Weeknotes 2024 W14 W15 W16 W17

Here’s a quick summary of the last 5 weeks. There’s no order to this, just what comes to mind.

I’ve been admiring the ephemeral beauty of Sakura in and around Lewes. Our trip to Japan last year has bought new meaning to this time of year and this spectacle has become a memory-portal to the beautiful country I so wish to return to.

I watched as a few brave individuals bared all on their website on CSS Naked Day. Mark your calendars for April 9th 2025!

I was accepted onto Stéphanie Walter’s new workshop Navigating Research Biases: Guiding Decisions and Mitigating Risks. I was really grateful of the opportunity and met some really talented researchers in the session.

I watched a few videos with Andy Bell talking about fluid typography (Utopia), Cube CSS and Every Layout. I’m really excited about all three and need to find some time to work through each. As an aside, it’s incredible how much has changed since I was a front end developer.

I made a few changes to my site:

• I setup a ghetto POSSE using IFTTT and an RSS feed on my website. I’m now syndicating my thoughts as bloops on Mastodon.
• I attempted to get Webmentions working on my site but eventually gave up, saving my time and energy to setup IndieKit.
• I added a Now page after stumbling up https://nownownow.com. I’m wondering about how I can syndicate these updates too.
• I added a speaking page for podcast and presenting appearances. It’s got me excited about doing both again so will seek out some opportunities in the near future.
• As I was going to be at an in-person event, I added a vCard to my site and then followed Brian Suda’s advice for creating NFC and QR code business cards. I’m a laminator away from finishing.

I volunteered for UX Camp Brighton and was documenting the day on their social media accounts. I caught snippets of some of the talks and as always they were fantastic. Al Power’s photos really capture the vibe of the day. I’ve taken a bit of a step back from in-person events and it was really wonderful to catch up with some familiar and new faces. I’m already planning my talk for 2025.

I visited Helen Davies and Audrey at Studio 52 in Southease. It was great to get a change of scenery and do some remote work. Audrey is still the Best Dog in the world!

I had lunch with the super-talented and lovely Andy Dennis. We spotted each other briefly at Patterns Day and arranged to meet up for some sushi and a natter.

I dusted off the family’s Nintendo Wii and breathed new life into it by installing the Homebrew channel. It was ridiculously easy and has unlocked and gained an array of new features. Fun fact: the Wii is able to read DVDs but at the last minute, to avoid licensing fees, Nintendo decided to turn off the feature in the software. With the Wii now ‘hacked’ you can turn this feature on. I followed this guide on Youtube without any issues.

I braved the ~14° water at Pells Pool so the swimming season is finally here.

I gifted 2 hours of my time to the Lewes Library of Things, a local community project providing access to all sorts of equipment free of charge. It was a tiny gesture of my part but was massively rewarding to meet people in my community and see some of the direct impact people like John are making locally. It’s piqued my curiosity in the sustainable and regenerative space.