2023 Goals
9 Jan 2023
I enjoy having goals for the year. They act as my guide for the year when I’m feeling a bit lost. Yes they have the power to overwhelm, which is why choosing the right goals off the bat and giving yourself a break is crucial.
Writing (page 5)
2022 in review
3 Jan 2023
This past year has been a good one for me. A few hastily-made goals for the year turned into this very blog; a project conceived out of not a lot else. I’ve steadily chipped away at the functionality for this site over the past 12 months, using the On The Side Slack community for motivation along the way.
Book Review: Zero Waste Home by Bea Johnson
13 Dec 2022
An eye-opening book, however some of the recommendations and values are a little heavy handed, so I would recommend a healthy dose of self-moderation when reviewing the suggestions. There was definitely enough in here to spark my creativity and realign my compass as to how I live my life, and more pertinently, how I consume.
Running a 10k race
30 Nov 2022
I ran my first Half Marathon in February this year and loved it. For one reason or another, it’s taken me a while to book my next race, but last month I committed to running Brighton 10k.
Master your spending habits
17 Nov 2022
Until fairly recently in my adult life, I’ve been in the fortunate position to not have to worry too much about my spending habits. I would say I’m quite a conservative spender, and this, coupled with a job in tech for the last decade, has served me well.
Is pair programming the answer to code review hell?
27 Sept 2022
I read a thought-provoking Tweet recently which unfortunately I’ve been unable to dig up now. Essentially, it proposed the notion that, when building software, we need fewer code reviews and more pair-programming.
Bringing your Notion database to life with Eleventy
25 Aug 2022
Notion is an excellent productivity tool, which I use extensively for my daily journalling. Another awesome tool I use as a developer is Eleventy (11ty). 11ty is a static site generator built in Node.js. A static site generator means the building of webpage occurs in a separate process to viewing the website. This has the huge benefit of serving up a load of uncomplicated, plain HTML pages to the end user, really fast.
My Journalling Setup in Notion
11 Jul 2022
I make a habit of journalling daily, and you can read about this practice here. I started this journal in Notion as a way of getting up to speed with the app. I use the Mac app on my laptop and the Android app on my phone. Notion has stood the test of time, 15 months on, so what do I like about it for journalling?
Revisiting 23 year old me: An introspective
17 May 2022
A little under 11 years ago I embarked on a challenge to complete 101 tasks in a 1001 days (roughly 2 years and 9 months). I did not fair well, completing just under a third of the tasks in the time frame (33). It was an interesting challenge to see how my goals change over time though.
CSS Cache Busting in Eleventy
20 Apr 2022
I’m pretty new to 11ty, and I’m figuring things out as I go. One of those things recently was cache busting my CSS. I’m by no means an expert in front-end development, but I figured it couldn’t be that hard to add a fingerprint hash to my CSS files to ensure changes are always pulled in by the browser when viewing my site.