Matthew Lang

Tonight, I’ve been building HTML templates with Tailwind to integrate them into a CMS of sorts using Rails. Is it a product? No, it’s just me hacking about on a wee Rails app and trying to brush up my skills once more. The last time I genuinely enjoyed doing this was a good couple of years ago.

So what prompted this change?

Well, the main reason is that I’m enjoying my job now. It’s full-time, but I’m also fully remote, so cutting out the commute has been a big win. There’s something to be said about working from home. It definitely suits me better than being in an office. I don’t mind being in an office environment, but the distractions can put your focus off a bit, depending on where you work. Working from home means, I can get my head down and get on with the work.

I’m using Ruby on Rails again. It’s not the most recent version, but I’ll take working with any version of Rails over working with just about anything else at the moment.

While working remotely, I am in a close-knit team that regularly checks with each other throughout the day. Although being remote has its benefits, you do need some contact with others throughout the day. Although Slack isn’t the ideal medium for this as it is pretty distracting, being able to meet and discuss with your team members regularly throughout the day breaks up the day nicely.

As a result, I’m finding myself reaching for the laptop more at night and hacking on Rails or Laravel apps. Now, if you don’t mind, I need to finish this little bit of code before turning in for the night.

Rebecca Toh has restarted her newsletter and in it’s first edition, Rebecca suggests accepting that we’ll never do everything perfectly and to enjoy more what we love to do.

Instead of working to make things perfect, why don’t we spend our energy instead on enjoying the things we love to do and getting utterly lost in them?

Maybe that is the true art we’re here to learn - to go deeper and deeper into the things that draw us in for no good reason, and to find true, lasting, simple joy in that.

— Rebecca Toh

It’s been 24 hours since I installed iOS 16. The update process took quite some time to complete on my iPhone 12, but it still took longer on my wife’s iPhone XR. That aside, the update process was straightforward.

Being able to edit a message and undo the sending of a message is new to the Messages app. Undo the sending of a message? I don’t think I’ve ever had to undo the sending of a message; however, I don’t live in my messages app. Many other iPhone users have sent a message they wished they could un-send.

Being able to edit a message, though, that’s a nice feature. Most of the messages I can see myself editing will result from typos. Even with the auto-correct, I still manage to make some typos when sending messages.

Aside from all the other features new to iOS 16, the most significant change is what you first see on your iPhone when you pick it up. The Lock Screen.

There are several new features here that I’ve enjoyed messing about with. You can now create more than one Lock Screen and Home Screen pairing and switch between these throughout the day. I’ve got several screens set up now, but I’ve yet to examine how changing your focus affects these screens. However, using the different focuses is something I plan on doing to try and curb the number of times I reach for my phone throughout the day. The widgets on Lock Screens are also a nice touch, and hopefully, we’ll see more of these added in the future.

Overall the iOS 16 update is pretty good so far.

Essential viewing.

I won’t lie, I’ve been watching a lot of the television coverage following the death of Queen Elizabeth II.

Tonight, I watched some of the events from today including the service at Westminster and the Scottish Parliament’s motion of condolence at Holyrood. I also watched the Vigil of the Princes where members of the royal family stand guard during a lying in state of relation. This tradition started with the death of King George V in 1936 and was continued in 2002 for the death of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother. It was a lovely moment to see the Queen’s children together standing guard.

I love Rian Johnson’s Knives Out. Such a quirky film and Daniel Craig’s Benoit Blanc character is great to watch. Looking forward to the sequel, Glass Onion.