Indonesia is a part of the world high on my "to visit" list. Between Komodo dragons, Homo floresiensis, the Wallace Line, and – of course – the delicious satay dishes, there's a lot that draws me to this region. Matt's write-up of his own trip is a little OTT at times, but it contains some useful information and a cracking itinerary. I had no idea that Borobodur was the biggest Buddhist temple in the world, for example.

Also, Matt notes this rather wonderful piece of folklore:

A long time ago, [the Dragon Princess] gave birth to twins, a human boy called Gerong and a female dragon called Ora. They separated at birth and reunited as adults in the forest, over a shared love of deer meat. Ever since then, the islanders have considered the Komodos their sacred ancestors and have lived in relative harmony with  them...

A fascinating breakdown of how the early web was forever changed by one of the first truly popular CMSs: MovableType. Most importantly, this is the likely culprit as to why so much of the web is now sorted chronologically, even though that may be a terrible model for what web pages actually are.

A wonderfully easy to navigate list of resources, tutorials, and guides for every stage of the web dev journey.

Though of course some people really do still rely on RSS readers, stubbornly adding an RSS feed to your blog, even in 2019, is a political statement.

A fascinating dive into the history of RSS. From the initial duel-creation of RDFSS and Scripting News format, to the perceived pre-bubble-burst concept that syndication was the future, until the present competing formats and slow recession out of view, it's very neatly put together. I think there's validity in the argument that RSS was always too "geeky for mainstream use" (something I also worry about with the IndieWeb movement, no matter how much I agree with it):

Regular people never felt comfortable using RSS; it hadn’t really been designed as a consumer-facing technology and involved too many hurdles; people jumped ship as soon as something better came along.

I certainly remember thinking, in the early days of Twitter, that this was clearly the evolutionary step that RSS needed (hah!). But it's a sad thing that, as the article concludes, these "single-author" silos are much easier to evolve and adapt than consensus-driven community efforts like RSS.

Just a really nice resource for trying to track down good areas to see the night sky or mess around with a little astrophotography.

The team behind the HTTP Archive do a fantastic job of analysing the web and 2019 is no exception. From JavaScript to accessibility, if you want to see how well we're doing as a community at standing up for our own ideals, implementing best practices, embracing new technologies, or just doing stuff in general, there aren't really any better resources.

It's not so much a resource as a resource of resources; a meta resource. Providing high-level overviews of complex topics and then linking out to more detailed deep dives or explanations (not all free, but all vetted). Fair to say if you're looking to understand a given topic about front-end development, this is a good place to start.

Mike Berners-Lee (yes, brother to that Berners-Lee) has carved out a real niche for himself as something of an authority on the complexities of the modern environmental movement, particularly when it comes to carbon footprint calculations. That's why it's exciting to see his name behind this new service. Pawprints will be a PWA (yep, they're going web-native - I wonder if his brother's influence 😁) and resource that helps people both track and understand their environmental impact. I'm still a little dubious as to how well this might work, but I'm also intrigued enough to have signed up to their waiting list.

I can't quite believe that The Oatmeal is turning ten years old. I definitely can't believe how excellent these 10 8 tips/thoughts on creativity are. I don't have any personal experience with #8, but the rest hit home hard. Creativity is Breathing is a particularly wonderful concept to take to heart. ♥

Very high level guide to getting webmentions on your website, tracking them, and automatically pinging linked sites when you post.

I've followed the news over the new species Oculudentavis with interest. The initial find was stunning; the follow up discussion around whether or not this is a basal therepod, a stem bird, or (quite possibly, it seems) a lizard was a fascinating insight into modern palaeontology. But the debate around the ethics of its provenance in Myanmar amber has eclipsed all of that. Mark Witton has a great argument here for why a boycott on amber from the region should be considered, but I can't help but worry about the knowledge that could be lost if legitimate scientific channels withdraw. It's a tricky situation.

An excellent collection of articles, tutorials, and advice on modern web development challenges. From PWAs to accessibility to caching, there's a lot of information here.