Cold start to the morning. Boys are Taekwondo while I sit in the cafe with a little code and coffee combo.
I watched the latest trailer on Apple TV for the new Star Wars movie. Even after over 30 years of watching these movies, I still get goosebumps when that music plays.
I’m resurrecting PenMuse, or something like it
A while back, I started a little Rails app that would generate random writing prompts. After a few months, I decided to kill it. To be honest, I’m not entirely sure why I killed it. I just remember one day deciding that it wasn’t gaining any traction, so I decided to pull the plug on it. Now though I’m not so sure that killing it was such a good idea.
If I was making the application all over again, then there are a few things that I would do differently.
I would open-source it
The main reason I would be open-sourcing the application is so that I can provide a working Rails application on my Github profile. That old chestnut about your Github being your profile isn’t something that I put a lot of stock into. Still, it would be helpful if I have something on there that is working, live and provides a small sample of my work.
I would enforce some constraints
The last time I did PenMuse it ran away from me. I got hung up about too many things about the application that I ended up overthinking what should be a simple application. This time I would keep it simple.
There won’t be an admin section for it, and I would simply connect directly to the database to add new prompts. I would keep the application as minimal as possible, to begin with. One model, one controller, one page. At least I’ll do it this way, to start with.
I would track interest in it
I’m not a big fan of using analytics, but that was back in the day when Google Analytics was the only real option. Now though, there are plenty of great options out there, and a few are even GDPR friendly.
One such analytics service that I have been wanting to try is Fathom. I have earmarked for another application, but I thought PenMuse would be a good starting point to get myself familiar with Fathom.
So there we have it. PenMuse is back! Although not right now, I still need to build it! And it’s not going to have the same name, but more on that later.
Frightening figures for golf in the UK as the number of registered players fall. I’m still optimistic for the future of golf in the UK though.
It’s a great sport that teaches etiquette, focus and sportsmanship. It’s also great for improving your health and socialising.
The diminishing MacBook Pro battery performance
Ever since I upgraded my macOS to Catalina, I’ve noticed that MacBook Pro’s battery isn’t lasting as long as it used to. In fact in the couple of days that followed the Catalina upgrade, I found that the laptop had simply ran out of battery while it was in the sleep state. What I can’t work out though is whether this issue has been made worse by the macOS upgrade or not.
I’m not using my MacBook Pro as often as I used to do, but one of the problems I have is that when I am using it, it’s plugged into the adapter and sits like that for a few hours at a time. The laptop has already had a battery change and I know that it’s bad for the battery to have it plugged into the adapter all the time, but having it unplugged just leaves me with a couple of hours of battery.
It’s time like this I wonder if I should go back to a desktop.
I want to stick with Ruby on Rails as my goto web development tool for the foreseeable future. It’s open source, frequently updated, and has a great community. Job opportunities have definitely tailed off though.
Our street is in a very quiet part of town, but like most places this time of year, there’s the frequent noise of fireworks being set off for Guy Fawkes night.
Building the reading list again
Last week I finished my first book in a long time. It felt good to get to the last page and actually enjoy the book for a change.
For a long time, I have struggled with books to read. As books have piled up, the want to read them hasn’t been there. And in some cases, when I do read them, I don’t end up enjoying the book and give up on it.
Here are a few more books that I am hoping to read over the next few months:
- Shiang: Empire of Salt by C. F. Iggulden
- The Falcon of Sparta by Conn Iggulden
- The Book of Dust volume I by Phillip Pullman
- Spitfire by John Nichol
- Super Thinking by Gabriel Weinberg and Lauren McCann
- Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport
What does “Ikagi” mean to you?
The blogging challenge
Adam Keys has some words on the challenges of blogging.
The hardest part is showing up, every day, writing. The hardest part is writing! The second hardest thing is hitting the publish button on a regular basis, not necessarily every day.
I find the act of writing pretty straight-forward to do. Crack open a notebook or a text editor and after a few stumbling blocks I’ll get going.
The big challenge for me is hitting that publish button.
You might not have noticed, but my blogging activity has picked up since the start of the month. I’m using November to build up a wee habit of blogging daily. Every day, I’ll post a short post and a longer post. It’s working well so far.