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Work

I’m taking this holiday season off work. Normally, I wouldn’t have any issues with working through the Christmas and New Year periods. They’re my favourite time of the year for working, mostly because everything is super chill, and because there are a lot of other people who are also taking the time off work, you can usually get some personal projects completed that you wouldn’t otherwise fit into your regular day, or put a little extra care into getting something done right.

Work is interesting like that. Even though I have far too much annual leave banked up and zero other commitments, there’s a small part of me that would still like to be working over the break. I know a few other people that use the holiday period to zero their outstanding annual leave balance for the year, taking whatever leave they have remaining after the year is done and dusted to rest, relax and recharge, allowing them to come back and start the new year with a renewed vigour and zeal for whatever lies ahead.

It’s not that I’m a work-a-holic or anything, either. I feel like have an excellent work-life balance otherwise. I rarely stay past the prescribed hour, and use my full lunch breaks as a way to get away from work for a bit. My only flaw is that I perhaps check work email a couple more times than strictly necessary over the weekend, but even that only adds up to a minute or two of distraction over the course of a normal weekend.

No, I want to work during the holiday season because it’s the coolest period of the year (attitude-wise, not temperature). Sure, you might be stuck in the office with the rest of the poor folks who drew the short straw. Or perhaps they, like yourself, volunteered to keep the lights on, and have now been charged with making sure that nothing breaks too badly while everyone else is drinking their eggnog, watching the cricket, or spending some quality time with their friends and family.

But because there are a lot of other people away from work, the usual pressures from the business dissipate, and all you’re left with is whatever your manager has decided they want you to work on over the break. If you get that done to their satisfaction, then the rest of your time at work is yours, free for you to finally work out how that esoteric system works, improve that thing that you’ve wanted to touch all year, fix that problem that needed more investigative time than your usual day would allow, or automate some process that probably should have been automated years ago.

I mean, what else am I going to do with my time off? There are only so many games of Frostivus you can play before you realise that maybe you’re the reason why your team can’t get past wave 12 of Tinys, and that perhaps Luna isn’t the ideal hero despite having built-in wave-clear, an aura that buffs your teammates, and scales well enough into late game to be truly formidable. Even though I can string creeps along and kite them all around the map, it’s my fault that my teammates decided to hide in base and get overrun.

So yes, a small part of me wants to be working over the break. Even if a not-insignificant portion of that is because I have basically nothing better to do.

The Liked List, 2018

A few years ago, Instapaper introduced the concept of personal profiles of everything that you liked via the read-it-later service. Which is great, seeing as it’s a public list of reads that I, well, “liked”, but less good is that there’s no context around why I like a particular piece.

Last year, I started a thing where I posted a dozen or so of my favourites out of all the stuff I liked in Instapaper from last year. At the time, I thought it was a good idea to tell you about Instapaper’s profiles — a feature you basically never hear about elsewhere — but this time around, I think it’s a good idea to occasionally share links to thoughtful, insightful pieces that you might not necessarily get from other places. So without too much more preamble, I present to you: The Liked List for 2018. In somewhat reverse chronological order of when I liked it, and excluding extremely popular stuff you’ve probably seen elsewhere, or stuff that I don’t think is noteworthy enough to write about…

  • Away Childish Things
    In late 2018, one of my sources for some of the internet’s more popular content linked to a Harry Potter fanfic. I started reading, and before you know it, I was caught up in a (mostly) post-canon story that seemed believable enough, which is exactly the kind of fanfic I’m into. Not only that, but the story itself was so engrossing that by the time it finished up, I was satisfied, but disappointed, and went looking for more…

  • Time Turned Back
    Which led me to Time Turned Back, the other Harry Potter fanfic I found after a bunch of filtering and sorting of Archive of our Own works. I’m not sure I can stomach some of the more explicit fanfics, or stories from alternate universes that don’t line up with the canon, but this one about time travel is believable enough, and is a pretty good story to boot. If it wasn’t for its slight deviations from the canon at the end, it would slot nicely somewhere in-between the fifth and sixth books.

  • Thongs
    Sometimes I read things that inspire me to be a better writer, and this one on the etiquette of the work bathroom is one of those pieces. It’s very well written, even if I’m slightly too daft to understand the implication at the end.

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A Tale of Two Backpacks

The last time we talked about backpacks, I was discussing how content I was with the Incase Campus. Despite not being particularly flashy, or having any really unique selling point, I enjoyed how light it was when empty. It was this combination of being super light and super compact when empty that allowed me to carry it everywhere, just in case I found something I wanted to carry home.

I don’t remember buying the Campus online, but I do remember how I stuck it in my wardrobe and kind of forgot about it, until I re-discovered it a few years later and decided to take it with me when I moved to Brisbane. I remember taking it overseas, to the US and The International 2015, and having it serve as my all-purpose, all-rounder backpack — capable of holding all my groceries during my weekly shop, everyday essentials, and whatever else I wanted to carry around.

I ended up putting it through the wash, which turned out to be the beginning of the end as a tear developed at the top near the zip. Due to its placement near the zippers which only exacerbated the fraying of fabric that followed, within a few short months the tear was big enough that zipping up my backup was, more or less, an exercise in futility.

I began looking for a replacement.

I had heard about the OnePlus Travel Backpack from The Verge, who said at the time that it was the best OnePlus product of the year — a scathing comment for a smartphone manufacturer that had just released the OnePlus 5. But the Travel Backpack looked the goods, and provided it was as functional as they said it was, combined with the same understated, yet minimal and modern look that made it not too dissimilar from my Incase Campus, it would make the ideal replacement.

But by the time I decided to buy the OnePlus Travel Backpack, sometime in early 2018, OnePlus themselves were no longer selling it. I was initially disappointed, dismayed at the prospect of having to spend another few months looking for another great backpack, until one day I decided to take my chances and take a look on AliExpress. After all, if there’s one thing Chinese manufacturers are good at, it’s producing decent knockoffs of real products, and I thought I had pretty good chances of them copying a Chinese-designed backpack.

I ended up finding and buying the OnePlus Travel Backpack on AliExpress. Although I’ll probably never know how close it is to the real thing, if it’s a fake, it seems to be a near-perfect copy, as far as I can tell. Everything carries OnePlus branding, including internal labels and zip pull tabs, right down to the removable tags you get on products. Plus, it seems to have all the same features as the OnePlus website says it should.

And as far as being an actual backpack goes, the OnePlus Travel Backpack is not bad. It’s heavier than the Incase Campus, but the trade-off is increased durability and slightly more protection for whatever I’m putting inside. I packed it full of stuff for a three-day weekend trip to Sydney, and it carried all of my stuff without kicking up a fuss, and was comfortable enough on my back for the better part of a day, so I guess it passes the basic backpack litmus test.

But it was the extra weight of the Travel Backpack that made me realise I couldn’t use it as my new go-everywhere, do-everything, backpack. The specs say it’s about 1.1KG, which isn’t much, but that makes it about four times heavier than the positively featherweight Incase Campus. I didn’t like the way it was always sticking out from my back, regardless of the contents — unlike the Incase Campus, additional structural support meant that it doesn’t collapse down to a more compact form factor when empty.

The search continued.

I got very close to picking up a super-lightweight something-or-rather from Crumpler made out of what I thought had to be the thinnest material known to man, and probably could have been happy with that. I wanted a backpack that I had looked at a while ago from a local company, but it, too, had been discontinued. I lusted after the GR1 (again), balked at the price (again), and decided I could find something cheaper and lighter.

Incase had another sale recently, and I decided to have another look. If I found the now-discontinued Campus the first time, they had to have something similar, right?

As it turns out, the Incase Compass is pretty similar to the Campus I had originally, at a price I was prepared to pay. The material is a bit thicker, and there’s slightly more padding all over, meaning that it doesn’t get as compact as the Campus did when both are fully empty, but it gets pretty close.

I really like the "chunkier zip style" of the Compass, although I’m not a huge fan of the faux-leather pull tabs. There’s now internal organisation pockets in the front-bottom zipped area, the front-top zipped area is larger, and there’s a new small pocket at the top that I’m not completely sold on – due to its location, when you open up the main bag compartment it’s the first thing you see, just hanging there. The pocket itself has a bunch of faux-fur padding, so maybe it will come in handy for delicates.

Overall, I’m very happy I finally found a great backpack replacement. Now all I need is somewhere overseas to take it…

Tilted and Muted

“Reported in 1 matches by 3 different parties”. Evidently, that game was a bad one.

With the introduction of the ranked role queue in Dota 2 for Dota+ members, I’ve been playing ranked for the first time in years. You can say what you want about Dota+ as a whole, and I’ll be equally as honest and say that there aren’t that many tangible benefits, but ranked roles improves on a crucial aspect of the ranked queue experience by guaranteeing you’ll be able to play a particular role and lane. By removing that extra potential point of friction, you could argue that it’s a little pay to win, but it’s perfect if you want to grind out tens of games on a particular hero.

Which is exactly what I’ve been doing. Much to the chagrin of my teammates, I’ve been picking offlane Luna and relying on a good support to do well enough to get past the laning stage, at which point I’ll focus on pushing out the lanes and creating space — either until my team’s real carry has enough farm to carry the game, or until I get big enough to feel that I can.

And it’s been working. Kind of. Dotabuff says I’m 13-9 on Luna in ranked games over the past three months, and while I’ve only played one game since patch 7.20, it’s early enough in the patch, here’s hoping that I’ll be able to get away with it until early 2019. Even though I consider myself pretty good at pushing out the lanes and making space with a carry that can farm, this tactic of picking offlane Luna isn’t exactly winning any popularity contests. Unless my team wins, in which case all is forgiven, but losing inevitably makes me the prime target for most of the blame.

So even though I know what I’m doing — playing a carry from the offlane position, making space for our “real” carry, even if that turns out to be me — some of the time, my team isn’t on the same page, which leads to mistakes and pickoffs, which often leads to some very unhelpful suggestions in chat.

I’ve said before that ranked is a festering cesspool of the worst Dota 2 players, which carries the unique distinction of being the only game mode where you can literally measure how good you are at the game, relative to everyone else, either via the ranked medals they introduced a little while ago, or via the MMR that you see on your profile page.

My thoughts on that haven’t changed — I continue to believe that ranked is the most toxic game mode in Dota 2, like any competitive mode in any other game — but on the other side of the scale is my own willingness to improve in a game that I’ve spent thousands of hours in. I cannot believe how truly awful I am at a game for the amount of time I’ve spent playing/watching/reading Dota. It’s actually unbelievable, and the only reason I haven’t quit altogether is because I know I haven’t played anywhere near enough to be good (and also because no one really quits Dota). If you want to get better, you play, and that often means playing a lot.

And so, if you want to see how good you are at Dota, or measure how much you’ve improved in any way, shape, or form, you play ranked.

Continue Reading →

Which Apple Watch Series 4?

Stainless Steel Apple Watch Series 4 – but with a fake or real Milanese loop?

I have one of those decision-making problems again. After pre-ordering the Apple Watch Series 4 in Stainless Steel as soon as it became available, getting it on release day, and marvelling at just how much better it was in literally every way (besides, maybe, telling the time) than my old Series 0, I returned it before my 14 days was up. All because I’m not sure if I want the regular Stainless Steel, or the Space Black Stainless Steel.

As I said on Twitter, it’s not that I dislike the regular Stainless Steel. I’ve worn a Stainless Steel Series 0 since day one of the Apple Watch, so I’d like to think I know what it does well. It has plenty of advantages that the Space Black doesn’t, including a classic/timeless look, the fact that it probably combines better with more bands, wears better over time, and looks marginally better in various situations or when paired with different outfits.

I mean, most classic watches you see come in silver. Putting aside the issue of watch/lug mismatch for a moment, there’s probably a reason why the Apple Watch Hermés only comes in the Stainless Steel, and even though you’ll eventually get scratches on your Stainless Steel, they’re not something a casual observer of your watch is likely to notice. If they do bother you up close and in the right light, you can either polish them out, or write them off to “character”, a sign that your watch is worn and loved.

As much I loved everything about the Series 4 hardware, I wasn’t sure about the finish. To me, it was as if I had simply swapped my old Apple Watch for a newer model, one that looked basically identical to the one I had before. Don’t get me wrong, the Stainless Steel Series 4 looked extremely nice on my wrist, exactly like a premium watch should — especially when paired with something like the Milanese loop — but for whatever reason, I wasn’t enamoured with it like I feel like I should have been. Some of that can probably be attributed to it looking near-identical to the one I had before, meaning it didn’t have as much of that “new and shiny” effect associated with any new technology purchase, even through it was, literally and undoubtedly, new and shiny.

I didn’t hate the regular Stainless Steel, but the problem is, I didn’t really love it, either.

Enter, Space Black Stainless Steel.

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The Vandarian Incident

The Vandarian Incident, by Martin Godfrey

Since about 2010, I’ve been looking for the name of a book. Not all the time, obviously, but every now and again. Sometimes I’ll plug a few words into Google to see if, by chance, I’ll be able to stumble upon some crucial detail that will let me get one step closer to something more specific than “futuristic/sci-fi adventure book for young adults”. Other times, I’ll wander rows and rows of second-hand books, on the off-chance I’ll be able to recognise the front cover amongst a sea of other titles.

For years, despite being able to recall the majority of the plot, I was never able to remember anything specific enough that would let me get any closer to being able to Google the title, the author, or even the publisher. There were nights I’d dream about finding the book with some of my old things, or even dream about reading the book, but for whatever reason I was never able to read the title, and it remained elusively out of reach. I like to think I have a pretty good memory, so you might be able to understand my frustration at not being able to remember something as simple as the name of a book I read over a decade ago.

And honestly, it got to the stage where I didn’t care about the book itself. I’d long ago confined myself to never being able to read the book again, which was fine — I knew how the plot went, anyway, so being able to read the book again was inconsequential, in the grand scheme of things — but after all this time, it became less about finding the book and just being able to know the name of it so I could put the whole thing to bed, get some closure, and let something else occupy that particularly obsessive part of my mind.

In June 2013, I posted on my blog about it. Not that I expected anything to come of it, but more as a marker, something I could refer back to, and refine as I remembered more details. I knew that it was possible someone would read it, know the exact book I was looking for, and get in touch to tell me about it, but I wasn’t exactly holding my breath for that to happen. It was more for me than anyone else.

At the time, one of my Twitter friends told me to post to Reddit’s Tip of my Tongue subreddit to try my luck, but I off-handedly dismissed the suggestion, offering the (admittedly very weak) excuse that I didn’t have a Reddit account.

Fast-forward a couple years, and I’m still no closer to finding out any details about the book that I read as a teenager. I do remember wading through dozens of pages of youth sci-fi/adventure books on Amazon in the vain hope that I’d recognise the cover, even if I had no idea what the title was, but that, along with everything else that I’ve tried, was as unsuccessful as any of my earlier attempts.

It’s August 2018. I sign up for a Reddit account, furnish my plot description with a few more details, give it a little extra polish, and post to the Tip of my Tongue subreddit, all in the vain hope that some kind stranger will either know the name of the book that I’m talking about, or know where to start looking.

Long story short, some kind stranger posts the exact title of the book I’m looking for, sourced from an old scholastic book ordering catalogue, based off nothing more than my description of it and some other contextual information particularly regarding the time period I read the book in (even though that turned out to be off by about 10 years). A quick Google confirms that yes, The Vandarian Incident is the exact book that I’ve been looking for, for years now. Total turnaround time, around 9 hours.

Thanks to the internet, I now possess my very own copy of The Vandarian Incident by Martin Godfrey, which you see in the photo at the top of this post. It arrived last week, all the way from a bookshop in Evesham in the UK, a town with a population one-tenth that of my home town, Hobart. I told my colleagues that it had sentimental value, which it kind of does — even if it’s not the traditional kind of sentimental.

There’s another story there, but it’s not The Vandarian Incident — which is, by the way, every bit as excellent as I remembered it being.

And now I can finally put this one to rest. Finish this particular chapter, if you will.