Monthly #5

It's a rainy Sunday in Taipei, and the start of a busy June. But that's next month's post. Let's take a look back at May, 2024.

💚 Meeting up with Mike Gifford. A lot of the people I work with and talk to in the digital sustainability work I do are based in either Europe or the Americas. I'm having a few more conversations with people in Asia this year, but mostly I find myself working closely with people online who I've never met in person. One of those such people is Mike Gifford. Mike's a old hand in the digital accessibility space and an active member in the Drupal community. We've had some great discussions online, but it was super exciting to finally get to meet Mike in person while he was in Taipei for a brief weekend attending the g0v Summit. I had a great time showing Mike around Taipei for an afternoon, and introducing him to some local summer treats (mango shaved ice).

🤖 More home automation buggery. I started playing around with Home Assistant earlier this year, but in May it got a bit more serious. I picked up a Raspberry Pi and was able to set it up with Home Assistant (HA) OS. This, plus a new Zigbee hub meant that I was able to move my office lights off the Philips Hue app and into HA. I've also setup a temperature and humidity sensor in my office, which is giving me some useful info into how the temperature in my room changes through my working day. It's also been handy this weekend with all the rain about, letting me know when the dehumidifier.

🐸 Screaming Frog is using CO2.js. Pretty wild. Certainly wasn't expecting a huge tool like Screaming Frog to pick up CO2.js to add carbon estimates to its reports.

🧮 Sustainable Web Design Model version 4 is live. I've been lucky enough to work with a group of fantastic people to update the widely uses Sustainable Web Design Model for website carbon estimation. It's something we've been working on for about a year, and with a team spread across the planet the process it has included some very late night calls. But it's great to finally have the updated model published & open for community feedback. I also put a lot of time into writing the explainer page (linked above), so please do let me know if any bits of that are unclear.

These are things I set out to do more or less of in 2024. I'm not big on habit tracking, so this "tracking" report is all just vibes.

• Going to the gym regularly: ⭐ Touch World Cup coming up next month.
• Doing 20k+ bike rides each week: Nope ❎.
• Writing monthly reviews: Yep ⭐, you're reading it now. I also started weekly notes of interesting things I've read.
• Taking the cat outside the apartment: Nope ❎.
• Capturing thoughts in a notebook: Nope ❎. I want to try to journal daily once the madness of the World Cup is over.

• Sugary snacks: Kinda 😐. I've definitely cut back a little more this month.
• Using my phone in bed: Nope ❎.

• Taking regular breaks/vacations with Kay: Nope ❎. We've suddenly got a lot of trips on the cards for the summer though.
• Getting nerd-sniped by work stuff: Yes 😀. I want to make a carbon tracking page for my website.
• Following other folks on RSS: Nope ❎. Still gotta clean up my current feed.
• Building a financial safety-net: Nope 🙁. But I have been taking advantage of the weak Yen to stock up on some cash for future trips there.