Week 829

Week beginning Monday, 2nd December 2024.

Chris and I had a busy start to the week. Our project to build a spike/prototype for our client was coming to an end. On a longer project we prefer to hand over by working with an existing team, ideally pair programming.

The aim of this project was for us to take an outsider’s perspective on a tricky future problem, so we decided to communicate our findings with a demo and a Q&A. We also wrote down our thoughts and technical approach in the repo’s README, linking to relevant parts of the code.

We also took the opportunity to style the prototype using tailwind. When prototyping there’s a danger of making it look more finished than it really is. But it can, understandably, be hard for some people to see beyond unstyled HTML! Working with the team’s designer I think we found a nice balance.

For the rest of the week we’ve been tying up loose ends before entering a slightly longer-than-usual winter break. Chris and I are travelling abroad to see family (in Australia and Colombia respectively) and James has a ski trip planned. Fortunately we’ve had some really positive conversations about a new project to start in Janauary, so we can go into the break feeling a little more relaxed.

This afternoon I’m meeting a few CoTech friends to celebrate Siôn Whellens receiving his pension. Siôn is a good friend of GFR and helped us when we became a (legal) co-operative. His impact on the worker co-op movement cannot be overstated and we wish him all the best.

Weeknotes may go a little quiet for the next few weeks, but from all of us at GFR, we wish you a merry Christmas and a happy New Year.