Build paths first
Michael Wade explains the sidewalk rule and why we should build paths first.
Keeping things simple and action-oriented is difficult and yet if that orientation is not present from the start, it may be too late. Territory may already have been seized and boundaries drawn.
— The Sidewalk Rule
In a recent project, I took the advice of another team when setting up a new project and categorising the work involved based on a template this team used. In doing so, I complicated the project before it even began. I should have built paths first before building sidewalks.
Time and attention are unrelated
Jason Fried recounts a tale showing that time and attention are unrelated.
What I don’t have – and what I can’t squeeze in – is more attention. Attention is a far more limited resource than time. So what I should say is “I don’t have the attention”. I may have 8 hours a day for work, but I probably have 4 hours a day for attention.
I may have created a monster by showing my youngest son the new Aliens Pulse Rifle from Nerf.
More recommendations from humans please
This blog has been quiet of late. I haven’t felt the need to share much of anything over the last year. In fact, in the previous few years, I’ve bounced back and forward on the want to keep running this blog. The motivation to blog has waned, but it’s something that I still want to do. It’s a strange feeling to have.
One of the things that I enjoy about blogging is the passing on of information. In the past, I would often share links to stories and posts that I have found through my daily read of the websites that I follow. It’s an excellent way of passing on the good stuff on the internet. The old fashioned way. Without the vanity metrics of likes and followers. Without the need for algorithms to find you the right content.
I should do this more often. I should share more links to the things that I find interesting on the internet. Not because I want more followers or readers, but for the intention of passing something else on that I found fascinating as an individual. As a reader of my blog, you might like it; you might not like it. However, there’s one thing that I can guarantee you. Each of the links I share on my blog is a post or a story that I found interesting and recommend as a human and not as an algorithm.
Maybe that’s something that we could do with more of on the web.
One of the things that I enjoy about blogging is the passing on of information. In the past, I would often share links to stories and posts that I have found through my daily read of the websites that I follow. It’s an excellent way of passing on the good stuff on the internet. The old fashioned way. Without the vanity metrics of likes and followers. Without the need for algorithms to find you the right content.
I should do this more often. I should share more links to the things that I find interesting on the internet. Not because I want more followers or readers, but for the intention of passing something else on that I found fascinating as an individual. As a reader of my blog, you might like it; you might not like it. However, there’s one thing that I can guarantee you. Each of the links I share on my blog is a post or a story that I found interesting and recommend as a human and not as an algorithm.
Maybe that’s something that we could do with more of on the web.
Proud of Ethan winning his first Junior Club Championship at Paisley Golf Club.
A superb match over 36 holes that went to a second playoff hole before the winner was decided.
Amazed by GitHub Copilot
I must admit, I am blown away by GitHub's latest technical preview, Copilot, despite not having access to it yet. It's almost like having Stack Overflow, your favourite snippets collection, and a pair programming buddy rolled into one.
There are some concerns being voiced about how this will impact the value of a developer's role.
While GitHub's Copilot will in time automate a fair amount of time in a developer's typical day, it can't account for the complexity involved in solving real-world problems using code. While the snippets generated by Copilot look to solve simple tasks, it's piecing these tasks together by the developer that counts. A developer's role is not just to write code but to understand the code being written. GitHub's Copilot looks to do both by providing generic suggestions that the developer can change to solve the problem they face.
Given that my brain is not quite as sharp as it once was, I welcome any tool or product that helps me write and understand better code. GitHub's Copilot will definitely help me do both. While it won't make me a 10x developer in the future, it will definitely make me understand and be more proficient with more programming languages.
There are some concerns being voiced about how this will impact the value of a developer's role.
While GitHub's Copilot will in time automate a fair amount of time in a developer's typical day, it can't account for the complexity involved in solving real-world problems using code. While the snippets generated by Copilot look to solve simple tasks, it's piecing these tasks together by the developer that counts. A developer's role is not just to write code but to understand the code being written. GitHub's Copilot looks to do both by providing generic suggestions that the developer can change to solve the problem they face.
Given that my brain is not quite as sharp as it once was, I welcome any tool or product that helps me write and understand better code. GitHub's Copilot will definitely help me do both. While it won't make me a 10x developer in the future, it will definitely make me understand and be more proficient with more programming languages.
An older post from Lifehacker in 2016 outlines the benefits and drawbacks of using plain text.
Lunch date
I just had a wee lunch date with Jennifer at one of our favourite local restaurants.
Nice to get out of the house, have the cooking done for you and be in great company. Shame I have to get back to work now.
Nice to get out of the house, have the cooking done for you and be in great company. Shame I have to get back to work now.
Let me get this right. Twitter's Blue subscription costs $3 per month, and for that, I still have to see ads in my timeline? Undoing tweets and organising my Twitter bookmarks hardly seems worth it.
I'm not impressed.
I'm not impressed.
The best medicine in life needs no prescription.
I love this. Just posted by Patrick Rhone about a post by Kurt Harden.
Glasgow bigotry, enough is enough
Growing up in the west of Glasgow for a few years, I witnessed plenty of actions of hatred and violence just because you had a particular colour of football jersey on. It was a mentality that I thought the city had outgrown until this year. Not once, but twice now, the centre of Glasgow has been the scene of violence and vandalism by those that call this same city their home.
The desperate, misplaced, desire to equivocate and suggest the wrongs in the conduct of a section of the Rangers support are shared city wide, hasn’t helped. The Ibrox club are on their own in this city and any other across the global game when it comes to the expression of anti-Catholic sentiment, and that should have been long since acknowledged. It was in an interview run by this newspaper group, conducted by Graham Spiers for the Scotland On Sunday in 1995 with Walter Smith, that the then Rangers manager struck to the heart of what continues to be at play. “There is a Protestant superiority syndrome around here, you can feel it sometimes…”
— Rangers, the 'superiority syndrome' and anti-Catholic bigotry: Why it cannot go unchallenged any more
Last weekend's scenes in the centre of Glasgow are just the tip of the iceberg of a culture of "fans" who hide behind their football club to justify their actions.
There is a clear consensus from people across Glasgow that enough is enough. Action must be taken.
There is a clear consensus from people across Glasgow that enough is enough. Action must be taken.
Michael Wade highlights the importance of a human touch when it comes to sensitive subjects.
It was nice to get back to church and celebrate Drew’s first Holy Communion today. Even nicer that he was able to do it with some of his classmates and friends.
We’re back home now and firing up the BBQ for a feast with a few drinks. All in all, it’s been a good day.
Is it time for a new Repulican party?
The GOP is continuing its move to always side with Trump.
In this, Cheney is hardly alone. At the national and state level, Republicans who challenged Trump’s Big Lie — ranging from Sen. Mitt Romney (UT) all the way down to a member of the Michigan State Board of Canvassers — have either been formally punished or publicly rebuked. The party may not agree on much internally nowadays, but on this point, they march in lockstep: Trump’s falsehoods about the election must not be challenged.
— The Big Lie is the GOP’s one and only truth
It makes you wonder if it's time for a new Republican party.
Another week, another thing I forgot to put in the calendar and completely forgot. It's official. I need to write more stuff down. In fact, I probably need to write almost everything down.
Apple back in court in the UK
On top of the court case against Epic, Apple is now facing another court case, this time in the UK. Apple is accused of over-charging people for the apps in their App Store.
The tech company has been accused of deliberately shutting out the competition in the store and forcing people to use its own payment processing system, generating “excessive” profits for itself in the process.
The claim, which is being brought on behalf of potentially millions of Apple users in the UK, has been filed in the competition appeal tribunal and calls for Apple to repay UK customers it says have been overcharged because of the company’s practices, with damages of up to £1.5bn being sought.
It says as many as 19.6 million UK users could be eligible for compensation.
— Apple accused of breaking UK competition law by overcharging for apps
As an Apple user of some years now, it's only recently that I've seen the argument against the use of a single App Store that is controlled by Apple.
Is it safer? Undoubtedly. Sometimes though, it might be too safe given the fickle approval process that apps must go through when developers submit new or updated apps to the App Store. Also the
What would happen though if developers could submit to stores other than Apple's own App Store? Maybe they could even run their own stores. I would definitely think twice before buying an app through an alternative store though.
Is it safer? Undoubtedly. Sometimes though, it might be too safe given the fickle approval process that apps must go through when developers submit new or updated apps to the App Store. Also the
What would happen though if developers could submit to stores other than Apple's own App Store? Maybe they could even run their own stores. I would definitely think twice before buying an app through an alternative store though.
The complete guide to plaintext productivity on Windows. You can also do this on Linux and macOS.
How do you get what you want? Nicholas Bate knows.
As nice as the Jumpstart Rails application is and all the feature it includes, I'm finding the new annual pricing a little on the expensive side. I think I may start building my own template and use that for new applications.
Trying something a bit different tonight, chicken parm in marinara sauce and mozzarella.
We’re getting a bit more daylight now, so me and Jen have started up our mid-week walks again. Lockdown or not, we’re going to keep this going.
Master & Commander, a masterpiece
I completely agree with Michael Wade. Master & Commander is a masterpiece.
I never got round to seeing Master & Commander at the cinema. If I'm honest, I don't even remember much of seeing Master & Commander being advertised at all at the time. I do regret not seeing it on the big screen, but at home, maybe with a good set of headphones, it is as close to the cinema experience as I'll ever get.
It's definitely one of my favourite movies of all time.
I never got round to seeing Master & Commander at the cinema. If I'm honest, I don't even remember much of seeing Master & Commander being advertised at all at the time. I do regret not seeing it on the big screen, but at home, maybe with a good set of headphones, it is as close to the cinema experience as I'll ever get.
It's definitely one of my favourite movies of all time.
Do you have all the essentials?
A productive Saturday
It was one of those Saturdays where everything through the day just fell into place.
A code and coffee session early this morning yielded another milestone met. I managed to close off another couple of widgets for my CMS product. There's just one more to go to switch out the old widgets for my new ones that offer better flexibility when it comes to putting pages together.
It was then off to the hardware store to get a few things for the garden. We missed out on a few things last year as we left it too late to get a couple of things, so we were quicker off the mark this year.
Back home, I spent a couple of hours getting the back garden into some shape for the summer. The next few Saturday's are going to be similar as we get a few more things done, but the hope is that we put in the work now, to enjoy the fruits of our labour when the sunshine and good weather really kicks in.
It not often a Saturday just falls into place like this, but its been great having a productive day. I can kick back a bit tomorrow knowing I've got a few things done today.
A code and coffee session early this morning yielded another milestone met. I managed to close off another couple of widgets for my CMS product. There's just one more to go to switch out the old widgets for my new ones that offer better flexibility when it comes to putting pages together.
It was then off to the hardware store to get a few things for the garden. We missed out on a few things last year as we left it too late to get a couple of things, so we were quicker off the mark this year.
Back home, I spent a couple of hours getting the back garden into some shape for the summer. The next few Saturday's are going to be similar as we get a few more things done, but the hope is that we put in the work now, to enjoy the fruits of our labour when the sunshine and good weather really kicks in.
It not often a Saturday just falls into place like this, but its been great having a productive day. I can kick back a bit tomorrow knowing I've got a few things done today.
The not so fun weekend of debugging code problems
It's been a while since I last posted here. I've been getting my head down and working on my CMS product, which has left not much time for blogging.
Over the last few weeks, I've been putting in place a feature that should allow for more flexible page designs so that customers can use a series of widgets to build up pages. It's a three-level form with a page with many sections on it, and each section has a single widget. The thinking is that the sections can be re-ordered regardless of what type of widget it holds. It hasn't been without its issues, though. It took several attempts to get this overall widget design with the page in place.
Thankfully, that part of the feature is done, but I'm still working out some issues with this.
The main issue is when I add a new section and widget to the page, it clears any input elements that I have changed on any other sections widgets on that same page. The merry-go-round of possible sources of the problem includes the usual areas when things like this go wrong on the front-end—namely Turbolinks and Javascript.
The biggest problem just now is that of time, though. I don't get much more than a couple of hours at a time working on this, and when I do, I feel that I am problem-solving the same things over and over again. It's just as well that we're still in a national lockdown here in Scotland because it does afford me some extra time to work on this.
Hopefully, I can make progress with it this week.
Over the last few weeks, I've been putting in place a feature that should allow for more flexible page designs so that customers can use a series of widgets to build up pages. It's a three-level form with a page with many sections on it, and each section has a single widget. The thinking is that the sections can be re-ordered regardless of what type of widget it holds. It hasn't been without its issues, though. It took several attempts to get this overall widget design with the page in place.
Thankfully, that part of the feature is done, but I'm still working out some issues with this.
The main issue is when I add a new section and widget to the page, it clears any input elements that I have changed on any other sections widgets on that same page. The merry-go-round of possible sources of the problem includes the usual areas when things like this go wrong on the front-end—namely Turbolinks and Javascript.
The biggest problem just now is that of time, though. I don't get much more than a couple of hours at a time working on this, and when I do, I feel that I am problem-solving the same things over and over again. It's just as well that we're still in a national lockdown here in Scotland because it does afford me some extra time to work on this.
Hopefully, I can make progress with it this week.