July 2021 Braindump

🪶 Wagtail, the open-source CMS on which I’ve built my livelihood recently started a performance working group. Already some great ideas as to how we can improve the CMS in the long-term - very much looking forward to seeing what comes out of this.

🎲 Attended the UK Games Expo 2021 show. It’s been great to work with the team here building their new site and infrastructure over the past couple of years. Even with the major setback of having to build a ‘Virtual’ version of the Expo in 2020, I feel like we’ve made some big improvements.

It was great to see this all come together at the show. While definitely scaled back from the past few years, there’s still something about being amongst other board gamers that reminds you why the hobby is great.

🎮 There was a lot of buzz around Final Fantasy XIV (the MMO) recently, initially after the poor reception to the latest WoW patches, and then after the awful stuff that came out of Activision/Blizzard.

Despite not having committed to an MMO in many years (only dropping in to the WoW expansions when they release), I still have a soft spot for the genre, so I thought I’d give it a go. Pretty pleased I did right now - very much enjoying the slower pace, the story elements and just exploring a different world.

🏡 Had the exciting experience of hiring a digger and going to town on our garden with it. Not entirely for entertainment purposes (although my son may have thought otherwise). We’re replacing our slowly rotting raised vegetable beds with new, fresh, sleeper-based ones.

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Despite the painful cost of wood at the moment, I think these will be a huge improvement. Always surprising how much you can learn from a “simple” project like this:

• Designing a wood structure in Fusion 360 (I like to be able to visualise these things).
• How to drive a digger, and how not to tip it over when working on slopes.
• You can buy really long timber screws.