Things I done did in July
A round up of the shenanigans I got up to in July.
Went to Pokemon Go Fest Dortmund
Only 3 weeks after getting back from Chicago, having attended the Pokemon Go Fest there I was back on a plane (albeit a shorter one) to Germany to attend Pokemon Go Fest Dortmund.
The event was really good, especially compared to last year’s event where I was locked out of the game on the first day and this year I took my girlfriend with me to a Pokemon event for the first time.
Worked with React Native
This month I would say I felt more comfortable using React Native and it’s different tool sets.
I recently wrote about my first experience with React Native and how I took on the development of an old React Native app that hadn’t seen active development in over a year (which is decades in the JavaScript ecosystem!).
Bringing the app back into active development and adding quality to it was a good challenge for me and helped to re-enforce some of the beliefs around development that I hold so it was quite cathartic.
One of those beliefs — lessening the concerns of the code base lead to me creating a pure component library for the UI elements within the app which is what I’m currently having good fun working on.
Ran my first successful Pathfinder campaign
For the last 15 years I’ve really wanted to play Dungeons and Dragons but my friends were never committed or nerdy enough to see a full campaign through to the end.
We’d had a number sessions that normally lasted about an hour or so until someone had to go home or grew tired of playing and then there was never a follow up session.
This month I was finally completed a campaign and it was in one session too!
My friends expressed and interest in learning how to play D&D and I’ve got the Pathfinder Beginner Box (think of it as the D&D starter set but more tangible so easier for new players to understand) so I invited them round for an afternoon of dungeoneering with me as DM.
I pulled out all the stops to set the mood as they progressed through the dungeon to defeat ‘Black Fang’, a dragon that had taken up residence in a cave and was annoying the local village.
I had ‘ruddy mysterious’ music (the Diablo game soundtracks), dynamic lighting (coloured Philips Hue lights I controlled with my phone) and bought a giant dragon figure to use in the final battle.
The general consensus was that it was a good session and they really liked the fact they were free to explore any avenue of thought in the game as long as they made a throw when they wanted to do something weird, which lead to:
- The fighter shitting themselves (justified as “We’ve been in here for 3 days, surely we’ve got to go to the toilet” then they rolled a nat 1)
- The fighter trying to use a giant spider leg to pick the lock of a treasure chest that didn’t have a lock
- The fighter lobbing a single gold piece at a ruby that ultimately set off a fire trap badly injuring everyone else in the party
- The rogue killing a dragon purely by stabbing it in the bum with their rapier for 3d6+2 damage
- The cleric ‘whoosh’-ing the wounds of the party away with a wand of cure light wounds
Did my first review as line manager
I’ve been a line manager at work for the last 6 months and this month I did my first review with one of the people I line manage.
When I worked as Development Team Manager at NeovaHealth one of my favourite parts of the job was helping my team get the most out of their time working for the company so it was really good to be sat next to someone helping them figure out how to achieve goals they wanted to meet again.
I’ve now got 3 people I line manage so I’ll be getting that experience once a month from now on by the looks of things.
