Jen timed picking up these new caramel crunch biscuits from Aldi perfectly. #mbaug

Looks like I removed the Instagram app from my phone at the right time.

As if Instagram weren’t addictive enough already, the company is adding a new feature that’s intended to keep you scrolling through your feed even longer. Starting today, Instagram will load ‘Suggested Posts‘ at the end of your feed, once you’re all caught up with updates from friends and other accounts you follow.

— Instagram’s new ‘Suggested Posts’ feature will keep you scrolling forever

Like Facebook, Instagram is doing everything to keep your eyes on the app. Suggested users, copying features from other trending apps like TikTok and now suggested posts. These features aren’t designed to help the users, they’re designed to keep you attached to your timeline.

Without an open API though, the options to viewing your timeline on Instagram are restricted. It’s not the kind of platform that I want to be a part of.

Our Japanese maple in the back garden is starting to change colour. A change of seasons is upon us. #mbaug

Nicholas Bate’s Tools of Excellence for a Brave New World series continues with The Master List.

I had no idea Unsplash had an iOS app. Found out this morning after continuing my process of updating accounts with my new email address.

Almost stationary. To be fair, I envy this little guy’s pace of life.

This is a silhouette of Ethan playing at Gleneagles last year in the junior open. I like this type of picture. I hope to get more shots like this when golf competitions return next year.

Nicholas Bate’s 14 point productivity primer is a great place to start if you need to get back on track.

I was optimistic about Mozilla yesterday. Today, I’m not so sure after reading various posts and tweets. Without Mozilla, we lose a big big fighter for the open web. I really hope Mozilla can bounce back.

My Soundcore Life 2 headphones were a great buy. They produce good sound and have noise cancelling.

They also work nicely for online gaming, although I never thought about using them when I bought them. #mbaug

Looking out the window from one of the buildings at Paisley Abbey. I would love a window like this to work from every day.

A moment of peace and quiet as I walked off the golf course a couple of weeks ago. #mbaug

Made the switch from Apple Music to Spotify today. So much easier to move about in the app and there’s the addition of the web player as well.

Senior minister Michael Gove has said he does not think face coverings should be compulsory in shops in England, saying he trusts people’s common sense.

Speaking to the BBC’s Andrew Marr, Mr Gove said wearing a mask in a shop was “basic good manners”.

— Coronavirus: I trust people’s sense on face masks - Gove

The problem with this approach is that by and large, people will ignore what’s common sense and just do what they think is right by them.

I don’t always agree with Nicola Sturgeon’s politics, but I agree wholeheartedly with the move to make masks compulsory in shops in Scotland. It keeps the staff safe, it keeps the customers safe and it removes any grey area in between where people wonder whether they should wear a mask or not.

I’ve been enjoying watching Picard on Amazon Prime for the last couple of nights. Just a few episodes in, but really enjoying it.

A paid tier on Twitter? If the benefits were right, I’d definitely go for it.

Nicholas Bate gives us a productivity system so simple it can fit on a single index card.

A fresh 3 by 5 card taken from the stack. One side is work. One side is home. Each side is divided in half with a vertical line. On the LHS side are things you need/have to do. E.g. at work return a client’s call; at home buy some pasta. On the RHS are things you don’t have to do but you will do because they will make your future life easier by reducing the things you have to do on the LHS.

— The Tools of Excellence for a Brave New World, 8: The 3 x 5 card

We had a new deck put in the back garden to give us more seating space. Up until that time, Scotland had been enjoying a wonderful sunshine. Since the deck was finished, and coincidentally lockdown restrictions eased, it’s been pretty much grey and wet.

That’s Scotland for you.

Sat down with the rest of the family tonight and watched Hamilton on Disney+. Absolutely amazing, loved it!

Today’s plan was to get in a round of golf with my son, my dad and my uncle at my dad’s golf club. I’ve been looking forward to it for a couple of weeks. As always though, the weather has scuppered these plans.

Taking the day to instead work on my product for a few hours.

Friday night fun.

Pizzas from our favourite local Italian restaurant, a couple of cocktails for me and Jen, and a few board games, including the family favourite, King of Tokyo.

A great way to start the weekend.

Despite switching to TailwindCSS, I still style components similar to Bootstrap. I’m still starting out on the journey of TailwindCSS, though, and I think in time, I’ll start to find ways to get away from this styling.

I’m sold on Hey email.

In the last six days that I have been using it, I’ve been getting my head around its features and workflows that make Hey different from most other email services.

The screener is a nice feature. When you receive an email from someone from the first time, Hey asks you if you want to continue to receive email from that person. Instead of you trying to determine if you have received an email from someone, Hey lets you know. Nice touch!

What I like best about Hey though is that it doesn’t look or act like a typical email client. There are some similarities sure, but instead of going down the same route as every other email client and using the same view for each collection of email, Hey goes a step further to make different groups of email more comfortable to read. The Paper Trail allows to scan recently received receipts, but The Feed page shows recently received newsletters and also makes them easy to browse through much like you might scroll through RSS feeds.

One advantage I’ve found from signing up to Hey is that I can stop using an email address tied to my domain name. Sure, it’s nice to own your domain name as well as use it for your email address, but I often wondered if tying these two together was a bit of a hindrance. Over the years my email address has been used for all manner of accounts and is probably on quite a few mailing lists that I would rather it wasn’t on.

In signing up for a Hey email address, it felt like I had a clean slate to start over with again. When Hey adds the ability to use custom domains, I might not transfer over my domain right away. I think I’ll keep going with Hey’s email address for as long as I can.

I’m going to pull the trigger on the subscription tomorrow at some point. Sure, it’s early days for Hey, and there are lots of things that are missing, but for a product in its first few weeks of launch, it’s got more than enough new features to make me switch over.

In a post-Covid world, maybe the time has come to go out on your own. Keep it simple initially: just you, no start-up capital and a desire to be beholden to nobody. Except you, of course.

— Agility Is The Big New Differentiator

Since the lockdown started, it’s clear to me that striking out on my own again is the best way to go.

Great night for a few holes.