Recent Posts

Had a great time yesterday at St Andrews. Got the boy’s picture on the Swilken bridge, walked along the beach, had one of the best fish and chips ever, and finally wandered around the ruins of St Andrews Cathedral. Next time we visit, we’re bringing the golf clubs.

Coffee on my desk, pen and paper ready, text editor open.

This morning’s goal is to get my head round Webpacker in Rails 6.0 and Font Awesome installed through Yarn/Webpacker.

A few pieces of the Webpack puzzle are starting to fall into place now. Got a few notes so that I don’t trip up on the same steps in the future.

Looking forward to my new development role with the NHS National Services Scotland in a few weeks. Time to brush up on the .NET knowledge again.

iTerm’s new status bar with configurable Python components should mean no more faffing about with Powerline in Vim.

Powerline is useful, but it can be a pain to configure and it takes up too much screen space as well.

Great night tonight. Some ten pin bowling with Jen and the boys and then a wee walk along the Clyde.

Rebooting my reading list with a trusted author

Despite only being a few chapters from the end of Cixin Liu’s The Wandering Earth, I decided to give up on finishing the book. The first few chapters were quite good, but my interest gradually waned through the middle chapters.

With my track record of books read this year being very poor, I’ve decided to read a book from an author who’s books I have always thoroughly enjoyed. Raymond E. Feist’s King of Ashes is the first in a series and hopefully, I’ll get to the end of this book and the rest of the series.

A corrupt bailout?

I often wonder why we as a planet, can’t seem to get our shit together, and then I’m reminded by people pulling stunts like this.

To summarize: the bill would subsidize four uncompetitive power plants, remove all incentive to build more renewable energy projects, and cancel efforts to help customers use less energy. It is a bill only a utility (and the lawmakers who do its bidding) could love, an extravagant gift to utility investors that hoses Ohio ratepayers.

Ohio just passed the worst energy bill of the 21st century - Vox

I’ve added “Galaxy Fold” to the growing list of muted tech topics that I couldn’t give a monkeys about in Feedbin. It’s an interesting idea, but foldable screens still seem to me, to be too fragile a medium. Especially on an every day device like a smartphone.

Bullet journaling again

I’m bullet journaling again.

To be honest, I didn’t really stop. I’ve kept a light bullet journal in a pocket notebook for the last few months. It’s hard to break a habit.

During this time, I also tried using a digital task manager, but it turned out to be a failed experiment. I just can’t keep a to-do list in an app anymore. It feels too constrained, and it usually feels like there’s a workflow to each type of app—a way it wants you to do things.

I just don’t get that with bullet journaling. The basic ideas are there, but I put my own little spin on them. It feels unique to me, and that’s maybe why I enjoy it so much.

As with each bulletin journal, I like to make it my own with a few stickers of stuff I like. I have a Micro.blog sticker, obviously, a Ruby sticker, and a couple of nods to The Last of Us and Stranger Things.

I’m still missing a golf-related sticker, though.

I was hoping for a week free of fire-fighting, but I’ve been at my desk two minutes and guess what? There’s fires that need putting out. Sigh.

Laptops. Allowing people to take their work home with them since the 90’s.

Spent the last couple of nights trying to resolve a MapKitJS and Turbolinks issue I was having. It was actually two issues rolled into one. Last night I finally managed to resolve both issues. Yay for patience and perseverance. 🙌

Time for ships to be accountable for their shipping containers?

Maybe it’s time to do something about the ways in which shipping containers are transported across our oceans?

Trainers, flip-flops and a selection of other footwear were appearing with a regularity that singled them out from the other tidal deposits.

They were the same brands, in the same styles, and, for some of the trainers at least, the same production dates were printed on a label sewn into the tongue of each shoe. Moreover, every item of footwear appeared to have been unworn.

In the months that followed, Mr Ribeiro retrieved about 60 Nike trainers, along with a host of other brands.

Why are Nike trainers washing up on beaches?

A single shipping container can contain hundreds of man-made products that if not secured to this ship, can end up being leaked into the world’s oceans. These end up being washed up on our shores, but also will break down in the ocean adding to the already big problem of plastics in our oceans.