As previously mentioned, I am leaving Chrome; my last work day was yesterday. (Sorry to those with July 3rd off that I didn't get to say goodbye to!) But I'm staying in Google, on more internal projects :-)

After 1100+ commits it's hard to pick out one thing that I love the most; as a team, we launched a lot of (IMO) useful CSS features and fixed a lot of issues. But somehow, I keep on gravitating towards performance, and perhaps this commit is the one I will remember the most fondly; a couple hundred lines to speed up repeated attribute selectors a lot. (If you ever wonder who would be doing that; well, there's a fairly high chance that you have an extension injecting a stylesheet with a lot of a[href*="..."] rules…)

Upwards and onwards. Please write lean, clean CSS; I won't be there to save you from now on. :-)

I am somewhat jet-lagged, having returned from Washington DC just before the 250th anniversary celebrations which will be happening today. I was part of a delegation sent by my employer to the AWS Summit there this week, partly to kindle interactions between PA Consulting and Jacobs who have recently taken a 100% share in PA.

Much of our conference time was spent in meetings with AWS executives impressing the facts of the Jacobs/PA partnership upon them, and discussing plans to broaden our collaboration in different sectors. So I spent even less time than usual at conference keynotes, talks etc.

This was my first time to DC, and I did find some time to see some sights – unfortunately the White House is rather fenced off at the moment following the UFC match, but I did make it to the Capitol and the Washington Monument in the heat.

Last Sunday a select few of us attended the baseball in Baltimore – rather than the game, the thing that stood out for me was the military jets flying in formation over the stadium every few minutes, and the block-booked seats for the Navy in uniform, who were having a great time! This is obviously a hearts-and-minds thing, but it provides a stark contrast with the UK – I can’t think of a time I’ve seen uniformed military at the football (soccer) or cricket for example. Or Union Jacks flying at shopping centres.

Speaking of soccer, England just about beat DR Congo while I was out there, but it was a close-run thing as we were 1-0 down at half time. I can’t claim to be following the World Cup too closely, but I overheard comments (from US passers-by) that made clear it would have had a significant reputational impact on our standing in the world had we lost.

Another highlight for me was the Church of the Ascension and St. Agnes, where I was able to get my fix of Anglican plainchant and four-part harmony for the week. At morning prayer, I noted they use “God save this land” rather than “God save the King” during the responses – I’ve since found other sources online that choose “God save the State”. It’s strange to think that the words of the BCP dating back to 1549/1662 are a point of continuity since well before the 1776 declaration of independence, and yet are still adapted and used in worship today.