List-basing the next 8 months

A few minutes are all that is left of August. Then we’ll pivot into September and for me it’s the beginning of the meh months, which span about 8 months.

But there are three more weeks of summer and that’s what makes September the easiest of the meh months \o/

In order to look forward to them, I am thinking of approaching them with lists of things I want to do.

One of the lists I need to make first is that of the things or activities that bring me joy and satisfaction. Because these don’t make themselves obvious at the times I need them the most!

Another is about the things I will need to do (outside of work, that is, where I am all set with TODOs, reminders, actions, issues, one-on-ones, weekly meetings, fortnightly ones, etc.)

I feel I might need a third list, but I don’t know yet if it’s right, or if it is a subset from list number two. But it’s an important piece and perhaps that’s what warrants a specific list: one area I read want to dig in is keeping imposter’s syndrome at bay and learning to enjoy where I’m at. Here’s what I mean:

1) one has skills without necessarily realising it, and 2) one may not know how to enjoy the place they’re at when they are right where they’ve worked hard to be.

Screenshot of the fitness app showing the illustration for a new move goal

How do you get to name those skills as personal assets? How do you bask in their glory (without becoming a pompous infatuated egomaniac)? And what list to you build for this journey?

Red moon rising

Today marks the 133rd consecutive day I’ve been exercising \o/

Every night I do 2 to 3 activities, usually running, walking, and core training or yoga.

I ran exactly 90 times. At the moment I spend an average of 1h45 per week exercising, and run 14 kilometers per week on average.

Tonight I ran 7K (my longest run) at 7:03 minutes / km.

And on the walk back, I saw the red moon rising and was spellbound:

Night shot of the white masts of sailboats reflected in water
Night shot of the big round red moon rising and casting a ray of orange light on the otherwise greenish sea
Night shot by the sea where a big round red moon is rising and casting a ray of orange light on the otherwise greenish sea

The moon, which was full three days ago, rose on the horizon on the Mediterranean shortly before midnight and it was a sight to behold! Bright red with a halo, and casting a fiery light on the water.

A bitter pill to swallow

Illustration of a sad person at a desk

I was prepared for that meeting where a man said the same things I said. But I wasn’t prepared to hear that in spite of being the project manager, I would need to be trained if I were to act as interface with people on this project. It’s not like I hadn’t been interfacing so far, and the group needed a different kind of interfacing. So I’ve been wearing my cranky pants for a couple of days. There’s a large dent in my motivation as a result, and an even bigger dent in my sense of worth.

My other website behind the curtain

I’ve been editing the W3C website for a few decades now (gasp!) and in leading its redesign from the 2008 design, I am learning an astounding amount of new things about it! Here are some of the things I know about it.

Illustration of a spotlight lighting a man running, graphs and a book

Spotlight on the W3C website

In the 21 years I’ve been with the W3C, I remember only 3 different designs, the current one dates from a decade ago. Redesigning our website is crucial to improve the overall experience of those who depends on our Web standards work.

The website is managed by W3C itself and has been up for three decades. It currently contains over 2 million web pages. They’re static HTML or built in Perl, PHP, come from WordPress or are custom built using Symfony.

Illustration showing a woman at her computer leaning against stacked objects adorned with a gear

Tech stack summary

  • Debian Linux
  • Apache is used for serving the static content
  • MySQL for database storage
  • Varnish HTTP Cache is used for full-page caching
  • HAProxy is used for load balancing
  • There are over 3,700 Apache .htaccess files with different rewrite rules
Illustration showing hands at a keyboard in front of a screen

Hosting & content

In a large-scale hosting setup, there are around 100 servers running Linux Debian on OpenStack, of which 20 to 30 servers are related to the primary website.

Web content is stored mostly in CVS and databases via CMS tools (WordPress, Symfony), and secondarily in GitLab and GitHub.

Most content is managed as static HTML edited locally (e.g. emacs, vi, BlueGriffon) and committed into CVS repositories using CVS clients, the terminal or HTTP PUT or WebDAV. Or, content is generated dynamically using Symfony or statically via makefiles, XML and XSLT.

25 instances of WordPress power the W3C Blog (over 950 posts) and W3C News (over 4,200 items), but also our Talks, working groups blogs, a test site, and W3C Community and Business Groups.

Illustration of an alien beamed by a UFO

The W3C Homepage

The current homepage of the W3C website is a mix of HTML snippets which usually appears elsewhere on the W3C site, generated via XML, XSLT, PHP and other tools:

  • The News items are read from WordPress
    • The “homepage news” category determines what to show on the W3C homepage; we typically show up to 9 entries
    • The “top story” category determines which news item is expanded on the W3C homepage; we prefer to feature one, but have at times shown two or more
  • The right-hand side shows the last three posts from the W3C Blog
  • W3C Member Testimonials rotate from a database
  • The Events and Talks are shown from a Symfony app and WordPress respectively
  • The search bar links to an external DuckDuckGo search (that we chose for its good reputation for data privacy)
  • The rest is static

Markup errors in any of the source files will likely “break” the homepage. On average, I break the homepage 10% of the time!