Weeknote 01-12

With the Christmas period now a distant memory, what is there to look forrward to in January? Actually we have a couple of winter celebrations coming up that our household like to celebrate, in our small ways.

This first is Wassail, an old English folk celebration to ensure a good havest for the new year. It's celebrated on 17th of January, Old Twelfth Night (as it would have been 12th night in the Julian Calendar) by drinking mulled drinks, singing songs, and hanging toast on trees.

The second is Burns Night on January 25th, a Scotish celebration remembering poet Robert Burns. Again, celebrated with song, drink and food. Although since we're not Scottish this is a smaller celebration for us; mainly a chance to try our hand at making a vegetarian haggis and enjoy a glass or two of whisky.

At work this week I've suggested we add an RSS feed to the site. In an era where so many people are becoming fed up with social media algorithms, many users have started to seek ways to curate their own news feeds and digital social networks, and it's a quick win for us to add this kind of open data feed to our site. Plus it's a timely coincidence, yesterday being the anniversary of the tragic death of RSS inventor Aaron Swartz.