Matthew Lang

My “must watch” for 2023.

It’s great to finally see a trailer for The Last of Us, which features all the characters and locations from the game.

I must admit, I had goosebumps when it came to the clip of the skyscrapers in Boston.

Also, the clickers look fantastic and a bit different from the usual post-apocalyptic worlds we’ve seen in other films and television shows.

A couple of weeks ago Drew bought this Lego Marvel Venom set. We decided to try out the additional light kit for it from Light My Bricks.

I have to say, the final result looks pretty good. The LEDs and wires fitted into the build nicely, although the green LEDs that go in behind the Venom’s teeth were a bit of a pain to fit and to stay in place.

Unbeknownst to Drew, he’s got a another light kit heading his way for Christmas which will be for the Lego DC Batman head we’ve bought him. I’m looking forward to seeing how that one turns out.

I’m a sucker for all things space, even more so when it comes to anything that allows us to see what’s in space. Hence the Astronomy Photographer of the Year competition is something I look forward to every year.

The Andromeda galaxy captured by Yang Hanwen and Zhou Zezhen which won Young Astronomy Photographer of the Year, is one of my favourites of this year’s winners.

The overall winner though was Gerlad Rhemann’s image of Comet Leonard which was taken on Christmas Day of last year. It captures the point when a piece of the comet’s tail becomes seperated due to high velocity solar particles.

The last few years in the UK have been a bit of a rollercoaster. We’ve had Brexit, the pandemic, the war in Ukraine, the rising cost of energy bills and now the death of her majesty the Queen. It’s been a lot to take in mentally.

It’s this continuing changing of circumstances that seems to be affecting people. I’ve had similar feelings about the future. As has my wife. Well, it turns out it’s actually more common than I thought.

The result is that many of us are experiencing future fatigue: “When several difficult experiences happen back to back, your mind starts to use this information to predict the future and it can appear bleak as a result,” says Cobban, which causes us to lose “a sense of hope about the future being different in a positive way”.

— Surprised by how disoriented you feel right now? You’re not the only one

As for getting over these feelings of uncertainty, it is recommended by psychotherapist Nova Cobban that you focus on things that you can see the outcome of.

As well as limiting your time on social media (“feeding the anxiety” by looking more than once or twice daily is not helpful, Duff advises), it’s important to focus on the aspects of your life that you can actually influence and shape. “Look at what you are spending your time and energy on,” suggests Cobban. “Is it things that you have no control over but greatly concern you or is it things you can actually personally have a beneficial effect on?”

— Surprised by how disoriented you feel right now? You’re not the only one

After nine years with my MacBook Pro, it’s time to upgrade. I’ve been using the same MacBook Pro since 2013, and it’s been a great machine. However, it’s time to upgrade.

Over the last year, I’ve noticed an evident degradation in my MacBook Pro performance. It can usually only handle a handful of apps open at any time. I tend to have Firefox, VS Code, iTerm and Docker available anytime. Anything else I can open at the same time is usually a bonus. If I have to open a few more apps, I’ll shut down all my development apps to allow more apps to open.

I’ve been researching the new MacBooks over the last few months, and I’m pretty sure the new MacBook Air is the right fit for me. The Pro would be a good fit if I needed a dedicated machine I used most of the day. Still, as I already have a reliable work laptop, I just need a light development machine to use at night and at weekends.

I’ve only owned two MacBooks over the last 15 years, which is pretty good. I wonder how long my new MacBookAir will last me?

Tonight, I’ve been building HTML templates with Tailwind to integrate them into a CMS of sorts using Rails. Is it a product? No, it’s just me hacking about on a wee Rails app and trying to brush up my skills once more. The last time I genuinely enjoyed doing this was a good couple of years ago.

So what prompted this change?

Well, the main reason is that I’m enjoying my job now. It’s full-time, but I’m also fully remote, so cutting out the commute has been a big win. There’s something to be said about working from home. It definitely suits me better than being in an office. I don’t mind being in an office environment, but the distractions can put your focus off a bit, depending on where you work. Working from home means, I can get my head down and get on with the work.

I’m using Ruby on Rails again. It’s not the most recent version, but I’ll take working with any version of Rails over working with just about anything else at the moment.

While working remotely, I am in a close-knit team that regularly checks with each other throughout the day. Although being remote has its benefits, you do need some contact with others throughout the day. Although Slack isn’t the ideal medium for this as it is pretty distracting, being able to meet and discuss with your team members regularly throughout the day breaks up the day nicely.

As a result, I’m finding myself reaching for the laptop more at night and hacking on Rails or Laravel apps. Now, if you don’t mind, I need to finish this little bit of code before turning in for the night.

Rebecca Toh has restarted her newsletter and in it’s first edition, Rebecca suggests accepting that we’ll never do everything perfectly and to enjoy more what we love to do.

Instead of working to make things perfect, why don’t we spend our energy instead on enjoying the things we love to do and getting utterly lost in them?

Maybe that is the true art we’re here to learn - to go deeper and deeper into the things that draw us in for no good reason, and to find true, lasting, simple joy in that.

— Rebecca Toh

It’s been 24 hours since I installed iOS 16. The update process took quite some time to complete on my iPhone 12, but it still took longer on my wife’s iPhone XR. That aside, the update process was straightforward.

Being able to edit a message and undo the sending of a message is new to the Messages app. Undo the sending of a message? I don’t think I’ve ever had to undo the sending of a message; however, I don’t live in my messages app. Many other iPhone users have sent a message they wished they could un-send.

Being able to edit a message, though, that’s a nice feature. Most of the messages I can see myself editing will result from typos. Even with the auto-correct, I still manage to make some typos when sending messages.

Aside from all the other features new to iOS 16, the most significant change is what you first see on your iPhone when you pick it up. The Lock Screen.

There are several new features here that I’ve enjoyed messing about with. You can now create more than one Lock Screen and Home Screen pairing and switch between these throughout the day. I’ve got several screens set up now, but I’ve yet to examine how changing your focus affects these screens. However, using the different focuses is something I plan on doing to try and curb the number of times I reach for my phone throughout the day. The widgets on Lock Screens are also a nice touch, and hopefully, we’ll see more of these added in the future.

Overall the iOS 16 update is pretty good so far.

Essential viewing.

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I won’t lie, I’ve been watching a lot of the television coverage following the death of Queen Elizabeth II.

Tonight, I watched some of the events from today including the service at Westminster and the Scottish Parliament’s motion of condolence at Holyrood. I also watched the Vigil of the Princes where members of the royal family stand guard during a lying in state of relation. This tradition started with the death of King George V in 1936 and was continued in 2002 for the death of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother. It was a lovely moment to see the Queen’s children together standing guard.

I love Rian Johnson’s Knives Out. Such a quirky film and Daniel Craig’s Benoit Blanc character is great to watch. Looking forward to the sequel, Glass Onion.

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My oldest son Ethan turns 16 today.

It still only feels like yesterday when we first brought him home from the hospital. A few highlights over those 16 years include his first nativity at nursery, his first day at school, becoming a big brother, his first holy communion, and his first junior club championship win, and many more great stories that we’ve captured. Now, he’s the tallest in the house and definitely the biggest hitter in the family when it comes to golf.

It will definitely be interesting to see what the next 16 years bring.

Happy birthday pal!

After reading Nicholas Bate’s latest powerful productivity post, I thought I would share a few of the people and apps that have influenced me.

• Patrick Rhone - Patrick’s dash/plus system has been part of my own processes since I read about it.
• Nicholas Bate - I’ve been reading Nicholas Bate’s blog for over 15 years. I’ve been using his master list idea for some time.
• Ryder Caroll - Creator of bullet journaling, the only productive process that I have stuck with recently. It also works for me because of it plays nice with Patrick’s dash/plus system and Nicholas Bate’s master list. The fact that it’s also analog is a huge benefit to me. I spend enough times on screens. The last thing I need is another app just to stay organised.
• 37 Signals - Over the years I’ve long been a fan of the way the 37 Signals company work. All of their books are recommended, but the real changers for me were Rework and Remote are great books that really do make you question the traditional methods of working. Short, sharp and straight to the point.
• Trello - Although I use pen and paper most days, there is times when you need a digital tool to manage a project. I’ve flip-flopped between Things, Todoist and Trello over the years. While freelancing I used Trello for managing client projects, but when I returned to full-time employment I started using Todoist and Things to manage projects. I’m back to using Trello now. It’s the visual aspect of the app that really helps me.

I could have probably added another dozen or so people and apps that have influenced how I work over the years, but these five are the ones the I keep going back to.

Who influences your productivity?

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been re-writing a small product that I spent sometime building before lockdown.

The product has been gathering dust since the start of lockdown. It does have a handful of customers and generally good feedback from those customers, but I wasn’t happy with my first pass at it. There were so many things that I would do differently if I could start it over again. So I decided to have another go at it.

I’ve made pretty good progress so far and will be able to launch it again in a few months.