Matthew Lang

The debate about the use of Javascript in the web industry and the role of the front-end developer continues after Chris Coyier’s post, The Great Divide and now a follow-up from Rachel Andrews.

There is something remarkable about the fact that, with everything we have created in the past 20 years or so, I can still take a complete beginner and teach them to build a simple webpage with HTML and CSS, in a day. We don’t need to talk about tools or frameworks, learn how to make a pull request or drag vast amounts of code onto our computer via npm to make that start. We just need a text editor and a few hours. This is how we make things show up on a webpage.

— HTML, CSS and our vanishing industry entry points by Rachel Andrews

Rachel’s post reminds us though that while Javascript frameworks might be all the rage at the moment, we’re neglecting the foundations of the web, HTML and CSS. And how they can still be used to educate those new to the process of creating websites.

Maybe as an industry, we should still be focusing on these fundamentals. Not just for those new to the industry, but for everyone in the industry.

Over the last couple of days, I put the finishing touches to the Commonmarks application so that others can deploy it easily to Heroku. The reason I went down this route is that self-hosting Commonmarks is a something I want people to be able to do, but I’m not at the stage yet where Commonmarks can be quickly deployed to any SAAS platform or even your own server. Going down the Heroku route was a short term solution.

If you take a look at the top of the README file on the Commonmarks Github repository you’ll see a Deploy To Heroku button that you can use to deploy. You’ll need a Heroku account to do this. The add-ons needed for the application to run are free including the dynos required to run the application. I’ve been running Commonmarks on a free dyno for over a month now without any problem.

This brings me to the next step. I’m now working on Commonmarks as a hosted bookmarking product that anyone can sign up for if they don’t want to run their own version of Commonmarks. I appreciate there are people on both sides of the fences, but there are probably more people who want to go with the hosted option than the self-hosted option. I’m not looking to have this running for another couple of weeks, and I’ll be initially opening up with a small beta to get feedback.

Updates will follow.

Driving to work this and I caught a small glimpse of what would have been a great sunrise. I drove on thinking how good it would have been to just stop and take it in.

Finally, all done with the bait store. Now Drew is looking for his next mega build!

I would love to have seen the “Tolkien: Maker of Middle Earth” exhibition in New York.

The picture depicting Bilbo’s conversation with Smaug was the first the image I seen of Tolkien’s books as a kid. I might not be able to get to New York for this, but it might be time for a re-read of the The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.

via kottke.org

Good advice from Derek Sivers on keeping a daily diary:

It works best as a nightly routine. Just take a minute and write at least a few sentences. If you have time, write down everything on your mind. Clear it all out. But if you miss a night, make time the next morning to write about the previous day.

— Benefits of a daily diary and topic journals by Derek Sivers

I also like his idea for topic journals.

For each subject that you might have ongoing thoughts about, start a separate “Thoughts On” journal. Whenever you have some thoughts on this subject, open up that file, write today’s date, then start writing.

— Benefits of a daily diary and topic journals by Derek Sivers

Just a little Commonmarks update for those interested. I’m working on the password reset over the next few days. By then I should have a working single-account version that people can deploy with a Heroku button.

After that I am going to then focus on a multi-account option for those who don’t want to host it themselves. The timeline for this is a couple of weeks, but I will have a limited set of invites for those interested. I’ll make the announcement on Micro.blog first.

With my day job taking me down the JavaScript route on a daily basis, it’s good to break out the text editor at night and write some Ruby code for Commonmarks. It might just be a simple Ruby on Rails bookmarking app but hopefully in time I can build a few more interesting features for it.

Recently, I’ve been scaling back on the number of newsletters that I subscribe to. Some are due to a lack of interest in the newsletter topic and some I just don’t read anymore.

Of the newsletters that I am sticking with though, I subscribe to them through Feedbin’s secret email address. Lately, though it feels like I’m merely scanning over my newsletters instead of reading them. I’ll star them to read later on, but most of the time I never do.

Stoop is an app for iOS and Android that allows you to subscribe to newsletters and manage what you have and haven’t read. I think this might just be the right tool for the job when it comes to newsletters. It leaves me to scan my RSS feeds as usual without missing anything, but it also keeps me away from my email. Sure it’s another app on my phone, but it’s for reading. So, that’s not really a bad thing.

Bait store still a work in progress but Drew’s making good progress. 👍🏻

Another benefit to the four day work week.

A four-day week, such as that proposed by Wellcome, could have a profound gender effect. Women at the company who have children will be free to spend one day a week with them and, crucially, remain on the same footing as the rest of their colleagues. And the radical change could extend beyond the Trust’s own staff: Men with kids at the company would be able to commit to a day of childcare as well, meaning that their partners would be freer to make their own choices about part-time vs full-time work.

— The four-day work week is fantastic news for gender equality by Cassie Werber for Quartz

Good news across the board it seems, however, the four day week is a hard-sell to many companies. I think it will be a long time before we see this gain traction across the wider global workforce.

After a week of using the open source Apple Music web player Musish, I’m still a fan.

The familiar look and feel to the native Apple Music apps as well as having the benefit of access to all my Apple Music data through a web interface means I can still listen to music while I’m working.

It also means I can conserve the battery on my iPhone and I don’t need to rely on a good network signal if I need to stream any of the albums I want to listen to.

Write it says our man in Arizona.

Gutted to see the Saints go out like they did last night with the non-call on Robey-Coleman’s pass interference. It definitely changed the outcome of the game from there onwards. Running up to that point in the game though, the Saints could have definitely handled a few plays better than they did.

I didn’t see the AFC Championship game, but I was disappointed in that one too with the result. It sounded like a great game, but I would have loved to have seen a Saints-Chiefs Super Bowl.

The Rams need to up their game for the Super Bowl. They took too long to get going against the Saints. The Patriots won’t be as forgiving.

I think it will be another Super Bowl win for the Patriots. 🏈

Just noticed a change in the Feedbin web UI on my phone and desktop this morning. I don’t know the full details of all the changes, but I definitely like what I see.

Drew with the first part of his Lego Ideas bait store. Even at this early stage, some of the detailing on the build is fantastic.

Nicholas Bate and his daily investments. Still a favourite blog of mine.

Great advice from Michael Wade to remember to do the small things.

It’s great to see the Signal v Noise blog running under Basecamp’s own control again.

Beyond that, though, we’ve grown ever more aware of the problems with centralizing the internet. Traditional blogs might have swung out of favor, as we all discovered the benefits of social media and aggregating platforms, but we think they’re about to swing back in style, as we all discover the real costs and problems brought by such centralization.

— Signal v Noise exits Medium by David Heinemeier Hansson

For those interested, I’m still working on a startup screen and Heroku deploy button for Commonmarks. I’ll post an update when I’ve finished these additions.

DuckDuckGo map related searches are now powered by Apple’s MapKit JS framework.

Nice to see DuckDuckGo and Apple unite on privacy and improve searches. I switched to DuckDuckGo years ago and I haven’t looked back since.

According to philosophy professor Jordan Shapiro, parents should embrace the technology that their kids are using and not worry so much about the time they are spending on it.

“Your job as a parent is not to stop unfamiliar tools from disrupting your nostalgic image of the ideal childhood, nor to preserve the impeccable tidiness of the Victorian era’s home/work split. Instead, it’s to prepare your kids to live in an ethical, meaningful and fulfilled life in an ever-changing world,” he writes. To do this, he argues, families and schools must embrace technology, including gaming, to prepare kids for an uncertain but determinedly digital future.

— A philosophy professor argues kids should use more technology, not less by Jenny Anderson for Quartz

As a tech-loving parent of two boys I know full well the impact of technology on our family. We do have a few ground rules when it comes to technology. No devices at the dinner table, no devices during movie nights and at least one night a week spent reading instead of gaming. Sure there are times when even I think that the boys have spent too much time on their games consoles and so we’ll huckle them off, and we’ll do something else.

Mostly it’s all about balance in our house, but I definitely lean towards allowing them to spend a bit more time on their games consoles. I remember spending whole weekends playing my games consoles and computers as a kid, so I’m in the camp that video games are not a bad thing. We also have more creative and educational games available. Minecraft anyone?

Maybe I’m a bit more forgiving in this respect because my oldest and I have started gaming together online recently. It certainly helps in the competitive matches in Overwatch to have a player you know to communicate with. We just need to get Drew to practice a bit more, and we’ll have a solid trio to play as online!

Over the last few days there has been some interest in my bookmarking web app that I’ve been working on.

Why another bookmarking solution though?

I used Pinboard and Pocket for a while, but I was never comfortable with either of them. Pinboard hasn’t seen much change in the last two years and Pocket is more akin to Instapaper (which I already use) than it is to Pinboard. I also wanted to work on something that I could pin to my GitHub repo as an example of work.

Features are light at the moment, with just the ability to add, edit and delete bookmarks as well as the ability to group tags into bundles. A basic web application, but it works. I’m using it on a subdomain of my own site .

I’ve had replies from people who are interested in a hosted solution rather than having to roll their own. I initially pushed back against the idea of starting a SAAS product. There’s a lot to do to make this happen as the open source version is for a single account only. There’s also all the other parts of a SAAS product to consider such as billing and privacy now that GDPR is a requirement. Also, my first attempt at a SAAS product is still ticking over but hardly a success in terms of revenue.

However, with growing interest, I am going to entertain the idea of making Commonmarks into a SAAS product. I won’t be abandoning the open source version, but the way ahead might lie in using the same model as Feedbin. They are an RSS reader service, but the source code is open source. I’m wondering if this would work for Commonmarks as a product as well?

There is a lot of other things to consider as well for this such as hosting, pricing and support. I won’t be entirely excluding the idea though until I can at least gauge some interest in the product.

The next step looks like it might be to set up a page to allow people to register their interest.

I’m not sure what to make of the new status feature on GitHub. I barely use the status feature on Slack, so why would I set my status on GitHub?

What would you do with an empty day?

A number of packages that I used to use in Sublime Text have disappeared over the last few months including the DA UI package. Is this the VS Code effect?