Articles

The fact that I'm writing these lines in a 300+ year old country house in Gozo, Malta, and in particular the fact that we're staying here around this time of the year is all but normal (for us, at least). It's the result of a year of twists and turns — and the intentional decision to be here today. How come?

Despite also having its difficulties, 2017 as a whole was an amazing year for me. Again, I'd really love to write down and capture all the remarkable moments, but instead of just adding another (hopeless) attempt, let me first and foremost thank some friends around the world for being such an invaluable part of it.

When Brian and I had the idea of running an event in Rekyjavík about 3 years ago and when we finally decided on a topic in late 2015 — to look at the Web as a Material and explore it from a variety of angles — we were not really knowing where this would lead us. Now that I'm sitting on the train back home, returning from a wonderful first Material Conference 2017 with a ton of impressions of a wonderful day, I can tell you that taking this challenge was not a mistake.

When I started developing svg-sprite more than 3 years ago, it was my first ever Node module and everything was totally new to me. I basically just wanted to create a JavaScript port of my iconizr project to get better integration into our build chain. Splitting out the SVG sprite creation part was just a logical step.

Inspired by the 100DayProject — and insufficiently-well prepared for 100DaysOfIndieWeb —, I commit myself to a 100 Days of Open Source challenge, starting January 1st, 2017. For more than 3 months I will contribute at least one meaningful commit a day to a public Open Source project or a similar community effort.

While working on my apparat libraries during the last one and a half years, I made serveral attempts to find the best architecture for my specific purposes. When I finally came across The Clean Architecture, something clicked and a lot of loose pieces fell into place. Let me share the current state of my personal recipe for layouting independent projects.

When I wanted to enable HTTP Public Key Pinning for this site, I couldn't find a complete and still easy to understand guide for doing so in combination with Certbot (formerly known as Let's Encrypt). While it's perfectly possibly to do HPKP which Certbot, it does require some manual preparation and maintenance. Here's what I did.

While I feel the need to write down some of the things that happened in 2016, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't find the time en bloc for doing that in the necessary verbosity, so I decided to quickly jot down some keywords first and flesh it out with details and photos later on. Please bear with me — this is work in progress.

It's that time of the year again. I'm spending my annual family holiday in Japan — and getting inspired by so many things. For example the fact, that the Japanese culture is mostly based on caring for others. I really enjoy that special sense for all the tiny little details here. Sadly, this does not fully apply to the IndieWeb community as well at present.

I've always considered myself pretty robust, both mentally and physically. Over the years, however, my eyes turned out to be the most susceptible part of my body. Last spring I finally had to get myself a pair of glasses — the first ones in my life. Time to get to know Tom Davies.