Latest thoughts, if any, of Rachel Lawson...

Community Driven Development

For many years in the Drupal community, I’ve found that my greatest pleasure is not in actually creating the next awesome feature (and, wow, we have some awesome features coming…) but in helping to mentor those who will in the future. Recently, an opportunity came up that interested me a lot. Cambridge University Press & Assessment were looking for a seasoned Drupal developer to help grow the in-house team as they deliver projects built on the platform. I could hardly say no! I very much wanted to look at how better active participation in the community can be a key driver for development of the team’s capabilities..

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There's a wider story to tell in overland travel content

I don't think I'm known for keeping quiet about my love of overland travel, especially by motorcycle. Jumping on my KTM and heading off in search of distant lands is what my life is about these days.

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A long, long day

My original plan, when meeting up with Sophie for a week in Morocco, was to follow a few of the routes that I have done before solo. Show her a few places I really knew well and knew what the conditions were like. Instead, we ended up trying a new route that turned out to be rather epic...

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Skin in the game

Just chatting about cable cars, based on reading the good news that everyone rescued from the broken one in Pakistan.
Decided they feel unnatural because the person in control doesn’t have “skin in the game” in the same way that a pilot does in an aeroplane.
Then it occurred to us that the same applies to self-driving cars. Those in charge of, say, Tesla have no skin in the game if you crash. Think about that…

Let me tell you that for peasants like me

Some years ago, after a DrupalCon in the US, I received a direct message. It was kind of shocking and has been on my mind on and off ever since...

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On a season of biking events

We are very lucky in the UK to have some great biking/adventure/travel related events take place in the Summer and I have been particularly lucky to attend a few of them so far.

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A game of two halves

Ehsan Haji Safi, the captain of the Iranian football team at the World Cup in Qatar, spoke out ahead of their game against England today, saying "I would like to express my condolences to all of the bereaved families in Iran. They should know that we are with them, we support them...

52:48

And, surprise, surprise, that there Elon Musk has invited everybody’s least favourite uncle, Donald Trump, back onto Twitter.

What is it about polls that should never be called that causes them to end up at a 52:48% split of opinion? And then for some idiot to decide to take terrible decisions based upon it?

Goodness me, if the decision to reintroduce Trump into Twitter turns out to be as terrible as Brexit, we can all expect the future of the platform to be dire indeed.

Let’s try Mastodon

I’ve been thinking of giving Mastodon a try and created an account for myself.

As Twitter continues to self-destruct, I’ll move over more and more to Mastodon. And here is how:

Finally feeling right

Whilst I may have ridden a fair few miles on Hedy, my KTM 790 Adventure R, I only really started to get the setup right recently.

Over the last few weeks, I have been continually making small adjustments to the suspension and feeling the changes, deciding if that’s actually how I want the bike to feel and if it is helping me ride better, especially on dirt.

The confidence a good setup creates in my riding is huge - I’m now no longer fearful in sand and bashing through it faster and faster. And I’m now happy making (little) jumps whenever I can. And it’s FUN!!!