Matthew Lang

A while back, I read with disgruntlement about the change that Smile were introducing to their TextExpander product. It was the introduction of a cloud syncing change to their product which required a monthly subscription.

I wasn't too keen on the idea. The reason I wasn't too chuffed with the idea is that I only ever used TextExpander on my MacBook Pro and nowhere else. I decided to look for an alternative. I switched to aText and never looked back. Until now.

Last week I purchased an iPad Pro. I've spent the first couple of days getting the various apps I needed setup. Then I started working on getting together a usable development environment so that I could do everything on my iPad Pro that I can do on my MacBook Pro. Aside from some of the terminal hackery that I can do on my MacBook, I can do just about everything else on my iPad including web development work for clients.

With my new tablet of choice I started doing administration work last week. An invoice was outstanding so I started the process of gathering the work I did for the week and writing the invoice and email for the client. Invoice done, I moved to the email. After a couple of attempts at trying to generate my email template I then realised that I wasn't using my Macbook Pro which is why the auto-expanding snippet I use for this particular email didn't work. It was time to re-assess the auto-expanding snippet tool of choice.

So what's a familiar auto-expanding tool that let's me use a single library of snippets across multiple devices? Well, TextExpander of course!

Is the subscription price for this worth it now?

I think so.

It seems that I just can't let go of my Twitter timeline. Despite not been very active on Twitter for the last few weeks, I still like to read through my timeline and see what's what. Largely I mostly interested in web development news and updates from people but I'll read other bits that people have posted.

Lately though my Twitter timeline has been a storm of political updates about what Trump is doing, not doing and other news surrounding him. It's getting to the point where my timeline has become a channel for political news and lots of other updates from the US. To be honest my Twitter timeline isn't where I want to read about this.

What's happening in the US regarding Trump, prejudice and racism is important. There's change happening and that's good. What I find difficult to do is to follow my timeline with all of this going on.

I'm simply not interested anymore in these kind of updates on Twitter due to the fact that it's simply become too much to follow and digest.

I'm trying to get a reign on my timeline again by adding more topical filters to restrict what I see and block retweets from most of the people I follow.

It's not that I'm trying to create a bubble of the world I see. I know what's happening in the US and I'm aware of it through various news sites. I just don't need to see this in my timeline as well.

I honestly think this is the last chance for me and Twitter to get along. The last few months have seen me fall away from Twitter. A lack of tweets and activity on my part is due to the fact that I don't like spending too much time on Twitter these days. I see the value in what Twitter does for other people but there's already enough noise on it without me adding to it.

For the moment I'm just going to try and tame the timeline that I have.

Jack Baty has been using his new iPad in anger this week. The results are good!

I’ve been using the iPad exclusively while at home for more than a week and I have been continually surprised by how much I enjoy it. I’ve been emailing, managing projects, editing photos, drawing, tweeting, and generally carrying on like it’s actually normal doing stuff on an iPad other than reading social media sites and playing games. Who knew?

Surprise! The iPad is a Content Creation Device

I picked up an iPad Pro at the weekend that I'm currently using side by side with my MacBook Pro. The iPad Pro isn't intended to be my main development machine but it will be my portable development tool of choice. First impressions are good and Jack's blog has been a great read with his recent move to using an iPad.

... with the personal resilience guide from Nicholas Bate.

Cal Newport divulges his technique for researching books.

The key to my system is the pencil mark in the page corner. This allows me later to quickly leaf through a book and immediately identify the small but crucial subset of pages that contain passages that relate to whatever project I happen to be working on.

How I Read When Researching a Book by Cal Newport

Such a simple thing to do and yet I wonder why I haven't read of this before. I often fold down the corner of pages, but simply putting a line in the top of the page I can quickly thumb through a book without having to worry about folded corners of pages unfolding themselves and being missed.

Kurt Harden is concerned about the erasing of American history.

The first is that it strikes me as an effort to erase history. That never goes well. And I write as an Ohioan with absolutely no sympathy for the the Confederates memorialized in bronze, copper, or stone. The statues represent our past and they offer different reminders to different people.

Erasing history by Kurt Harden

I agree with Kurt on this one.

By removing these statues, the American people are removing part of their history. Yes, these statues represent a side of America that many would like to forget but it's in these statues and the history they represent that we see the progress that has been made.

Rachel Kaser over at The Next Web certainly thinks so.

Like it or not, social media provides an easy-to-use template that lets anyone make their personal information available — and most of those sites are a hell of a lot easier to use than even the mildest website creation software.

— It’s time to kill the personal website by Rachel Kaser for The Next Web

I can certainly see Rachel's point. With all the progress we've made on the web, the days of self-publishing means that you don't need to be tied to a domain or a way of publishing your thoughts online. Social media and blogging platforms make publishing online easy.

Where I disagree though is that while these social media platforms are easy to use, they require an investment of effort in order to be effective. In order to stand out you need to be publishing consistently and that requires investing time and effort in that platform. I'm just not prepared to make that investment in order to build my name when I can use a personal website.

Having my own website means that I'm only investing in the content at my own website and then optionally using social media to get my content out further. I not only control the content but I also having a simpler delivery method for people. I have a place where people can follow me without the pressures of social media timelines. You can visit my website or subscribe to my RSS feed. It might be less convenient than following me on social media, but when you consider that you can read my website in a less crowded environment, away from the timeline, then I think having a personal website is essential if you want people to actually read what you're publishing.