Monthly #17

May was a quiet month where I was finally able to get a big chunk of work done on the Grid-aware Websites project.

🇸🇬 Cracking on with Grid-aware Websites. Between travel and other projects through March and April, I've not had a chance to get a lot of coding work done for our Grid-aware Websites project. That changed in May, where I was able to set aside some mental bandwidth and a heap of time to work on improving the project. The key thing I worked on was simplifying the implementation process on existing CDNs. The aim was to remove the amount of boilerplate code required for setting up the project. I got that done for Cloudflare, and have updated our tutorial as well. Check that out if you're interested in adding some grid-awareness to your own website!

🇯🇵 Web sustainability in Japan. I had a short Touch trip to Japan near the end of the month (see below). I took the opportunity to meet up with a few folk working in web sustainability over there who I've come across through different channels. I caught with with Kazuhito Kidachi and Christian Brown from Mitsue Links, both of whom are part of the W3C Web Sustainability Interest Group. I also got to meet with Shingo Kinoshita and Nii Motoaki from Buddyworks, a Japanese web agency that is using CO2.js in a website carbon calculator for the Japanese market.

🏉 Japan Touch Summer Elite Nationals. I love going to Japan to referee Touch, and try to make a point to get over there at least once a year. This time, I was able to make it for their Mens Elite Nationals, which is their highest level domestic tournament. This time the tournament was shortened to a one day tournament, but that was still enough to wear me out with the fast pace of play in Japan. The shorter tournament also meant an extra day for exploring Tokyo where I discovered a few suburbs in town that I'd not visited before.

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

• Tracking habits daily: 😔 Nope.
• Carrying a water bottle with me: 😄 Yes!
• Drinking a glass of water first thing in the morning: 😄 Yes!
• Making a weekly "Links & Listens" list: 😔 Nope. But I made a links page ... now I just gotta update it!
• Cooking more regularly: 😔 Nope.

• Reaching for sugary (fizzy) drinks: 😄 Yes, though I gave in a few times after Touch/cycling.
• Waiting for things to be perfect before releasing them: 😔 Nope. Too busy to be building any side projects. But I do have a few blog posts in draft that are dragging on longer than expected.

• Trying to get Touch into more local schools in Taiwan: 😄 Hoping to help out a school in central Taiwan later this year.
• Getting in a 20-30 minute walk during the day: 😄 Yes!