What a (Rails) World, on to the Nation!

This has been an interesting year for me, both as a technologist and an author. When I say year, I mean the past 12 months. I do my "new year" planning in October as this is my birth month. The great thing about setting those goals is reusing them each year as when I slide right past achieving them. But we will not talk about that now.

I went to three technical conferences; two for Ruby on Rails and one on enterprise software platforms. Call the latter an occupational hazard. The Rails conferences were in Detroit and Toronto, and the last was in Vegas. As venue cities go, I liked Toronto, then Detroit. Vegas doesn't do it for me. I have one more conference (Author Nation) in November. Yes, that's "this year" in my frame of mind instead of "last year."

Why are these conferences exciting to talk about? If you've read the earlier posts, this has been a year of technology renaissance for me. I've returned to Linux. I've started dabbling with Neovim (yes, the fingers still remember all those commands from 20 years ago!). Ruby on Rails released new capabilities focused on solopreneurs and small teams. As I get closer to retirement, I'm exploring what to do in the next phase. That includes looking for my tribe. I'm a creative who likes to give back to his tribe, so it helps to know who they are. With these conferences, I think I've found two of my three tribes. The last can only happen when we ultimately relocate.

Rails World was the peak experience for me. I've met a lot of public figures and celebrities in my life; presidents, governors, congressmen, actors, musicians, authors. DHH is perhaps the most authentic public figure I've met; what you see in the videos is how he is in person. I rarely went for the fan selfie, but my wife said I am beaming in the image below with DHH. I think that speaks to being comfortable in one's skin.

Does this mean I'm done with writing? Heck no! At the conference, I almost spoke as much about my experience as a writer---the joy, the intricacy of the mechanics---as I did programming. Yesterday my wife and I were talking about my writing, and I took her through the rabbit warren of my mind when I think of characterization and how to weave new characters into a series.

A co-worker complained about how some authors will burn a chapter of the reader's life introducing and providing backstory on a new character. Robert Jordan was the example he used. I've not read the Wheel of Time series, but my co-worker commented that there are books that are more filler than plot advance so Jordan could set up for a future sub-plot.

I explained to my wife about how I just toss the character into the scene where they make the most sense. In Bellicose, I had a character who I needed to push a sub-plot for a couple scenes. I intended that she would quietly enter (a shuttle screaming in and landing only a few meters away from Litovio with dust and debris flying everywhere), and then quietly exit stage left. Not much need for a backstory there. But she shows up again in Gambit. I didn't really want her there or need her there. If you know the character, you know she really doesn't care who you are or what you think. She's doing to deliver; a real smooth operator. I then started on about Checkov's Gun, and a few other concepts before my wife pulled me back into the mundane.

We had been talking about office political strategy and tactics, and programming. At work, I think in years and strategic moves, and how to help someone in a way that we both get what we need. Then I moved on to the evolution of web development and data hosting over the past twenty years. (At home I think in years as well, but that's a post for another day.) The comfort I showed in shifting topics caught her a bit off guard.

To me they are all related. Plotting novels and series requires every bit of strategic thinking as it does out-thinking others at work by a handful of moves. Writing a web application can be just as strategic, depending on what you're writing.

I've previously written about not being able to write fiction when work stress is high. I'm in one of those seasons now. I'm thinking about themes, characters and scenes. But I cannot commit them to paper, er, text files.

Rails has advanced the web development community to the point that I'm going to create a web-based computer game I've wanted to play for twenty-five years. My skills are sufficient and the framework is robust enough. I started this iteration on 29 September, but I have fragments of code going back almost a decade that I can dust off. I just finished roughing out Action Resolution mechanics, which led to shifts in approach. I'm almost to the point where I can tie in those past fragments, then add in action queuing, and I'll have an alpha.

It's been an interesting few weeks. Thanks for reading along my journey with me.