Matthew Lang

I’ve started getting into the habit of reading source code again. It’s been too long since I have done this, and actually did wonders for my confidence. When the code you write isn’t that far from other people’s code, you know you are on the right track.

I was looking for a new font for this website and came across IBM’s Plex Sans. I’m very happy with the end result.

It was a glorious morning for a hit. Course is looking great and so glad that we haven’t had any snow either.

Not the final score I hoped to wake up to for the Packers game. Having watched the highlights though, a deserved win for the 49ers. 👏

This morning I put the final touches on a Rails application that I planned to move from DigitalOcean to Render whilst upgrading it from Rails 6 to Rails 7. The actual change of platforms wasn’t too much of a problem, but the upgrade to Rails 7, and the third one that I have done, still presented me with a few issues. These problems were not too difficult to fix, and after an hour or minor tweaks, I managed to get the application up and running on Rails 7.

With this being the third Rails 7 upgrade I have done, I’m gradually building up a checklist that uses the Rails document as a base and includes a few other steps when it comes to moving away from Webpacker as well. This checklist will prove invaluable for another couple of Rails 7 upgrades that I plan to do over the next couple of weeks.

With a checklist, you know where you are and the steps you need to take. It allows me to do these upgrades in sections as well, so that I can do a few steps, take a break and then pick up where I left off, knowing what the last step was and what the next step will be. It’s a wonder I don’t use checklists a bit more. I know a few tasks are coming up over the next few months where a couple of checklists will be invaluable once again.

More checklists, please.

I’ve been trying to get more out of my Todoist setup recently by using labels to tag more of the tasks that I have there. It’s similar to the previous setup when I used Todoist a few years ago. I have labels for the duration of the task, labels for the context of the task, and some GitHub style labels that provide some further context to tasks related to building web applications.

It’s working well so far, and now the next step is to use Todoist’s filters to pull together some tasks from various projects. It’s at this point where I fell away from Todoist last time. I ended up with far too many filters that split all my tasks into multiple lists that were too hard to maintain.

This time I have vowed that things will be different. This time I am starting with just a single filter of minor tasks that I can pick off through the week.Most of my tasks are scheduled throughout the week. So there’s no need to apply additional filters to these tasks. It will get done on the scheduled date and time. For those minor tasks that can take me up to 15 minutes, I’ve decided to allow them to sit in Todoist and get done when I need to do them. With them spread over several projects, the new filter will bring them together under one view.

I’ve been intentionally slow on my uptake with Todoist this time. It can become overwhelming to try and use everything from the get-go. However, this time, I decided to pace myself and try out different parts of Todoist when I needed to. It is working well so far.

It’s coming up for a year since I started my Tweetbot subscription, and now that it’s up for renewal, I’ve decided to pass on renewing it for the next 12 months.

Over the last year, I’ve been gradually finding myself using Twitter’s web interface a lot and their iOS app on my iPhone. The Twitter client has come under fire a lot over the years, but I find both their web interface and iOS app very easy on the eye, and they don’t present too much information at once. Also, now that I can change Twitter to see the latest tweets from my timeline, I no longer need a third-party app to do this for me.

I’ve also been using Tweetdeck on the odd occasion as another option. If I’m looking to follow my timeline and a couple of lists at the one time, I’ll use this. I have enabled the beta preview, which adds many new features.

While Twitter can be a time-sink, I’m gradually getting it to a place where I only check-in a few times during the day on my browser and use the app on my phone for a few minutes at night. I’ve also limited how long I can use Twitter every day, which lets me ration my time on it.

I use Twitter lists to break down who I am following into categories. Most of my lists are emailed to me using Mailbrew a few times a week. I do this so that I catch the highlights from each list every few days, and then I don’t need to check on that list until the next email. Mailbrew allows me to catch up on Twitter content within the safe confines of my email and has effectively become my offline client for Twitter.

Lastly, Twitter handles many things better for me than third-party apps like Tweetbot. I can bookmark tweets and see threads better as two minor examples, and there are probably more. For me, though, it means that another app subscription is perhaps something that I can do without.

Nicholas Bate reminds us that daily gets the right things done

Kurt Harden adds to my world once again with “bookwrapt”.

Julian Summerhayes on the importance of handwriting.

At the start of the year, I chose “build” as my word for the year. The single word strategy is the idea that you choose a word that will direct what you do for the year. Having not done this for a couple of years I wanted to go back to doing this so that I could at least focus on something for the year.

It’s mid-way through January and now seems as good as any to review what I’ve been building over the last two weeks and what I will be building in the near future.

My Twitter List Banner Maker (a mouthful I know) is now public on my GitHub profile. It’s far from complete but it’s working and with a few tweaks here and there can be used by others for their own lists. While building this I did learn a couple of things. Mainly, authentication with the new Twitter API, and also I improved my knowledge of RMagick by learning how to merge images together to change how they look.

In the background, there’s also a number of other things I’ve been building up.

• I am continuing to post to my blog during the weekdays to build an audience up again. I’m not looking to build an audience of thousands, just more people that like what I am writing.
• I am building a single document that will act as my playbook if you like for the day. A template for the day if you like. It’s been working well for me but it still needs some refining.

Looking ahead, over the next few weeks I am going to start building an application using the Blitz.js framework. A fellow developer from Glasgow put me onto this framework a week ago and I’m intrigued by the comparison to Rails but also that it’s a JavaScript framework and that’s one language that I am keen to build up my knowledge of in 2022.

The application won’t be too complex, a single-page application with a form that does validation and uses an external resource to look up information based on the data provided by the form. It was the simplest idea I could think of at the time and could be done within the next few weeks.

I’ll also continue to tweak the Twitter List Banner Maker so that it formats avatar images into a layout that is determined by the number of members on the list.

That’s enough for this month’s update. The next one will drop in mid-February.

Good session on the practice ground with the wee man this morning.

Minilog 2 complete. I wasn’t as happy with the sketches in this one. I aim to do better next time.

I’ve been looking at my GitHub profile over the last couple of days. It seems like a graveyard of half-finished or throwaway projects that do not show my best work.

While I’m not in the freelance market and not looking for any roles soon, I would like my GitHub profile to reflect some of my better work. There are a few things I am going to do from now on to achieve this.

I have a backlog of projects that I’ve used for exploring different parts of Ruby, Rails and JavaScript. These primarily reside on my laptop and be shared for others to use with a bit of a polish. These projects are not, by any means, world-changing ideas. They are just projects that I used to try something out.

What I plan to do, is publish one project/application a month on my GitHub account. I will provide some instructions on running the application and any updates that I may do on it in the future.

I also have several other repositories on GitHub that are quite frankly just sitting there doing nothing, and they’re not worth much, so I’ll delete these from my account. There’s not much sense in having on my account if they’re not doing anything.

This month I’ll be wrapping up and publishing a ruby script that generates an image for your Twitter lists. I’ve been trying to get my head around the Twitter API over the last week and the different authentication methods needed to access other endpoints. After working this out on Wednesday night, I’m now making good progress with this script. I may try this out as a web application later in the year. I’m not sure yet.

That’s the plan anyway for my GitHub profile. 

I’m reading again. And it’s been long overdue. I can’t remember the last time I finished a book that I hadn’t read before. It’s been that long.

There are lots of pitiful excuses I could make for not reading. There are two significant reasons why I stopped reading.

The first reason was that I spent far too much time elsewhere. And that time elsewhere was usually on screens like television, games console, phone. The rotating screen exercise throughout the day was relentless. I traded one screen for the other throughout the day until right up until I went to sleep.

The second reason is not as significant, but it impacted my reading. I had a run of books that I didn’t finish. Most of these books were fiction, and I didn’t finish them because I lost interest in them.

Now, up to this point, I mostly read science fiction and fantasy books. On the odd occasion, I would read something else, but this genre was the one that I enjoyed the most. However, a pattern started to emerge between every handful of books I began to read. I would lose interest in it. After a couple of attempts to finish each book, I gave in. Eventually, I gave up reading altogether.

Thankfully, now things are starting to look up. I’m almost three-quarters of the way through my first book for 2022. I’ve also started another book that I hope to finish by the end of the month.

I do want to read more books this year. I have a stack of physical books on my desk that I need to get through and a reading list written down. I hope that’s all the planning I need for this year to start reading again.

If you are curious about the book I am currently reading. It is Seveneves by Neal Stephenson. The story itself is about preserving the human race following an apocalyptic event on Earth. I am thoroughly enjoying it.

48 hours after my booster, and happy to report just a sore arm.

I’m typing this on my new Keychron K6 keyboard. It is a Christmas present from my wife, and I love using it.

This morning I decided to try and pair it up with my work laptop, a Windows laptop. It paired up beautifully. It even allows you to switch to a Windows/Android mode to make the key mappings better for those modifier keys on either side of the space bar. Now I can sit the one keyboard on my desk and switch my two laptops when I need to.

I have been looking at mechanical keyboards for a few years now, and while I have always considered getting one, I always put it off as I wasn’t sure what keyboard to get, what switches to select and what features would be supported. In the run-up to Christmas, though, my wife suggested that I make the jump and get one and call it a Christmas present from her. I did. And now, having used the keyboard every day for the last few weeks, there’s a thought running through my head.

I should have done this years ago.

How many times have you muttered those words? You realise that there’s a better way for you going forward, and you regret not doing it in the past.

You can end up quickly kicking yourself when you realise this. You end up looking back, wondering what would things be like now if you did that one thing years ago.

A change of your keyboard seems trivial, but it can happen with any change you make. You are cutting out caffeine at night, going for a walk every day, or reading a book at night instead of watching television. 

There’s another way of looking at this, though.

What if you never made the change to begin with, and you just kept plodding on, having never made the change?

At least now, having made the change, I know that I’ve made a change for the better. And it’s better to have made that change than never at all.

It’s world Sketchnote day today! A chance for the sketchnoting community to celebrate this under-appreciated form of note-taking.

I first encountered sketchnoting through Mike Rohde’s sketchnotes. I found that sketchnotes provided a way of organising visual notes more linearly.

Before I started using sketchnotes, though, I used mind maps. I’ve been a user of mind maps for almost three decades now. When I was studying for my exams in high school, my uncle introduced me to mind mapping. I used them extensively while studying. I can still remember the epic four-page mind maps I created for each topic.

Mind maps, like sketchnotes, are visual. However, unlike sketchnotes, they are organised radially with a central topic in the middle and sub-topics emitting out like spokes on a bike.

One minor gripe with mind mapping is that it is always difficult to gauge how much space you need for the final mind map. Sub-topics can grow out from their designated areas on the page, and despite having some idea of how much space you need, I always found that I ran out of room.

With sketchnotes, though, it allows you to be more linear with arranging your notes. Although sketchnotes on a topic might cover a couple of pages or more, they are linear, making for little wasted space and is easier to read.

I still use mind maps on the odd occasion for outlining or doing a brain dump, but for taking notes, I use sketchnotes. I also keep a log of the events of the day using sketchnotes. I call this my minilog. I keep it in a series of Field Notes notebooks.

After a long spell of not sketchnoting, I’m happy to say that over the last few months, I back to using it daily again and enjoying it over the previous few months.

You can use any notebook and pen combination for sketchnoting, but after a few trials with different notebooks and pens, I found the following selections good for my sketchnotes.

• Paper Mate Flair medium felt pen
• Faber Castell Pitt Artist pen
• Uni Pin Fine Line pen
• Zebra Double Ended Midliners pens (for highlighting and colouring)
• Any Field Notes pocket-sized notebook, preferably with the blank or dotted paper
• Dingbats A5 notebook

I also have two Sketchnote Ideabooks, but I haven’t taken these out of the wrapper yet. I want to use them, but I just haven’t got around to them yet.

If you want to get started on sketchnoting, check out Mike Rohde’s sketchnote page. It has lots of free material to get you started. If you need some inspiration, there are also many examples of other people’s sketchnotes on Twitter.

I try not to post anything political here. However, I think, like many people in the UK, I have just reached a maximum tipping point with the Conservative government. Time for them to go.

Finally got my booster today. No queuing this time, as my appointment was first thing this morning.

Over the weekend, I started reviewing my Feedbin account to reduce the number of unread items I see daily. Recently, I’ve noticed that I check my Feedbin account less regularly. I used to go through it a handful of times a day, now not so much. It’s not that there isn’t anything interesting there to read. There always is. I think it’s because I am scanning more of the headlines and just starring what I find interesting.

I’m also concerned by the number of high volume feeds that I subscribe to — Hacker News, Lobsters and Dev.to to mention a few. Also, I have been trying out using Feedbin to read some Twitter content. Neither of these plans is working out for me.

While perfectly manageable to use in Feedbin, the high volume feeds are becoming less and less of a required scan through daily. In the last couple of weeks, I’ve moved the Hacker News and Lobster feeds to my daily newsletter that I created using Mailbrew. Scanning the last few recent items is easier to read than continually checking through the day.

As for Twitter, I think I’ll stop reading it through Feedbin. Again, Feedbin does a great job of making Twitter work, and the ability to subscribe to individual accounts and lists is excellent. It’s perfectly usable. In my case, though, I think I would instead check Twitter myself a couple of times a day. I don’t need to see everything from the Twitter accounts and lists that I have added to Feedbin, so this week, I’ll remove these sources from my Feedbin account.

It seems an age since I have discovered many new websites and added them to Feedbin. The last time I said anything to my Feedbin account, it was a series of .NET development blogs that I thought would be useful for work. Aside from that, there’s hasn’t been much else.

Please let me know if anyone has any recommendations for interesting websites that I can subscribe to, then please let me know.

I just can’t compete with my wife Jen when it comes to playing Name That Tune with Spotify. She gets most of songs right within a few seconds of the song starting. 😳

As I start to break open a few sub-projects in Todoist, I start to wonder again if another coupe of boards is the answer or can I manage it all on one board, but using labels to filter each project?

Using a single board, would make seeing an overview of everything much easier.

I remembered Draft, the writing app I used years ago. Checked it out today, and it’s still there! The web is truly an under-appreciated and brilliant platform.

In the last few years, I have realised that there’s no best time to start a new habit. The critical thing to remember is that anytime is the best time to create a new routine.

I started keeping a small notebook and filled it with sketch notes of things that happened during the day. I started doing this at the start of December. The plan was to get to the end of the week without missing a day. I managed that quickly enough. The next goal was to get to the end of the notebook without missing a day. I managed that a few days before Christmas. I kept going, and today I hit the halfway point of my second notebook doing this.

Now, I don’t doubt I wouldn’t have managed the same exercise had I started on the first of January, but starting on the first of December allowed me a bit of time to get used to the habit and build it up during a time when I knew I would have many distractions. Had I started this exercise on the first of January, I would have had to contend with the kids being off school, taking the decorations down for Christmas and getting the kids ready to go back to school. Chances are, I would have missed one day. 

The point to this is that there’s no point in waiting for the right time to start a new habit. Why wait until New Year when you can start something in December? Why wait until Monday when you can start something on Friday?

There’s no single best to start a new habit. Anytime is the best time to start.