Monthly #13

January started off really busy, but thankfully around the Lunar New Year holidays here in Taiwan things started to calm down. We enjoyed a restful time at the end of the month, spending some of it with Kay's family in central Taiwan and the rest at home in Taipei. I even got in a 3 hour bike ride for the first time in ages.

🎓 Drinks with an old friend from university. The month started with me whiling away some time on Instagram one Sunday afternoon only to see an old mate of mine from university posting a Story from a tea house near Taipei! Turns out he was here with his partner, and they were flying out the next morning. I hadn't see Dave for maybe 10 years, so we hastily arranged a time and place to meet for drinks. It was great to catch up and talk about how our lives have gone. I hope 2025 can bring about more reunions like this one, as well as bring more people to Taiwan for a visit!

🏉 One day Touch tournament. In the middle of January, we held our first local Touch tournament in Taipei for many years. It was a chance to bring the small Touch community together with the larger Rugby community here, and give folks a chance to stretch their legs in the middle of Winter. We had 8 teams, over 60 players, playing 30 games in total. A really fun even, even it was a bit rushed squeezing all that in over the course of 4 hours.

Another Touch related highlight off the month was the school team I coach having the chance to play some games against another local school from central Taiwan to end their season. This is the first time that's ever happened, and I'm really hopeful that we can continue to develop Touch in both schools.

🔗 carbon.txt validator and an updated spec. At work, we finished January by releasing some updates to the carbon.txt project we've been working on. We hope that these updates, which include a validator CLI and API, updated tooling on the website, and a revised syntax will encourage organisations to start adopting carbon.txt as a means to report and link to their own sustainability disclosures.

There's also another small project I've been working on behind the scenes that we'll be sharing soon too.

These are my current Start, stop, continue items for 2025.

• Tracking habits daily: 😐 Kinda. I started doing this at the start of the month, but trailed off during and after Lunar New Year.
• Carrying a water bottle with me: 😄 Yes! This has been regular, even for times where I'm only out of the house for a short while. I've got a small 350ml Camelbak flask that I clip onto a bag, or just carry in my hands.
• Drinking a glass of water first thing in the morning: 😄 I'll give this a pass. I'm not doing it every day, but I'd say the majority of days now start with a drink from that same 350ml Camelbak flash I mentioned above.
• Making a weekly "Links & Listens" list: 😄 Yes! I'm sure I'll skip a week eventually, but going good so far.
• Cooking more regularly: 😔 Nope.

• Reaching for sugary (fizzy) drinks: 😐 Kinda. This is kinda, but on the negative side. Towards the end of the month I got weak with this.
• Waiting for things to be perfect before releasing them: 😐 Kinda. I've been regularly putting stuff out about the Grid-aware Websites project we're doing at work, but some other things I feel like I'm still sitting on even if they could be released already.

• Trying to get Touch into more local schools in Taiwan: 😄 Yes! As mentioned above, we've got a new school in central Taiwan that I hope to speak with. I think late February and early March will be busy with school meetings for me.
• Getting in a 20-30 minute walk during the day: 😄 Yes! I reckon at least 6 out of 7 days as week I'm getting this done. We've not had a long rainy spell or long cold spell this winter, so that helps.