Sacrificing knowledge in the name of data
The goal is not more data, but data to facilitate the story of what we're trying to achieve.
All writing
1.0Everything
Predictable, token-based filenames with Eleventy Image
How I swapped Eleventy Image’s hashed outputs for readable, stable names — and the trade‑offs.
Exposing HTML: The No-JS nudist CSS toggle
A tiny footer checkbox to turns your site styles off with no JavaScript required.
Go-go-go … I missed EmbedPDF
It seems a robust, embeddable PDF viewer for on‑page reading already exists.
Recursion: it’s fonts all the way down
I’ve moved from Now Alt to Recursive, an open‑source variable font that unifies UI text and code with one flexible file.
A simpler, faster site: moving to pure Eleventy v3
I upgraded the site to Eleventy v3, removed Gulp and the Visual Framework, and simplified everything.
Reclaiming three weeks of editorial time every month
No single issue was breaking UNDRR's editorial experience — it was an accumulation of paper cuts that drained editor time and patience.
Making PDFs more viewable
Because ‘Just give them the PDF’ isn’t good enough.
Drupal delayed by Azure MySQL
Managed Azure Database for MySQL cost us 50%–80% slow down. After six months of pain, we moved our Drupal 10 site back to a classic VM and halved our page‑load times.
Recovering platform performance after a cloud migration failure
UNDRR's Azure migration followed the playbook — managed services, platform-as-a-service, letting the cloud handle complexity. Instead, performance degraded and user trust eroded.
It’s been 3.5 years
A long-overdue update.
Something new for 2022
This month, I’m saying goodbye to my projects at EMBL but my career in web work continues.
Enabling a more dynamic EMBL online
From contentHub to VF 2.0: foundations for faster, more flexible journeys across One EMBL.
EMBL.org: Empowering users to navigate a large scientific organization
We tamed the ‘footmap’ by introducing a more effective directory pattern.
Untangling an 80-link footer into scannable navigation
EMBL.org's footer had become a screen-and-a-half of densely packed links — failing users and stakeholders alike.