Weeknote #6

At work

• It was a bank holiday in the UK this week, which meant that I spent less time on the telephone and responding to slack messages. It was a real productive start to the week - I wish they could all be like that
• On Friday at approximately 17:59, I managed to complete a task that’s been on my todo list for a while
• It involved migrating 2 old large websites onto a private server, so that the client could access the old content
• That meant I could shutdown some old servers and consolidate everything onto 1 platform

After work

• I made a few changes to my website this week
• I separated the field that was powering the meta and open graph description tags. This allows me to make the open graph description tag more friendly in tone
• I’ve been testing my site with Lighthouse version 6 and making further improvements to the preloading of my core website assets
• I started to investigate removing Google Analytics in favour of using something self hosted. I'm worried about data storage and optimising the server for performance if I go down this route

Links and inspiration

• Google announced Core Web Vitals this week, which will become an official search signal later this year
• Mark Boulton launched Type Specimens which aims to bring together a curated stream of type specimens from around the world

Life

• After much deliberation, we sent our son back to school, which equates to 1 day a week until the summer holidays. It was a very emotional experience and felt like his first day back at school. But I'm happy to say, he really enjoyed seeing his friends again and didn't find the experience traumatic
• When my son talks about the virus, we refer to it as Pedros cough
• It feels like the new normal has begun here in France. From the 2nd June bars and restaurants will re-open. The 100km lockdown rule will also be lifted, meaning we can travel anywhere in France. Just in time for the sacred summer holidays
• We watched Elon Musk shoot his corona rocket into space
• We finally had our first swim in the sea of the year, something I've been dreaming of for some time