Recent Posts

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.

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.

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!

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.

Family

Great day with Jen and the boys walking around Luss on the shores of Loch Lomond. It helped to clear the cobwebs.

The family has upped their Hobonichi Techo Planner order to three this year. One for me, one for Jen and now one for our oldest Ethan.

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.

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.
Golf Family

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.

Auto-generated description: A young person in a red shirt and gray pants stands on a golf course holding a trophy next to a flagstick.

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.