As a freelancer I’m wondering if a newsletter is worth putting into place. Another thing to maintain and run. Why can’t I just rely on a blog with a contact form?
Bacon. That’s good for a cold, yeah?
Hello PenMuse
I'm always on the lookout for something different to write about, but some days the nudge just isn't there. I started using my daily themes as writing topics but this can be somewhat repetitive, and it still falls on me to narrow down the theme to a topic that I can write about.
I started looking for writing prompts that fell into the category of my daily themes, but this was another challenge in itself. Frequently it involved digging through the thousands of writing prompts available online across different websites. What the problem with these is that they not usually organised in a way that makes them easy to search through.
I needed a daily random writing prompt but one that was geared towards my daily themes for the day. So I started making one. Here's how it looks so far.
The idea is simple. It displays a random writing prompt. If you don't like it, you can generate another one. As a nice tie-in with DailyMuse and my preference towards analogue writing tools, I've called it PenMuse.
Product playground
PenMuse serves a dual-purpose for me. While it does take the guesswork out of what you are going to write about, it also helps a much more significant purpose. It's a product playground.
The idea of this that you have a small service or product that you can use to flex your development skills. While this application doesn't have the complexity of a more significant Rails application, it does allow me to try things out on a smaller scale and it's proved to be helpful already. I'm going to re-design the DailyMuse website with a similar theme.
Plans for the future
There are a few things still missing that I hope to add shortly.
- Allow people to suggest a writing prompt and give them accreditation when it is displayed.
- Document the API for other developers to use.
- Allow people to link to individual writing prompts.
- Create a weekly PenMuse email that emails you the week's writing prompts ahead of schedule.
One thing that I could do with help on though is writing prompts. There are thousands of writing prompts online, but I don't want to copy these into PenMuse without thought. I want to curate these prompts so that they are easy to find and share.
What do you like to write about? What prompts would you like to see on PenMuse?
Contact me with your suggestions.
Too many writing apps?
I’ve got three apps on my MacBook that I’m starting to use on a more frequent basis.
Ulyssess remains my favourite for writing blog posts, Bear is great for capturing notes and acting as a personal sratchpad and finally there’s iA Writer. It fits the gap in between the two. I use it mainly for composing emails and updates for clients.
Three different writing apps might be a bit much, but I’ve found a use for each of them and it works well for me. I probably won’t find much use for the iA Writer 5 update for iOS but never say never.
Yeah, Firefox 57 is pretty fast. 😲
I’ve got Star Wars Battlefront II downloading on the PS4 for tonight. Early Xmas present to myself!
EA’s release of Star Wars Battlefront II is already under fire. Let’s hope that Firefox do better with their release of Firefox 57.
Bootstrap 4’s Flexbox support is great. I can see me using it a lot more with new projects and clients.
Back to GitHub
A few months ago I started a GitLab account out of curiosity. I wanted to see if there was anything that GitLab offered that GitHub didn’t.
In the last two weeks though, I’ve been moving my repositories back over to GitHub from GitLab.
There’s nothing wrong with GitLab, it’s an excellent source code management platform, and it has many great features. However, GitLab just didn’t make the grade that GitHub has set when it comes to source code management and hosting.
Heroku integration
Heroku’s pipeline integration is an excellent feature for managing the deployment process, but the only dependency for this to work is that you need to use GitHub for your source code management.
GitLab does offer their continuous integration tool, but it’s highly dependent on some different configurations and settings, all of which I don’t have the inclination to read up about or even research. To be honest, I would love to use GitLab’s tools, but the problem with them is that they require too much fussing.
GitHub, on the other hand, does one thing well and that’s host your source code for you. Sure you can also do pull requests, code reviews and many other great things but this is all nice to have besides being able to have one place to manage and host your source code.
Issue management
I have to say that GitLab’s issue management tools are very much on par with GitHub but where GitHub excels is their project, milestone and issue integration with pull requests. I find GitLab’s way of handling pull requests complex. I tried using them for a few months, but the whole process just didn’t feel as straightforward as GitHub’s.
Maybe it’s a familiarity with GitHub that stopped me from getting on with GitLab’s issue management tools. I’ve been using GitHub with some clients, and I have to say that managing their pull requests is a simple process.
A bigger community
There’s no doubt that GitHub has the more prominent community and despite attempts by others to create communities elsewhere it just isn’t possible to do so. It’s a bit like building another Twitter. There has been plenty of attempts, but nothing compare’s to Twitter when it comes to micro-blogging.
It would be nice if all GitHub, GitLab and Bitbucket could integrate with each other seeing as they all support using Git, but then what would be the incentive to pick one?
I’ve been hesitant about the number of businesses and organisations the use GitHub for their source code management, but as long as GitHub continues to support them and the rest of the GitHub community with great features and integration with others tools, then I don’t see a problem in sticking with GitHub.
More features for GitHub please
There’s no doubt that GitHub is a much bigger and better-suited source code management tool for me. I’ve used Bitbucket in the past, but even it can’t compare to the ease with which I can use GitHub. It’s time to hang up my projects on the GitHub website and start creating more projects there for people to see.
That doesn't mean though that GitHub has all the features that I need. I would like to see a few more options and features on GitHub though.
A repository template for labels and project columns would be a good thing. I’ve managed to replicate the labels I used for my Trello boards in GitHub issues as labels.
Another thing I would like to see is the assignment of labels to issues as I move them across project columns.
I would like to see the addition of an avatar for repositories. GitLab is on to a winner with their avatars for repositories.
I would also love to see greater management of repositories. Being able to group repositories into folders would make my job a lot easier and would also let me create a showcase folder where I could highlight all my best work.
Between GitHub, GitLab and Bitbucket there’s plenty of options for developers of all types for their source code management and hosting. For me though, GitHub ticks all the rights boxes.
Them shadows again.
I think I have a rogue plug-in for Sublime Text. I’ve been getting errors all morning. Switching to Atom for the rest of the day.
Tried to use my iPhone SE as a mouse this morning for about a minute. Definitely time for a coffee.
I wish Github’s Pull Request filters would persist in between changes.
Attention vs Currency
Is attention no longer a viable form of currency?
We’re told every day as creators online that attention = prosperity. But no one’s attention online lasts long enough for that to be true anymore (if it ever was).
— The Value of Attention by CJ Chilvers
Social media might make you famous for five minutes, maybe even a few times over, but what about the times when people’s attention is elsewhere?
Mondays
Nicholas Bate has Monday’s covered. Do you?
Mondays can be approached slowly or quickly or even from an oblique angle. But always approach them with coffee, a plan and total lack of fear.
Jagged Thoughts for Jagged Times, 253 by Nicholas Bate
Long shadows up at the golf club today while I was picking up Ethan.
Another great lesson for Drew this morning. Won’t be long until he is beating his brother out on the course!
Twitter's house rules
I can understand the joy on Twitter when a certain account was removed by a member of staff who was leaving.
De-activating an account out of your own personal agenda isn’t playing by Twitter’s rules though, and it certainly wouldn’t be as funny if it was your own account that was deleted.
Once again though it throws into question Twitter’s “house rules” and what constitutes playing by these rules and breaking them.
Hyper terminal emulator, good but not great
A week running Hyper as my terminal has been mostly without incident, but I’ll be switching back to Terminal.
Hyper is a good replacement for Terminal or iTerm but it’s not a great replacement and doesn’t bring anything extra that I didn’t already have.
Also, I would rather rely on scripts and dot files for my terminal configuration rather than relying on Hyper’s plugins.
Finding that Spark’s short and long swipes a pain to use when the actions are different.
Reconfigured each side now to have the same action for both short and long swipes.
Avoids the wrong action being applied and keeps things simple.
The value of silence
There’s value to be had in silence you know.
Late at night. A quiet office. No phone calls. No interruptions. The work can be broken down into small tasks and each task approached with an attention that respects its value. The big picture can be pushed into the distance and scrutinized later. This is the time for craftsmanship.
— The Quiet Times by Michael Wade
Another great lesson for Ethan with our club professional, Andy. Just a few minor setup changes and Ethan’s already seeing improvements.
Pocket Productivity
Curtis McHale offers some advice for those looking to get more from their mobile devices when it comes to deep work.
One of the final big ways to stop your phone from wasting your time is to not have it near you unless you need it. When I’m at home, I don’t need my phone because my family is downstairs. If there is something I need to deal with they’ll call up to me.
— Setting up iOS for Focused Work bby Curtis McHale
A bleak future for the web?
The Trinet (Amazon, Facebook, Google) is a depressing prospect for the future of the web.
The War for Net Neutrality in the USA won a battle in 2014, but in 2017 we are seeing a second battle which is more likely to be lost. Internet Service Providers (ISPs) are probably soon going to dictate what traffic can or cannot arrive at people’s end devices. GOOG-FB-AMZN traffic would be the most common, due to their popularity among internet users. Because of this market demand, ISPs will likely provide cheap plans with access to GOOG-FB-AMZN, while offering more expensive plans with full internet access.
— The web begain dying in 2014, here’s how by André Staltz
There’s still one thing that the web has in it’s favour. People are still willing to make it the best open platform it can be.
Google might have shut down their RSS reader but there’s been a number of replacements sprung up that people are willing to pay for like Feedbin.
Facebook might have the social internet sewn up just now, but people are continually challenging that with alternatives like Mastodon and Micro.blog.
Amazon might have the shopping internet market share, but how long can they continue that success? Retail is a never-ending cycle of new companies and stores trying to sell products. Can Amazon remain on top?
I’m optimistic that the web can still be and open platform for all. It comes from educating people about the sacrifices they’re making in using the Trinet’s applications and services and what the trade-off is. I suspect most people are not too bothered though, but there are people who are willing to support and work towards an open web.
40 day writing streak on 750words.com. The daily habit is getting easier to do now. Here’s to another 40 days of writing!