Weeknote #2

• url: /notes/weeknote/weeknote-06072020/ created: 2020/07/14 updated: 2020/07/14

This week flew by. But I’m not quite sure why it it felt so busy.

We, the Digital Land team, got a shout out from The School of Design. People have welcomed our approach to working in the open.

Still waiting for Apple to announce a new iMac.

What I’ve read

• https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/1280144839623860226?s=20 - the EU fightback against Big Tech continues. This includes a letter to the EFF backing their plans to make it easier for users to switch platforms.
• I find Lululemon buying Mirror fascinating. Generally I think tech augmenting existing physical products is the way forward; as in here is what you normal have/use but we’ve added a little (to the user) extra tech to enhance an experience or to provide a completely new one. E.g. the now discontinued Oakley’s Airwave ski googles. And this fits the model, it’ll be interesting to see what they come up with. A couple of questions I have are; how will a non-tech company handle a techy product? And how will they transition from singular transactions to an on going service/relationship
• https://www.heropatterns.com/ - basic svg patterns for repeat backgrounds
• Monzo workplace inclusion pack - this is great and has tonnes of training and resources. I think the privilege walk is a really powerful idea and should be used in all workplaces.
• Guardian report on 57 billion in dividends paid out by water companies. It’s a utility we all require, there is a single pipe coming into our homes, there is no competition. It shouldn’t be privatised, it shouldn’t be being milked for profit. I’m pretty sure I read about a successful public utility in German, run by the community but I can’t find the link.
• Read this Guardian piece on Trump and China which basically says just because Trump is wrong on pretty much everything doesn’t mean China aren’t fully deserving of scrutiny and scorn. What they are doing to the Uighurs (and tibetans and hong kongers) is despicable. The World should be shouting about it.

What I’ve made

• This Notes section. This week I made it work a bit better, the wikilinks bit should now link to any note I have in my collection. It feels a bit messy to need 2 instances of Markdown initialised; one for producing the list of available notes for the WikiLink functions, and one for rendering the notes.
• Using Simon W’s twitter-to-sqlite library and datasette, I now regularly collect my favourited tweets. Allows me to search over them. Playing around with datasette, customised it with some JS which adds a link to twitter for every tweet. Customising datasette views - adding css and/or js
• Digital land design - which is a collection of frontend components and code we, the digital land team, use. It builds on the GOVUK design system and is 100% a work in progress! Psd tweeted about it after I showed it to the team. This caused a few more eyes to look at it, and therefore prompted me to fix some of the very many things that are broken with it.

What I’ve learnt

• using git cherry-pick <commit_hash> - for cherry picking commits to add to branch. Useful, if like me, you miss a PR then when you do look at it you realise you’ve already made some of the same changes.
• Brixton Cycles, a very cool bike shop in London is staff-owned. I really hope we start to see a lot more shops and businesses that have the model. I’d love it
• The London Met Police can’t help themselves.
• YourRepair are the worst. Don’t use them. Ever.