Matthew Lang

My favourite notes app just turned 2 and continues to be an essential part of my day.

I’ve been trying to reduce my screen time on my phone. It hasn’t been easy and I’ve tried a number of different strategies to do this.

Copyblogger has a little gem of advice though when it comes to dealing with daily distractions.

Take some time away from the usual flood of news and notifications to think about your daily intentions. Document them somehow — any way that works for you — and make sure you see them through.

— What’s Actually Stunting Your Productivity (It’s Not Multitasking)

I wonder if my daily intentions is something that I can include in my DailyMuse email each morning? Something along the lines of Mike Vardy’s themed days.

So WhatsApp is going to starting showing ads in the Status feature. How long before they do the same thing to Stories on Instagram?

Is it just me or has the Apple product update become something of a formality now when it comes to the tech sites that report on it?

Apple unvelied a number of updated products yesterday. The tech sites, as always, responded with a range of predictable posts. Insert an Apple product for x where you can.

• What a maxed out x will cost you
• Why the x blows away its predecessors
• Which x should you buy
• What Apple didn’t announce

Despite rising prices of Apple products and now steady release cycles of products, the tech sites are always favourable to Apple when they do a product update or launch.

Don’t get me wrong, I like using Apple products and I will continue to buy them as they are dependable and last. However, I’m still using a MacBook Pro from 2013 and my iPhone 5S continues to just work. I don’t see me replacing my MBP until at least next year.

As for my iPhone though, I am considering an upgrade to an XR. I’m not a huge fan of the 5S camera and I don’t use a seperate camera, so an upgraded phone serves a dual-purpose. A bigger screen and a better camera.

Maybe can Apple can do no wrong, but it would be nice if the tech sites didn’t just roll over when it comes to an Apple event.

Six years ago I wrote a snippet about a portfolio career. This is still the end goal for my career.

Splitting my time into smaller part-time roles would be a great way of still keeping my programming skills but also being able to explore other roles in different industries. I have an idea for that other role, but it requires a few other things to be done before I can realistically make it happen.

I’ve not picked up my Kindle for a few months now.

That’s no reflection on the device itself though. It’s easy to carry, easy to read on and doesn’t need a frequent charge. I’m too blame for not making anytime to read.

Time to rectify that.

Forget the Apple announcement. Let’s get to a more important issue. How many people signed up today for Micro.blog after seeing it on Hacker News?

Great day for Ethan and the rest of the RGU boys practicing at Caldwell Golf Club today. Hope we get many more weekends like this over the winter.

Nerf are going to do guns from Fortnite starting with the always popular SCAR.

Of course my boys will go for the Fortnite choice, but I’ll stick with an Overwatch one when they come out.

Another notebook recommendation from one of my blog buddies. This time, it’s Michael Wade recommending the Dingbat journals.

I must resist ordering one now. Although, I will definitely consider one of these when my current bullet journal runs out.

When it comes to blogs, Kurt Harden has one of the best there is. A wide range of topics, daily bite size posts and best of all, he just tells it like it is.

Definitely a blog to aspire to.

Nicholas Bate goes beyond the to do list. Always an essential part of my daily surfing on the web.

I’m halfway through Marvel’s Daredevil on Netflix. Definitely my favourite of the four defender series.

I’m of the mind that web development has become overly complicated. Or maybe I just don’t have the patience for it anymore.

Ruby is falling again on the TIOBE index.

It’s not a cause for alarm, but I will continue to look at alternatives to Ruby for the long term. Microsoft’s .NET is still something I would like to come back to and there are more opportunities for it as well.

While not directly related, I also did notice that Thoughtbot have made their learning platform, Upcase, free for all. An attempt to get more developers to use Ruby?

Got me a new prompt in the form of Spaceship ZSH. Git, Ruby and Docker info all in the one prompt. Nice!

I’m in the process of moving back to full-time employment, but the step away from being self-employed doesn’t mean that I am abandoning any of the side projects that I have been working on. I’m putting a few ideas together for DailyMuse, and there’s another more significant project that is a work in progress. Working on these in my spare time can be difficult especially when I have to consider other important things in life.

In the last few weeks though, I’ve been making smaller sprints for my side project, and instead of scheduling big blocks of time, I’m picking up the work when I want to work on it.

Zach Holman’s post on staying productive as a solo founder puts it in a better way.

There’s something to be said for focus, of course, but life’s too short to constantly throw yourself at the wall day in and day out. If you really believe in your product and think that generally, it’s something that can get you stoked, then taking a break for a while is usually worth it, and is more productive in the long run. It’ll draw you back in again in the future; don’t worry about it too much.

— Staying Productive as a Solo Founder by Zach Holman

As a programmer I know I’ll always have the itch to be building stuff on the side. From experience, I’ve learnt that working on side projects when I want to is a much more effective way of working on them than consistently plugging away at them and getting depressed about them.

I’m becoming more interested in Google’s Material Design for my web applications.

The Materialize framework looks like it will be starting point thanks to the Materialize SASS gem.

VS Code continues to impress me. Not just in terms of functionality, but also in the consistent updating and improvement of the application. Monthly updates are becoming something I look forward to now.

Great post by Julia Evans about what a senior engineer does.

I’ve been giving this a lot of thought recently as I move toward full-time emoloyment again. While a few things do crossover from my time as an freelancer, I do see it as a different role.

Voyager 2 still going. Space sure is amazing.

The power of the timetable. Who thought that something so simple could be the ultimate time management tool?

The new Action Text framework for Ruby on Rails looks great. Easier management of rich content for applications and seperation of that same content from the models which is nice.

What a great weekend of golf! Another win for Europe!🏌️‍♂️🇪🇺