Humanizing computer work
Published: 2016-04-13 00:00:00

---
title: Humanizing computer work
published: true
description: A short essay about humanizing computer work after going fully-remote in 2015 and sharing my work-life online using social media.
published_at: 2016-04-13 00:00 +0000
cover_image: https://write.rog.gr/writing/setting-up-lolcommits/images/social-setting-up-lolcommits.jpg
canonical_url: https://write.rog.gr/writing/setting-up-lolcommits/
---

### Roger is working on a computer all the time

I started this [Tumblr][roger-is-working] about a week or two after I started working at [18F][eighteenf]. This had been my second foray into remote-work life and I was starting to really miss some of the aspects of checking into an office building everyday and having living-breathing humans around me that weren't my living-breathing reflection in the mirror.

So I considered it important to start doing this **publicly**.

![The author talking with coworkers remotely whiling a Git commit messages says "Point to new manifests" and a SHA is displayed in the upper-right corner](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/3ysq1i9phklvsdxut23h.gif)

I had found out about `lolcommits` from the [Meetup's Hack &
Tell][mu-hack-and-tell] in NYC back in 2011. I had been mesmerized by how simple the concept of tagging your likeness to a commit would make for better signing of commits than a GPG key. It made what I do on the computer more approachable.

I would tell friends that I hacked on something over the weekend, and didn't have anything to show for it. It was either a script or a tweak to my system that I couldn't really show off. But showing people a series of pictures taken while I was working on said thing was always easier to show off. More human too.

So I continued from job to job and project to project collecting `.lolcommit/*.[jpg|gif]` along the way.

![The author's selfie with a Git commit message of "Request Points page markup complete." and a Git SHA displayed in the upper-right corner](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/ksoo9g9p62la2mw4jlkr.jpg)

![The author's selfie with a Git commit message of "bringing back the popupTooggle" and a Git SHA displayed in the upper-right corner](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/ka7a3hv24pk4w3n4r6np.jpg)

![The author's selfie with a Git commit message of "Tweak the animation of slides based on nav clicks" and a Git SHA displayed in the upper-right corner](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/w6e1fjxpr821rf956l75.jpg)

![The author's selfie with a Git commit message of "Renaming the empty image" and a Git SHA displayed in the upper-right corner](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/ljdp0ggdtdabgk858ndk.jpg)

![The author's selfie with a Git commit message of "Fixed the edit-active triggering for each case" and a Git SHA displayed in the upper-right corner](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/jgacaro23h11y4auk9cx.jpg)

### That remote life

So once I moved from NYC to RVA, I found myself in a predicament. Jobs in Richmond weren't all they were promised to be, and I started looking for something else I could work with. So I did what I think most people in my situation do. I started working remotely. Freelancing at first, and finally landing my first full-time remote job at 18F.

This is when the real need for something like this came up. I needed a way to both keep myself sane and express myself to my new coworkers. So I updated my clone, merged with upstream, and found myself with all these glorious plugins that hadn't always been available. [So I installed the Tumblr one and wrote about how to set it up](https://write.rog.gr/writing/setting-up-lolcommits/).

[mu-hack-and-tell]: http://www.meetup.com/hack-and-tell/ "Meetup's Hack&&Tell"
[roger-is-working]: http://rogerisworking.tumblr.com/ 'Roger Is Working'
[eighteenf]: https://18f.gsa.gov/ '18F Homepage'