Matthew Lang

Over the last year, a line has been forming between my laptop and my phone. And it became really clear last week when I tried out Obsidian Sync for a few days.

I thought it would be good to run Obsidian on my phone as well as my laptop, so I set up Obsidian Sync, got the remote vault working with my local vault, and set it up on my phone. I must admit, it was tricky to get my local vault up and running with it, but that wasn’t the reason why I cancelled it.

After a few days of use, I found I didn’t like using my phone to interact with Obsidian. I preferred a bigger screen, and so, I found myself reaching for my laptop more during this time. The sync feature wasn’t the problem. Trying out Obsidian Sync solved a different question. Which device do I want to use? The answer was obvious: the laptop, almost every time.

It was from this point that the divide between phone and laptop was clear.

My laptop is for head-down work. Coding, writing, researching. Anything that requires me to spend more than a few minutes on a single task. Anything like that and I use the laptop. There are two benefits to this.

The first is that the laptop is a dedicated workhorse. There are very few social media applications on it, so notifications are infrequent.

The second is that I no longer require as many app subscriptions. Many subscriptions are based on the premise that they can sync your information between devices. With just one device, that cost disappears. And given that just about everything is a subscription these days, that’s not a bad thing.

For everything else I do, and there’s not much left thankfully, there’s my phone.

I use it mostly for messaging family and friends as well as for golf club-related comms. I use it to arrange teams matches, organise competitions for the club’s junior section and organise other junior events.

I do use social media on my phone as well, but I keep my interaction light there. Reddit is still a good source for many things. I’m more of a lurker on Instagram. I prefer to share most of my photos on my blog rather than on Instagram. Then there’s BlueSky and Mastodon for news.

There’s one exception to the laptop rule. I have iA Writer installed on my phone and my laptop. Why? Just for when the need arises for putting some words down and I’m away from my laptop. For everything else, though, the divide between them is clear: each has its own dedicated use.

It’s taken me until I am almost 50 years old to get to this point and recognise that each device has its purpose. It’s taken a while to get here, but at least I have arrived. Better late than never.

Every few months, I start to question the tools and processes I use to build a couple of side projects. It invariably stems from at least one of the following questions:

• Is there a better way of doing this?
• Are there better tools than the ones I am currently using?
• Will I be better off with these new tools?

What follows is a process that leads me right back to the very beginning. I view it as a curse, and it is in a never-ending loop.

Here’s how it works.

I am wondering if the processes that I am using are working for me. This usually happens between tasks when I think something isn’t quite right. I might have dropped the ball on something, or I haven’t checked in on some code I’ve been writing for a few days. Simply put, I have lost my place. It’s at this point that I start to wonder if there are better tools or apps I could be using.

A few days go by as a gremlin sits in the back of my brain, rewiring my thoughts in favour of how a shiny new tool would solve my woes. After a week, I start to look at different apps and products that will get the job done better. After a couple of weeks, I sign up for one or two apps I may or may not have used before and start trying them out alongside my existing processes. After another week, I conclude that these apps are not going to work for me and delete their accounts.

I then go back to my original tools and find the fault is actually me, not what I am using.

A few weeks later, and the whole process starts again.

So what gives? Why do I put myself through the cycle of doubt and time-wasting?

Reading back what I just wrote at the start of this post, it’s clear that even the slightest break in the routine of progress has me questioning what I use and how I use it. And to be honest, that break in routine is usually me procrastinating or external factors breaking my planned time on something.

I’m sure I’m not alone in this cycle, and it was probably more of a thing back in the day, when we had a new todo app or task manager released every month, and everyone wanted to use the latest and greatest app, but didn’t really know why.

Over the past five years, I can count on both hands the number of times I have tried Todoist and Basecamp in vain attempts to find that golden feature I have missed. I know full well it’s not there, but clicking about through the apps is probably the one highlight from this cycle.

It’s taken me many cycles to get to where I am with the tools I use for web development and writing, too. Many subscriptions to different products and apps, and what has this many years of digital wandering taught me?

It’s the analogue tools that keep sticking. The notebook, the pens, the index cards. Despite all the technological advancements, and with the age of artificial intelligence and LLMs marking a major change in the world, I still fall back on my trusty notebooks. I think for me, they’re more robust than digital tools; they have an offline mode and, finally, they’re a damn sight more interesting to look at than a screen.

Don’t get me wrong, I still use several tools and apps to support my web development, where a notebook can’t be used. I use issue-tracking software to manage a backlog of features and bugs. I use LLMs to act as pairing buddies when working on features. I have digital tools that have their place, and analogue tools that have theirs.

I think I’ve finally found the balance between the two, and I should accept that this works.

Jennifer and I spent the day watching Drew play at Stirling Golf Club today in a Stephen Gallagher Foundation event. Stirling is a fantastic golf course with great views of the castle from just about every hole on the course.

Despite a rocky start on the first three holes, Drew found his groove on the back nine and finished second in the net scores. These events are a great opportunity for him to learn more about his golf game and play many courses across the west of Scotland and the central belt. Back at it tomorrow for another SGF event at Whitecraigs Golf Course, which is thankfully, just down the road.

Despite telling myself I would only update my website theme once a year, tonight I decided to throw that rule out the window and give it a new look.

Gone are the hand-drawn-style dividers and the Kagi-inspired black, white, and gold theme, to be replaced by a Rosepine theme featuring earthy tones. Very apt now that we are coming into summer here in the UK.

I have made a bit more use of a card design for the website’s images, blogroll and reading pages.

For fonts, I am using Lora for body text and Fraunces for headings. I quite like to split my font selection this way.

To make future changes to the colour scheme, I have set up five CSS variables that represent the theme’s main colours. Any other colours are derived from these five variables using the color-mix function.

I definitely scratched an itch with this one, as I felt the previous theme was too stark and lacked some warmth. I’ve found it in this colour selection and by changing the fonts the website uses.