Week Notes – S01E01

Let’s see how long this thing lasts.

Things I did.

This time last week I was in Brighton for the fantastic Patterns Day where I saw 8 great talks I managed to live blog, had some really tangy chicken wings, drank several IPAs, and had my first Newcastle Brown Ale in what must be 20 years on the beach as the sun set and Jupiter and Saturn came into view. I also got a chance to catch up with lots of friends – something, that in attending conferences, I find that are as good as the talks.

The weekend was full of BBQ’ing, filling a paddling pool with a swimming pools worth of water, attempting to watch the Austrian Grand Prix and a cup of tea with my folks.

Monday I finally got around to writing about the Design Systems Newsletter that I curate. Explaining the reasons behind it’s schedule, what the emojis mean, and why the email subject line is always a song lyric.

This week with my client I have been working on the overall architecture of the Design Tokens that are used within the Design System. Along with the various Pull Requests from my colleagues we are almost near to releasing the first beta of the component library. And I’m hoping we get this shipped before I take my annual “freelancers summer holiday” off in August.

Things I read.

This week I went through about 60/70 articles relating to Design Systems and 20 of them made it into a Saturday and Friday edition of the newsletter.

Things I watched.

We started to watch New Amsterdam that I found on Amazon Prime (or it found me with the amount of introduction adverts I was getting for it). I really enjoyed the first couple of episodes but my partner didn’t really take to it, so that’s one for the second monitor next week.

I managed to play through the entirety of season 3 of Stranger Things and really enjoyed what I heard and the bits I saw when it was getting really good. I’m now working out when I can binge it again without any distraction.

We watched Murder Mystery on Netflix, a modern take whodunnit which was pretty cheesy, but great to put on and not really pay attention to.

Things I listened to.

I’ve not really listened to much music this week, the only music I’ve been playing has been a variety of material from Queen. I really should have a ‘Queen Day’ in the office soon.

So, that’s ‘all from memory’. Hopefully next week I’ll take some notes for all the work and non-work highlights.