After 3 months of work from absolute scratch, I have just finished putting together my first stand-up routine. 5 minutes, no fat. Just in time too – the final practice session’s on tomorrow night, and then it’s time to take off the training wheels and face the crowd on stage on Sunday night. It’s amazing what you can come up with under pressure. I think it’s fair to say that I’m absolutely terrified, but at least I know that the material will get me through. Now all I have to do is memorize it, and then not forget it in a haze of public humiliation. No worries!
Archive for the ‘life’ Category
My name in lights
My first stand-up show listing just went up on the net this week (http://amusedmoose.com/shows). You can book tickets online. Sunday the 14th at 7:30. Reality has just hit like a sock full of coins. I’m bricking it.
Go on funny boy, tell us a joke
A while back I had a good look at myself and decided that life was too short and it had to be lived. After all, no one really wants to spend their limited time living the day to day grind until retirement. Since then I’ve gone out and traveled more, taken a few career risks and clocked up a good few adrenaline sports. And I’d encourage everyone to do the same. So in that continuous vein of putting myself out of my comfort zone, a couple of months back I signed up to a stand-up comedy course.
My best description of it would be that it’s a bit like that feeling you get when you go skydiving and the plane takes off. It’s that horrible thought of “what the hell am I doing here”, rapidly followed by “what was I thinking”. An adrenaline sport where the build up fear lasts for months.
It’s two months in, with a month to go until the course end and with it my first gig. And this week I finally hit a couple of breakthroughs. And none too soon. After 8 weeks of writing on an almost daily basis, there’s finally some stuff there on paper that looks like it might get laughs. That’s been one of the hardest things – you just can’t tell after a while. Dissecting sentences trying to extract that little nugget of mirth that you know lies within tends to kill the joke for you. It’s been a huge relief – kind of like getting to cloud level (if I can go back to the skydiving analogy) and being told that by the time you’re here again the chute will be open.
Stand-up is not like telling jokes. You can’t run them past your mates. It’s all about atmosphere, context and typically a chained story (you could be doing one-liners). So there’s no real test bed other than getting out in front of an audience and giving them your best shot. To make it more complicated, it’s 90% delivery. If you want proof, just check out these sets that Michael McIntyre wrote for TimeOut (spoiler: they’re not that funny when you read them). So it’s this bizarre art form with immediate feedback when you perform, but absolutely none beforehand. No wonder it’s mind-numbingly terrifying to those of us who haven’t braved the stage yet (and probably for a good number of gigs afterwards as well).
The course has been really good in getting some valuable stage time in front of an audience where anything goes. So far, I’m loving it. Lots more writing and practice ahead.
Tips on the London Eye
Pretty much everyone who comes to London goes on to the London Eye. If you want to save yourself some time and money, book tickets online at their website to get a 10% discount, and you get to skip the ticket queue when you turn up to collect your tickets. Great way to save yourself 15 minutes.
A fire-side chat about programming
Every once in a while I go through a period of introspection where I pose questions like “why am I solving the same stuff all the time?”, “is there a better way to be doing this?” and “what’s around the corner?”. I think it’s pretty healthy, and I prefer to give it a good two weeks of thought straight rather than to constantly be going through that process (which I find pretty distracting at the 10k foot level). As part of that I have been reading an awesome book in the last week called “Secrets of the Rock Star Programmers“. It’s a collection of interviews with some of the biggest/loudest names in programming, and contains the sorts of conversations that you would have down at the pub with these guys. I think that it’s quite an introspective, passing-on-wisdom type of book in the vein of “The Pragmatic Programmer” (TPP), but for the Java/.Net generation. Unlike TPP, it covers subjects around the meta-level stuff like keeping up to date versus trend chasing, and work-life balance amongst the day-to-day grind of pending deadlines. The really interesting thing is the common threads coming out despite the personalities and differences in approach. The book’s style is very different to TPP’s in that it is not prescriptive, but rather lets you draw your own conclusions. It has been an interesting read that I think I will keep coming back to, and one that I think I would not have gotten as much out of at the beginning of my career. I strongly recommend it, especially if you happen to be going through a “so, what’s it all about, then?” stage and don’t happen to have your favourite rock star around to chat to.
The Moustache is Back!
During Movember (the month formerly known as November) I’m growing a Mo. That’s right I’m bringing the moustache back, because I want to help tackle men’s health issues and fight prostate cancer.The Movember rules are simple. I start out on the 1st clean shaven, and for the rest of the month grow the most awesome moustache humanly possible within one month!Here’s where you come in. You help out with a donation to help beat the most common form of cancer among men, and in return on the 30th of October I let you vote on the shape of my upcoming soup-strainer. Here’s where it gets interesting. The higher the total, the bigger the choice. Here’s the breakdown:
- £0-500 – Not bad. The tache looks respectable, even pretty good in a pastiche kind of way.
- Errol Flynn/Clark Gable
- Johnny Depp
- £501-1000 – Pretty good. Serious face-caterpillar time.
- Borat
- Tom Selleck
- £1001-1500 – Now we’re cooking with gas. I either get mistaken for:
- Merv Hughes
- Ron Jeremy
- £1501-2000 – Smoking. Getting out the tache comb and wax for some serious swash buckling.
- Salvador Dali
- The “D’Artagnan” – complete with triangular goatee.
- £2000+ Facezilla destroys Tokyo!
- General Ambrose Everett Burnside
But wait! There’s more!
Every day in Movember I’ll take a photo of the tache progression, and animate it so you can see the magic happen in internet time at the end.
As you can see, every little bit helps. So you get to have a bit of a laugh for a month and get to feel good for helping out with a great cause. “But Jake? How do I get in on this sweet deal?” I hear you say. It’s real easy…
- Go to https://www.movember.com/uk/donate and donate online using your credit card or PayPal account.
- Email me at jakekemail-movember at yahoo dot com dot au.
I will then add you to the “special” mailing list that lets you… Pimp My Face.
The money raised by Movember is donated to the good people at The Prostate Cancer Charity which will have an enormous impact on many men’s lives, and the awareness will help us to fight prostate cancer on every front – through research, support, information and campaigning.
Did you know…
- Prostate cancer is the most common cancer in men in the UK. 35,000 men are diagnosed every year and one man dies every hour.
- 1 in 11 UK men will be diagnosed in their lifetime .
For those that have supported Movember in previous years you can be very proud of the impact it has had and can check out the details at:
[ Fundraising Outcomes ].
Movember culminates at the end of month Gala Partés. If you would like to be part of this great night you’ll need to purchase a [Gala Parté Ticket].
And if you want to link back to this blog, that would be cool too.
Conference organizing no more
After taking a step back to have a think about my situation, I have regretfully pulled out of organizing the IJTC conference in Dublin this year. Putting together a conference is a hugely involved activity and I just do not have the time to spare on it this year. I wish the remaining organizers the best of luck and hope the event works out to be a success.
Irish Java Technologies Conference 2008
It’s that time of the year again. We are just starting to ramp up getting this year’s conference in Dublin together for November. A good few months this time, as opposed to our insane 3 month schedule last year. There are a bunch of themes that we are looking to cover in this year’s line-up, but the crux of it will be around addressing common problems and how the tools can help to support that effort, rather than being a bog-standard tech showcase. It’s kind of a reverse point of view from what other other events take.
It was a great buzz putting it all together last year, and I know this one’s going to be even more fun, both for the delegates and speakers. We already have our scheming hats on 
Who reads your blog?
So, why no blog posts lately? Most of the interesting stuff that folks blog about are those issues and ideas which have currency, those at the forefront at their minds. Tech blogs too deal with the everyday. Issues that we have come across, interesting ideas, problems and techniques. However, in this day of corporate non-disclosure agreements and overly keen security departments sometimes it’s just not prudent to scratch that blogging itch, regardless of how tangential the topic might be.
On the flipside, if you didn’t know, Eclipse 3.4 aka Ganymede is out! With a whole bunch of new goodies as standard. After my first cursory test drive, the concensus is… very nice.
Teenage Knife Crime in London
An unfortunately pessimistic, yet topical, post this time. You only have to walk past the news stands any given day to see the topic of the month. Knife crime is increasing, with the victims typically being teenagers. What were a couple of isolated incidents now appear to be accelerating into a sustained trend. Anyone who has read Malcom Gladwell’s Tipping Point would not be surprised to see the similarities between the case studies described, and what’s going on. Ironically, bringing media attention to the issue, and staging marches in unity against knife crime only serves to validate this behaviour as an appropriate way to resolve disputes. Seeing one’s peers behaving in a particular way serves to validate that behaviour as an acceptable form of expression. The current trend will only be stopped by applying lessons from past equivalents. In the meantime, we can unfortunately expect it to accelerate.