Another largely admin-focused week, for now.

I completed everything to do with taxation at the end of the tax year. My bookkeeping was largely up-to-date, so that just involved going over it all, a quick check-in with my accountant, a few final reports, and then getting everything sent to HMRC.

I did some final tweaks to material for the Longridge courses, which launch on Futurelearn on Monday 27th. They’ll get their own project page and announcement on this site in Week 370.

I finally wrote my yearnotes for 2019. Useful to reflect everything I got up to, and perhaps how I might want the shape of work to change this year.

I got some feedback from the client on Hallin, so triaged those issues ready to return to writing code next week.

I started writing on Ninebarrow. Not for long enough, but enough to break the ground, and leave a few dangling threads that I’d like to return to - usually the easiest way to get me to want to Keep Writing.

I ripped out Adobe Fonts from this site. I’d been using Typekit since way back when. Adobe absorbed it and, for a while, provided it cheaply. However: when my free year of “Adobe XD” (which includes their fonts) expires, the pricing will go up to £120 a year, which is just too much for the odd typeface around the internet. I was reminded of this by a friend getting a ‘surprise’ credit card charge. My renewal turned out to be due in April, so I used the time to remove this dependency.

So I ripped out all reference to Typekit from my live sites, and, where necessary, found alternatives on Google Fonts (where the open-source faces are decent enough for my needs). On this site, that meant moving to a more traditional sans as a face for headlines and display, and adjusting alignment a little across the site. I am happy with the slight refresh. But: if you noticed the design change, this is why.

End-of-year admin out of the way, next week should see a return to more head-down productivity, and perhaps more writing.

Finally, worth noting a little about how I use weeknotes here. Weeknotes on this site are, for me, a diary of work and things I’m doing in a professional capacity. I have a personal blog as well, and I continue to write and link there; subscribing to its RSS feed will keep you up-to-date. I like to (try to) separate work from non-work, although it’s not always 100% straightforward. When I write here, though, it’s equally to log what I was up to for myself, and share the way I work - and how I think about work - publicly. So if they seem dry, that’s a little deliberate - but they’re certainly not the sum total of myself.