It’s nearly Halloween. Today we carved pumpkins (just look at Ingrid’s stabbing!) and bought lots of candy for the trick-or-treaters we hope will come.

On Saturday we saw the Tower of London from the outside. Today we came back, bought tickets and went inside. Ingrid was a bit sceptical at first but agreed to give it a try, especially when she saw the informational signs about Henry VIII and his six wives. (Her love of Hamilton has led her to listen to other musicals as well, including Six, about those six wives. “Divorced, beheaded, died. Divorced, beheaded, survived.” Musical + Tower = history coming to life.)

There was a lot to be seen and done there, enough to keep us occupied for half a day: the history of the Royal Mint, exhibitions of all kinds, the various walls and towers themselves, and then of course the crown jewels. The queue for those snaked back and forth across the entire courtyard but moved quite quickly so the wait didn’t feel as long as it was. And the crown jewels are quite magnificent to see. The oldest ones are massive gold and big colourful jewels; the newest are all edges and sparkle.

Our final afternoon activity was a tour on the London Eye. The tour itself was half an hour, but booking, getting the tickets and then queueing to get onto the thing took forever, so the whole endeavour literally filled our afternoon. It was a nice and relaxing experience. Too bad they’ve wrapped Big Ben in scaffolding though.

After two late nights – one flying, one at the theatre – we were tired today. Ingrid slept late, and we took it easy during the day. More bus rides, less walking.

We took a bus to town. alked around Covent Garden, watched some street performers, walked to Leicester Square and Chinatown, walked along Pall Mall to Buckingham Palace. Took a bus to Harrods, admired the food hall and the chocolates and cakes and teas, and the jewelry and handbags with silly prices.

The highlight of the day was afternoon tea at Paul’s. Ingrid has recently taken up tea-drinking (mostly rooibos and spice tea) and a real, proper afternoon tea was a key item on her wish list. Paul’s is maybe more French than English, serving little brioche buns instead of sandwiches on their tea trays, but the whole thing did involve tea and multiple cakes and that’s what matters.

By then it was evening and we took a bus back to the hotel and rested while watching Sherlock Holmes (the one with Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman).

We’re in London! Seeing Hamilton!

First we slept, though, to recover from yesterday. Finally I had to wake Ingrid because I was starving hungry. The hotel breakfast looked decent – but since it was charged separately, I was rather aware of the cost, and decided that we could get an equally nice breakfast for half the price at the nearest Pret.

Apart from Hamilton, our plans for this day were vague and loose. I thought we could just see a bit of London, so we simply walked out of the hotel and headed south towards the Thames. This took us past not just a Pret but also the Gherkin, various other cool buildings, and then the Tower of London. Ingrid didn’t feel like walking for hours in a castle, so we just looked at it from the outside.


She was more interested in Tower Bridge – it’s pretty iconic! – so we went inside and looked at all the photos as well as the old engines. The view from up on the walkways is pretty nice as well. It really brings home the contrast of central London – centuries-old buildings side by side with gleaming, curved skyscrapers in glass and steel.

We walked westwards along the Thames, taking in the Globe theatre, Borough market, Millenium bridge etc on the way. Lunch was fish and chips near St. Paul’s.

One of the items on Ingrid’s list of places to see and things to do was Platform 9¾ so after lunch we took the Tube to King’s Cross. We had heard and read that there’s a baggage trolley there, halfway into the platform wall. What we were not prepared for was the commercialization of it. There is a Harry Potter shop right next to it, with a queue just to get in. And another big queue of people waiting to stand next to that baggage trolley and get their photo taken by a professional, with enough of a crowd there to warrant multiple security staff to wrangle them all. Eugh. The cost of globalization and cheap travel is that everything Instagrammable is totally overrun.

In the afternoon, we went to the London Dungeon. (No photos from there because it was dark from beginning to end.) I had expected something museum-like but it was more like a series of short theatre performances, with the crowd walking from one vignette to another. From Guy Fawkes, through the plague and the Great Fire, to Jack the Ripper and so on. Overall, not bad.

Dinner was conveyor belt sushi at Yo! Sushi. This was mixed with nostalgia even more than all the other things we’ve walked past. One of the very first times I had sushi was at Yo! together with Eric. Either their quality is not what it was, or maybe it’s my palate that has changed, but I found the food less flavourful than I remembered.

Then some queueing, and finally, the grand finale of the evening – Hamilton, at the Victoria Palace theatre. We were there early to give Ingrid ample time in the gift shop, and she was overjoyed.

She was even more overjoyed by the performance itself. And I have to agree – it was fabulous. I’ve heard it on Spotify enough times (god knows!) to know what it sounds like, but hearing and seeing it live was a whole different experience. I’m glad that Ingrid is such a fan because without her I wouldn’t be here.

When the performance ended, my first thought was that if only we still lived in London – we could come back and see it again.

Ingrid and I are off for our three-day trip to London to see Hamilton, the musical, spending a good chunk of today getting ourselves there. Train to Stockholm, bus to Skavsta, flight to Stansted, train to Liverpool Street station… Hours and hours of sitting around either being transported or waiting for the next phase of transportation. And we won’t reach our hotel until past midnight.

Eric’s computer is occupied by Eric, so Adrian can’t program in Scratch. He found Scratch Jr on the iPad instead. It didn’t have the flexibility to make a game, but he could make objects loop around the screen – one horizontally, one vertically – and go “bing” when they hit each other. And each time they hit each other, they also grew larger, so finally they were constantly hitting each other and constantly going “bing” which Adrian found hilarious.

This is the bath shark, reminding Adrian that it’s bathing day.

Ingrid is past the stage of needing reminders and can both see when her hair needs washing, and actually do it voluntarily and without prodding. Adrian is a different story. Once he is in the shower, he doesn’t actually mind showering and often stays far longer than he needs. It’s getting him there that is hard for some reason.

I ripped my spring/autumn coat some months ago. A fold of fabric literally got caught on the end of a door handle and I kept walking and tore a great big L-shaped hole in it. (This fabric looks pretty and feels nice but is way too flimsy for a coat; it’s already wearing thin around the edges of the buttons as well.)

Now I’ve finally mended that rip and I’m quite pleased with the result. The two arms of the L were easy but I couldn’t come up with a good solution for the corner. In the end I just sort of fudged it, which is luckily not too noticeable.

I learned this stitch from a book. They called it the paratrooper’s stitch, recommended it for field repairs of tents and such and demonstrated it on heavy duty canvas. I think it worked pretty nicely for this case as well.

There are books about mending things. I own three.

At what point does something I like doing become a hobby? When I start buying books about it, maybe?

Adrian is programming a game in Scratch. You control a taco with the arrow keys, trying to catch apples and avoid the dreaded loaf of bread.

Attended leetspeak, the tretton37 developers’ conference.

The morning sessions were less technical and focused on the ethics of software development. “Code that goes wrong – is it my fault?” Interesting discussions. What is our responsibility? When should we say no? A few thoughts and comments that I especially remember:

• Do project managers and product owners expect us developers to always deliver faster and faster because they cannot understand the complexity of what we do? Or is it because we keep feeding their expectations, and delivering faster than what is sustainable?
• It is perfectly possible and even easy to become a developer without ever having considered the ethics of this profession. There is no certification required. Anyone with a two-month JavaScript boot camp under their belt can start calling themselves as a developer. Even if you have a CompSci degree, ethics courses are usually optional.
• Every developer should give some thought to two things. One, where does your line go? What are the things that you would say no to? (Weapons software? Gambling? Lying to your users?) Two, what is your path of escalation? If you see something you need to say no to, and your manager will not listen, who do you talk to?
• One of the panel members worked with online marketing. When the question about everyone’s “lines” came up, she jokingly said that if that’s the case then she would have to quit her job entirely. “Then you should,” was my immediate thought, “and the world would not miss what you have been doing.”

The highlight of the afternoon was Eric Wastl’s behind-the-scenes talk about Advent of Code. Passionate and inspiring, interesting and entertaining.