I really enjoy my job and I find it rewarding in all sorts of ways. And while I wouldn’t want to do anything else professionally, I think that I am at my happiest when I am making something. Sometimes this is a physical project, much as a bit of functional but deeply unappealing bit of furniture like the cat tower or a little bench that the washing basket sits on near the clothes line.
But more often, it is a piece of software which, in my case, is usually web based. Most recently, I built Speed Filter. It came from a project that my student teacher, Amanda, was doing with the Year 10s where they were building a simple hangman style game. It turned out to be a bit too complex for most of these students, so I devised something simpler, where the player would guess three letters and then try to guess the word from twenty possibilities.
As tends to happen, this set me thinking, and the end result was Speed Filter. I thought it might be a fun and perhaps even compelling game, and the only way to find out was to build it. So I did.
Now I know that it is mildly fun and not especially compelling, which is fine. It was fun to build and, as I mentioned, I am happiest when making something.