First, the tanty:

I’m earning a little coin doing some part-time work far away. Not quite in a galaxy, but damn near close to being one. To get there, I could drive. I have. It works. If I leave at 6am, I get there at 6:30 and workout, shower, and relax before I start working. The traffic is minimal and while it’s three times the distance from my house to Austin’s CBD, it takes less time to commute to this almost-galaxy at 6a than to the CBD at 8. But no matter how early I get up and how fast the commute is, it’s still driving. I’m also coming home in school traffic. I get nothing done. Who does? Who on earth gets anything done while driving? Oh yeah, the phone users. Let’s not start a rant about them.

I’ve sussed it out. I used to live in a city with a decent rail system (yo, Brisbane!), and have had to get used to Austin thinking it’s a city but having only one train. ONE! Two cars and running hourly on one route. I wouldn’t call this a rail system. I’d call it a functional amusement park. Austin, darling, you’re hardly weird by not embracing rail. Your hippies, hipsters, and pseudo “weirdos” are in cars (often solo) and clogging up your roads. It’s not Californians’ fault. We are backwards thanks to decisions made by people born and raised here. But go on blaming California. It’s more a sign that you’re bad at math.

Now the coding:

Now, to get to work, I cycle 30 minutes, take the train for another 30, then cycle 15 more. Coming home it’s slower due to the time of day and a serious uphill commute. I have 30 minutes in there to open up the laptop and tap tap tap. I could work on existing code and projects, but since my desk is my lap, and I have no space to write AND I have no give on the time I can unpack and pack, I thought the best thing for me to do is either read about coding, data science, and how-tos, blog about them, or do easy mini projects to keep my mind occupied on the train.

I initialised a repo on GitHub just for this. I have no general plan other than to commit whatever I’ve done. I may start and delete. I may copy something from one project over and take it back. I may just have little bitty things or one larger thing built in itty bitty steps. I think of this repo and 30 minutes (x2) as my version of train sudoku or crossword puzzles. It’s less about the final code than it is just to code. Anything.

I think my only rule will be to work on JavaScript (nilla or jQuery) bits that I can add Sketch App work to in order to balance the logic with the creativity.

And now I have spent this first chunk on a blog post that starts with a tanty ranty. Ah. Venting Tssssss. All good. My boat; my rules.