Tagged with opinion

• Timelines and RSS Feeds

  There have been a couple of interesting apps in the last few months whose concept I don't really like very much. Tapestry and the new version of Reeder are both apps with great pedigree, and I like the interfaces. But the fundamental design feels like it's solving things backwards.

  These apps build a chronological timeline out of RSS feeds. This is something you may be used to from social media apps, especially if you used Twitterrific, or if you still use Ivory, for example.

  But a timeline is for things that need to be read in order to make sense. Mastodon and Bluesky are good examples. When I read them, it needs to be chronological, because you see things happening then you see people responding to them. And it's why I hate algorithmic timelines on text-based social networks. Reading things out of context completely ruins it for me.

  RSS feeds from websites don’t fit that model though. When I read RSS, I want to be able to browse different categories of feeds (e.g. I subscribe to personal blogs, tech news, F1 news etc.). I don't want to scroll through those longer articles in a feed mixed in with short social networking posts. (I certainly don't want to mix in video and podcasts.) I want to read the posts I've subscribed to based on what's interesting me right now. Some of them (e.g. F1) contain spoilers for things I haven't seen yet. Some of them are longer and I don't have time to read them just now. Sometimes I just feel more in the mood to read about iOS development than sport.

  If I were to create a smarter RSS reader, I'd go the other way. Instead of copying the chronological timeline from social media apps, copy the algorithmic timeline. Show me the things that are causing the most buzz. Show me recommended stories based on what I'm subscribed to, because it's a good way of surfacing new sources.
  

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  13 February 2025

  • opinion

• Changing My Approach To Journaling

  I keep a journal, a diary of my life, and have written in it daily since 2013.

  This year I moved away from Day One as my journal app, after over a decade, to writing in a physical book.

  Partly because I’m uncomfortable with storing data online, and wondering what happens to it after I’m gone. A physical book has a legacy.

  Partly because there’s something nice about writing in a book.

  Partly, I don’t like that Day One has platform lock-in on iOS. I can’t use any alternative phone if my journal holds me to iOS.

  And partly, I don’t love that Automattic owns Day One. The Wordpress meltdown has made me reconsider what other products of theirs I use.
  

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  5 February 2025

  • opinion

• Quick thoughts on Bluesky, Mastodon and Threads

  We’ve now got three replacements for Twitter. I’ve been trying out Bluesky recently, like the rest of the tech world. I’ve been active on Mastodon for a couple of years now. And Threads… exists.

  Threads 🧵

  I’ll get this one out of the way quickly: Threads feels completely irrelevant to me. I’ve had an account since it launched and barely used it. The app pushes the algorithmic timeline instead of the time-based one and I don’t like that. There’s very little interesting content there, and what is interesting is either federated to Mastodon, or cross-posted. So I don’t bother with Threads.

  Mastodon 🐘

  I’ve used Mastodon since the idiot with the sink sank Twitter. I like it, but it’s a very tech-focused community, unlike Twitter where I followed silliness, F1, and non-tech friends. I miss having those in my timeline. But I do enjoy the tech community, it’s been genuinely interesting and productive for me in a professional way that Twitter rarely was.

  It gets some stick for UX, but I don’t really see that. Just sign up to mastodon.social and don’t overthink servers. It can be hard to find people, but it’s hard to find people on any service. You need to go looking for them. And as for the apps, It’s great that there are so many 3rd party apps, because you can tailor your experience the way you want it. I love Ivory, it’s my ideal social media app.

  Bluesky 🦋

  Bluesky is interesting. It’s clearly catching the desire to leave X/Twitter in a broader way that Mastodon never did. I guess that’s a combination of it only currently having a single server (even though it’s theoretically decentralised just like Mastodon), and how similar the app is to Twitter. It feels familiar and comfortable to people leaving Twitter. Whereas I never liked the Twitter app and I don’t like the Bluesky app either.

  Bluesky has starter packs to find followers, which I think is another helpful feature in moving over. You can easily find a lot of people you followed before. As I touched on above, Mastodon has often had the criticism that discovery is difficult.

  And in my experience, it is definitely easier to find people to follow on Bluesky. On Mastodon, I had to follow hashtags for a while, which did work, but doesn’t have that immediate satisfaction of finding a follower list when you sign up, because it relies on people posting over time, and with the hashtags you choose.

  However, I also find that a lot of people are following whole starter packs and will have massive feeds, so I don’t know how they’re finding value in that. Lots of content, sure, but that’s not the same as value.

  I’ve made as many followers through being in one starter pack as I have done in my whole time on Mastodon. But that’s not all good; the starter pack was for iOS developers. So now I kinda feel like I have to post more about iOS development than I naturally would. On Mastodon I feel completely comfortable posting about whatever I want.

  Roundup 🥇

  Overall, I like Mastodon best. I have Ivory, the perfect app; I can follow the whole timeline that I’ve curated without any algorithms or weird refresh behaviour; I feel happier posting whatever I want.

  But Bluesky is really promising because of how many people are coming on to the platform. It mostly just needs a good 3rd party app.
  

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  17 November 2024

  • opinion

• The Kindle Paperwhite and Nintendo 3DS

  I usually love the latest gadgets, but I’ve started keeping two older devices beside my bed, and using them frequently over the last few weeks. My Amazon Kindle Paperwhite from 2015, and my Nintendo 3DS (technically New 3DS XL, but that's a ridiculous mouthful of a name) from 2014. (Yes, 2014-15 is old now...)

  I've been reading on my iPhone a lot in the last year or so, mostly due to the necessity of doing things one-handed while dealing with sleeping children. For the same reason, I haven't really played many games other than iPhone games for a few years. Now that I've got that bit more freedom to use both of my hands during my leisure time, I can consider other options.

  

  Reading

  The Kindle is a nice way to read a book. My Paperwhite is showing its age, in that it's pretty unresponsive now when I open it up and when I browse my library, so it takes ages to actually let me start reading. But once I do start reading, it's smooth, and it's really relaxing not to have notifications pop up. It's great not to have the draw of "oh I'll just pop out and check RSS/Mastodon". And it's more comfortable to have the bigger screen to read on, so that I'm not constantly turning pages. Overall, it just feels like a better way to read a book than my phone does. Funny, that.

  Gaming

  I love my Nintendo Switch, but I still find it a bit big to use in bed or to carry around. And the games I want to play on it, like Tears of the Kingdom, are big games that I feel like I want to play on the big TV to fully experience. That’s not an option often enough for me to get into the games properly.

  So instead, I've been trying out my 3DS again, and it's a great device for sitting in bed, on the couch, or commuting. It's small, it's portable, and it has some really good games.

  Right now, I'm finally playing through The Legend of Zelda: A Link To The Past for the first time, which I bought on the 3DS store years ago. After that, I'm probably going to play through Pokemon Yellow again, which I also bought years ago and have just left sitting on the 3DS that whole time. Pokemon games are great for jumping in and out of on mobile platforms. And I'm browsing eBay and Vinted to find other games that I didn't play at the time (e.g. I never played Super Mario 3D Land or Pokemon Omega Ruby/Alpha Sapphire), and having fun doing it. I'm excited to play games again, thanks to a 10 year old console that was never that big a hit in the first place.

  

  Gadgets don't stop being good just because something new was released. Take another look at what you've got sitting around in drawers, you might find something useful or fun.
  

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  5 November 2024

  • opinion

• Comparing Reminders and Todoist

  I was a Todoist user for the best part of the last decade. I've tracked all sorts in my to-do list there, from work tasks, to household chores, to planning my wedding. It had a great Alexa integration, and I used it extensively with my wife, to manage shared tasks and our shopping list.

  Then Amazon killed the Alexa lists API and the Todoist integration ended. Our shared tasks ended up in the (absolutely awful) Alexa app, and I figured this was a great time to try out Apple's default Reminders app. It's got a lot of great features in the last few years, and is so much closer to Todoist in so many ways.

  I went all-in, fully deleting a load of lists and filters in Todoist and re-creating them in Reminders. I lost a streak of completing tasks that stretched back to 2019. (I think streaks are a silly way to manage a to-do list, but I also understand that they work, because I would often check it just to feel good about my productivity, and I felt disappointed to lose the streak!)

  I used Reminders for around a month, and mostly enjoyed it. It does pretty much everything I want: it has smart lists, it has repeating tasks, and honestly I quite like how it looks, with colourful titles, icons for lists, and links in task metadata. Best of all, it's free as part of the various OSes that I use.

  But I also found myself playing with the EventKit API to address some shortcomings, like the fact the Apple Watch complication is just a static app icon, and the widget doesn't give any sense of progress through the day.

  Over the last month or so, I also realised that my wife and I had used Todoist to plan family and household projects, and this is missing with Reminders as Reminders doesn't go beyond Apple's devices, and she uses Android.

  So I moved everything back over. I really liked Reminders, but not being able to work with anyone, regardless of their phone's OS, is too much of a limitation for me. And I'm increasingly feeling that while iOS and macOS are my favourite computing platforms, I resent being tied to them by core apps and services, if I did want to move to Android.

  Reminders is a great app though, and it's incredible how much you can do with it as a free service that comes with your phone.
  

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  2 September 2024

  • opinion

• 15 Years Since Snow Leopard

  Nostalgia time. It's 15 years since Apple released Mac OS X 10.6, aka Snow Leopard.

  I just changed my desktop wallpaper to the old default Snow Leopard space wallpaper that Basic Apple Guy released the other day, and it's a great bit of nostalgia for a great time in computing. It makes me smile when I look at it.

  My first version of OS X was technically Leopard. Mac OS X 10.5, back when I remembered all the version numbers and big cat code names.

  I only used Leopard for a few weeks though, because I bought my first MacBook Pro just before Snow Leopard (Mac OS X 10.6) came out. I even got the update disc for free, because I bought my Mac after the OS update was announced, but before it shipped.

  I loved my Mac and I loved Mac OS X straight away. It was such a breath of fresh air after fighting for years with getting flimsy Windows computers to do what I wanted. Snow Leopard was my OS for my first few years of owning a Mac and it was a great experience.

  So much has changed since 2009. What’s now called macOS is shipped for free, as a download, not a paid disc. It’s gone from a release every 2 or 3 years to an annual cycle. Intel Macs have gone from the amazing new hotness to just the worst Macs you could be unfortunate enough to have to use. And I couldn’t tell you which random place name in California we’re on to as a version name now. (The big cats were more memorable to me, and the annual release cycle, combined with an unfamiliarity with California, has made it impossible for me to keep up, particularly when macOS versions don’t seem to have any major distinguishing features.)

  But macOS is still my favourite OS, and it started with Snow Leopard.
  

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  30 August 2024

  • opinion

• Getting Up Early

  I just came across a couple of posts by Johnny Decimal and Chris McLeod about getting up early. Properly early: 5am. I've just started doing the same thing - completely coincidentally, all three of us get up at 5am - and it amazed me that other people are as ridiculous as me.

  But here's the thing: it works really well.

  I start work when I get up, and I get a solid 2 hours in before the rest of my family is up and about. And not all time is created equal; those 2 hours are the most productive of my whole day, by far. There's something about getting up early that fires my brain up.

  I used to catch up on work after my kids went to bed, at the end of the day. And this was terrible for two reasons: I always felt like I was catching up, and if I work for 2 hours at the end of the day, I produce absolute mush.

  Now, I work when my brain works best, and I get to feel like I'm ahead of things too, which gives me an extra boost through the day.

  I always thought morning people were weird, but it turns out I am one.
  

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  10 June 2024

  • opinion

• Living (Comfortably) In Apple’s Walled Garden

  I've used an iPhone as my personal phone since 2009, but I've used Android alongside that, off and on, for most of time. I bought my first Android phone in 2010 (an HTC Hero that I flashed Android 2.3 Gingerbread onto because it was limited to Android 2.2 Froyo). I wrote my first Android code around the same time, just a year after I first opened Xcode. And I spent 4 years as a full-time Android developer, before I worked on iOS professionally.

  But I've never fully made the switch to Android on my main phone. Periodically, I set up an Android phone for that purpose, and always last just a day or two of using it full time before I go back to my iPhone.

  This isn’t a criticism of Android. It’s just my own reflections of what I like about the two platforms, and why I prefer iOS.

  There are a few things keeping me on iOS. There are some apps that either aren't available on Android, or just aren't as good. There are some hardware reasons. And honestly, there's some data lock-in too.

  I feel like I can't switch to Android because there are some things I can't bring with me. But I'm also perfectly content with that.

  Apps

  • Day One: my diary, and it's only on Apple platforms. I have a decade of history that I can't recover if I move to Android. That on its own is enough to ensure I will always want an iOS device around.
  • Ivory: a brilliant Mastodon app, beautiful and powerful. I've used so many in the last year or so, on Android and iOS, and none work for me like this does.
  • Awesome Habits: a habit tracking app, which I use for little things like reminding me to write in my diary and practice French.
  • Working Copy: a git client, surely Android actually has better support than iOS for this?
  • Textastic: surely Android has a good text editor with some basic syntax highlighting?
  • Dark Noise: an app for playing white noise sounds to help me concentrate when I work.
  • Noir: automatic dark mode on the web, even when sites don't support it.
  • Reeder: a fantastic RSS reader.
  • Mela: a recipe app. It's beautiful, and the recipe import is really clever.
  • Carrot Weather: beautiful and clever weather app, which has great widget and Apple Watch support, and is incredibly customisable, so I can see exactly what I care about and ignore the rest.
  • GoodLinks: this is just a dumping ground for links I want to save, so there must be something useful like this on Android.

  There's also a strong indie app scene on iOS that I've just not found on Android. There are all sorts of great iOS apps like Working Copy, Crouton, FoodNoms, Awesome Habits, Dark Noise, Darkroom, Halide, Carrot Weather, which are made by small or one-person teams on iOS, and I can't find the same standard of apps on the Play Store. Please, prove me wrong, and give me all your indie Android app recommendations!

  Locked the Garden Gate

  Beyond just the apps and their capabilities, another reason I stick with iOS is the ecosystem around it.

  • iCloud sync: another issue with many of the apps I listed above is that they use iCloud or Apple Health for their cloud sync, which obviously doesn't translate to Android. But their sync works well (unlike some cross-platform sync, in apps like Obsidian for example).
  • Fitness tracking with Apple Health: I have a long history of running data, well over a decade now, and I don't want to (or even think I can) migrate all of my data to Google.
  • Apple Watch: this is a huge reason. I've used other watches - Android Wear devices (I got the first models that were handed out at Google I/O 2014, and my Android-using wife has had others in the years since), Garmin running watches too. But I love the Apple Watch, whereas I barely liked the others. The hardware, the software, the way it integrates with my phone, the wrist straps I have for it. Honestly, if I can get an Apple Watch to work nicely with an Android phone, then that's a huge part of the garden wall knocked down.

  
  

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  1 May 2024

  • opinion

• I Don't Like Ratings

  Giving something a score is incredibly subjective. Whether something is worth 1 star or 5 depends on who you are, how you felt at the time, how much time and thought you were able to give it, and whether or not you'd seen other opinions before you gave your own rating.

  If it's a product rather than a form of media, you can give a review after using it for one day or one month, and that experience, or lack thereof, with the product can cause very different ratings.

  But someone glancing at a rating doesn't get that detail. They might, if they read a full review, but the whole point of a rating is to sum it up into a score, so that people don't necessarily have to go into the details.

  The Phantom Menace is a 4 star movie

  Trust your feelings, you know it to be true.

  How do you know if you can trust star ratings? Are the reviewers spending enough time with the item in question? Do they have the same opinions, the same values, as me?

  For example, I gave star ratings to every book I read on Kindle, for years. But I never wrote a review. And basically everything was a 4 star rating, because I only rated books I finished, and I don't see the point in finishing a book at the point when I know it's 3 stars or less. But 5 stars is basically perfect so nothing gets that, except Night Watch by Terry Pratchett).

  Others however will have different scores. Some people will give Night Watch 1 star. And they're wrong, of course, but if you've never read the book, who do you trust when you're trying to decide which book to read next?

  Aggregators solve this to some extent, although it creates groupthink. For example, The Phantom Menace is my favourite Star Wars prequel by far (admittedly a low bar), because it has Qui-Gon Jinn and it doesn't have that utterly unbelievable relationship between Anakin and Padmé. But almost everyone else thinks The Phantom Menace is the worst, to the point that some people exclude it completely. If I trusted others, I'd never watch it, and miss out on Darth Maul, Qui-Gon, and the whole switcheroo thing with Queen Amidala and her handmaidens. And still be stuck with the ridiculousness of Anakin Skywalker in Episodes II and III.

  Anyway.

  The point is, giving something a star rating is bad because it's just like, your opinion, man.

  Alternatives

  I read Casino Royale earlier this year. And in many ways it's a problematic book. The story is good, but the telling is often uncomfortable. How should I rate that? Instead, I wrote (briefly) about its pros and cons, and tried to think of who would like to read the book, and how else could someone enjoy what is a good story overall.

  So instead of a rating, you have to read what I wrote. Which isn't as quick, if you're looking at multiple movies or multiple reviews, and that's why star ratings exist; it's a shortcut to make your decision simpler. Was this a worthwhile book or movie or not? How many stars did it get?

  But I'll never trust star ratings, at least not while The Phantom Menace (6.5 stars out of 10, 51/100 on metacritic) is rated so far behind Revenge of the Sith (7.6 stars, 68 on metacritic).

  (This train of thought originated from a process I recently experienced where people were given numeric ratings based on various criteria. Needless to say I wasn't enamoured by that.)

  
  

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  26 April 2023

  • opinion
  • ratings

• Evolving Projects

  I'm a big fan of keeping things vague and seeing how they develop. It's how I'm writing my novel and short stories, and it's how I approach other projects too.

  Running Track was originally a simple tool for sharing GPX files made from my runs.

  And my 2023 albums project was originally motivated by wanting to listen to more music. So it was simply "listen to 12 albums", one for each month of the year. Nice and simple.

  As it's gone on though, I've realised I'm picking albums I like listening to, rather than exploring new music. I'm looking for memories and happy places. So the project is evolving that way too.

  I'm really enjoying the trips down memory lane, and it makes them easier to write about too. So that's the 2023 album project now. It's found its own definition as I've worked on it.

  
  

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  18 April 2023

  • meta
  • opinion

• Owning my own content

  I really enjoy writing blog posts. I'm also one of those weirdos who likes writing documentation for my code. I like that it makes me think more than just superficially about a subject, like how a thing works or what my opinion on it is. If I'm going to put something in writing, I have to get it right, or at least makes it defensible. And that makes me put much more effort in to the writing, compared to a social network where content is essentially ephemeral, so quality matters much less.

  So I'm trying to write more blog posts, longer posts, rather than just quickly sharing thoughts on social media. And I'm liking it.

  But it's not just about writing blog posts any more. This year, I've started moving away from third party services where I can, and looking at what I can own for myself. And I really like where that process is going.

  Owning the content

  An important aspect of having a blog is the ownership it gives me over the stuff I produce online. I don't have any worries about changing social network, and having to migrate or export my posts. I don't worry about a service being taken over or sunsetted, and possibly losing everything. It all just lives here.

  And I don't want to create content for other sites to advertise against any more either. Goodreads, Letterboxd, Twitter, Instagram, whatever else. I don't want to share those links around. I don't want to have various things living in random corners of the Internet. I want my "content" in my place. And a nice benefit of that is that nobody can get rich off of me by turning me into part of a content farm that doesn't pay its contributors but still aims for the kind of ad revenue that makes its founder a billionaire.

  I want my personal site to be my source of truth. That way I can share a link wherever it's appropriate, and now I'm completely responsible for what's there. And perhaps one day I'll look at building some ActivityPub or micropub service, or integrate something like Webmentions, to embrace the Fediverse or IndieWeb and add a social layer. But what matters most to me isn't the social element, which is essentially the comments section of a blog. It's the content itself.

  Owning the appearance

  I love being able to style my site and my content however I want. And I'm well aware that the style is really basic at the moment. But I'm getting the opportunity to learn more about CSS, to improve the appearance and style things how I want them to look. I couldn't do that on Twitter or Letterboxd.

  Owning my own projects

  I love what I'm doing with my albums and books projects this year, tracking my listening and reading here. Over the years, I can build my own archive, like Last.fm and GoodReads but owned by me. Here. Rather than having some other network to contribute content to, and manage.

  I can show as much content as I want, and completely control my own privacy too. I'm sharing what I want to, and don't have to worry about what else is being gathered.

  And I can present the projects however I want. Make a library that covers all my favourite media, see challenges for a year, show how books and music relate to each other rather than being siloed. There are so many possibilities.

  I've mentioned Instagram in this post already. I stopped posting to Instagram, in large part because I don't want to be part of that service's monetisation. But I do enjoy taking photos and sharing them, and while I don't have any photography here yet, I'm looking forward to one day working on a fun way to share them on my site, while learning about how to present them in HTML and CSS.

  Owning my own vanity

  I love not worrying about likes, retweets etc. I have no analytics on my blog at present. Maybe nobody reads it? That's fine! It's for me.

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  Related reading:

  Matthias Ott: The Year of the Personal Website

  
  

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  21 February 2023

  • opinion
  • meta
  • blogging

• Software struggles on slow networks

  Andy Bell experienced a power cut, and thought he'd check the UK Power Networks website to find out. But they forgot they were making a website for people who might reasonably be expected not to have Wifi, thanks to a power cut...

  In this video, I tried to load the site. It took just under a minute to show any content, and then I ended up giving up completely after watching it load for 3 minutes. 3 minutes. Obscene.

  There's a laziness among some web and app developers around performance on slow networks. They just assume your internet connection won't be slow. Because who even has slow internet these days anyway, don't we all have fibre?

  I recently moved house, and spent two weeks tethering on my phone because our internet connection was slow to be transferred. Being an old house, I had terrible mobile signal, so I often found myself with websites and apps that behaved really badly.

  The app we use to track our baby's sleep has a really slow and unreliable sync engine, so that became a disaster for two weeks. Plenty of websites would load headers and UI chrome, but fail to load any content for minutes. Apple's App Store was particularly slow, often with no loading UI. And I even found a game that wouldnt let me play until it had finished whatever API calls the developers thought were important enough to block play, even though levels were worked fine when offline completely.

  There's no excuse for only building your product for people with fast internet connections. In the two examples here, Andy and I experienced downgraded network quality. And there are still a huge number of people for whom this is normal.

  
  

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  17 February 2023

  • opinion

• Annual Challenges

  For a few years I've set myself a reading challenge. Usually something like "read 20 books a year". And I've read a lot more this way than I otherwise would, as I proved to myself last year when I didn't set a challenge and hardly read anything. So I've set one again this year and I expect I'll do it for the foreseeable future.

  I've also been feeling lately that I don't listen to enough music any more, and wanted to change that. So I've also set myself a music challenge.

  And I've fallen out of running in the last six months or so, mostly because a new baby really takes over your life. As the baby gets older, I want to run again, but that's a challenge to start working at later in the year, so the number is set deliberately low.

  My challenges for 2023

  • 📚 Read 20 books. (I've beaten this number every year since 2015, except for last year when I didn't set a challenge.)
  • 🎧 Listen to at least 1 album every month. (Not a high bar, as I'll come on to later.)
  • 🏃 Run at least 1 time every month. (On average, since I think it'll be loaded towards the latter half of the year. But 12 runs this year feels like a nice round number, and while it sounds low, I've not ran since last September, and only twice since the start of June.)

  My daily challenges

  • 🇫🇷 Practice French every day.
  • 📓 Write in my diary every day.
  • ✍️ Write something every day. (This can be a blog post on this site, or some progress towards the novel or the short story I'm working on.)

  Apps

  • Gola is how I'm tracking my annual challenges. It's great, you should download it if you're going to try this approach
  • Awesome Habits is how I track my daily challenges. There are plenty of alternatives in this space, like Streaks or Productive, which I've also used over the years. I really like the UI of Awesome Habits, especially the iOS widget.
  • I use Duolingo to practice French, and have had a streak going for over a year at this point.
  • Day One is a great diary app, and I now have an archive going back almost a decade.

  It's a hack

  Annual challenges are a little hack that work for me. I think it triggers the reward part of my brain - I feel like I've achieved something, however arbitrary it is. And if I set the target low, and complete it early, I don't stop there; I find it even more rewarding to keep going and smash past the original target.

  It's a silly hack, considering these are things that I want to do, and shouldn't need to trick myself into doing. But it does work, because it makes me spend at least some of my time doing that thing instead of browsing social media or playing a quick mobile game.

  What about resolutions?

  New Year's resolutions are a terrible idea. The resolution version of these would be something like "listen to more music", "read more", "learn French". Vague ideas that are impossible to measure, and therefore hard to achieve.

  The ultimate aim here is to listen to more music, read more, learn French. But leaving it at that is setting yourself up for failure.

  My challenges are designed to be easily measurable, so that I can really clearly see my progress. And I've found that they build into habits over time (part of the marketing of Awesome Habits, in fact). I've been writing in my diary for years, and practicing French every day for a year. I've been writing a lot more in the last couple of months too.

  And something else that I think is important: I'm very forgiving with myself, because a) I don't want these things to become a chore, and b) any progress counts towards building a habit. Some days I'll do lots, some days I'll barely have time for anything. Doing more of something I want to do is a good thing, however much I'm actually doing. The challenges are a prompt for change, not important in themselves.

  
  

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  31 January 2023

  • challenges
  • opinion

• Blogs are dead, long live blogs

  I don't remember when Google Reader was killed off. I vaguely remember the cries of the death of blogging and RSS, and the plethora of new services that launched to completely disprove those obituaries. Feedly. Feedbin. FeedWrangler. Etc etc. But by that point, a shift had happened for me which kind of justified Google's lack of interest in Reader.

  Google Reader

  I discovered Google Reader sometime around 2009, give or take a year or two. I was in uni, studying computer science, and I was just starting to really get into the tech news world. Engadget, TechCrunch, The Register, that sort of thing. I heard about Google Reader, and decided it sounded like a cool place to get my news from, rather than jumping between sites I had bookmarked.

  Then I started seeing repeated mention of the same bloggers, like Gruber, Kottke, Marco. So I subscribed to them as well, and discovered how fun it was to follow individuals as well as bigger sites.

  I checked in on Reader multiple times a day. Whenever I was at a computer, really. Combined with the advent of the iPhone, my personal switch to using the Mac, and the related rise of tech podcasting (👋 TWiT and 5by5), it all shares a very special place in the nostalgic part of my memory. It's when I really got into this corner of the Internet.

  But over time, that Reader time moved to Twitter. I started using Twitter in 2009 as well, and what started as a bit of a social novelty eventually became a combination of social site and news source. After a few years, Twitter was where I found blogs to read, not Reader. And it had the added benefit of conversations happening in the same place, linking all these blogs and bloggers together with the readers.

  Comments Off

  It's funny that I liked the conversations on Twitter because I have always hated comments on blogs. It seemed like a place for trolls to go to start arguments. I felt like the noise of all that negativity spoiled anything good in the comments section. So I just ignored them.

  Twitter fading

  But on reflection, Twitter being a news source and social site is basically just the comments section of a site, with occasional reference to the main article. The comments are the main event there. And that was fun for a while. But it stopped being fun, and it's taken me a while to realise what was missing. The actual articles. In-depth thought, and replies on other people's blogs which had the same depth. Not hot takes and trolling that could all be spat out while sitting on the toilet.

  Twitter's algorithm doesn't reward deep thought or considered nuance. It rewards opinions that will generate a reaction, and a negative reaction is much easier to achieve. So lots of negative sentiment gets rewarded, and that in turn makes it less enjoyable to be part of. Over there last few years, I've noticed lots of previously active Twitter users becoming less engaged, often blaming negativity, trolling, and worse.

  And that's the Twitter that we had before it was bought. Lots of hot takes, lots of negativity being algorithmically rewarded. Far less civil conversation or nuanced thought.

  Blogs are cool again

  Then the changes happened at the end of last year, and that felt like the final straw for a lot of people. Lots of people stopped using Twitter, often moving to Mastodon but also reviving the old idea of blogging. I'm seeing so many more interesting blogs in my RSS feed now. And I'm more motivated to write too.

  And I love it. It's so cool to read articles instead of tweets. Long may it continue.

  ---

  Links

  • Here's an OPML file with my current subscriptions.
  • An article on The Verge, of all places, about personal blogging.
  • Bring Back Blogging is a site dedicated to bringing back personal blogging, surprisingly enough, with a large directory of blogs to explore.
  • Paul Stamatiou, an ex-Twitter employee, takes a deep dive into Mastodon and owning our own content.
    

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  27 January 2023

  • opinion
  • blogging

• My Internet Usage With Poor Connectivity

  I recently moved home and haven't had fibre connected yet, so I'm exclusively using my phone service for the Internet.

  Which sucks, because it's an old house with terrible signal. There are patches where I get a reasonable connection, some where I get a very slow one, and lots of dead zones.

  Slow Internet is definitely worse than no Internet. I can spend a LOT of time staring at my phone screen waiting for something to load. If I didn't have the hope of a connection, I'd use my time a lot more effectively than waiting for a loading screen to disappear!

  How Am I Internetting Now?

  But it's been interesting to step back and see how my web use has changed with less immediate access. With a normal connection, I'd usually open Ivory to check Mastodon, and Reeder to check RSS feeds. With an unreliable one, I haven't opened Ivory in days. I (subconsciously) prioritise spending a bit of time waiting for Reeder to sync, then fall back to the Kindle app to read a book instead.

  With less immediate access to information, I'm preferring longer-form reading. That may be because my book is immediately available offline, so I don't have to wait around to see if I get a quick enough connection to sync, but it's also quite enjoyable.

  And when I do browse, I think it's telling that I would rather refresh RSS feeds than Mastodon. That's my priority now. At the time of writing, I haven't checked Mastodon at all for 2 days and I don't miss it at all. I spend so much time waiting for Reeder to sync that I don't get round to thinking about Mastodon! But in recent years I would definitely have gone the other way; waiting ages for Tweetbot to refresh my Twitter timeline rather than reading RSS or a book.

  Why Am I Reading More And Doomscrolling Less?

  I think there are a couple of elements to this. The first is that I'm just enjoying reading more in the last few weeks, so I may well have gone to the Kindle app more often anyway.

  But the other is that I'm enjoying reading blogs with an RSS reader again. There's much more of a conscious choice involved, rather than just doomscrolling through a feed. I quite like that I'm reading things in a random order of my own choosing, rather than a strict chronological timeline or an algorithmic timeline that's configured to keep me hooked.

  And I like getting to read a slightly longer thought than can be fit into a tweet or a toot. It lets people reason more, fill in context. I've subscribed to a lot of personal blogs recently, and I really like the format compared to microblogging.

  Subscribing via RSS also allows for other types of writing; for example, one of the feeds I'm subscribed to is Matt Gemmell's RSS feed, which contains a short story every Monday. Not a tech hot take, just some enjoyable fiction.

  I like this approach to using the Internet, although I'm interested to see how it changes when I have a reliable connection again, having experienced this.

  
  

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  10 January 2023

  • opinion

• Leaving Twitter

  The world’s town square. That’s a common metaphor used to describe Twitter. The new owner describes it as such. #JoinTheConversation is a common hashtag to see around the world. The world’s conversations happen on Twitter. Or they used to.

  I think that’s a good metaphor. But another is the world’s playground. Lots of fun has happened on Twitter over the 15 years or so it’s existed. Lots of friendships have formed. Lots of entertainment and games. Wordle spread through Twitter, for example. So many comedians have built careers there. And remember the dress? Or Laurel and Yanny? Twitter has been a lot of fun.

  There has also been a lot of harassment, bullying, and threats of violence) over the years. A playground will have varying levels of that. You’ll never avoid it, but how the playground is managed by the adults in charge makes a big difference.

  Sadly, Twitter’s new owner, supposedly the adult in charge, is one of them. A bully. He will happily criticise his staff in public, and then fire them for disagreeing with him when replying in kind. He will happily make fun of people who wear face masks, as a response to them asking a fair question about them quality of his work. He thinks calling someone a paedophile in front of millions of people is a fair response to feeling insulted. He claims to be a free speech absolutist, yet he blocks or fires (publicly!) those people who disagree with him. He’ll often retweet those people first with some silly comment designed to entertain his legion of fans first though, because he wants to think he’s funny. And will happily engage in this at others’ expense. He claims comedy is legal on Twitter again, as part of his free speech agenda, then suspends accounts engaging in parody, all because they’re pointing out his errors. Our fire someone for drawing humorous cartoons of which he is the butt of the joke.

  It’s a classic playground bully persona. You couldn’t write a kids’ TV show with a more clearly defined bully than him. Thin skinned. Can dish it out but can’t take it. Plays to the crowd of sycophants. Punches down.

  So do I want to hang out in a playground that’s run by a bully? Nah. It’s his ball. He can play his game. But I’m going home.

  —-

  Side Notes

  • I’ve deactivated my account and removed all links to it from this site.
  • I plan to use a mix of RSS, Mastodon, Instagram (which I’m not mad about either, but it’s cleared my ethical bar for now…), and Discord a lot more, to replace Twitter. Four services to replace one!
  • I’ve deliberately not included any links to Twitter in this article. So there are no references for the behaviour I’m accusing the new owner of. So be it. I don’t want to persuade anyone. I’ve seen enough for myself. And I don’t want to drive any traffic there; even one click is too much. A quick Google search will show plenty.
    

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  14 November 2022

  • opinion

• Tags As An Organisation Method

  I think tags are simultaneously the best and worst organisation method for my brain. If I have a clearly defined, and limited, set of possible tags, then it's great for organising related things, and being able to have multiple tags is useful for things that really do belong in multiple places at once. But if I have an unlimited set of tags, it's basically impossible to keep things organised.

  I used to use Bear for notes. It uses tags instead of folders. And I frequently found myself having multiple tags on things for no reasons. I was basically just adding any keyword I could think of, but I was classifying it at the time. It was useless for search, and I ended up with a ridiculously long sidebar that had lots of duplication. It just made the "organisation system" way to heavy to actually help me organise things. Since I switched over to using Apple Notes instead, I've found my notes are much easier to organise.

  Another example is in banking apps. Monzo lets you set categories for transactions. There is a limited set of categories you can choose from, and they are all pretty clearly distinct from each other. I use it to keep track of how I'm spending money, and I never find myself wondering which tag I should choose, or wishing another tag existed. It's a great, and helpfully limited, set.

  Tags On This Site

  Which brings me to this site. The template that I used from Publish had tags enabled for the post previews. (You'll see them on my homepage, in the list of blog articles.) And I started off writing random tags, which ended up being pretty unhelpful. The idea is great; you click a tag, and can browse all articles on that topic. But if I have one article tagged "tests" and the other tagged "testing" then you don't get all relevant articles under one tag. And that's really easy to do with an unlimited set of tags!

  I've tweaked my current posts and come up with the following set: - uikit - ux - localisation - tests - engineering - opinion - meta

  I'll definitely refine these over time, as I get a larger data set to work with, because some only have one article and the tag might not make sense soon enough. And I'll certainly add more tags, as I write about more topics. But they'll always be listed on the tags page of the site, to make it easy to browse the topics I've written about. And I'll be holding myself to the artificial constraint of only introducing a new tag if the article doesn't fit into any existing ones.

  If you have a nice way of managing tags, let me know! They're very popular, I just can't make them work for me without introducing artificial constraints.

  
  

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  7 January 2022

  • meta
  • opinion

• The 2020 Mac mini

  The new Mac mini with the Apple M1 chip is an incredible machine to use. It’s also finally hit the minimum standard we should expect from computing devices.

  It just does what you ask, and is the first traditional computer to do so. This is one of the features that made the iPhone so impressive from the start, back in 2007; it’s immediately responsive to your actions. It feels great, then almost immediately it feels normal, and makes everything else feel slow instead.

  For example, apps launch straight away. It shouldn’t be remarkable that the user in the linked video can just keep opening apps without it being an issue, but it is.

  I like to edit photos in Lightroom. On the iPad, that’s always been a fairly smooth experience: I adjust a slider, and the image on screen changes as I slide it. On the Mac, that was never the case. I’d always be waiting for the image on screen to catch up with my changes. Until now, because on my Mac mini with the M1 chip, performance is just as snappy as it is on my 2016 iPad Pro.

  On the one hand, that feels like a low bar. Seriously, the Mac has finally caught up with an iPad from 2016? I’m comparing it’s responsiveness to the 2007 iPhone?! But on the other hand, it’s a massive change. My top of the line, 16” MacBook Pro from 2020 couldn’t perform like this. One thing that people have always loved about iOS is how smooth it is, how natural it feels to use. You ask it to do something, and it does it. That’s been a problem with PCs for decades. And now it’s not.

  This is the baseline now; the minimum standard that we should ask of our computers. It should, to use an overused phrase, just work.

  
  

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  2 December 2020

  • opinion

• Hope and Fear

  The two big electoral shocks in western democracy this year [2016], the British vote to leave the EU and the American presidential election, have a few things in common. One of the biggest is the analysis of the unexpected support for candidates or causes that, just a year ago, you’d never have thought stood a chance. In both cases, a story has come out about voters wanting to send a message to the establishment. They’re unhappy with the way their country is now and they want to take back control, to make it great again. These platitudes are meaningless on their own, but they won votes. And the question I’ve been struggling with is, why?

  The reason I found both results to be such a shock is the fear and the hatred of others that became such a big talking point. It was wrapped up in concern for infrastructure that was struggling to cope, or concern over terrorist attacks, but when one leading light stands in front of a poster that was eerily similar to Nazi propaganda and another talks about a blanket ban on all members of one of the world’s biggest religions (not to mention being endorsed by neo-nazis and the KKK), it’s hard to avoid the feeling that fear of others is a big part of why people voted for these causes.

  But it’s not as simple as saying that. Of course it’s not. And most reasoned analysis says something different: that the platitudes were much closer to the truth. People are unhappy with the way things are. Unhappy with being ignored, with feeling like political systems are set up to serve the elite, those already in power, at the expense of everyone else. Everyone else is struggling to make ends meet, they’re deeply unhappy with the way things are, and so it’s natural that they have fear for the future; the present is bad enough and things have only been getting worse over time. If there’s someone to blame for that, someone to blame for making it worse, they’ll take that and support the people who point this out and promise to make it better.

  The problem is that the people who promise to make it better are part of that elite. They don’t really want significant change, but this is an easy way to win votes. Point out that people are unhappy, position yourself to be on their side, and say you’re the only person supporting them.

  The alternative, that most of us who don’t want to stoke fear and hatred need to recognise, is hope. Again, it’s important to acknowledge that there’s a problem, much like the hate-mongers are saying. Acknowledge that things aren’t working as they are and need to change. But show how it can become better in the system that we have, rather than tearing it down and starting afresh. The current message, which to paraphrase is simply “this is the best we’ve got, and look at how bad it would be if the other side won”, hasn’t worked. There needs to be a new message. One of hope. One of potential. One of a bright future that includes everyone, rather than an us-vs-them battle.

  I wrote this 6 years ago; 14/12/2016. An interesting (read: awful) year in politics. I never published it for various reasons, but reading it back now, I think it’s lasted well. And with a few years’ removal I think it’s got an interesting historical context, as much as the politics haven’t really changed today.

  
  

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  1 December 2016

  • opinion

• Being Critical

  "In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little, yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face, is that in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is probably more meaningful than our criticism designating it so. But there are times when a critic truly risks something, and that is in the discovery and defense of the new. The world is often unkind to new talent, new creations. The new needs friends."

  I recently watched Ratatouille, which is a movie about someone having an unexpected talent, but struggling to have that talent be accepted because of where he comes from. Or, on a simpler level, it's about a rat that wants to be a chef.

  That quote comes from the story's food critic character, when he has cause for introspection near the end of the film. It's widely quoted, and for good reason: the web makes it very easy to have our opinions heard. And as the quote says, it's fun, for some reason, to both read and write negative criticism. People can write negative blog articles or fire off quick, critical tweets, and have them be received by the target of the criticism and also the wider world with incredible ease.

  A big part of being a critic is passing practical judgement. There is also moral judgement, of whether something is right or wrong, or inappropriate, but often the most harmful negative criticism is that something "just won't work" or "isn't worth trying". This is also the hardest criticism to justify, as you're essentially saying that you can predict the future, and that's where I feel this quote comes into its own.

  Whenever something new appears, people always want to be the first to say why it will fail. Why it is unworthy of the attention that it is getting. Why the fact that it breaks existing traditions means that it will either crash and burn, or is somehow inappropriate. It's rare to see that encouragement of a new idea of which Anton Ego speaks. For some reason, people are more comfortable with the idea of criticising something and being wrong when it succeeds, than supporting something and being wrong when it fails. Possibly because failure is more common, so it's easier to be right.

  That's why, with so many people being so naturally inclined to say something will fail, "the new needs friends." Of course it's important to exercise critical judgement; to study something and understand what makes it weak. But it's also important to understand what makes it strong, and to support it in evolving, in changing or removing its weak points in favour of its strengths. Whether as a stakeholder or as an interested outsider, there's far more value to be had from positive, constructive criticism, and support of new ideas, than to be had from being right if and when something struggles.

  
  

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  3 November 2015

  • opinion

• Who Are You?

  We are defined as people not by what we are obliged to do, but by what we choose to do.

  Nobody is entitled to anything. There is no law of nature that says people ought to have anything. Not charity, not honesty, not respect. Not property, nor employment. Certainly not social security, a pension or free healthcare. We chose to make these a part of our society. Even legal obligations like our human rights were constructed from choices that we made. We didn't start off with the society in which we live, we built it ourselves. And we can dismantle it ourselves.

  Everything from dropping your spare change in a charity collection to donating a kidney to a complete stranger is a choice that defines who you are.

  Choosing to give up your time to volunteer with the Samaritans, or to help pack food parcels, is a choice that defines who you are.

  Choosing to freeze public sector pay, while accepting your own substantial pay rise, defines who you are. Choosing to fight against either aspect of that inequity, or to donate your pay increase to charity, defines who you are. Choosing to make cuts to welfare that provides help to the segment of society that needs it most, while also cutting taxes for the segment of society that doesn't have to worry about where the next meal or the next rent payment comes from, defines who you are as a leader of society, and defines who you are as a member of society.

  Who are you?

  
  

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  27 July 2015

  • opinion

• The Value of An Idea

  I'm currently reading "Becoming Steve Jobs" by Brent Schlender and Rick Tetzeli. As you'd probably guess from the title, it's a biography of Steve Jobs, although as such it also covers parts of the history of the computing industry in general. I found one part that talks about Microsoft's 1990s and 2000s dominance particularly interesting.

  In the early 2000s, Microsoft was by far the biggest player in the computer industry. Almost all personal computers ran Windows, and the industry then was almost entirely personal computers, either laptops or desktops. At CES in 2000, Bill Gates described a clear vision for far more personal, interconnected devices. He was essentially describing the world we live in now, with devices like phones and TVs becoming increasingly computer-like, and cloud services becoming the way to get instant access to your music, photos, email etc. from any of these devices. He could see the industry growing from millions of computers on desks, to billions of computers in pockets and around the home. It was also a vision that he expected to play less of a role in, as in January 2000 he stepped down as the CEO of Microsoft and handed control to Steve Ballmer.

  Microsoft had an almost 20/20 vision of the future, as set out by Gates. As the authors of Becoming Steve Jobs put it, "all he and Steve Ballmer had to do was execute the strategy". I'm giving the authors the benefit of the doubt here and assuming that was tongue-in-cheek, because at best, that's an incredibly naïve sentence.

  If you need an example of how hard it is to turn an idea into reality, and how little value there really is in an idea, as opposed to the execution of an idea, this is it. Microsoft was on top of the world in 2000. It completely owned the computer industry. The company was worth hundreds of billions of dollars, and attracted some of the best talent in the field. And the leaders had exactly the right idea of how the industry would evolve over the next decade. But even with such a seemingly ideal starting point, they couldn't make things happen the way they wanted.

  Microsoft is far from gone, but Apple and Google power those billions of devices that Bill Gates foresaw. While they were successfully developing iOS and Android, Microsoft was floundering with various attempts to bring Windows to mobile devices.

  Having an idea means nothing on its own. And having all the power and money you could wish for doesn't guarantee success. Being able to turn an idea into reality is much, much harder, but it's also the only thing that matters.

  
  

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  13 July 2015

  • opinion

• Listen To Your Emotions

  I always find these quotes to be a helpful reminder whenever I'm having trouble thinking about a difficult decision.

  "Your intellect may be confused, but your emotions will never lie to you." - Roger Ebert

  "Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary." - Steve Jobs

  When I look back at decisions I've regretted, I've usually gone with my head over my heart. However great or terrible the outcome, it's hard to regret doing something that you really wanted to do.

  ---

  I can't find a source for the Ebert quote, but it was in his NY Times obituary, which is worth a read anyway. The Jobs quote is from his Commencement address at Stanford University in 2005. It's probably my favourite inspirational speech. Read or watch it here.

  
  

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  16 April 2015

  • opinion

• You Are Not Your Idea

  I've been reading Creativity, Inc. by Ed Catmull recently, and it's a fascinating book about the history of Pixar and some things that Catmull has learned over the course of running one of the most successful creative companies in the last 20 years. One of the most interesting passages of the book describes how candour (or "candor" if you're American) has become an important part of the company's culture. An extended excerpt was published here online around the time that the book was published.

  This part in particular struck a chord with me:

  The film — not the filmmaker — is under the microscope. This principle eludes most people, but it is critical: You are not your idea, and if you identify too closely with your ideas, you will take offense when challenged.

  
  

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  21 January 2015

  • opinion