Matthew Lang avatar

Matthew Lang

Web developer with a preference for Ruby on Rails

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.

I have a couple of errands to run this morning, including holiday haircuts for myself and the boys. After that, it’s back home for some brunch. I’m also going to crack open the Dailymuse app to continue working on a new feature for it. Yeah, even on holiday, I’m still writing code.

Have we reached peak saturation point with these annual reviews from different products and services yet on how we used them?

My music player, app launcher and bank have each notified me about my review of the year on their service.

Skipping the golf today. The boys are going to the indoor studio instead for a hit. I think I’ll just potter about the house instead.

Raindrops on a window pane looking out to a garden.

Given the increasing use of portrait mode as dictated by mobile phone screens, I’m curious if I’ll ever get to the point in my web development career where I’ll have my desktop screens in portrait mode.

Once again I find myself scrambling about in my web history looking for a link that I read a few weeks ago but didn’t bookmark. 🤦‍♂️

Last night, I started adding a blog to my website. Managed to get a couple of test posts rendered.

It’s nothing fancy, just a bunch of markdown files picked up by Rails and rendered as HTML using RedCarpet and Tailwind Typography. Will polish it up tonight and start adding the RSS feed.

After a few days of the lurgy ripping through the house and taking everyone out, I think we’re all starting to turn the corner and get back to feeling better once again.

Added the standard light set from Game of Bricks to the Home Alone house. I’d say it worked out quite well!

The Home Alone Lego set illuminated on a small table.

I’m back to work this morning after a five-day weekend. I would usually feel recharged and raring to go, but a bug is working its way through the family. I hope that it misses me! 🤞🏻

It’s not often we get snow in this part of Scotland and very rare that we get it before Christmas.

Watched the first two episodes of Slow Horses season 3. Hooked once again on this great show!

Last day of work today before I enjoy a five-day weekend. Nothing big planned other than enjoying some downtime.

A good day of golf at Troon today. Pretty drab and grey conditions but the boys played well and enjoyed a wee change of scenery.

Final leaves of the autumn raked up and bagged and tidied up the driveway in preparation for our Christmas lights and wreath going up. A bit of code and coffee this afternoon and that will be a productive day.

Crawling back to X?

David Heinemeier Hansson recently posted about X’s appeal.

Everything that happens, everyone who matters, is on X first. Even the most rabid Musk haters come crawling back to this platform when it counts.

DHH, X

I’m afraid I have to disagree with this.

X was the place I checked first when something happened. It’s definitely the last place I check now. A news website like The Guardian might be where I start if there’s some breaking news story. If it’s tech-related, I’ll go to Hacker News and then possibly The Verge for more information on the story.

As for the “everyone who matters” part, I see X now as nothing more than a platform for technical people. Yip, many friendly people are on there, and they are still posting interesting stuff. Still, the general vibe to me is that it’s an excellent place for those in tech but not much else. For me, it’s become an echo chamber.

So, are others still crawling back to X?

Not for me. I might check my X timeline once a day and bookmark a few things to read later, but that’s the extent of my interaction on X. It’s not the source of good content that it was a few years back. It’s definitely not the platform that counts for everyone.

I think I would like to see more options available when composing posts in Micro.blog. As a default I would like the ability to always show the categories and the cross-posting options. Most of the time I’ll cross-post everything everywhere, but not always.

Trying a new family thing this year. A Christmas movie every Monday night with the family. Tonight’s movie, Arthur Christmas. The boys might be older, but they were still in hysterics watching it. 🎬