After spending a couple years in management I want to get back into more individual contributor roles. It's where I can apply the skills I actually enjoy. Preferably I'd work as a dev or data scientist, but what I want is to spend time solving technical/mathematical problems and less herding cats and politicking.

EDIT: US with ability to relocate; willing to take a paycut.

Current plans:

• Attend more meet ups, there are a couple about an hour south of me. Hoping to build some connections with the local industry.
• Private server and website stood up, plan to host projects etc here for interested parties.
• Runs through exercism.io to refresh on some stuff.
• Find some open source projects to contribute on? There is also a local group of indie game devs, perhaps offer my services where possible.

So my question to you all is how would you go about sharpening skills and building up a portfolio?

Have you watched any TV shows recently you want to discuss? Any shows you want to recommend or are hyped about? Feel free to discuss anything here.

Please just try to provide fair warning of spoilers if you can.

What are some games that have inspired you to break out a real pen(cil) and paper?

How do you feel about games that implicitly or explicitly want you to take notes?

Do you have any recommended “note”-worthy games?

This thread is posted weekly - please try to post all relevant Israel-Hamas war content in here, such as news, updates, opinion articles, etc. Extremely significant events may warrant a separate topic, but almost all should be posted in here.

Please try to avoid antagonistic arguments and bickering matches. Comment threads that devolve into unproductive arguments may be removed so that the overall topic is able to continue.

This thread is posted weekly - please try to post all relevant US political content in here, such as news, updates, opinion articles, etc. Extremely significant events may warrant a separate topic, but almost all should be posted in here.

This is an inherently political thread; please try to avoid antagonistic arguments and bickering matches. Comment threads that devolve into unproductive arguments may be removed so that the overall topic is able to continue.

So last of the Cannes films this month with The Tree of Life by Terrence Malick from 2011. It won the highest price, Palme d'Or, at the Cannes Festival.

IMDb
Letterboxd
Wikipedia

Besides any thoughts on this movie, are you familiar with other Terrence Malick movies? Any comments on Cannes films in general?

The schedule for June is:

• 3rd: The Wicker Man (1973)
• 10th: Ravenous (1999)
• 17th: X (2022)
• 24th: The Exorcist (1973)

I saw a video by Throttle House with this premise and thought it was a fun one. What three cars or trucks would you want in your budget garage?

Let's assume that you can only buy vehicles legal in your country, but that there are no costs for importing. For instance, it might be illegal to import or drive a car with the steering on the opposite side as normal, so that's out. But you can import a legal car for no additional cost. Prices are today's prices, but if your prices are not in US$ then don't feel obligated to be exact down to the dollar/euro/CHF since exchange rates fluctuate. And to keep things easy, there is no VAT/sales tax.

If you'd prefer to spec out a wishlist for a country you'd like to live in (like Japan or Germany) you may do that instead, but same import rules apply. :)

Recently, I went to a meetup for a blog I follow. I was expecting and (in part) hoping for it to be really strange. Similarly to this post "Developers Aren't Nerds", I think a part of me held the expectation that I really would become an adult who sat around with other people who read something intellectually stimulating and joyfully kind of debated it amongst ourselves. Sort of like being on Tildes or any good forum. And being around these people and the environment was fun-- it was mostly casual, but when it wasn't, I felt challenged and like I was talking about things I cared about. And above all, unlike being online, it still felt human-- there wasn't that weird anxiety of saying something and getting piled on.

I'm blessed to have a pretty good life, which includes (now) a fairly diverse and broad social life I worked to grow. I believe there is emotional support too (though I have a smaller circle for that). But it feels like we spend more time talking about (their) travel, music festivals, clubbing, whatever. And I know part of the issue is that I don't "get" it (I am an introvert, I like small groups), or I did enough of those experiences and feel sated for the time. But man, would I like to be a little weird and just randomly talk about the random shit my head puts together after reading. (Today, it was global fertility rate projections, sperm counts, IVF. Other times it was blockchain and other architectures I was learning about. Overall, things that are difficult to bring up randomly.)

Do people have that outlet offline? Where did you find it?

Every single backpack I've seen that is functional and has at least some basic organizational features (see Bellroy, Peak Design, Alpaka, etc.) is usually pretty ugly and makes you look like a weird tech bro. And every single backpack that looks good is usually made by a fashion company (eg Zara, Pull&Bear or luxury brands like Prada) and don't have any utility features, only a single big pocket and maybe a laptop sleeve if you're lucky.

I have managed to find one backpack that looks awesome and is actually useful - Sympl Day Backpack. However, I'm out of luck here, because it has been discontinued by the company, and their other backpack models also have that "tech nerd" look to them (although they're not as bad as some other options)

Do you, by any chance, know some backpacks that both look fashionable AND have more than two pockets at the same time?

Edit: there's also Topo Design Daypack Classic which looks good in the black and white variant, but it does lack some useful stuff like laptop sleeve padding

Edit 2: I managed to find another awesome looking backpack! The ISM Bag. I might actually get this one, although $300 is somewhat expensive