2025
I appreciate programs like Obsidian that automatically saves my work, yet let me press Cmd+S without saying anything. It’s empathetic of those trained to frequently Cmd+S whenever they’re working on something. It may seem like showing a message saying “you don’t need to save” is useful, and it might be first time for new users. But doing it every time they press Cm+S quickly becomes distracting. It takes a long time for this reflex to be unlearned, especially when there are programs which still require explicit saving. So just do nothing and say nothing. Let the user press Cmd+S in peace.
Just heard the name for John's new app. Must say I kinda like it. It grows on you. No spoilers (except in the clip), but I do appreciate that it follows a similar vein to the crazy names I came up with. It just does it so much better.
I’m guessing the product owners of YouTube’s Android app assumes that people will be opening links to videos from social apps, where there’s a link preview. Tapping a link now opens the YouTube video in full screen mode. I rarely have a link preview available to me, so this feature is quite jarring.
Started filling out the UCL website, mainly by documenting the core modules. It might be a little unnecessary to have a full website for this, given that the only person who’ll get any use from it right now will be myself. But who knows how useful it could be in the future? If nothing else, it’s a showcase on what I’ve been working on for this project.
Some photos of birds taken during my walk this morning.
I’m pretty happy with my success at using Obsidian for my work notes, and I think a key to this is adding Obsidian as a launch item, so that it’s open at log in. I’m doing likewise for my non-work vault to see if it helps with my personal notes. “Out of sight, out of mind” is a real phenomenon.
I don’t know what’s worse: overhearing others in cafés talk about local politics, or overhearing others in cafés talk about US politics. Surely there are more interesting topics to talk about than politics.
🔗 We Don’t Need More Cynics. We Need More Builders.
Liked this piece by Joan Westenberg. I occasionally see this cynicism myself, which is frustrating as they usually come from builders. Surely they know how hard it is to come up with a solution to a problem, only have it torn down. Granted, there might be some ego involved in these feelings.
Via Pixel Envy.
The whole “squeaky wheel gets the oil” approach to software companies is that it’s easy for those working on a project to get a warped sense on how it’s received. A majory of users may find what you’re building usable, maybe even good, yet all you hear are the problems and shortfalls.
I wish I was the type of person that can use physical notebooks. That’s said, I’m going to try Obsidian for my personal notes again. I realised I don’t use the fancy features that Notion offers, and I think I prefer making straight markdown notes most of the time.
Signed up to Lottielabs after watching Matt Birchler’s video about it. Had an idea for an animated seven-segment display countdown, which I had a go making as a GIF. It was pretty easy to make, and came out pretty well, although not exactly how I imagined it.
My Micro.blog mug by @jimmitchell has arrived. Looks great. As for where it fits in my ever expanding tech-related mug collection, if we were to order by size, it sits nicely in the middle.
How is a .lol or .fun domain more expensive than a .com domain? Is there some discount for being serious I’m not aware of? 🤨
🔗 100 quotes that helped me write
Wish I could remember where I saw this so I can give them a HT. But there are some excellent quote here in this list prepared by Austin Kleon.
Started rewatching Andor last night. Wow, it’s such a great series.
Saw my headphone doppelgänger on the train this morning. In a world where pretty much everyone else is wearing AirPods, it was unexpected to see another wear black JBL E45BT Bluetooth headphones.
I’ve been using UCL a lot recently, which is driving additional development on it. Spent a fair bit of time this evening fixing bugs and adding small features like string interpolation. Fix a number of grammar bugs too, that only popped up when I started writing multi-line scripts with it.
It’s said that “short cuts make long delays”. The beauty of software is that you get to experience those delays over and over again. 😏
Like the Australian Open. Not because of the tennis, but because for two weeks, the tram I take home is rerouted to go directly to Southern Cross station, saving me from making a large road crossing. A very small improvement to my day.
Oof, my Python skills have atrophied quite badly. I’m trying to write a script and I’m forgetting fundamental things like how to interpolate variables within strings, or which standard library packages are used to do what. It’s not like I can’t look this stuff up, but it’s really slowing me down.