Matthew Lang

It’s great to see a player like Sam Darnold win a Super Bowl. A real testament to not only his physical ability, but also his mental resistance. Also, it pays to be patient. The NFL is a tough league to crack, but players need time to develop their skills. Sam Darnold played the long game and won.

A horrible playoff weekend for Packers fans once again.

I’m still on the fence about Matt LaFleur’s position at Green Bay as head coach. There has been criticism over decisions this year. If he stays on, I’d like to see an offensive coordinator step in and take over play-calling duties.

Not that fans of LaFleur’s Green Bay Packers are interested in any of that after their team — their coach, to hear some of the criticism — surrendered a 15-point fourth-quarter lead at Soldier Field, falling 31-27 to the Chicago Bears in the wild-card round.

The Denver Broncos 1977 throwback uniforms are absolute class.

I’ve been a bit of a die-hard Anker fan for the last few years. I’ve spent my fair share on chargers from them over the previous few years, and I can’t fault them one bit. The earliest ones we bought are still working and are used to power the LEDs for a few of our Lego Star Wars dioramas.

The same goes for their headphones. I got a pair of Anker Soundcore Life 2 headphones for my 40th birthday. It was only this summer that I finally had to retire them. I replaced the ear pads for them only once during the entire time I owned them. I couldn’t fault them. The long battery life, quick charging, and noise-cancelling feature were beneficial for my daily influx of calls and meetings at work.

With my headphones on the blip during the summer, I started borrowing my youngest’s headphones, Anker Q20i headphones, but I knew the day would come when I would need to get a set for myself.

Last week I purchased a pair of Sony WH-CH520 headphones. All the usual stuff. Bluetooth, multi-device function and over-the-ear style. I can’t wear an in-ear set like AirPods all day. It’s too uncomfortable.

Sound quality is good, and they’re easy to connect to different devices. The multi-device function was a bit finicky and required installing the app, but once set up, it was easy to switch between devices. I have noticed the audio stutters upon initial connection and for a few minutes after it.

I have reservations about the physical side of the headphones. They are very light and don’t feel as solid as my Soundcore headphones or even the Q20i headphones. Also, the ear pads are a lot smaller than Anker’s ear pads, which means they sit on my ears as opposed to over my ears like the Anker ones do. After a couple of hours of use, they are very uncomfortable to wear.

I’ve got mixed impressions about the headphones, so I have decided to return them. The stuttering audio is the main issue with the uncomfortable feeling when wearing them being the other. Yes, the Sony headphones were at the cheaper side of the scale and I do believe you get what you pay for, but the Anker headphones are on a similar price and I do find them more comfortable and the audio has always been faultless.

Just need to wait for the refund and then re-order the Anker ones, so for the moment, I’ll still be borrowing my youngest’s headphones.

Green Bay’s first wide receiver round 1 pick since 2002 isn’t the only reason the Packers fan base is excited. Matthew Golden had some great stats for last season and the playoffs.

In 16 games last season, he hauled in 58 receptions for 987 yards — 17.0 yards per catch — and nine touchdowns as a trusted target for quarterback Quinn Ewers. Golden saved his best play for down the stretch, posting season highs in receptions (eight) and receiving yards (162) against Georgia in the SEC Championship Game. During the Longhorns' thrilling double overtime win over Arizona State in the quarterfinals of the College Football Playoff, Golden had seven receptions for 149 yards and the game-tying touchdown in the first overtime.

Stats like this are encouraging, and hopefully, Golden can carry this production level to the Packers for many seasons to come. I’m also looking forward to seeing Christian Watson return. Having Golden and Watson on the field together gives Love a lot more options.

Tonight, the Lang household is celebrating Thanksgiving with the usual twist: a little turkey, roast vegetables, and Yorkshire puddings. We’ve settled down for the night with the NFL on.

My NYT subscription ended its introductory offer of £6 and is now £12 per month. I’m finding it hard to justify the cost now. I rarely read much of the news from the NYT these days, and I have also deleted their games app from my phone.

I enjoy the sports coverage on The Athletic and read some articles from there every day. The Wirecutter is also a good read, but to continue these subscriptions individually is almost as much as the full NYT subscription itself.

I might wait and see if a Black Friday offer can bring the subscription back down. If not, then I think it’s time to cancel the whole subscription. I’ll find coverage of the NFL elsewhere; that won’t be a problem. And there have to be good alternatives to the Wirecutter as well out there; I just need to find them.

Hunkering down for the night. Beer in my hand, lights are dimmed, watching the NFL. Love this time of year.

It’s that wonderful time of year when I can golf in the afternoon with the boys, head home for a Sunday roast dinner, and watch a couple of NFL games in the evening.

I miss Twitter’s lists feature when I’m on Micro.blog, Instagram, and Threads. On Twitter, I had lists for a handful of topics that I looked at daily, such as the NFL, notebooks, people, and web development. It was nice to scroll through related content and change to something else.

I feel like I am in the minority on the influence of the Apple Vision Pro. While the technology is certainly a game changer, I can’t help think that this new generation of devices will close us off from the world even more. Well at least until they reduce the device to a simple pair of glasses.

Last Sunday of the season, when an NFL game is broadcast at a watchable hour here in the UK. I’m watching the Chiefs at the Ravens tonight and hoping for a win for the Ravens. I’ll need to fill my Sunday night with some golf until the new NFL season begins!

Why can’t every New Year’s Eve fall on an NFL game day? It’s much more entertaining than the usual drivel you see on the telly on New Year’s Eve.

The last few years in the UK have been a bit of a rollercoaster. We’ve had Brexit, the pandemic, the war in Ukraine, the rising cost of energy bills and now the death of her majesty the Queen. It’s been a lot to take in mentally.

It’s this continuing changing of circumstances that seems to be affecting people. I’ve had similar feelings about the future. As has my wife. Well, it turns out it’s actually more common than I thought.

The result is that many of us are experiencing future fatigue: “When several difficult experiences happen back to back, your mind starts to use this information to predict the future and it can appear bleak as a result,” says Cobban, which causes us to lose “a sense of hope about the future being different in a positive way”.

— Surprised by how disoriented you feel right now? You’re not the only one

As for getting over these feelings of uncertainty, it is recommended by psychotherapist Nova Cobban that you focus on things that you can see the outcome of.

As well as limiting your time on social media (“feeding the anxiety” by looking more than once or twice daily is not helpful, Duff advises), it’s important to focus on the aspects of your life that you can actually influence and shape. “Look at what you are spending your time and energy on,” suggests Cobban. “Is it things that you have no control over but greatly concern you or is it things you can actually personally have a beneficial effect on?”

— Surprised by how disoriented you feel right now? You’re not the only one

After reading Nicholas Bate’s latest powerful productivity post, I thought I would share a few of the people and apps that have influenced me.

• Patrick Rhone - Patrick’s dash/plus system has been part of my own processes since I read about it.
• Nicholas Bate - I’ve been reading Nicholas Bate’s blog for over 15 years. I’ve been using his master list idea for some time.
• Ryder Caroll - Creator of bullet journaling, the only productive process that I have stuck with recently. It also works for me because of it plays nice with Patrick’s dash/plus system and Nicholas Bate’s master list. The fact that it’s also analog is a huge benefit to me. I spend enough times on screens. The last thing I need is another app just to stay organised.
• 37 Signals - Over the years I’ve long been a fan of the way the 37 Signals company work. All of their books are recommended, but the real changers for me were Rework and Remote are great books that really do make you question the traditional methods of working. Short, sharp and straight to the point.
• Trello - Although I use pen and paper most days, there is times when you need a digital tool to manage a project. I’ve flip-flopped between Things, Todoist and Trello over the years. While freelancing I used Trello for managing client projects, but when I returned to full-time employment I started using Todoist and Things to manage projects. I’m back to using Trello now. It’s the visual aspect of the app that really helps me.

I could have probably added another dozen or so people and apps that have influenced how I work over the years, but these five are the ones the I keep going back to.

Who influences your productivity?

In an effort to address issues with Apple and their App Store, several companies have founded a non-profit organisation that hopes to address these issues.

As a developer I hope they put enough pressure on Apple to change their App Store policies for the better, but as The Verge puts it, I don’t see Apple backing down on this.

The Coalition for App Fairness is hoping to gain influence over Apple through a united developer front. But even if other developers flock to join, Apple still holds all the cards; while Spotify, Match, Basecamp, and the rest are protesting Apple’s rules, at the end of the day, they’re still putting their apps in the App Store and paying Apple’s fees. As long as that’s the case, short of legal intervention, it’s hard to see Apple acquiescing to any of these demands — no matter how many developers complain.

— Spotify, Epic, Tile, Match, and more are rallying developers against Apple’s App Store policies

EA is bringing Colin Kaepernick back to Madden. Starting today, Kaepernick will be available as a QB who can be added to any team in Franchise mode in Madden NFL 21, which was released in late August. He can also be selected in the game’s Play Now mode.

— EA adds Colin Kaepernick to Madden NFL 21

You can play as Kaepernick! That’s all I need to know.

An apology from the NFL’s commissioner, Roger Goodell:

We, the NFL, condemn racism and the systematic oppression of Black People. We, the NFL, admit we were wrong for not listening to NFL players earlier and encourage all to speak out and peacefully protest. We, the NFL, believe Black Lives Matter.

— We, the NFL, believe Black Lives Matter

This apology from the NFL’s commissioner Roger Goodell, is a move in the right direction. Some might say it’s too late though. It’s been four years since Colin Kaepernick started protesting by kneeling during the US national anthem. His action’s are now being replicated at protests all across the US. Sure, the NFL have admitted that they are wrong, but the real test in their words will be during the upcoming season. Will players be allowed to peacefully protest during the national anthem?

Another NFL season, another time to wonder why teams aren’t signing up Colin Kaepernick to replace their injured star quarterbacks. Well, we know why teams aren’t signing up Kaepernick. His protest’s against racism and police violence are well known.

With each star quarterback that falls by the wayside, one question looms ever larger: Will Colin Kaepernick, after over two years in exile, finally be signed by an NFL team? Kaepernick, still only 31 years old, is, according to people I’ve spoken with who know him well, “in the best shape of his life,” waking up at 5 am for daily workouts. His agent has reportedly reached out to several of these teams in need of quarterbacks to see about getting a tryout. By signing Kaepernick, the NFL could close the book on a true instance of “cancel culture,” of denying Kaepernick his livelihood, because he dared stand up to racist police violence.

— NFL Teams Are Desperate for Quarterbacks—but Colin Kaepernick Remains Unsigned

What can be done then?

Very little in fact. The NFL has the chance to make a difference here, but the league remains very aligned to ensuring that they make a profit and not a difference. It looks like Kaepernick will remain the greatest quarterback to be unsigned and ignored by the NFL.

Over the last few weeks, I’ve noticed that my youngest son Drew is spending a crazy amount of time drawing. You can usually find him sprawled out on the floor of his bedroom with sheets of paper everywhere and a circle of Sharpies around him. He loves it, so what harm can come from it?

The thing is, the source for his new love of drawing comes from a Youtube channel that we found one day while he was looking for some drawing inspiration. The channel is the Art for Kids Hub.

After we checked it over, we thought it was okay for him to be left alone with it for an hour. Now though, we’re at the point where he doesn’t draw without it.

I remember being slightly older than Drew when I first started taking an interest in drawing. I did the same thing, except instead of watching Youtube videos, I frequently drew from books and comics that I had in my room. After a while, I realised that I had enough of the basics down that I could pretty much draw anything. And I did.

The concern we have now is that he’s using a screen to do it. Sometimes he can be in his room for hours drawing. When’s he’s done he will come down with about ten drawings from a single session. Is that amount of time spent in front of a screen good for him?

There are so many conflicting reports and findings of kids and the amount of screen time they should have. The saving grace here I suppose is that he’s not just sitting there doing nothing. He’s doing something creative, and the screen is only a guide.

As long as he’s producing drawings, I can’t see any harm in it. I think in time, he’ll realise that he doesn’t need the iPad and he’ll start drawing on his own.

A very detailed post over at NicePage about the changes in web design, the gap between site builders and designers and how you can design for the new 3.0 era.

My design skills as a web developer are definitely lacking, but I can do enough to get by and make a functional user-interface. I prefer to use Bootstrap, but I’ve also been using the Vuetify framework recently as well.

I think Bootstrap gets a lot of bad press for being the popular framework out there, and sure there are a lot of designs that look similar, but there are alternatives out there. The Themes For App site provides free themes based on Bootstrap and looking at them, you couldn’t say for definite that they are built using Bootstrap. They make good use of whitespace and visuals and lean towards NicePage’s 3.0 trend.

Another Bootstrap based theme I’ve been looking at is Material Kit. Take the Bootstrap framework and wrap it in a design influenced by Google’s Material Design.

I’m glad to see there is a new trend in web design. It keeps everyone in the industry on their toes and ensures that there is something else to work towards. It’s not for everyone, and I love minimal plain text designs just as much. It’s good though that we can have this choice as users of the internet.

As David Heinemeier Hansson leaves Instagram for the second time, the question of reality on social media rears it’s head again.

That’s the stereotype, right. Instagram isn’t the place for reality. It’s for the curated highlight reel. And I thought I understood that bargain. Surely people wouldn’t take this to be the whole picture. Surely they’d understand that it’s not all race cars and champagne and glorious sunsets. Surely I would understand that. Surely?

Regret-stergram by David Heinemeier Hansson

It’s a given that most people only post the good things on social media and this is especially the case on Instagram.

My own timeline comprises of different accounts. I follow accounts for family and friends, NFL, golf, a handful of celebs, and a mixed bag of other stuff. The point of my timeline though is that it’s mostly the good stuff. It’s the good times and experiences that people are having. And I like that. It feels good to scroll through.

I know that these photos in my timeline are not a true reflection on life. Behind every great photo, whether it’s a Malibu sunset or a steaming hot cup of coffee, is a lifetime leading up to the moment in time that the photo was taken.

I know there’s more to that person posting that particular photo. I know that person has lived a life leading up to that point and that it hasn’t been plain sailing, and that makes me appreciate that picture more and more.

I know social media isn’t a view of the real world, and that makes it easy for me to hop on and thumb through my timeline and then leave it for a while.

David also mentions Facebook recent bad press and ownership of Instagram as being another reason why he wanted to leave.

It wasn’t until the latest barrage of Facebook sludge washed over me that I gave serious thought to getting off again. To make another clean cut.

Regret-stergram by David Heinemeier Hansson

I think this is a bigger concern for users of Instagram. With the original owners of Instagram having now left, there’s little to stop Facebook putting their stamp on the platform.

I’ll keep posting to Instagram in the meantime.

I’m finding it increasingly difficult to want to watch the NFL. First, the long-term damage that players suffer and now the NFL owners appeasing Trump.

Posts like Buffer’s “How to Share Posts From the Instagram Feed to Stories” are becoming less about how everyone can use a feature of social media and more about how companies, brands, and organisations can use social media. Buffer’s post even has a section for this.

Gone are the days when social media was all about people who just wanted to share something of themselves. A photograph, a thought, a revelation.

Nowadays social media has been replaced by algorithms that decided what posts you should see and ads. Now there’s going to be a new type of post on Instagram where brands are promoted through influencers.

It’s not about being social now. It’s about influence.

It’s not about people now. It’s about branding and marketing.

If this is what passes for social media these days on Instagram, maybe I am better off not being on Instagram.