I have been poking around in my own archives recently. It’s pretty cool to remember things that I had completely forgotten. Anyway, the following is a post I found about the first Book Sprint. It was about Pure Data and held on the little island of Korčula, Croatia. A buddy, Darko Fritz, let us use his apartment in the center of the old town. I was to join two friends, Derek Holzer and Luka Prinčič, at the apartment for 3-ish days. However, on the way I had a health freak out and had to participate remotely. It was our first attempt at a Book Sprint and looks almost nothing like how Book Sprints are done now, but it was a starting point and gave me a lot to think about.
The following is the report written by Luka for the FLOSS Manuals site. I love the two images in the post. They are the only images Luka and Derek sent me of this mysterious event.
So, Adam sent us (he was supposed to come too, but couldn't at the end) - he sent Derek Holzer and myself to this Croatian island Korcula, into the little (but very very cute) town named the same (Korcula) so that we Sprint-it up and write a Pure Data manual for FLOSS Manuals. I took my little old red car and drove down from Ljubljana over Rijeka and under scary stoney Velebit entering the warm sunny region of Dalmatia and driving further towards Split. Now this was a fun ride, especially under Velebit was very scenic. My cup of tea, as I hate the boredom of motorways. And my clutch was going to hell too, so my fingers were crossed. In split I caught this superfast catamaran-pedestrian-ferry that took me in under three hours to Korcula where Derek was waiting for me. And for phone line. And for internet connection.
In this lovely little town with incredible feel of Venetian architecture, tiny little streets, all set in stone, we waited for ADSLine to appear, which it did right next morning. The evening before we discussed over a plate of Italian pasta and a beer what would be good to work on in the coming days. After the internet magically appeared (yeah right!) we could also discuss with Adam, who was in Amsterdam, over Skype how to work and what to work on. Derek was somewhat the main captain although each of us worked on our own chapter. Adam was going after installation instructions for various platforms, Derek was rewriting and expanding tutorial on how to build a simple synth, and I was going deep into 'Dataflow' tutorials.
On Monday when I arrived, the sea was quite wild as there was a lot of wind. Tuesday was all gray and rainy. We had some talk about doing some hiking, as Derek had already explored some terrain, but Tuesday was a bit too wet, so we stayed in and worked on bits and pieces trying to see how much work there is and how writing feels. It seems from the after-perspective that this was the day to slowly get the grip on how the writing will go.
On Wednesday, we took a bus in the morning to a nearby village by the coast and with a little map from the tourist office tried to find that little path that would correspond to a tiny dashed black line that goes up the hill towards another village about 500m higher. We searched for more than an hour until finally a communicative small but wide man told us that old paths were overridden with a new tarmacced road. "I used to go up those little paths, when I was young..." he said, "but now there's a road so why would one bother, but if you really want there's a little path there, you can find it...." We walked a path for a while and than decended slightly to find a road and walked the road for an hour, maybe two, under not-too-hot spring-ish sun. It was lovely. After icecream in a local shop (those local shops are always something!) we caught a bus and went back 'home'. We started to work immediately, had some lunch and worked quite late into the night. We talked to Adam over Skype and kept working each on our own part.
Interestingly, and maybe because we were supposed to leave on Saturday morning (Derek had a plane ticket), next two days somewhat turned into a bit of frenzied work. As we knew we had just two days left, we tried to finish our parts. In consequence, at the end of Friday, we realized we hadn't gone out much. A real Sprint! One of us would go to the shop now and then, couple of times a day, and cook something (mostly pasta! - but I found some local home-made from Istria, and also Korcula olive oil!) The weather was nice, not cold, with many bits of sun. The voices of kids, sometimes horny cats, and other inhabitants were protruding through an open door and were making a special kind of atmosphere. It was lovely to feel this Venetian-medieval town around you. Our flat was on the third, top floor, we could see the sea from it and the roofs around us.
On the friday evening we found ourselves with two huge finished chapters, both quite satisfied with it. We were tired but happy we made something. We searched the town for fish and found an empty but slick-looking restaurant with a young owner-cook who made us some fish and vegetables. I guess we could have made them ourselves at home, but none of us spotted a fishery and had much time and energy left. I must say it has also been very educational for me to listen to Derek's peculiar playlist which included a lot of metal, old rock (Black Sabbath, etc) and African (Angolan) music from 70s. Luckily, Derek had a near perfect (or at least compatible) feel for sound levels, so it was always very enjoyable to become aquanted with a genre I haven't explored yet in my life much.
In the aftermath of the Sprint of two-and-a-half days, we both felt we wouldn't be able to go like this for another day. If anything, we would need a day, or ideally two days of real break from this and than we could come back to the book with passion. I was thinking this would be great to do three or four times. In waves. Either that, or steadily work for 8, maybe 10 hours per day and then have a break. But I think this also depends on the writer and her/his ability and fitness to write.
At the last moment I decided to stay for another two days (as our 'landlord' told us we could stay for us long as we liked, and Adam agreed). So Derek left on Saturday morning (6 am, ugh) and I worked on some of my music and had couple of walks around town and surroundings, really enjoying it immensely.
My car was still where I left it in Split, and the clutch was still functioning (barely), so I drove back, under lovely Velebit of course. It was almost like summer all the way to the border with Slovenia, where heavy rain was waiting for me.
Korčula image by PJL (Own work) CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)
In this lovely little town with incredible feel of Venetian architecture, tiny little streets, all set in stone, we waited for ADSLine to appear, which it did right next morning. The evening before we discussed over a plate of Italian pasta and a beer what would be good to work on in the coming days. After the internet magically appeared (yeah right!) we could also discuss with Adam, who was in Amsterdam, over Skype how to work and what to work on. Derek was somewhat the main captain although each of us worked on our own chapter. Adam was going after installation instructions for various platforms, Derek was rewriting and expanding tutorial on how to build a simple synth, and I was going deep into 'Dataflow' tutorials.
On Monday when I arrived, the sea was quite wild as there was a lot of wind. Tuesday was all gray and rainy. We had some talk about doing some hiking, as Derek had already explored some terrain, but Tuesday was a bit too wet, so we stayed in and worked on bits and pieces trying to see how much work there is and how writing feels. It seems from the after-perspective that this was the day to slowly get the grip on how the writing will go. On Wednesday, we took a bus in the morning to a nearby village by the coast and with a little map from the tourist office tried to find that little path that would correspond to a tiny dashed black line that goes up the hill towards another village about 500m higher. We searched for more than an hour until finally a communicative small but wide man told us that old paths were overridden with a new tarmacced road. "I used to go up those little paths, when I was young..." he said, "but now there's a road so why would one bother, but if you really want there's a little path there, you can find it...." We walked a path for a while and than decended slightly to find a road and walked the road for an hour, maybe two, under not-too-hot spring-ish sun. It was lovely. After icecream in a local shop (those local shops are always something!) we caught a bus and went back 'home'. We started to work immediately, had some lunch and worked quite late into the night. We talked to Adam over Skype and kept working each on our own part. Interestingly, and maybe because we were supposed to leave on Saturday morning (Derek had a plane ticket), next two days somewhat turned into a bit of frenzied work. As we knew we had just two days left, we tried to finish our parts. In consequence, at the end of Friday, we realized we hadn't gone out much. A real Sprint! One of us would go to the shop now and then, couple of times a day, and cook something (mostly pasta! - but I found some local home-made from Istria, and also Korcula olive oil!) The weather was nice, not cold, with many bits of sun. The voices of kids, sometimes horny cats, and other inhabitants were protruding through an open door and were making a special kind of atmosphere. It was lovely to feel this Venetian-medieval town around you. Our flat was on the third, top floor, we could see the sea from it and the roofs around us. On the friday evening we found ourselves with two huge finished chapters, both quite satisfied with it. We were tired but happy we made something. We searched the town for fish and found an empty but slick-looking restaurant with a young owner-cook who made us some fish and vegetables. I guess we could have made them ourselves at home, but none of us spotted a fishery and had much time and energy left. I must say it has also been very educational for me to listen to Derek's peculiar playlist which included a lot of metal, old rock (Black Sabbath, etc) and African (Angolan) music from 70s. Luckily, Derek had a near perfect (or at least compatible) feel for sound levels, so it was always very enjoyable to become aquanted with a genre I haven't explored yet in my life much. In the aftermath of the Sprint of two-and-a-half days, we both felt we wouldn't be able to go like this for another day. If anything, we would need a day, or ideally two days of real break from this and than we could come back to the book with passion. I was thinking this would be great to do three or four times. In waves. Either that, or steadily work for 8, maybe 10 hours per day and then have a break. But I think this also depends on the writer and her/his ability and fitness to write. At the last moment I decided to stay for another two days (as our 'landlord' told us we could stay for us long as we liked, and Adam agreed). So Derek left on Saturday morning (6 am, ugh) and I worked on some of my music and had couple of walks around town and surroundings, really enjoying it immensely. My car was still where I left it in Split, and the clutch was still functioning (barely), so I drove back, under lovely Velebit of course. It was almost like summer all the way to the border with Slovenia, where heavy rain was waiting for me.
