Anyone who knows me or has followed me on social media will know I am learning to drive. I have thus far failed my test twice (annoying!), and my third attempt is tomorrow (as of writing). What really has thrown a spanner in the works is that my instructor's car got written off as bodywork was stolen from it, and so in the last few weeks, I have been practising and taking lessons in my own car, which means I will be taking the test in the same car. It's been a bit of a whirlwind of preparation knowing this!
Something that has been fun though, is that my car, a Skoda Karoq, has an app that allows for gamification of driving, mainly with respect to how efficiently you drive. And I have been doing great on that front.
While I don't feel I get nervous in tests, there is an element of it there, and the worst thing is that I second-guess myself. That is what happened last time I failed. It's all quite interesting, given that I feel I can do tests and interviews for other things quite well.
Freelance Work
With another contract down, I think it is likely the end of any writing work for the year. Writing about Space Marines, namely the Absolver Chapter which was created for Wrath and Glory, has been great as it was an opportunity to look at how playing as a Space Marine is more than just combat (which would make for really dull RPG sessions).
Now that Hunter the Reckoning 5e is an option for the ST Vault, I have got some content written for a new book for that game line. There are quite a few ideas from Chronicles of Darkness that just work better in World of Darkness.
Related to this I got to chat to Fiona over at the DMs Book Club/What Am I Rolling podcast, where we delved into more Iron Kingdoms RPG and the Nightmare Empire kickstarter.
Hobby
I've slowly, very slowly, been painting some Warmachine miniatures in preparation for playing 4e rules of the game, while also painting a Realm of Battle gaming table. It should look amazing for most games, but Necromunda Ash Wastes and Adeptus Titanicus will really suit the table well.
Also arriving on my doorstep are the remaining original expansions for Kingdom Death, which reminded me it is now 7 years since that game was delivered, and 6 since I did the Let's Play videos for Beasts of War. I really need to play some more.
Work
The upside this last month has been the end of a long-term project at work. Over the course of the project I have learnt a lot about AWS, Lambda, Glue, Athena, and more. Coupled with using python, and just today deploying the working version of the company car park space booking app on AWS Elastic Beanstalk (using python, MySQL on RDS and MS Single Sign On), it has been a lot of good learning with AWS and showing the utility of python to others in the company.
Combined with the above, I have been delivering workshops on python, combined with either web apps, or machine learning. I am really finding at the company that the niche is taking form as I demonstrate my knowledge about python, data science, and machine learning.
So to finish off, I also delivered a motivational talk to my old high school, explaining how gaming fitted into, and contributes to my career, thanks to the transferable skills that you gain from these hobbies.
Here is the extended recorded version of that talk.
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