What I’m doing now

Updated on the 28th of January 2024

Sitting here to write a short update to this page, I’m realising quite a bit has happened recently. One more example of why journalling is a great thing.

I’ll start with the most personally exciting (and daunting) thing: I’ve been asked to be the celebrant at my sister’s wedding. No pressure! It’s not quite the same thing, but running JSOxford and other community events has taught me that’s my comfortable place: public speaking infrastructure, where the thing is really about someone else and you’ve just got to make sure everyone has a good time and things work.

I’ve also been getting out running again, for the first time since COVID. It’s a challenge not to overdo it early on – I’m often impatient when trying to regain form I used to have which can be counterproductive.

A new keyboard

I’m typing this update on a ZSA Voyager keyboard. If you’re not familiar with how much of a rabbit hole keyboards can be, this is your cue. This one is split, much like my Logitech Ergo K860 but more extreme so you can open your shoulders up. Although the split looks radical, the actual challenging shift with the Voyager is twofold:

  1. It uses an columnar key layout, so the keys sit in columns rather than offset. A few days in I can see how this might be better… but also I mistype almost every word while I’m re-learning a skill I’ve not thought about in 25 years

  2. It has way fewer keys than a standard keyboard. In theory this means less travelling for your fingers and making more use of your thumbs. In practice it means having one key do multiple things depending on whether you tap or long-press.

So although it’s just a keyboard I’m having to relearn the fundamentals, shedding years of muscle memory to learn a new system. That sounds bonkers, but it’s also got me practicing the craft of typing and thinking about the things that make me productive on a keyboard. It’s surprisingly mindful, so I recommend it… for now.

Work bits

I’ve been helping a London council establish their security team over the past 9 months. It’s been rewarding, particularly mentoring more junior members of the team and bringing across an engineering/deverloper mindset to security problems. Although this has taught me a lot about security and risk, I’ll be in the market for a change soon as I’m pulled back to tech leadership in engineering.

This is a now page. If it’s old, hassle me on social media.