Matthew Lang

I’ve been trying to re-organise my Twitter following into a few different lists, but I wanted to see at a glance who’s on that list, so I put together a Ruby script that gets the profile pic for each user on a list and creates an image from it.

I finally got something working that offers a little bit of flexibility when putting the profile pics on the image. It looks pretty good, but it could still do with some improvements. At the moment, I have to pass in an array of the list member’s usernames for it to work.

Ideally, you would supply the list id on Twitter, and the script would look up the list members on its own. Still, I’m happy with the end result from tonight’s coding session.

You can see the end result on my All things analog Twitter list.

I wrote yesterday about how my New Year resolutions never work and why that is the case. One reason is the amount of time I set aside to prepare for my New Year resolution. You can’t just change from one day to the next, maybe some of you can, but for most of us, we need a bit of time to adjust.

Making broad sweeping changes on the 1st of January seldom works as many of us are still in some form of recovery mode. Expecting to make a successful change from the 1st of January onwards is a challenge that I frequently fail. Instead of one sudden change in direction, would it not be better if we gradually changed our direction?

We’re starting to move out of the dark winter months in the northern hemisphere. This move is slow, but it’s enough to allow us to plan for what I view as the best time of year to implement change, around March.

Instead of making a New Year resolution, I tend to view the next few weeks as a proving ground for change. Sure, I want to make a change in the New Year. Still, I know that I can’t make the switch overnight, which is why over the next few weeks, I’ll explore a few things that I want to do different and see which changes are feasible to make and sustain.

During this time, I’ll outline some goals for the current year and break down what’s involved in achieving those goals. It might take a small change, or it might take a more considerable change. Whatever is involved, I’ll use the next few weeks to see what I need to do to achieve those goals. This might come in the form of changes to my day, what tools I use, reading, writing. Anything really to make these goals and changes clear. I can gradually implement these changes over the next few weeks to see what works and what doesn’t.

When we finally get to March, I’ll know what changes will work and what doesn’t, and I’ll stick with the working modifications for the remainder of the year to meet my goals.

I’ll also have recovered enough from the festive period that I’ll be back in a routine at home and work. I will be able to make better decisions on what is right for me. Being in a pattern make implementing changes more straightforward, as they are easier to schedule. I don’t know about you, but trying to make these changes on the 1st of January is a whirlwind. 

This gradual change is slow, but it’s more effective than the sudden change of direction that a New Year resolution offers. By giving myself time to recover and adjust, I can see better what will work for me for the rest of the year.

Out walking round our local trails and we managed to spot a deer. It’s been a while since we last seen one round there.

Another year, another chance to start over again. How many of us have pledged to make a change in 2022? More to the point, how many of us will fail in these New Year resolutions? Probably most of us.

When it comes to new year resolution’s, we often fail to meet these resolutions within the first few weeks. I’ve lost track of the number of times I have been unable to follow through with my resolutions past the end of January. I don’t think I can remember a year when I followed through with a New Year resolution. It just never happened for me.

A few years ago, I decided that making a New Year resolution wasn’t for me. I noticed a couple of things about making new year resolutions over these last few years.

My resolution wasn’t focused enough

For me, making a new year resolution usually entailed a single statement for the year. For example, many of us would like to lose weight. What does that involve, though?

It involves eating healthier and doing more exercise. Eating healthier means changing what we cook, which means planning meals ahead of time. In turn means buying the right ingredients for these meals, which might mean budgeting the right amount of money for the month for these ingredients. That’s a lot to unpack in itself, and that’s only the diet part of my resolution. We haven’t even touched on the exercise part.

My New Year resolution was too broad. It wasn’t focused enough.

I didn’t prepare enough

We find ourselves starting the New Year by telling ourselves that we would like to change ourselves in a big way for the new year. However, that change won’t happen overnight. We’re all creatures of habits, but we’re probably more creatures of bad habits than good habits. We don’t adapt quickly; it takes time to change. And it’s for that reason; I always failed in my New Year resolutions.

December for me usually involves indulging a bit more than I should. We indulge a bit more in things like food and drink. We might also spend a bit more time on the couch in front of the television. Justifying this action as it’s a holiday and a break from work.

However, the problem is that switching from these traits in December to new ones in January isn’t easy to do. I frequently struggled with it, so my new year resolutions failed.

I needed more time to prepare for my new year resolution, and that was hard to do as the holiday season drew to its climactic end.

It’s just not for me

For me, making a New Year resolution is a practice that invariably led to defeat and made me question why I even bothered to start them in the first place. After wondering why I failed it often, I could see why it never worked for me.

If you are making a New Year resolution, I wish you all the success in 2022.

Upgrading my development environment to use the latest stable versions of Ruby and Rails. It’s been a while since I have last done this.

Started keeping a notebook of sketchnotes that I like to re-use often. First up are the date headers and separators I’ve been using.

Merry Christmas everyone!

Minilog v1 complete. I really enjoyed this exercise of keeping a small book of sketches and thoughts over December. Onto the next one!

Intrigued by DuckDuckGo’s announcement that they are building their own web browser for the desktop.

After a brief flutter with Brave and Safari, I’m back to using Firefox again. I don’t think it’s a great browser, but it makes my web experience easier to do.

Nicholas Bate shares 22 possible goals for 2022. This list is a great list of goals to start with — hiking, cooking, reading, health, organising and notebooks.

I’m intrigued by Cal Newport’s Analog January Challenge.

I could certainly stay off the Twitter native app and website for the month, but I have a couple of Mailbrew newsletters that aggregate some Twitter lists for me. I wonder if these would still be allowed?

I’m chuffed with my banner for today’s minilog. Just one more day and I’ll have done this for 23 consecutive days.

Messing around with microStudio this morning. I thought this might be something for my youngest son to tinker around with over the holidays.

Bah. Just noticed that using a Sharpie comes through to the previous page. No more Sharpies for my daily pages now.

I’ve been keeping these daily notes for over a week now. A good daily exercise.

Projects that leave you better off, as a person, despite not being a commercial or critical success. If you work on projects like this, it’s impossible to waste your time.

— It must be worth it even if it doesn’t work by David Heinemeier Hansson

Love this.

I created up a Rails 7 app last night using the esbuild and Tailwind options. This is definitely a step in the right direction for Rails. Modern tooling for a stable framework. Love it!

I was going to post a link to a bit of Facebook news but I’ve decided against it. They’ve been given enough air time on the webs. Who needs to digest even more of it? Definitely not me and I suspect, not a lot of you microbloggers.

So, I’ll just say, have a good day everyone!

Ordered a couple of books from Derek Sivers this morning. I’ve opted for the hardbacks for durability. Nice to have the digital versions included in the price of the physical copies as well.

If today’s venture into the office was anything to go by, then you can keep it. Commuting in was fine, but the office was such a dark and grey environment when compared to my home office. Long may working from home continue.

I am heading into the office this morning to pick up a new laptop. It’s the first time in 18 months that I have had to do the morning commute. Even though it’s not as crowded as it used to be, I don’t miss it.

Disappointed to hear that Nock is winding down its retail store. I managed to grab a couple of Hightower cases before all the store stock disappeared. One as a backup replacement for my current Hightower and the other, a Christmas present for my youngest.

My youngest drew me a picture of Discworld’s best wizard, Rincewind. Thanks Drew!

Pumpkin picking over at Cupar today. Thankfully the weather was in our favour.

When we moved into current house, we had three oak trees across the street.

A few years ago, they had to cut one down as it was dead. Today, they’re cutting down the remaining two for the same reason.

I know they need to be cut down for safety reasons, but still sad to see.