Matthew Lang

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.

A nice reminder from John Gruber about new Apple products and the fine art of shipping that product.

I wasn’t a fine of the first Apple Watch. The idea of a smartwatch that doesn’t just show you the time felt wrong. Over the years though, Apple has been chipping away at it. A few iterations later and I’m starting to like the idea of owning an Apple Watch.

And then they did what Apple does: iterate, iterate, iterate. They started knocking down Apple Watch’s glaring flaws one by one. Battery life improved significantly. They identified what Apple Watch is meant for: health and fitness tracking, and notifications. They added optional cellular networking, so your watch could remain utterly useful while out of the range of your iPhone.

— Apple Watch Series 5

The always-on display didn’t seem like a big feature at the time, but having persisted with a Fitbit for a few years, I can appreciate that gesture to see the screen. It just wasn’t always possible.

I’m hinting to Jennifer for an Apple Watch Series 5 for my Christmas now. We’ll just need to wait and see if she takes the hint.

In my development work I usually find that the simple way works best and is also easier to maintain. However, the web development industry is still insistent on progress and not always for the better.

This comparison between AirPods and the headphone jack by Bastian Allgeier is a great way to describe the issue.

Modern web dev tools and services are like AirPods. It’s fantastic to get rid of the cable. The experience is far better 95% of the times. But they also have connection issues from time to time, they are massively over-engineered, expensive and you can easily loose them.

Bluetooth headphones are likely the future. But I still have more love for a set of standard headphone with a regular cable and headphone jack that has been working reliably for decades.

— Simplicity (II) by Bastian Allgeier

It’s why I use Rails as my go to framework for new projects. Sure it’s not as simple as editing files on a server but it’s as simple as a tool you can get for building web apps.