I’m currently following through the hotrails.dev tutorial series so that I can build an admin section for the Writeabout website.

For too long, I’ve just updated Writeabout’s prompts using the Rails console, which is fine. Using a web interface, though, would make it a bit easier for me to add prompts.

My favourite game of all time has been polished up for the PS5 and will also soon be released on the PC as well. This might just fill in the gap before the HBO series begins.

Over the last couple of months, I’ve started to make some progress on many of the habits that I fell away from a few years ago. I’m reading again, I’m working on more side projects, and I’m starting to find myself blogging more again. Feels good that I have found my path again. I hope that it continues.

Shazam was an unexpected DC favourite in the Lang household. I think Black Adam will be another DC favourite for us.

Professor Chris Painter at The Byline Times digs into the lack of direction that the United Kingdom finds itself in under its Prime Minister, Boris Johnson.

Nothing has changed; everything has changed. Following Monday’s vote of confidence, Boris Johnson staggers on, for now. The lyrics from the famous 1960s Beatles track even more perfectly encapsulate, through popular culture, the state of his failing premiership: “He’s a real nowhere man, sitting in his nowhere land, making all his nowhere plans for nobody, doesn’t have a point of view, knows not where he’s going to.”

— Boris Johnson: Nowhere Man by Professor Chris Painter

I didn’t think there would be enough votes on Monday to trigger a leadership contest for the Conservatives. Still, I was somewhat taken aback by the number of politicians who voted against Boris Johnson. The Conservatives have never been a party favoured by myself. Although, it is refreshing to see that there are members of the Conservative party who are willing to take some form of action.

It is hard to conceive of anything that will heal Johnson’s fundamental breach of trust with the public, no matter how many ministers he reshuffles. Already saved twice, first by COVID vaccines and then by the situation in Ukraine, he descends into ever deeper trouble.

— Boris Johnson: Nowhere Man by Professor Chris Painter

While there are plenty of indicators that the UK public is fed up with Johnson’s antics, the only real test of the public’s trust in Johnson is a general election. And the conservatives aren’t going to call a general election early unless they absolutely have to.

Twenty years ago, Boris might have gotten away with continuing on and ignoring the public’s views. Still, there’s no escaping the scrutiny of the people for those in power. With a more connected world than ever before, there are very few ways leaders can hide the ugly truth. I hope that, in time, the world starts to see a change in those that undertake a career in politics. Perhaps those coming into politics will have more tremendous respect for the connected world and commit to doing a more respectful job of governing than Johnson and others.

Lots to like from Apple’s WWDC event, but the MacBook Air definitely caught my eye. Might just be my next laptop to replace my ageing MacBook Pro.

So, Boris Johnson survives again. “Move on” seems to be the Tory favoured response to the media after the no-confidence vote. Roll on the next general election.

The wee guy channeling his inner artist in the corner of the garden this afternoon.

Walking round the peripheral of the Trump Turnberry course while Ethan plays his county match. Such a beautiful part of the world.

This morning I finally resovled an issue with a Rails application of mine.

After a couple of weeks, of getting an hour every other night to resovle this, I finally understood what the problem was and how it could be fixed. A bug? Not necessarily, it was more of a lack of understanding on my part. The issue is fixed now and I can now crack on with other elements of the application.

There I was waiting on the final match tonight when I noticed a nice bit of light through the trees from the 11th tee. It wasn’t until I got home and I realised I captured a deer almost in the middle of the shot.

Digital Minimalism and Deep Work author Cal Newport, highlights a new paper shows that taking a prolonged and full break is good for you.

The researchers further found that they could obtain smaller, but still significant improvements in depression and anxiety by having users simply reduce the time they spend on Twitter and TikTok. The biggest effects, however, came from full abstention.

— Taking a Break from Social Media Makes you Happier and Less Anxious

This is something that I need to do more often. The endless scrolling is a terrible habit of mine. When this happens, I sometimes start to sense that feeling of negativeness creeping in as I am scrolling. At this point I just put my phone down and find something else to do. Maybe I should just delete the Twitter app from my phone?

I’m on board with Kurt on this one. Money spent on books and music is never wasted. Although I do admit that it’s been a while since I actually purchased music outside of a streaming service.

Good advice from Kurt Harden on how to salvage the day when your plans end up changing.

Hey, 37signals is back!

Nice reminder by Shawn Blanc that the quality of question matters.

Signed up for the free plan on MDN Plus this morning. I’m not convinced that I need either of the paid plans yet, but I might change my mind after a few weeks of using it.

It’s always good to use good tools for the job. In my case, I’m back to using a Macbook Pro and macOS as my development machine and operating system. It’s also great that I am working with Ruby and Rails once again.

The downside to using the tools is that they are the same tools I use to write web applications in my spare time. I enjoy hacking on ideas for web applications and using them for my own use, but I’ve noticed that the lines have started to blur when I use other tools.

Take for instance, source code management. I’m now using the same source code management tool for both work and my own projects. With source code management being a big part of my workday, I don’t enjoy using it the same way now for my own projects.

If I’m to continue enjoying hacking on my code after then, I want it to be an enjoyable experience. While I have no complaints about my job, it’s not a part of the day I want reminded of when it’s the evening or the weekend. I’ve been exploring different options for source code management over the last couple of weeks. I have decided to try out Gitlab for this over the next few months. It’s free, has similar processes to my current source code management tool, and integrates well with the hosting company I use for my web apps.

I’m also looking into other ways of using different tools or using the same tools differently. iTerm and Visual Studio Code are two tools that I use both at work and at home but finding alternatives to these is tricky when I use these tools really well. So instead of changing these tools to something else, I’m just changing how these tools look.

For iTerm, I have different looking terminals for work and home. It’s not much of a change, but the look definitely changes the dynamic of being at work and being at home.

I’ve also done the same with Visual Studio Code. I’m not going to look for a new text editor when I already use this quite proficiently. Instead, I am using the toggle extension in Visual Studio Code to change the theme and font settings for when I am at work and when I am home. A simple keyboard shortcut is now all it takes for me to change my interface from work to home.

Setting these boundaries between these contexts is essential as it creates a space for both. While I use many of the same tools, I do like to feel that I am in the correct mindset at the right time. That means using the appropriate tools for each and being able to distinguish between each. If the same tool has to be used for both, then a simple change of how that tool looks is all it takes for me to determine which context I am in.

Do what Matt Gemmell does and write down your writing ideas.

It seems that Heroku is no longer the go to place for deploying Rails applications. I’m having some success with Render for my Rails and static websites.

Today I finally got round to going through the Making VS Code Awesome book by Caleb Porzio. Let’s just say I am now a happier developer for reading it!

Our oldest has his first exam tomorrow afternoon. After a wee pop quiz with him tonight, he seems confident enough for tomorrow.

I made a wee decision over the weekend, that should see me gaining a bit more time back for myself and the family starting from the end of the summer. Good times ahead.

Now that we can all go back to the office, people are now realising that perhaps they would rather continue to work from home. This is due largely to the rising cost of living.

But there’s a problem. Employees who haven’t had to budget for train tickets, takeaway coffees or new office outfits for the past two years are now acutely aware of how much it costs to spend a day at your desk. And, worse, these costs are growing. Petrol prices are at an all-time high; transport fares have increased, and food and other essentials are on an upwards trajectory. That means an office day can hit the wallet hard.

— The sky-high cost of returning to the office by Sophia Epstein (BBC)

I’m a long-term work from homer. I’ve been doing it for the best part of the last 15 years. It’s simply what I prefer. As a slightly introverted person, I enjoy being able to get my head down and get on with the work. Don’t get me wrong, I do enjoy face-to-face meetings with people and I get that you need that time to meet and chat with co-workers. I would just prefer that there were other genuine benefits to going to the office.

One thing I have wanted to do for a long-time is to have a single checklist for the day that I can check items off for and then reset it for the next day. It doesn’t sound too difficult to do, but it never works entirely the way I would like it to in the various task manager apps I have used.

Many task manager apps re-create the tasks as they are crossed off the list. Now, that sounds fine for a single task, but when you have a bunch of tasks that you want to do daily, it can start to look slightly chaotic depending on the app. You may end up with tasks not completed from the day before, tasks completed for today, and some already completed for tomorrow.

I would like my list of tasks to stay completed for the day but not re-create the tasks for the following day. When the next day does come around, I would simply like to reset the checklist to start over again. I suppose the behaviour here is not to re-create the tasks but reset the list into a state so that it can be used again.

I created a page on my website that I can visit that contains a list of tasks with checkbox input elements that, when checked, are saved in the browser’s localStorage. There’s also a button there that, when clicked, resets all checkbox input elements back to unchecked. This allows me to start the list all over again.

After a couple of passes, I finally have it working now.