June 2023: Flores, Australia and preparing for major releases

Meet up

I'm back in Sydney for a couple of months while working on open-source.

In the area and want to catch up? Get in touch!

Personal Updates

Flores

We spent the last week of our South East Asia trip in Flores, an island in Indonesia, east of Bali.

Flores is best known for its Komodo dragons and the glowing lakes of Mt Kelimutu volcano.

Volcano coming in hot.
Volcano coming in hot.

We did a road trip from East (Maumere) to West (Labuan Bajo), weaving along "spaghetti roads" through the mountains and dense jungle.

We passed tiny villages as we went that offered a unique glimpse into the life of the Floresian and the Manggarai people.

Nearly everyone lived off the land, with rice being grown as the main source of food.

Occasionally we'd see someone roasting their coffee beans which I also had a go at.

Drying coffee beans post roast.
Drying coffee beans post roast.

When inspecting the jungle, we'd always see something growing: mangoes, bananas, passion-fruit, cocoa, vanilla pods, taro, etc.

Our highlights were:

  • Kelimutu volcano, which has 3 crater lakes at the top. These lakes change colour over time, and we were lucky enough to see them in their blue, green and black state.
  • Rinca Island, seeing the Komodo dragons in their natural habitat.
  • Bena Traditional Village, walking amongst amazing thatched roof houses.
The view of Padar Island.
The view of Padar Island.
Random spot we passed on the road trip.
Random spot we passed on the road trip.
Kelimutu volcano at sunrise.
Kelimutu volcano at sunrise.
A Komoto dragon cooling off in the shade.
A Komoto dragon cooling off in the shade.

Australia: A wedding and camping

After Flores, we flew back to Australia for a wedding.

It's winter time here, so it was a bit of a shock to the system after 3 months of high heat and humidity.

After the wedding, we took a trip to the Warrumbungles with some friends.

View of the Warrumbungles.
View of the Warrumbungles.
Breadknife and high tops hike.
Breadknife and high tops hike.

The Warrumbungles is a national park north-east of Sydney which is best known for its amazing night sky views.

We camped there for a few days, doing some hikes and exploring the area.

Afterwards we spent time in the Blue Mountains and Sydney catching up with family and friends, and planning the Europe leg of our trip.

Blue Mountains lookout swimming in fog.
Blue Mountains lookout swimming in fog.
Grand Canyon walk in Blackheath, Blue Mountains.
Grand Canyon walk in Blackheath, Blue Mountains.
More grand views.
More grand views.

Work Updates

June was an important month of work, getting things ready for the next major releases of my Nuxt modules.

The main blocker was Nuxt OG Image which had continued to plague me with issues.

With some luck and many hours of work, I was able to get it to a state where it's mostly working correctly on all major runtimes and was able to unblock myself.

This was a huge relief, and I'm looking forward to pushing out all Nuxt SEO modules in the coming months.

Numbers / Financials

  • ⭐ 6112 GitHub stars (+705)
My WakaTime numbers for June 2023
My WakaTime numbers for June 2023
My June 2023 Fathom Traffic
My June 2023 Fathom Traffic

Open-Source

  • ⌛ 87 hrs (+3 hrs)
  • 💸 $867 AUD (+$123)
  • $10.36 AUD / hour (+$1.51 / hour)

Main projects

  • Nuxt Modules Audit (13.5 hours)

Some preliminary work to audit the state of Nuxt modules and authors. Still need some time to finish this off.

  • Nuxt SEO Modules (45 hours)

Fixing outstanding issues to unblock work on the new majors deveolopment. Mostly involved Nuxt OG Image, Nuxt Simple Sitemap and Nuxt Simple Robots.

Work also going into the initial versions of the new Nuxt Site Config module.

Adding new CSV reporting feature and fixing some minor bugs.

Freelancing

  • ⌛ 10.25 hrs (+1.5 hrs)
  • 💸 $1,025 AUD
  • $100.00 AUD / hour (-24.24 / hour)

Small bit of adhoc bug fixing work for one of my clients. Fun with AWS SNS notifications...

Final thoughts

It's really nice ce to be back in Australia and to have some more time to dedicate to work. There are exciting things planned for July, some have already been released, and there's much more to come.

Thanks as always to my amazing sponsors. See you next month!