Notes Short posts, photos, thoughts about code, design and personal stuff

Monthly Notes: February 2023

8th March 2023

Well, February was definitely an improvement for me. Better focused at work and actually got some work done. Started dating someone and it's going well. The house is now listed for sale and have got a mortgage in principle. Things are a lot better now.
Monthly Notes: January 2023

6th January 2023

January has been pretty quiet, and again I've not done much other than turn up for work, do some work and then spend the evening in my room watching TV on my own.
Monthly Notes: December 2022

6th January 2023

Pretty much did nothing the whole of December and some of you who follow me on social media will know why.
Monthly Notes: November 2022

14th December 2022

A very slow month, which is normal as we approach Christmas. I turned 41 this month. Also, some personal stuff has happened, and I'm not ready to talk about yet, but It's why this post is so late.
Monthly Notes: October 2022

11th November 2022

Another slow month with work and on the personal side of things again. I guess that's normal now that I'm not doing contract work, there's less going on.
Monthly Notes: September 2022

13th October 2022

Bit of a slow month. I started working on a Books section on my website and worked on a complex membership table build.
Monthly Notes: August 2022

13th September 2022

August saw quite a lot of change for my family and me. We've switched to a mostly plant-based diet and have also started to venture into minimalism.
Monthly Notes: July 2022

6th September 2022

July was a bit of a slow month work-wise, both freelance and permanent - although I'm not actively looking for new freelance work
Monthly Notes: June 2022

10th July 2022

I'm way behind on these monthly blog posts that I've decided to forget about the last few months. There hasn't been much to write about these last few months, plus I've just been too busy with life and house stuff.
Monthly Notes: March 2022

3rd May 2022

Not a lot happened in March which is not too bad, apart from the lack of work and downtime at work, which makes for a long and boring day. Continue working on a freelance website project.
Monthly Notes: February 2022

12th April 2022

Very short update for this month. Mostly personal updates, a lot of articles read and some freelance work
Monthly Notes: January 2022

12th February 2022

Wowsers January flew by. I started the year with a detox. Set a reading goal of 10 books - only managed four last year...
Monthly Notes: July 2021

4th August 2021

July was a bit of a mixed bag of events and feelings, including having my second covid jab, celebrating our 18th wedding anniversary and more...
Monthly Notes: June 2021

2nd July 2021

Not much to note for the month of June. Been busy with my permanent job and working to get the new Surbiton Tyre and Wheel website finished.
Monthly Notes: May 2021

9th June 2021

Another short notes post for this month. Been busy at my new permanent job at intelliflo - learning the ropes and how to be a permanent employee again. Plus freelance work. I've had my google free phone now for over a month and I finally got round to adding some new features to my website.
TIL: Generating a hash from the command line

27th May 2021

Since adding Content Security Policies to my website, I need to add a sha for any inline scripts I use - I only use one, which is the one to initiate the ServiceWorker.
Changelog: Added Webmentions

26th May 2021

Changelog: Added Webmentions
TIL - Webmention and URLs

5th May 2021

Creating a post with a title that has uppercase letters, like IR35 - the URL will have those uppercase letters in your file system, but in the live URL they will be lowercase
Monthly Notes: April 2021

5th May 2021

Busy month adjusting to being a permanent employee again and finishing off freelance work. New de-googled Android mobile phone
Opting out of Google's FLoC Network

27th April 2021

This website is now opted out of Google's FLoC Network
Monthly Notes: March 2021

4th April 2021

March has been a busy month with me going back to permanent employment and starting a new job at intelliflo. Finishing my last contract. Finishing a freelance project and starting another one.
Monthly Notes: February 2021

5th March 2021

February was quite a busy month work-wise. Finishing the Property with Prospect website as well as finishing and presenting the design for the new Surbiton Tyre and Wheels website
Monthly Notes: January 2021

11th February 2021

January has been a good month with a steady flow of work and spending plenty of time with the family whilst making the most of being in lockdown.
Monthly Notes: December 2020

4th January 2021

Not a very busy month as the year comes to an end and things slow down ready for the Christmas break. Spent quite a bit of time working on improving my website by forcing myself to adhere to my strict Content Security Policies.
Monthly Notes: November 2020

4th December 2020

Don't you hate when you go from having no work to then having way too much work and it starts pilling up on you? That was November for me.
Monthly Notes: October 2020

11th November 2020

October was a surprisingly busy month which is a good thing after months without any work. It's good to be back in work mode but must not forget to continue working on my business, website and side projects.
Monthly Notes: September 2020

4th October 2020

September flew by. Not much to report as it was a quiet month on the work and personal fronts. Launched a new client website and a got personal achievement too.
Escaping Nunjucks code in a markdown code block

22nd September 2020

Turns out you need to escape Nunjucks code within a markdown code block. Found a solution by Mark Llobrera - @dirtystylus
Monthly Notes: August 2020

3rd September 2020

Augusts' monthly notes are mostly personal and shorter than usual as I didn't get up to much - and that's a good thing - we all need to know how to chill once in a while. 👍
Monthly Notes: July 2020

2nd August 2020

July has been a bit slow going as I slowly get back into web development, now that the homeschooling has ended and I'm cooking a lot less as my wife has now finished work. I'm still looking for my next contract, but I do have some potential freelance projects coming up shortly. Things are looking up.
June 2020: Monthly Notes

16th July 2020

Wowsers, we are already halfway through the year and what a terrible year it has been. Hopefully, it will get better soon.
Recording audio input from other apps

2nd July 2020

Turns out that you can't easily recorded audio from one app to another on a Mac, without some extra software and changing some preferences
April & May 2020: Monthly Notes

2nd June 2020

I've now been in lockdown for about sixty days and I'm struggling with lack of routine and schedule. As much as I try to stick to a schedule, it's hard, with everyone at home all the time - their routines and schedules get in the way of mine.
March 2020: Monthly Notes

12th April 2020

Better late than never I guess? So March has been the longest Monday ever! I was in lockdown two weeks before the government told us to do so, just because I could work from home, so I did because I didn't want to risk going into a large open office.
February 2020: Monthly Notes

6th March 2020

February was a good month for me as I released my first open-source project - a tiny thing I made - an eleventy shortcode for using cloudinary images in your markdown files.
Getting rid of Google calendar

15th February 2020

Replacing Google calendar has been one of the hardest apps/services to replace.
Pi-hole and New Router

14th February 2020

The next stage in my privacy control adventures is to setup Pi-hole at home.
Eleventy Cloudinary Shortcode

12th February 2020

Created a shortcode for @eleven_ty so I can use Cloudinary images within markdown files.
January 2020: Monthly Notes

10th February 2020

January has been a surprisingly busy month - it's normally a bit quieter than this. My contract was extended until the end of March - it was supposed to be just a 6-week contract until mid-January, so I had lined up some freelance work to tide me over before starting a new contract.
Monthly Notes: November

9th December 2019

November saw the end of my contract at Signet and the start of a new contract at the Chartered Management Institute (CMI). I have worked with them before and they asked to come back to help them with a new project.
Monthly Notes #1: October

2nd November 2019

I struggled to keep up with writing weekly notes since I cut my days at the office down to just three and they felt like they were the same thing every week and I didn't have much to write every week - so I am not trying a monthly note. We'll see how I get on with this schedule.
Weeknotes #24

25th September 2019

Not a lot to write about this week. Still really busy with my current contract - busy is good. But obviously its harder to keep up with note-taking in preparation for writing these.
Weeknotes #23

14th September 2019

As my current contract gets busier and we head towards a huge deadline, I'm a lot more tired in the evenings, so the last thing I want to do when I get to the hotel and get back on my computer and do some work or write a blog post.
Weeknotes #22

29th August 2019

This weeknotes has been in my drafts for a few weeks now. It only takes getting busy at work, for writing weeknotes to fall off the radar. I need to find a way of fitting this into my routine.
Weeknotes #21

24th July 2019

Work on the new header continues for one of the brands and the pressure is on to get it finished within this sprint. More work on my own website and some tinkering with our new car.
Weeknotes #20

15th July 2019

After a bit of an unscheduled break, my weeknotes are back. You may notice that weeknotes are no longer showing on the blog index - after some feedback, I decided it didn't make sense to clutter the blog with notes. They have taken over because I've not been writing much of anything else.
Weeknotes #19

18th June 2019

I'm sounding like a broken record, but it has been yet another slow week. We're still having some GIT related issues - not me personally, but we're also completely redoing our build process so that has caused some expected issues.
Weeknotes #18

12th June 2019

Bit of a slow week at work while we wait for the new UX Designer to get acquainted with the business and produce some designs for the Front-end Developers to produce.
Weeknotes #17

4th June 2019

Another bank holiday week but it was a very busy weekend. Second week at my new contract. I'm really getting behind on week notes, so this week I have published two in order to keep up to date.
Weeknotes #16

30th May 2019

Started a new contract on Monday, working for Signet Jewellers aka H.Samuel and Ernest Jones based in Borehamwood, North London. It was a hell of a drive, but as usual, I drive to work Monday morning and then stay in the area until I drive back on Fridays.
Weeknotes #15

22nd May 2019

This weeknotes is late again due to having a weekend without being in front of a screen, most of it - my youngest child had been begging me to jump on the Minecraft server so we could play together. This week was my last with DXW and DfE (only 2 days) and the rest of the week was spent working on my own website and on my freelance project.
Weeknotes #14

13th May 2019

Not much happened this week. The handover process is well underway and there if not much left now to handover. It was my last full week in Manchester.
Weeknotes #13

6th May 2019

This week started the handover process to my replacement at the Department for Education, as well as making a lot more progress to the prototype. Got a new contract lined up to start pretty much as soon as I finish my current one, which is a first and I have finally made nsome time to work on my own website.
Weeknotes #12

29th April 2019

Short week at work due to the bank holidays in the UK. First time working from home in this contract. I should really make some notes during the week to make writing weeknotes easier.
Weeknotes #11

24th April 2019

Another short week notes this week due to a short week and a long bank holiday weekend that I spent with friends and family and no screens.
Weeknotes #10

16th April 2019

This weeks 'weeknotes' is being posted a bit later than usual. I was supposed to write it on the train up to Manchester on Sunday evening, but I still can't get used to working on a laptop on the train.
Weeknotes #9

7th April 2019

This week I was in Manchester for my new contract. I was only there for two days for the project kick off and tech setup. Monday and Tuesday was a blur. I couldn't focus on anything.
Weeknotes #8

3rd April 2019

This week started with me handing in my notice at my then-current contract. I felt very guilty about ending my contract early, I managed 5 weeks out of 12 - it's the first time I have ever had to end a contract early.
Weeknotes #7

24th March 2019

Well, it was another uneventful and unproductive week - I've been distracted all week. I've decided to finish my current contract early. I've never done this and I have mixed feelings about it, but I know that I am not happy here and I don't see it getting better.
Weeknotes #6

17th March 2019

It's been another pretty uneventful week apart from all the wind we had here in the east - we lost yet another water butt. This week I didn't do any JavaScript learning and I've not managed to continue reading any of the books I've started. Managed to make some more progress with my freelance project. Work-wise nothing much has changed or improved.
Weeknotes #5

10th March 2019

My week didn't have a great start but it got much better towards the end. Did loads of JavaScript learning this week. Fixed an issue I've been having with Sublime Text and wrote a blog post.
Weeknotes #4

3rd March 2019

It's been another tiring week, but I felt it went by fairly quickly. Tiring because I did about ten hours of driving this week to my new contract. But I made some progress on my freelance project.
Weeknotes #3

24th February 2019

This week has been a busy one - with the housework and a new freelance project. There's been a lot of furniture moving around while the new carpets were fitted.
Weeknotes #2

16th February 2019

This week I'm starting with what didn't go well, as it was a bit of a blow for me. I'm also introducing a personal section because I like writing about my personal life on my blog, so felt it was appropriate - it also explains why I didn't get much work done on my website!
Weeknotes #1

9th February 2019

My first #weeknotes. I really like the idea of these - just like the yearly reviews - so why not a weekly review. I'm hoping this will help me, not only with getting into the habit of writing but also make my weeks more productive as I look back and see what did and didn't work well.

Notes Short posts, photos, thoughts about code, design and personal stuff

Monthly Notes: February 2023

Monthly Notes: January 2023

Monthly Notes: December 2022

Monthly Notes: November 2022

Monthly Notes: October 2022

Monthly Notes: September 2022

Monthly Notes: August 2022

Monthly Notes: July 2022

Monthly Notes: June 2022

Monthly Notes: March 2022

Monthly Notes: February 2022

Monthly Notes: January 2022

Monthly Notes: July 2021

Monthly Notes: June 2021

Monthly Notes: May 2021

TIL: Generating a hash from the command line

Changelog: Added Webmentions

TIL - Webmention and URLs

Monthly Notes: April 2021

Opting out of Google's FLoC Network

Monthly Notes: March 2021

Monthly Notes: February 2021

Monthly Notes: January 2021

Monthly Notes: December 2020

Monthly Notes: November 2020

Monthly Notes: October 2020

Monthly Notes: September 2020

Escaping Nunjucks code in a markdown code block

Monthly Notes: August 2020

Monthly Notes: July 2020

June 2020: Monthly Notes

Recording audio input from other apps

April & May 2020: Monthly Notes

March 2020: Monthly Notes

February 2020: Monthly Notes

Getting rid of Google calendar

Pi-hole and New Router

Eleventy Cloudinary Shortcode

January 2020: Monthly Notes

Monthly Notes: November

Monthly Notes #1: October

Weeknotes #24

Weeknotes #23

Weeknotes #22

Weeknotes #21

Weeknotes #20

Weeknotes #19

Weeknotes #18

Weeknotes #17

Weeknotes #16

Weeknotes #15

Weeknotes #14

Weeknotes #13

Weeknotes #12

Weeknotes #11

Weeknotes #10

Weeknotes #9

Weeknotes #8

Weeknotes #7

Weeknotes #6

Weeknotes #5

Weeknotes #4

Weeknotes #3

Weeknotes #2

Weeknotes #1

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