After some big disappointments at Environment Canada, I decided to take three months off in May, June, and July of 2024. Now that my time off is coming to a close I thought it would be nice to jot down all the nice ways I got to spend my time.

"How Stuart felt before his time off". A painting by Enrico Baj in London.

London

Around June I realized I can just hop on a plane to anywhere without having to plan vacation time. I power walked through six great museums, most notably the incredible National Museum of Computing. They have the world's largest collection of old computers that are still running today! Some as old as 1940s. Incredible.

An 8MB early hard disk drive at the National Museum of Computing

I also saw:

• the Book of Mormon musical
• Rosetta stone (how we learned to translate ancient Egyptian)
• Lewis chessmen (oldest modern chess, 12th century)
• first x-ray
• first atomic clock
• Ada Lovelace's house
• three comedy shows
• Alan Turing's teddy bear
• AI meetup at the Queen Mary University of London. Neat presentations and free food and drinks. Super random that I was there but I just owned it and people thought my work and ChessCraft was very cool.
• and much more.

I ate fish everyday. No seafood in Montreal compares.

Lakes & Cottages

I managed to do three lake trips!

1. Lindsay, Brutus, Gary, and I went to Thunder Bay to celebrate my uncle's 70th birthday. Ice cold swimming. Drinks and marshmallows by the fire. Perfect weather, for me anyway.
2. Airbnb with Alex in Saint-Ferdinand. We realized we've never used a BBQ before, since there's always someone else more assertive who takes over. Everything turned out great.
3. Airbnb with Gary, Coral, Lindsay, Brutus, Russell, Adrienne, Elizabeth, Victoria, and Alex. There was a big turtle in the lake! Everyone was very excited to get me to see it. More excited than I was. It may have had something to do with the shirt I was wearing.

Founders

I've been dabbling with a tech co-founder matchup service. No big wins yet but I've had several chats and meals with two different people who looked great on paper.

NorthSec 2024

I attended NorthSec (computer security event) with some friends for the fun CTF competition. I had a lot of trouble at the event connecting to the challenges and submitting points. I thought maybe this was part of the challenge (my first CTF) but it turns out the event just had problems. It seems like a big oversight to me that the organizers allow other teams to interfere with the uptime of competition infrastructure. Clearly, each team should have their own isolated playground to attack. The event was disappointing to me, mostly because of this. I didn't stay for the last days because of family stuff.

OMSCS

I've applied to a master's program called OMSCS from Georgia Tech for Winter 2025. It's online but a real master's degree, in-person graduation, remarkably cheap, 10 courses, 2.5 years, and designed for people working full time. I've wanted to go further with computer science for years now, but leaving the workforce didn't make sense. I'll try it out and see how I like my first course!

Jobs

• I've applied to about 20 jobs. Quality over quantity. A few interviews.
• Declined a mediocre offer from a Montreal AI company. You'd expect a less stable higher workload private sector job to have better pay than government. They seemed insulted. Red flag I guess.
• I'm probably moving to a new government department soon as an AI lead.
• Another department is also interested in taking me, also AI lead, but they don't have any open position yet.
• I got a job referral from the AI meetup. Skillset mismatch.
• I declined an interview with a fintech recruiter for a high paying job that I'm very qualified for (HPC Python Linux). Mixed feelings.

ChessCraft

I finally released ChessCraft 1.16 with custom piece images! I've been 95% done since December 2023 but never could quite get it done... this release has been a slog. I'm excited to start work on something new after this.

Screenshot showing custom piece images in ChessCraft 1.16

Random Stuff

• New bike and a great St Lawrence bike trip with Alex.
• I built a new computer with the second most expensive consumer-grade CPU on the market! Mediocre parts otherwise, so just right for me. My old computer was ten years old! Wow. Linux and small upgrades really keeps a system going. I sold it to some eager kids for 100$.
• Air filter. I highly recommend this to my fellow allergy folks.
• Visited my parents and sister in Aylmer.
• Strength training gym trips with Alex. First time going to a gym in nearly 20 years.
• A dozen AI meetups.
• A half dozen amateur comedy shows at the Comedy Nest.
• Read: Dune, Huge, AI survival guide, evo-devo, probably more.
• Comics: Wonder Woman by Greg Rucka (great) and George Perez (not so great). Started Sandman and loving it so far.
• Read several computer science papers.
• Reconnected a bit with some peers and a professor from my master's in edtech.
• Helped Alex with a singing gig at an old folks home.
• Comiccon Montreal. The best part was how excited and happy Alex was to see her childhood hero, the voice actress of The Little Mermaid. Very nice lady.

Alex with Jodi Benson at Comiccon, the voice of Ariel from the Little Mermaid

Closing Thoughts

• Sometimes you need three months off to sort out your thoughts, feelings, and dreams.
• I'm starting to realize how much I like living by a quiet lake surrounded by trees.
• I want to learn more computer science, and not just casually. OMSCS looks great!

Back to work soon!

"A Manufacturing Town" by LS Lowry, 1922. A painting in London.