Miscellaneous Monday - We're all NERDS at Heart!

[Andy - PTC Redundant]

[Prologue – Once again I have the serene honour of doing the Miscellaneous Monday in the place of @Meg Holbrook  who is being super overtly Nerdy in her job right now and due to her nerdy-ness/busy-ness, passed the mantel temporarily. Thanks so much Meg!]

What Makes One A Nerd? 🤓🤔

Let's be honest... we're all a bunch of nerds, right? Even the most jock-like of people - be they NFL fans, rugby players, bodybuilders, whatever - love to Nerd out! Talk of statistics, or the best nutrition or even their favourite book/movie can fill their conversations daily.

Back at school I used to believe that a nerd could only be a person who wears glasses and is really good at studying. Such a cliché!

But later in life, with far more experience and wisdom now under my belt, and a personal realization of my own levels of "nerdy-ness", I’ve come to realise that nerds are nothing more than overtly passionate Subject Matter Experts who just want to share all their knowledge with the world and gain more knowledge in return.

What Makes YOU A Nerd?  🏆🤓👍

So based on that self-proclaimed definition, what is it that you are passionate about and love to talk about?
Are you the SME of a particular subject at work or an activity in your private life and you love telling the world about it?
What is getting you up in the mornings and help driving you to work?
What are you doing on the weekends that you love Nerding out about!?

You’re already on Community ready this… so you’re technically half-way to answering the question really! Just gotta fill in the rest of the details now! 😁

I’ll make a start….

[Andy - PTC Redundant]

For those that know me both Online and Offline within the world of Atlassian Community you will know that Fun Man Andy is a MA-HOO-SSIVE nerd…. Not just for all the fun stuff like Miscellaneous Monday and Fun Friday but also for the serious side of using Atlassian Tools. I just love to share my knowledge, answer questions and also ask my own questions when I get stuck too!

It’ll come as no surprise that I am also the Atlassian Admin at work and promote way of working with the tools and help others out as much as possible. I do also love to ensure we’re using Atlassian tools in the office according to best practices as much as possible…. Mostly it’s a vertical-climb-without-a-harness-or-rope kind of challenge but highly rewarding because it improves my quality of life as a Project Manager exponentially!

Along side work what really makes me a nerd is my love of music, in particular lyric writing… I pretty much spent every commute to and from work working on this as much as possible! It’s pretty amateuristic but in the last year started collaborating with people from Philadelphia, Brighton (England) and also here in Rotterdam! Very cool.
Just recently in another Miscellaneous Monday I Assembled the BAND GEEKS:
https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Off-topic-discussions/Miscellaneous-Monday-Atlassian-Band-Geeks-Assemble/td-p/1157285

Alongside music I really love all sorts of puzzles… my lifetime favourite has to be jigsaws, but I haven’t done a proper jigsaw puzzle in a looooong time, but over the span of a lifetime I’ve easily completed over a hundred, with my favorites being a jigsaw puzzle of Spiderman and our home town Zoetermeer in the Netherlands! My ultimate passion when it comes to puzzles though is the Rubik’s cube! Over time I have learned how to master the 2x2, 3x3, 4x4, 2x4 Tower and the 3x3 Mirror Cube…. Now that I’ve started learning how to Speed Cube, plus all the standard algorithms and short-cuts, it won’t be long until I go onto 5x5, 6x6 and the Megaminx (which, interestingly enough… is just the 3x3 solution with two extra algorithms – much like most of the cubs in reality!)

Recently I’ve gotten into Geocaching big time and therefore my nerdiness has EXPLODED! Everywhere I go now, it’s on my mind… I’m constantly looking at the app to keep an eye out for caches! The kids love it because for them it’s like pirates on a treasure hunt. My wife just grins and bears it. After last weekend’s very Autumnal experience, she asked we only do it in good weather from now on. Hah hah! Next week I’m even going to hide my first cache. What a NERD!

So that’s me as a nerd in a nutshell – there’s so much more but these are definitely the main highlights… now over to the Community!

[Jimmy Seddon]

Awesome stuff @Andy - PTC Redundant!

At work, I'm super passionate about tools.  While others see them as just a means to accomplish the job at hand, I see them as something to be cared for and nurtured.  I was not the one at our company that made the decision to go to Jira but I made a vow that I would let things get as out of date and mismanaged as my predecessors.

6 years later, I am responsible for managing everything with our Atlassian stack!  Wwe have increased our Jira usage, we added other Atlassian products to our stack and I'm here helping others where I can and learning as much as I can from all the smart people here (and slowly getting more budget space to expand our Atlassian usage into other things Atlassian offers ;)).

Outside of work, I have three things I'm passionate about.  Baseball in the summer, Curling in the winter (yes I'm Canadian!), and Video Games.

Baseball and Curling are the way I stay active, Video Games are more of a social thing for me where I generally play games that allow a group of us to sit on the couch together and have a good time!

[Andy - PTC Redundant]

Yeah @Jimmy Seddon ! Cracking stuff. Love that you are a true Atlassian Hero! Your Nerdy work story is true inspiration. 👏🤓

What great sports to keep you nice and active and Curling is surely a standard of nearly all Canadian nerds, right? 

🏆✌

[Mike Rathwell]

@Jimmy Seddon , I am a misplaced Canadian living in SoCal. It is highly amusing to a) try to explain curling here and b) reveal that we both had that as a sport in high school phys ed and that I skipped rinks in a league. The only sport that can be played at Olympic level while holding a beer and a smoke.

[Kat Warner]

My specialist subject can be seen as contentious so it is something I keep separate from my work persona. From a need for quality information and support from peers, I created a Facebook group that provides evidence-based information and support. I had hoped to provide advocacy and be a catalyst for change - but decided the risks from notoriety/publicity is not worth it for me.

I am an information magpie always collecting sparkling titbits (tidbits to the US and Canadian folk) with no real specialist focus. 

[Andy - PTC Redundant]

Cracker lacking @Kat Warner : super secret group? Can't get any more nerdy than THAT! 👏🤓

[Jimmy Seddon]

@Kat Warner I'll be honest I read both of those as "tidbits" needed to go back and read it a second time to understand the joke :D

[Andy - PTC Redundant]

Hah hah ! 😂👍

[Mike Rathwell]

sigh Nerd-dom... where does one start? For me, when I am not causing glazed eyes over a super cool post  function that is HTML encoded email with embedded Groovy for conditions including what goes in the email with fancy velocity output formatting... it's keyboards. Lots of keyboards... 

I am writing this little missive on a hot plug switch tenkeyless board having a mix of Gateron Brown and Cherry Blue switches with really cool chiclet style keycaps. I have in my drawer a 75% Vortexgear Race 3 that has Cherry Clear switches with DSA profile keycaps and also a stupidly expensive walnut spacebar and enter key along with a 65% keyboard with Cherry Brown switches with O-rings under the keycaps and a couple of (also stupidly expensive) artisan keycaps. I rotate among them based on what I am doing and... whim.

I just ordered (because interesting and cool; at least to me) a 75 key ortholinear keyboard; 75 keys in a 60% keyboard space. The layout is this way in the picture but where MY keys are might be different (and, indeed, the 3u spacebars might well end up being single keys). This one is getting Gateron Clear switches.

For those that don't get it... it's weird. That said, at least where I work, I'm not alone. We have a Slack channel dedicated to keyboards. At least I've not (yet) gone down the rabbit hole of custom spring weights and stem lubrication in the switches.

[Andy - PTC Redundant]

@Mike Rathwell WOOOOOWWWWWWWW!!!!! You win the Nerd Crown. That is fricking AWESOME!
I can imagine that THAT keyboard is absolutely perfect for coding... plus blind typing!
What is CTRL...? the yellow buttons?
How does FN work...? is at all?
I see no F1, F2, etc. So interesting!!!

[Mike Rathwell]

So, @Andy - PTC Redundant , here's the cool thing about this board (and there are many, many others like it); the keys are what and where you want them. Using QMK you can make the layout what you want including extra "layers" (think of them as more "shifts") to have keys do exactly what you want. My layout may well not be exactly that and this keyboard is extra cool because the keys are a square 5X15 grid of single keys. In that image, even the small 3U "space bars" may not be what I go with as there can be 3 discrete keys in each of those spots and, indeed, the initial keycap set I bought doesn't even HAVE any 3U keys (but does have 2U keys). However, I think I'll end up with SOME layout close to that as I think it would be insanely neat to have cursor keys under thumbs in the middle. 

Many smaller form factor keyboards (typically 65% and smaller, this being the one I have) don't have explicit function keys; rather you get the Fn keys with a secondary "shift" key and they mate to the number keys. The whole idea of smaller or "interesting" form factors is that they either innately or can be configured as such to reduce finger/hand movement. Even just going "tenkeyless" brings your pointing device in closer to the board reducing movement.  

Consider, the 75% Race 3 I am using at this moment is quite a small form factor and just the layout having the cursor keys rather close to the rest of the keys means that one's hands almost don't move to use the cursor keys. 

My other part of nerd-dom is to craft my work environment to where I do all my work on a Chromebook or Chromebox. Where this ties to the above is that about the only Fn key I use is F5 (direct to window switch or ctrl-shift-F5 for a screen area capture). So... I'll put on two keys; one that is an F5 and the other macroed to do that somewhere in that middle section.

We'll see how the ortholinear goes; the idea is that fingers don't have to move side to side as much as "standard" keyboards with the staggering that merely legacy from key positions imposed by the levers on manual typewriters. However, I think I'll like it. If I like this ortholinear keyboard, my next one might well be an Ergodox (this is an example of a pre-built one but one can also get as kits) where they use the thumbs for rather a lot more than just the spacebar. 

The rabbit hole is deep.

[Mike Rathwell]

An advantage to 60% form factor keyboards; more room for cats (and yes, I did make the leap to the 75 key ortholinear)

[Fernando Bordallo]

Wow! And I thought I'd seen my fair share of odd keyboards 🤯

[Andy - PTC Redundant]

@Mike Rathwell : I am not sure what to say about this knowledge share... it's so deep and informative! I actually think you should transfer this into an entire post of its own on Community, it is that amazing....!
I kinda wish I had a need of this in my life. Alas, I do not... (I think....?)

So the cat.....?? 🐈
Is that like you're smash-enter button or something....??? 🙀

[Fernando Bordallo]

My nerd ways are quite easy to classify. I'm known for holding information on common 'sayings'. And use them quite often!!! Even have a good laugh when I try to use translated versions across cultures 🧨 hehehe. My favourite comes from my granny: the difficult takes some effort, the impossible a little more.

[Esme Crutchley]

I'm so making this into a background for my Mac!! Love this soooooooo much!!

[Andy - PTC Redundant]

Nice one @Fernando Bordallo ! You have a wise granny! 🧐