Matthew Lang

In building a product for a specific market, I’ve discovered that the admin interface doesn’t need to be anything fancy. Feedback from beta users is that they like the basic screens.

A good turn out today for the start of the junior winter league at Paisley Golf Club. I hope the weather stays favourable through the winter so that the juniors can get more opportunities to play.

I’ve been collecting a few ideas for Ruby and Rails apps to try a few things out.

In the past I’ve ended up simply building some form of task manager or blog engine. In order to explore some of the other parts of Rails though, I’m need to try and build something a bit different.

Here’s what I have so far.

• A live updating leaderboard for an event. The idea behind this is to explore ActionCable again. I haven’t used this in a project for a couple of years. It would be good to get familiar with it again.
• A command line tool for generating images with text. I had a template I used last year for creating images for the golf club’s junior section for competition announcements. Rather than using the existing template I have with Pixelmator, it would be good if I could generate the same image using the command line. A nice way of exploring what Ruby can do with a good image library.
• A Microblogging client. This would simply be a client for posting message instead of being able to read posts. The idea here is to see if I can deploy a Rails app with something like Vue.js or React built in.

The idea is to build out each of these over the next few months to understand a bit more about the different parts of Ruby, Ruby on Rails and JavaScript frameworks that I can use with them.

I’ve been following a few more people on Twitter and using Feedbin to read my timeline. The ability to mark tweets as read is such a simple thing. It would be nice if Twitter did this as well.

After today’s news that Google has bought Fitbit, I’ve decided to delete my Fitbit account. This wasn’t a knee-jerk decision based on Google’s ever-increasing grasp of the world’s data, though.

For a few months, my Fitbit Alta hasn’t seen the light of day due to abysmal battery performance. I was lucky if I could get it to last 24 hours. I have been looking at a replacement Fitbit for a few months, but nothing really stood out as being a worthy replacement. Today’s news that Fitbit have being acquired by Google was just the last nudge I needed towards looking elsewhere.

I’ve been curious about an Apple Watch for some time, but I haven’t quite found the need to buy one. I must admit, I do prefer the idea of just having a watch, but there’s something about the Apple Watch now that has started to grow on me.

One last thing. It seems that no matter what size of company you are, there’s always going to be a more prominent company that will eventually buy you out. It puts me off thinking that I can get behind a company who has an innovative new product. It’s a good chance that eventually they will end up being swallowed up by someone else.

Started job hunting again. Key requirement for future roles is finding a role in which I can work with Ruby. Remote would be a bonus, but yeah, it definitely has to be Ruby.

Nicholas Bate reminds us of the purpose of a list.

The purpose of the list is to filter and focus. The list is that to which you give attention. If it’s not on the list you say no, politely. The list drives you the proactive wolf rather than the hang-back sheep.

— Productivity Reminder 27

Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 both have computers that have been running the same number of years I’ve been on this planet. That’s some uptime service level agreement!

As much I want to get my grubby post-apocalyptic mitts on this game, I’m prepared to wait another few months.

“At this point we were faced with two options: compromise parts of the game or get more time. We went with the latter, and this new release date allows us to finish everything to our level of satisfaction while also reducing stress on the team,” he continued.

— The Last of Us Part II has been delayed until May 2020

Taking an extra few months to finish off the game properly is a better way to go and I’m sure many fans of the game will agree.

In an age of multi-player online games like Overwatch, Fortnite and Call of Duty, I’m glad Naughty Dog are investing heavily in a single-player campaign game and are taking the time to deliver something that should at least equal its predecessor.

Ghost 3.0 now includes memberships and subscriptions.

As of today, Ghost is the first totally independent product out there with publishing<>subscriptions deeply integrated at the core, allowing anyone to build a recurring revenue subscription business.

— Announcing Ghost 3.0

I used Ghost for a while for my blog. Eventually the cost was something that I couldn’t justify and so I switched. However, with Ghost’s new memberships and subscriptions, they’re definitely going to attract the attention of many content publishers.

Jamie Tanna’s transcript of his talk on the IndieWeb movement is a wonderful read.

Instead of relying on another platform to host your thoughts, with their specific branding guidelines and restrictions, you should be the platform you want to be. By making the social network revolve around your site, you’re keeping it within your grasp and built for the things you want.

— The IndieWeb Movement: Owning Your Data and Being the Change You Want to See in the Web by Jamie Tanna

It seems that every once in a while I need to do a personal reboot. A chance to start over again with a few things and correct the mistakes I’ve made in the past.

Over the next couple of weeks, I’m hoping to start over on a few projects and try to build up some good habits again.

This morning started well with some early morning exercises, making a list of tasks for the day and reading a new book on the train to work.

I’ve got a half-hour set aside tonight for a spot of coding and writing as well.

A good start.

It’s that time of year again.

Spurred by this post on digital minimalism, I’ve decided to do a little clearing of the decks on my iPhone.

Gone are some Twitter clients, a few news apps and a 2FA app.

I’ve replaced the Twitter clients with the web interface on Safari, and I’m glad to see that I can now log into multiple Twitter accounts. I’m still not a big fan of Twitter, but accessing it on Safari is handy.

The news apps were never really used, and I can also read the news on Safari.

I’ve been meaning to move to 1Password’s two-factor authentication for accounts for some time, but I’ve been simply putting it off.

The home screen is starting to look a little more sane again.

I forgot how good the Travelling Wilburys albums are. Volume 1, crank it up.

I wish there was an option in iOS to see folders of apps in a two by two grid as an initial default over the three by three grid. It would be easier to see apps on the screen, and would let people make more focused app folders.

Watching the Paisley GC juniors playing in the Scottish Junior Team Championship at Kilmarnock Barassie today.

They have excellent course conditions today, but playing off the longer white tees has been challenging.

Philadelphia Fusion, the city’s Overwatch League team, are having an e-sports complex built that will become the team’s home ground. Effectively, their home stadium.

But an arguably even more important milestone happened earlier in the week — and it took place across the street. On Wednesday, the Philadelphia Fusion — the city’s OWL team — held a groundbreaking ceremony for Fusion Arena, a $50 million e-sports complex that will eventually become the team’s home ground.

— After the Overwatch League grand finals, the league prepares to finally go global

Who would have thought e-sports would reach the heights where team’s are having statiums built?

Not a fan of the new programming font from Microsoft. It’s really wide. Wider than anything I’ve ever used. I’ll stick with Iosevka.

Closing down Friday is here.

It’s not very often that I link to Twitter, but this tweet about teen leaders and how they’re making themselves heard is spot on.

Apparently I need to state the obvious: teen leaders have emerged because of a total vacuum of courage or actual leadership amongst “adults” in power. It’s not because they’re good at social media 🙄

— Amy Westervelt on Twitter

Finally! A release date for the The Last of Us Part 2. I guess that’s my birthday sorted then!

Looking for something to read?

Here’s the 100 best books of the 21st century according to The Guardian website.

Another NFL season, another time to wonder why teams aren’t signing up Colin Kaepernick to replace their injured star quarterbacks. Well, we know why teams aren’t signing up Kaepernick. His protest’s against racism and police violence are well known.

With each star quarterback that falls by the wayside, one question looms ever larger: Will Colin Kaepernick, after over two years in exile, finally be signed by an NFL team? Kaepernick, still only 31 years old, is, according to people I’ve spoken with who know him well, “in the best shape of his life,” waking up at 5 am for daily workouts. His agent has reportedly reached out to several of these teams in need of quarterbacks to see about getting a tryout. By signing Kaepernick, the NFL could close the book on a true instance of “cancel culture,” of denying Kaepernick his livelihood, because he dared stand up to racist police violence.

— NFL Teams Are Desperate for Quarterbacks—but Colin Kaepernick Remains Unsigned

What can be done then?

Very little in fact. The NFL has the chance to make a difference here, but the league remains very aligned to ensuring that they make a profit and not a difference. It looks like Kaepernick will remain the greatest quarterback to be unsigned and ignored by the NFL.

I love those few weeks leaving the summer when we start hitting the range, and you still have clear nights like this.