An apology from the NFL’s commissioner, Roger Goodell:

We, the NFL, condemn racism and the systematic oppression of Black People. We, the NFL, admit we were wrong for not listening to NFL players earlier and encourage all to speak out and peacefully protest. We, the NFL, believe Black Lives Matter.

— We, the NFL, believe Black Lives Matter

This apology from the NFL’s commissioner Roger Goodell, is a move in the right direction. Some might say it’s too late though. It’s been four years since Colin Kaepernick started protesting by kneeling during the US national anthem. His action’s are now being replicated at protests all across the US. Sure, the NFL have admitted that they are wrong, but the real test in their words will be during the upcoming season. Will players be allowed to peacefully protest during the national anthem?

An apology from the NFL’s commissioner, Roger Goodell:

We, the NFL, condemn racism and the systematic oppression of Black People. We, the NFL, admit we were wrong for not listening to NFL players earlier and encourage all to speak out and peacefully protest. We, the NFL, believe Black Lives Matter.

— We, the NFL, believe Black Lives Matter

This apology from the NFL’s commissioner Roger Goodell, is a move in the right direction. Some might say it’s too late though. It’s been four years since Colin Kaepernick started protesting by kneeling during the US national anthem. His action’s are now being replicated at protests all across the US. Sure, the NFL have admitted that they are wrong, but the real test in their words will be during the upcoming season. Will players be allowed to peacefully protest during the national anthem?

I have a pull request that’s been sitting in Github for about two weeks now. It’s for a Rails app and the pull request includes some breaking changes. I’ve done my best to limit these breaking changes but there are some parts of the application that I need to update after the deploy.

I haven’t scheduled this into my day as I know it’s going to take a chunk out of my day so I’ve just let it lie there for the last two weeks.

I can’t put it off any longer. I’ve scheduled it in for this afternoon. I just need to get it done.

I hate to play down the benefits of blogging, but I think the author here has a point. There used to be so many blogging platforms. Google even had a filter on their search engine for blogs. Now though, it feels like there are fewer blogs out there.

But they would be the one thing I’d bring back to the internet if I could bring one thing back. They’re the thing I miss the most and the most often. They were the most valuable thing on here, besides freer availability of news, free although low quality video content on YouTube, and I guess some kinds of social media. But blogs are something you can sit down and read and get really into to the point you forget where you even are, and think about how you want to try those things maybe in your life, or just enjoy their writing, and you can read deeper into them into past blog posts, and tune back in later and see what they’ve posted since the last things you read about them.

— If I could bring one thing back to the internet it would be blogs

I think this is a bit ironic me pointing this out. I’ve definitely not been blogging as much as I have in the past. I’ve been struggling with blogging frequently again for the last two years, but the want to publish just isn’t there as much as it has been in the past.

The Last of Us Part II is finally getting a release date in June and the new trailer is just adding to the excitement.

After a lapse of reading, I’m back on track and finished Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo tonight. A good story and something a bit different from your usual fantasy books. 📚

Another wonderful evening stroll through the trees with Jennifer and the boys.

The Tantive IV set is complete! It took a wee bit longer than we planned, but it’s finally finished. Now, we just need to find a place to put it.

After some consideration, I’ve decided to kill my Atlassian account. I’m not using any of their products other than Trello. Despite Trello’s benefits though, it can be replaced by a number of tools that I already own.

After a few weeks of not posting to my dev blog, I’ve decided that over the weekend I will delete this blog.

I don’t see the long term value in having this resource on a seperate domain or in collating the links for this blog. Instead of posting to a blog, I’m going to start collecting web development and Rails guides and resources on a number of pages on my personal website.

Don’t worry folks, I’ll keep posting here and any major changes in this web development content will be shared here as well.

Progress on the Tantive IV build has been good. Almost there!

I’ve been trying to build a series of themes using the Tailwind CSS framework. Creating the different components of each theme is simple to do, but bring these components together has been more challenging. My design eye for these things isn’t great.

Nicholas Bate with some basics for your marketing strategy.

Mobile version of XCode coming to iOS? I hope so.

Kurt Harden is supporting local businesses. We all should do this and continue to do so when the pandemic ends.

In an effort to break the boredom, I opened a few Lego sets that we had initially put aside.

Drew’s been desperate to build the Tantive IV set, so we’re starting with this one and just doing a couple of bags a day. When it’s done, it’s definitely going to be quite big.

Great day for a walk, although the trees are still a little bare for my liking.

Sony has revealed their new DualSense controllers for the PlayStation 5. A familiar look for the controller with the button layout, but what stuck out for me was the two-toned design.

Now, let’s talk about the colors. Traditionally our base controllers have a single color. As you can see, we went a different direction this time around, and decided on a two-toned design. Additionally, we changed the position of the light bar that will give it an extra pop. On DualShock 4, it sat on the top of the controller; now it sits at each side of the touch pad, giving it a slightly larger look and feel.

— Introducing DualSense, the New Wireless Game Controller for PlayStation 5

I look forward to getting my hands on these when the PlayStation 5 is released.

Me and Jen watched Knives Out last night on Apple TV. We fancied it when we first seen the trailers for the cinema release, but we decided to just wait for it to appear on the small screen. We thoroughly enjoyed it and Daniel Craig’s southern accent wasn’t too shabby either! 🎬

The Twitter timeline is just completely unusable. Tweets are injected into your timeline by different signals and it makes it too confusing to follow. Trying to rectify this by using Nighthawk for iOS to keep my timeline simple and using Feedbin to follow lists.

A brand new editor is coming to the Bear app and it is available now if you want early access to it. Tables would be a welcome addition to my notes, but I think I’d rather wait for the official release though. I’d rather not risk screwing up my notes.

The Last of Us Part II is delayed again. I’ve waited for this long, I can wait a few months more.

It was announced yesterday that Apple has acquired the weather app Dark Sky. As part of the acquisition, the iOS app will continue to function as it is. In contrast, the Android app will no longer be available for download. Like many others, I use the Dark Sky app daily. The API service that provides forecast and historical data for other apps and services will continue to function until the end of 2021.

Like so many other people, Dark Sky was one of those apps that have been on my phone for years. In my opinion, there was no contender. Now though, it looks like we’ll hopefully get a revamped iOS weather app with many of the features of Dark Sky in it. I hope. This is still the early days of the acquisition. Like so many software takeovers in the past, I’m sceptical of what lies ahead for both parties.

The bad news.

It’s another excellent service swallowed up by big tech. The Dark Sky team finished their update on this by saying they are looking forward to building great products. When a smaller independent company gets bought over by big tech though, there’s usually no light at the end of the tunnel.

With no app available for download, Android users not only need to find an alternative to Dark Sky, but also a weather app that doesn’t use the Dark Sky API. The Dark Sky API has been seen for a long time as the best and most accessible API for weather information. With the API closing down, developers will need to find an alternative.

I’ve been using the Dark Sky API for a product of my own. I’ll now need to spend some time finding an alternative to the Dark Sky API and make the necessary changes for my product. I have the time to do this, but it’s time that I would have earmarked for other prioritised work. I’ll need to re-jig things in the meantime.

The good news.

There is good news about this. Apple will finally get a better weather app. I’ve not been a fan of the weather app for a few years, and when Apple allowed their core apps to be deleted, it was one of the first ones to go from my home screens.

With Dark Sky closing their doors, there is space in the market now for an alternative to Dark Sky. A developer-friendly forecasting API that also provides alerts for changing weather conditions. I’m not saying that it will be easy to do, but there will be many app developers looking for such an alternative. It could be an opportunity.

Is Apple going to do the same for weather data as they did for maps? Apple’s MapKit JS service is a good alternative to Google’s own map service. It would be nice to see a WeatherKit service for both native and web applications. Like maps, weather information can be included in all manner of apps. Having a reliable source of weather information would likely attract more developers to building apps for the iOS platform.

It’s always good to have an alternative

At the end of the day, Apple’s acquisition of Dark Sky should be a cautious reminder. No matter how excellent the service is, there’s always a chance that it can be pulled. The best way to plan for such disruptions is to have at least one other alternative in place.

With another service already earmarked, you can make the switch from one service to the other easily. This doesn’t just go for the apps you use, it goes for your personal data as well. It’s also should be considered if a service is fundamental to your business.

I have to say, Ethan’s first batch of oatmeal and raisin cookies are pretty spot on. I wonder if I can get him to cook dinner as well? 🤔

I’ve been really enjoying using Tailwind CSS over the last few days. I’m finally getting my head around it. The thing about it I like the most though is the ability to go from basic HTML to styled components in a relative short period of time.