Weeknote 26: Topside of beef

Happy egg weekend.

Some time later today me and my sniffly nose have got to make a start on a topside of beef for the big egg day tomorrow. For now though lets revisit the short week:

In work

  • Finished up a spike on a GOV.UK Frontend feature to let folks switch on the brand updates using just a nunjucks global
  • Merged a production-ified version of that same spike, thanks to the devs on my team for simplifying the implementation a whole lot
  • Mapped out what the technical brand update process would be for users depending on their tech stack, namely if they're using nunjucks or not, to help out with writing guidance
  • Tried to move the dial on deciding if we should release a new version of the prototype kit before 5.10.0 or not
  • Reviewed some stale contributor pull requests

I felt a bit less burnt out, more in control this week. I wonder if it's because the type of work I'm doing at this stage of development, where we know what needs to be built and we just need to build it. Smaller scale problem solving. It's lots more comforting compared to the big thinking we have to do at the opening and mid game of projects like this. It does help that it's 2 short weeks in a row. I've also booked some preventative holiday in May and June. Every Friday off in May, the first week of June off. I found this helped when I did it in March so I'm giving it another go. Knowing it's coming helps in its own way as well.

On contributions

I got into this on Thursday before the break. We had several PRs from non-team members that had been sitting around for ages that we hadn't managed to get to or even respond to. I've at least cleaned that side of things up a bit.

I've seen this happen a few times now where we let PRs slip, we don't do anything with them for a year, a single team member has a spare second and the where with all and burns through them one afternoon, they stagnate again. That's not even mentioning our community backlog where the bulk of our contribution-shaped stuff comes in in the form of research, comments and requests for new components, patterns or features... which we also aren't consistent with responding to. We haven't really nurtured our contribution process in this respect. I'm not gonna act like I'm above this either. The fact is we don't have time to stay on top of everything coming in.

I have really specific opinions that this could go through our support model and we could put more effort towards support, but I'm not gonna prattle on about this too much since I know my team read this, teehee. I'm very keen for us to revisit this stuff in the future. I'll give my lengthy opinion then.

In life

Generally a quiet week. Worked, cooked, cleaned, stayed in playing Monster Hunter (not the new one, the old one). Uh, I fixed my dishwasher?

I don't feel like I've been doing lots of consuming of fresh new stuff lately. I've wanted comfort in my media, which may speak to how I've been feeling off of work. Monster Hunter is very comforting to a spreadsheet freak like me. We've also been watching X-Files which holds up in my opinion. Very schlocky but a lot of fun. I've been hearing loads of good stuff about Blue Prince so that might be the next thing.

I had a trial class for that new Jiu-Jitsu club and it's obviously great. The difference that numbers and scheduling make. I feel a bit sorrowful that I have to rebuild the community I've established at my current club but I managed it then, I'll manage it now.