Audible

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I joined Audible in 2007. In 2017 I stopped watching television. So, since then, the majority of my entertainment has been via audio. I listened to a lot of radio throughout college, and got to liking the theatre via radio-plays. I like that listening doesn’t demand all of your attention like watching TV does.

I’ve made jewellery whilst levelling up my entrepreneurial skills, and at one point even thought of including a ‘made while listening to’ entry for each item of jewellery in my web-shop. While listening to books, whenever what I was doing demanded all of my concentration, say, if I was setting a stone, or attempting a particularly fiddly solder joint, the narrators voice would disappear. With years of listening though, I’ve become an expert at quickly getting back to the point where I lost the thread. It’s amazing how often you will repeat missing exactly the same section though. Almost like its secret information that doesn’t want to be heard, but it’s just the natural rhythm of the work.

When I cycled a lot, and heard something particularly interesting or striking, that same something would come back to me when I next passed that place by. It’s a known phenomenon, I don’t recall its name.

I’ve noticed that far more IT books are being converted for listening, but for coding I need silence or unobtrusive background noise. For me, an accompanying activity for listening has to be somewhat disconnected from the main thrust of your thought, a form of physical labour is best. My favourite book listening past-time is now gardening, but I have no garden!

Trackpads, ThinkPads and Open-Source

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I had my first experience with a free app-store via Linux, way before my first Play store experience. I used to buy second hand ThinkPads, chosen because they were robust and worked well with Linux, rebuild them and then get them booting so much faster than they could with Windows. They lasted for years. I never really took it further than setting them up, installing free stuff, using and updating them, but I was hooked on the trackpad straight away.

Don’t worry though, this is not me advocating for a specific hardware platform. I like to handle my own needs and preferences with as little inconvenience to others as possible. I’ll be happy, whatever office platform is used; I’ll just connect my trackpad keyboard. Afterall, if you are spending a long time doing something, or you have to do something often, isn’t it best to find what you love doing it with?

IntelliJ IDEA Ultimate Edition

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above: Code inspection with 16,000 + errors in a snippet and example project.

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above: shift shift and find anything, simple.

We received a 6-month introductory license for JetBrains IntelliJ IDEA Ultimate Edition part way through our Java course, so I guess I was brought up on it. Admittedly my experience with other IDE’s is limited. I’d used Eclipse for some very basic Java years before, Brackets for a dabble with HTML and eventually VSCode, all of which are/were wonderfully free. But I cannot imagine moving away from IntelliJ now. I’ve seen it improve over the last year, to the extent that I would not want to stick with the legacy version my license would roll back to if I didn’t renew. Their business model working..

I’ve plans to study IntelliJ IDE properly, to ensure I get my money’s worth. And, in the future, were I looking to revisit Python or learn Golang I’d definitely be looking at PyCharm and GoLand.

They got me, it’s a yearly tax that, this year at least, I find myself wanting to pay..

Honourable Mentions: