Gah, was lookingh forward to watching season 3 of Tehran but it’s only released in Israel today and no date for Apple TV+ has been announced.

The first email Apple Intelligence deemed as a priority for me is a phishing email pretending to be from a delivery company who failed to deliver a package I haven’t ordered. Good start Apple.

You scratch mine, I'll scratch yours: One of the most active blogs in my feed reader is by Louie Mantia. He has an interesting point of view that sometimes differs from mine (mainly politics) but I like what he creates and find it inspiring. In his recent post titled Learn to Code, Don’t Learn to Code he states this: Both parties can …

Giving the tyres a kick on the new Craft. I always liked the first version of the app but it got to business focused and I stopped using it. This new version seems more like the original version, and I like the tasks view.

Best Christmas advert so far. Very wholesome. Well done Apple. I think I’ve got something in my eye…

Found an old backup hard drive at the weekend with my old iTunes library on it. Copied everything to my NAS and I’m slowly adding things to Plex. Revisiting my favourite Delirious? album this morning as a result.

This is fun from the new Overcast update. Surprised about Appstories being in the top 4.

Considering an early upgrade of my AirPods to version 4 with ANC. Using them at work is useful but annoying when people are chatty chatty around you whilst on a call.

Todoist is introducing deadlines to tasks, this has always been a point of friction for me with their due date implementation. When I’m working on something isn’t necessarily when it’s due. It feels like they’re really upping their game lately.

I’ve recently discovered that the artists behind one of my favourite tracks of all time are still making music. They’ve just released a new album which I’m really enjoying.

Woke up to some unexpected snow this morning. Sadly it’s already melting 🫠 ⛄️

A few fun questions: At work we’re doing a team visibility piece to help others in the business get to know us. We’ve been asked to answer some questions and I thought it would be fun to share them here… Favourite movie: It would be a three way fight between The Usual Suspects, Shawshank Redemption, and The …

I’ve been using Reminders for my tasks since the new macOS came out, it’s just to difficult to get stuff in and so I’ve noticed I’ve not been using it. Time to return to a different tool.

Seriously fed up of seemingly intelligent people stating that anyone who doesn’t lean left politically is a Nazi. Here’s news for you, the Nazi’s were leftist and socialist. Stop demonising/name calling people who disagree with you and learn how to have considered …

Some thoughts on politics, a topic I don't normally touch with a barge pole: I generally don’t comment about politics on social media, or really in life in general. I find the whole topic to be divisive and alienating especially as someone who is not liberal enough for the left and not conservative enough for the right, it is a hard topic to broach. What I can say is …

That should help me stay sane for the next few days…

The past two seasons were fights against relegation… the current standings… I was 10 the last time we were in third in the Premier League! ⚽️

A friends daughters headphones wouldn’t connect wirelessly to their Surface computer. I fiddled around for a bit and then pulled the cable that comes with them from the box. Worked first time. Sometimes the old ways are the best.

The new Mac mini base model is looking very tempting… if I start picking up some freelance work it might be the new Mac I need.

I’ve decided to give Kagi a try for a bit to see what it’s like. Initial impressions are it’s fast, the page loads insanely quick compared to Google.

Just found out that UNRWA is being tipped to win a peace prize… This is an organisation that has had Hamas terrorists in their employ. An organisation that has employees who have held Israeli hostages in their own homes. They are not innocent and do not deserve it.

My elephant made it to the wall of a fun little exhibition at a local gallery.

Went to visit a small gallery exhibition opening last night. A collection of postcard sized boards by loads of different artists. Somehow got roped into doing something for it to fill some gaps left by those that had been sold…

I don't think I've gone from discovering a book to buying a book so quickly. I've always loved notebooks, and now a book about their history.

The last Mac that I bought is now officially obsolete. 9 years old. It feels both old and young at the same time.

Trying out something new with iOS 18…

Starting to get a little tired of some of the tech podcasts I listen to. Listening to one host today saying he can buy non Apple headphones because Apple didn’t update the AirPods Max with any meaningful features. Fine in and of itself, but at no point did he indicate the headphones he has are …

Trying out the new Reeder from @rizzi@gloria.social and it’s a lovely experience for reading. The only thing that might stop me using it is the lack of ability to reply to things. I’m signed in with my Micro.blog account but I can’t respond to people’s posts.

This is a very interesting read about what’s happening in the Israel-Hamas war. Regardless of whose side you are on, I recommend reading it.

Made a few tweaks to my macro blog​ theme. I think the first step in getting a custom design is the same way I did it with Wordpress many years ago. Start by hacking at an existing theme that’s got a close layout to what I’m after.

I keep finding myself looking at mechanical keyboards… not sure if this is a good thing or not.

Moved my main, or macro blog, to Micro.blog… Now I need to get back in the habit of writing blog posts and learning how to create my own theme. Anyone have any recommendations getting started with Hugo themes?

Absolutely love the design the home page on this personal site. It's giving me the itch to design something this weekend.

Finished reading: Murder on Lake Garda by Tom Hindle 📚

Finished reading: The Hunger of the Gods by John Gwynne 📚

Voted. 🇬🇧

I somehow forgot about Aaron Draplin. His backyard studio is great and his enthusiasm for creating is infectious.

I’d love something like this on the iPad instead of Stage Manager.

I wonder if there will be a more coherent Sports story in iOS 18. The new sports app certainly needs a cleaner narrative around it and how it works with Apple News and Apple TV.

Added a new ink to my collection today. A green for summer.

Now this is what I call fun coffee packaging! ☕️

This mornings brew…

Moved all my notes from Obsidian to Bear yesterday, the constant jankiness of Obsidian made me have another look at Bear. Decided to give it a try and see how it goes.

I generally try to avoid Google services, but they sure are good at making me wish I use them. How well they come together is impressive and I’m starting to really like their visual language.

It’s all excuses: I have this weird stumbling block with my blog. I want to blog, when I do it I enjoy it and when I get into a good rhythm posting regularly I enjoy it even more. I should then be doing it regularly, and in fact I want to do it regularly, but I have this weird block. I’m a designer. I don’t like …

That this happens on Apple’s own devices is crazy…

Might have already downloaded the Delta emulator for iPhone and found a Pokemon Blue rom to play…

I feel caught in a continual battle of task managers. I like the OS integration of Things and the calendar sync of Todoist.

I wish I could make my iPad Home Screen as calm as my Mac one, but still with the utility. Full colour widgets are too shouty.

Starting the day off with some beautiful coffee in my local coffee shop. They’ve got some stunners from Kawa Coffee on today and I couldn’t resist taking some photos. ☕️

Migrated my Mastodon account to Micro.blog fully. The next few days will be spent pruning my follow list.

Love receiving Travellers notebook packages in the mail.

I was so engrossed in my work that I missed the start of a meeting by ten minutes. Nothing worse than having to send a sheepish apology message when joining.

Take a moment: Life is odd. Sometimes it seems to just pass us by, each day sliding into the next, the week begins and ends before we’ve even had time to catch our breath. At other times the days are slow and packed with things, little moments that create memories or that build up to make a week to remember. …

Made my first little foray into editing the template for my blog. I’m a bit rusty with CSS and HTML but it all started to come back as I adjusted link colours and made a tweak to the spacing on my new bookmarks page. The bookmarks page is a bit of an experiment as I try out some of the …

Finally found some time this morning to add some personal sites to my blog roll. I’ve been wanting to create one for a while so when Manton added it as a feature to Micro.blog it made perfect sense to do it here. The aim is for this to be the first of many small improvements I would like to make.

Is there anyway to block or mute words on Micro.blog?

Tried to use TickTick briefly today. Felt way less intuitive than Todoist does, decided to stick with Todoist and their calendar integration for time blocking. Sometimes new isn’t better.

All I would like is an Obsidian like app that works on iPad and feels like it belongs there.

Came across Swift Mail yesterday, a native macOS app for JMAP email providers and it looks like a Mimestream for Fastmail. It’s a shame I don’t have a Mac that can run it, hopefully they’ll do an iPadOS version as well.

Theory: Apple is soon going to announce a HomePod with a screen. People will want to see sports scores on that. The new Sports app is for that.

I’m tempted to reset my iPhone and only install the apps I’m using to see how few apps I can get away with.

I would really like to be able to put apps in slide over on my Mac. Having Todoist there would be very helpful when I’m not plugged into my external display.

I finally have a new iPad to replace the one which died in early January. Realised how much I used the old one and my ancient MacBook Pro wasn’t able to handle some things I was doing. Been playing the new Affinity apps and they are very impressive.

I really wish Safari played nicely with all site or web apps. Having to run an app so that links for certain things (Monday.com and Miro) open in a Chromium browser is very annoying.

New iPad ordered and arriving to my local Apple shop on Tuesday. They had an offer with £75 off which was a nice bonus!

Apple bringing transcripts for podcasts is very cool. In fact the only thing stopping me from using the built in Podcasts app is the lack of a smart speed feature. I’m so used to having it that when I listen to a podcast without it it sounds really slow.

This week I’ve made a switch to Todoist, setup the calendar integration with Google and really leaned on their task durations. It’s worked really well for time blocking tasks in-between work meetings.

It doesn’t happen often, but occasionally I read something in the first lines of a post and can’t read the rest of the post because I keep going back to it. Many different creativity systems In this case it was the first 4 words. I don’t want a productivity system, I want a …

Fit for Forty: This is a post which I’ve had brewing in the back of my mind since September. This year marks the end of my 3rd decade, September will be my 40th birthday the end of what has turned out to be quite a hard decade. A look in the mirror and I can see how hard it has been. At the start of the year I …

I always enjoy a birthday list. This one from Jeff Sheldon has a few nice points and a few that made me chuckle.

Picked up a USB C dock that can handle all the connections I need. I love that I only have one cable to plug into my MacBook Pro now.

I want timers on my HomePod to be live activities on my iPhone. That would be a great enhancement.

My refusal to use Threads or X is making it much harder to keep up with sports (specifically F1) news. Anyone know of any good blogs I could add to my RSS?

It dawned on me this morning that we are in an election year. I’ve never been more disillusioned with UK politics than I am now. There seems to be no party that actually represents me, they all appear to be different shapes of the same blob with no real difference between them.

Trying again: One of my aims for this year is to try and develop some more healthy foundations or habits in my life. For many years now I’ve wanted to blog more regularly like I did in the very early days of discovering what the small web could be. It was a place of individuals sharing their lives and thoughts on …

Had a lovely long weekend down in Cornwall staying in St Ives. Lots of fresh air, mostly good food, good company, and some winter sunshine. Watching the sunset behind St Michael’s Mount whilst enjoying a Cornish Cream Tea was beautiful.

A long time ago I owned the domain electricweekend.com, just had a look to see if it’s available. Seems it’s now classed as a premium domain and is available for $4,480! Maybe I won’t pick it up to use as a blog.

Just discovered you can’t add a shortcut to standby mode on the iPhone. So you can’t quickly tap a button to run a shortcut, seems like a bit of an over sight.

Official diagnosis from Apple is my IPad Pro is dead. It’s either new iPad or new Mac… not an easy decision.

First day back to work. First job of the year: update all the software I kept putting off because I didn’t have time before Christmas. At least I get to enjoy a coffee while my work Mac goes about its thing.

Happy new year one and all! May 2024 be one of joy and fulfilled dreams!

In the middle of reading something on my iPad and it just turned off. It was plugged in and charging and now won’t turn on or show any sign of life… with my Mac so ancient that it only works plugged in I now have no reliable personal computer bigger than my iPhone.

Ventured onto Threads briefly. My word, it’s as bad as Twitter. Full of ill informed, uneducated, antisemitic posts. The few people that are capable of careful considered thoughts are drowned out. Social media has a lot to answer for.

Managed to follow @mosseri@threads.net on Micro.blog… let’s see how this goes.

Currently reading: Answering Jihad by Nabeel Qureshi 📚🎧

Finished reading: Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus by Nabeel Qureshi 📚🎧 Wonderfully told and fascinating to listen to the journey of Nabeel. I only wish I could’ve heard him tell it in person.

Considering a switch to iA Writer for my writing. Something doesn’t feel right with Ulysses or Obsidian these days, I want something with the right balance of simplicity and features.

So how do we send a mention to someone on Mastodon from Micro.blog?

I think my coffee station has reached peak Jonny Ive… ☕️

I really don’t get this insistence by some Apple bloggers on referring to the iPhone 15 lineup as iPhones 15. It’s iPhone 15s, just as it’s MacBook Pros and not MacBooks Pro.

The October Declaration – British Friends of Israel Signed. It feels feeble, but Israel holds a special place in my heart. It is not perfect, but one of the most important moments in my life happened there and Jewish people deserve to be safe in their homeland.

When I updated to Sonoma I switched off Alfred and decided to give Spotlight a go. It hasn’t stuck so I’m giving Recast another go.

New ink day! Just as the weather turns cold and autumn truly starts to arrive I have my new autumn pen and ink setup. 🖋️

New UK coin design: The Royal Mint has released its designs for a new set of coins, the first since the accession of King Charles. I think they are an outstanding piece of design.

My parents bought me a Travellers Notebook for my birthday and I love it. Feels and smells amazing. 🖊️📔

I stand with Israel 🇮🇱

39

First visit to the gym done. 35 minutes on a bike, 5 minutes on a treadmill. 🥵

It’s decided, once Sonoma is released I’m going to give Reminders a real crack at managing my tasks.

I’m already a big fan of stand by mode on the iPhone. I really want it on my iPad now.

I think I’m going to finally make the move from 1Password to the built in Apple password manager this year.

The Hidden Complexity of Static Sites: Derek Kedziora neatly sums up The Hidden Complexity of Static Sites and why I decided to move back to Wordpress. It’s just easier and integrates with a lot things without having to jump through a load of hoops.

Adding the archive: I’ve begun the long process of adding in some of my old posts from previous iterations of this site. My apologies if this triggers a load of posts in your RSS. I’m working backwards, and I’ve now added all the posts from 2023 and 2022. It will be a slow process as I’ve decided to add each post …

I would really like the lock screen widgets on the homescreen of my iPad as well.

Haha Redbull and Verstappen! 🏎️🥳🥳🥳

So the Apple website doesn’t sell leather iPhone 14 Pro cases anymore… might make a trip to an Apple Store this weekend to pick one up before they are all gone.

2023 Ocean Photographer of the year competition: These photos from 2023 Ocean Photographer of the Year competition are amazing. I particularly like the one of the polar bear and the hump back whale but all of them show fascinating glimpses into the life of the ocean.

Just discovered they made a version of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 & 2 for the PS4. Very tempted to buy that. I used to play Tony Hawk 2, as we called it, when I was in my mid teens.

One month back on Wordpress: It’s been about one month since I restarted my blog back on Wordpress. I say restarted rather than moved because so far I’ve yet to add all my old posts to the archive, something I still plan to do, but which I’ve yet to find the time for. The change was triggered by a combination of things, but the …

People and blogs: A few months ago I came across a blog that has been a mainstay in my RSS feeds ever since. I enjoy each and every post for the simple reason that it is the only place to find them and the thoughts of the author. He is introducing a new series called People and Blogs which will run for at least a …

Really disillusioned with social media at the moment. Recently moved my blog blog (not micro) to Wordpress which I like and I like that it has Activity Pub support. I like and use RSS, but I’m getting fed up of Mastodon like I got fed up of Twitter. I thought about adding a few Mastodon accounts to …

Trying this little beauty this morning. ☕️

Considering installing the iPadOS beta to give the new reminders feature a look. Anyone running it? How do you find it?

Label Craft by Jordan Bell: Label Craft by Jordan Bell is a fantastic little piece of the internet I stumbled across while having my morning coffee. It’s a preservation of craft beer labels removed from cans. I particularly like the label from Transmitter Brewing, and the accompanying Flickr gallery.

I seem to have fallen into a massive stationery fascination in the last few weeks. Obsessing over notebooks, inks, fountain pens… you name it and I’m interested! ✒️

Devon’s tech stack: I will always be fascinated by the tools people use, whenever someone posts to their blog with a tour of their desk, office, or a list of the tools they use it’s an instant read. This one from Devon Dundee is no different. Maybe I should write my own version.  

Found a very complex Axure RP10 tutorial this morning that I had a feeling would help me do what I needed to do in a prototype. At the end of the day I understand what it’s doing and I think I can now manipulate it to do what I need in my prototype. #ux

brr: I really enjoying reading things about daily life from people living in unusual parts of the world. So this perfectly titled blog (brr) about life at the South Pole fits the bill. An instant addition to my RSS feeds. (Via Robin Rendle)

Clean shaven for the first time since before the pandemic. I’ll be growing it back.

A bad habit list: I’ve a long standing interest in the power of habits and what they can help us accomplish. Oddly I’d never considered the impact of bad habits, but in a post on his blog Chris talks about a recent process he went through in listing out his bad habits. It’s a really interesting …

Love this little kerning game.

Kern Type: Once in a while the internet pops up a great little typography game. This time around it’s called Kern Type and is an addictive challenge to correct the kerning of random words.

The constantly changing weather conditions we have in the UK at the moment are starting to play havoc with my asthma.

I can’t help but coming back to read this post about how our digital calendars could be so much more powerful. I keep looking at ways of integrating my tasks with my calendar but nothing out there does it that well at the moment.

I think my brain is done for the day. Couldn’t find a way to create a subdomain on Hover, even a cursory google didn’t uncover the mystery.

How FoodNoms' New App Icon Boosted Download Conversion Rate by 10%: I really like blog posts that give a behind the scenes for design changes. I’ve just written an internal post for my work on the reasoning I’ve made changes to a key part of our user experience. This is an interesting look at the effect of a new icon design for Foodnoms has increased …

Stanford researchers find Mastodon has a massive child abuse material problem: This is a rather concerning piece of research. I hadn't considered this angle of decentralised social media services. One thing that the large corps have is resources and urgency to tackle things like this.

Blogging is still a journey: When I started this site, I was just a 19-year-old looking to have fun on the internet. After all the twists and turns, I’ve come back around to a very similar place. Now, I’m a 31-year-old who’s still looking to have fun on the internet, share my thoughts and experiences, and make friends. That’s …

Very tempted by the public betas for iOS, iPadOS, and tvOS this year…

It still baffles me that in both Outlook and Apple Mail there is no built in button to create a task from an email…

Multi-layered calendars: This is a fascinating read that presents the idea that calendars should be multi layered. We tend to think of calendars as 2D grids with mutually exclusive blocks of time, but as this example shows, not all events automatically cancel each other out. Depending on their characteristics, they can be …

Back on Wordpress: Back on Wordpress. It’s been a few years and many attempts to revitalise my blog, but I’ve decided to move back to Wordpress. The ease of posting from any device using apps has trumped everything else. Things will be a bit rough over the next few days and weeks as I get old posts back but stay tuned …

This mornings coffee is brought to you by the ends of two different bags… I call it frankenfilter… ☕️

My use of Threads has dropped dramatically this week, it’s become really clear that all I want is them to enable Activity Pub so that I can follow a few friends from Micro.blog or Mastodon.

As much as it pains me to say this. Bard is proving to be better for me than ChatGTP lately and it’s all because of one thing. It looks at the internet.

A night of natural wine tasting with these two 🍷

I love seeing behind the scenes look at new logos for things that have been around a while. Really like the new Thunderbird logo.

Creative process in three words or less: Just saw a a post on Threads from Figma… describe your creative process in three words or less. My attempt: Steal, splice, iterate. Maybe I should elaborate? Steal: Be inspired. Steal ideas from others, but also from your past. At the start, or even in the middle of, a project I tend to ask myself …

Starting to think I want a smaller bag for than my back pack. Want one that’s comfortable to wear, can fit my iPad Pro 11 inch and a general assortment of “stuff” like inhaler, phone, and keys… any recommendations out there?

Plus these two that are going to a local coffee shop for them to cup.

I’ve got some seriously good coffees in the house at the moment… the red bourbon is especially 😚👌🏻 ☕️

Threads is intriguing but feels like the wild west. Mastodon has the best apps but discovery of people is really hard. Micro.blog is comfortable, like sitting in the lounge of an old pub. The problem is there are people I want to follow on all of the networks but I can’t do it from one app. In …

Now that Apple has done interactive widgets. I want them to bring back interactive notifications on the Mac.

I hate DNS.

Just discovered this Security Checkliston Brian Lovin’s personal site. What a great resource and way to share knowledge.

Deliveroo finally added live activities!

Feeling the urge to watch Mad Men again. Haven’t watched it for ages and I miss the style of it.

The joys of Monday morning click test results not being what you had hoped. Design revision time. But first, coffee.

You have a meeting. You have a meeting. You have a meeting, and you can have a meeting. Meetings for everyone!

Anyone know if the Apple Music improvements in iOS 17 bring sync of the up next queue across devices?

Shut up Thierry Henry… enjoyed Ted Lasso and its fitting end to the final season. When does the Roy Kent series start?

Where I’ve been: I’ve seen a few posts from people sharing where they’ve been and thought it was interesting. So I’m sharing the countries I’ve been too as well: Denmark 🇩🇰 France 🇫🇷 Switzerland 🇨🇭 Israel 🇮🇱 Italy 🇮🇹 I’ve also stepped foot in Belgium and Luxembourg but they were both on the way to Switzerland so I …

Editing memories: I’ve been looking at some of the things Google announced this week. Whilst some of the things are quite interesting – like the Pixel Tablet and stand – others are just plain puzzling. I understand that Google was is trying to flex and show off their AI abilities, the new Magic Editor that they …

I love my Sonos, but starting to want some kind of physical remote to control them. Any recommendations?

Finished reading: Building a Second Brain: A Proven Method to Organize Your Digital Life and Unlock Your Creative Potential by Tiago Forte 📚

Went for a walk after work. A bird pooed on me. About sums up my day.

A long time ago I used an app called LittleSnapper to collect images and snap websites I liked. Anyone know of a similar app?

Trying to utilise Hookmark in my workflow more but finding I spend a lot of time making sure things are linked… seems to create more admin work than I would like.

A thought provoking blog post about the role of software, thinking, and the affect they are having on our abilities.

Finished reading: Laws of UX by Jon Yablonski 📚

Tried my hand at an Austin Kleon style collage in between Teams calls this morning. Quite fun. 🎨

So engrossed in my book I dropped coffee on the page 📚

One of the best uses for the HomePod mini on my desk… making hands free phone calls especially when I know I will be on hold.

I’ve always tried to have a style guide page somewhere on my own websites, but this one takes it to another level. Excellent stuff.

This. RSS is not a notification system, it’s a delivery system.

New coffee from Plot coffee roasters. ☕️ Origin: Patalillo wet mill, Tarrazú, Costa Rica Process: Red Honey Notes: red apples, chocolate, and nutmeg

Such a shame what happened to the brand design of the fashion world.

Fascinating read about the redesign of Wikipedia and the role that prototypes played in it.

The irony of Chat GTP asking me to verify I’m a human 😂

Finished reading: Foundation & Empire by Isaac Asimov 📚

My iPhone has taken to having phantom touches and doing things by itself. It appears it might be time to replace my XS…

Exploring the IBM Design Language is really rather beautiful…

I’m just gonna get this off my chest here. I don’t think VR is the next big thing and I don’t think it will be the success everyone seems to be saying it will be.

Finished reading: Diddly Squat: ‘Til The Cows Come Home by Jeremy Clarkson 📚

I need to stop reading the comments on political things.

I’ve had the app Soro on my iPhone/iPad for ages so I could use shortcuts to play stuff on my Sonos. Discovered last week that it’s also on the Mac and now I can’t stop finding ways to use it! Brilliant app.

Found myself installing Evernote to play with again yesterday. The one thing I’ve always liked about it is how easy it is to get stuff into.

Decided to carry out an experiment. One todo app for work and a different one for my personal stuff. Todoist for work as it integrates better with Microsoft 365 and Things for all my personal stuff. Let’s see how it goes.

Instruction from the doctor: Lose weight your cholesterol is too high. Nothing like a statement like that to make you feel worse about yourself.

A terrible thing has happened. I’ve run out of coffee beans and there’s no time to go buy some before my first meeting of the day…

Currently reading: The Innovators by Walter Isaacson 📚🎧

Absolutely love this. I’ll be saving this to return to many times. Go and read Lessons of Design.

May finally have got it working… sometimes it takes a vent post to make you reset and look for a different way.

No matter what I do, I can never get tags to work in Jekyll. I’ve followed so many tutorials to try and get tag pages to work, but the plugins never do.

Adding tags: This post was written when this blog was based on Jekyll before I moved back to Wordpress. I have kept it as part of the history of this blog. It’s taken me a long time with lots of googling and trial & error, but I finally have tags working on this site. Out of the box Jekyll provides a …

First steps playing with Figma today. We’ve been all in on XD for visual design but it seems to be dead and keeps breaking things.

1Password is going to support passkeys. This looks really interesting, might be time to do some passkey research.

Spent a bit more time working on my personal site. I’ve now revived the Jekyll powered blog and plan to keep playing with the site. Need to add a little personality to it but more of the bare bones are there now.

Hobbies, blogs, writing, iPads, and Macs: For the last few years 99% of my personal computing has been handled on the iPad Pro. For the most part it was ok. Sometimes I would need to jump through some hoops to do things and occasionally I would fall back on my work Mac. The only item that has suffered in that time has been my ability to …

Cameron Moll’s problem solving process is very similar to mine. Start with a basic understanding of the problem, and iterate on the problem and the solution.

I wish Sonos would make a proper Mac app.

Came across these rather beautiful pens this morning.

Since I cam across this post from Om Malik on whether the “stream” as a design paradigm is over it’s been noodling away at the back of my mind. I think, to some extent, I agree with it whilst at the same time disagreeing. Streams are good for one thing: communicating context via time.

I’ve recently discovered the blog of Manuel Moreale and I love the simplicity of the design.

In his post about Blogging, RSS, and Imposture Syndrome Brandon writes, Then it clicked… the internet I miss didn’t include my mom. It was a bunch of nerds, creating stuff, showing it off, and most of the time doing it for free for others to enjoy. And I couldn’t agree more. This is exactly …

First steps of an updated personal site today. It will likely evolve a lot in the coming weeks especially while I work out how micro.blog, mastodon, and the site work together.

Keeping an eye on CodeEdit. Looks promising.

My code editor of choice (Atom) is no more. Anyone got any recommendations?

I miss blog rolls… the first time the personal web was in full swing everyone had blog rolls on their sites. Now very few people have this and it makes finding sites much harder.

Wandering around Oxford today after a few days in London. An end of January mini holiday is actually really nice and refreshing.

Blank page paralysis: I’ve been feeling the desire to create more since the start of the year. I’m not sure if it’s just because it’s a new year which often brings with it a fresh vigour or whether it’s seeing some people I know have their artwork displayed in a local gallery. It creates a spark in me. A desire to create …

Blank page paralysis: I’ve been feeling the desire to create more since the start of the year. I’m not sure if it’s just because it’s a new year which often brings with it a fresh vigour or whether it’s seeing some people I know have their artwork displayed in a local gallery. It creates a spark in me. A desire to create …

Not sure why but I now have a Mastodon account… I think intrigue more than anything is behind it.

Apple has released a new HomePod that looks like they haven’t learnt any lessons from the first one. It’s still $300 and still seems over engineered.

The internet needs a follow button…: Over the last few weeks I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about social media and the open (indie) web. As people are fleeing Twitter and flocking towards Mastodon in an attempt to find a new way of doing social media some of the things that social media gets right keep cropping up in my feeds. The …

The internet needs a follow button…: Over the last few weeks I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about social media and the open (indie) web. As people are fleeing Twitter and flocking towards Mastodon in an attempt to find a new way of doing social media some of the things that social media gets right keep cropping up in my feeds. The …

Finding myself drawn more and more towards analog tools lately. Considering buying some writing paper to write some letters to friends I haven’t seen for a while.

Interesting to see Medium starting it’s own Mastodon server. Perhaps trying to shield itself from an eventual collapse as people rediscover their own personal websites.

Currently reading: Diddly Squat: ‘Til The Cows Come Home by Jeremy Clarkson 📚

Considering all my various software subscriptions given some are increasing in price (Fantastical). Any set app users have experience of BusyCal vs. Fantastical?

6 For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. (‭‭‭Isaiah‬ ‭9‬‬:‭6‬ ‭NIVUK‬‬)

I followed @johnvoorhees@mastodon.macstories.net through Micro.blog and his name is so long it breaks scrolling in the Micro.blog app. @manton is there a way display Mastodon users names rather than handles?

Indiekit look slike a fantastic way to add easier publishing to your own static generated site. Might have to have a play around with this over Christmas.

The best films of 2022 according to The Telegraph. In a shocking turn of events I’ve not seen a single one. Will have to remedy that over Christmas and New Year.

I find it interesting that sites like @macstories@macstories.net are setting up their own Mastodon instances. It’s an interwsting concept, but I can’t help but feel like they should setup individual blogs and ActivityPub so that they contribute to the open web instead. Needless to say, …

Cameron Moll laying out exactly what I have had to lay out to others about why UI and UX belong together.

I’m officially fed up of it being minus degrees outside 🥶

I used to love using Notational Velocity back in the day, I didn’t know that nvUltra was a thing. I’d love to return to the simplicty of that app for notes.

Came out of church to snow this morning…

What’s Good About the Arc Browser… A really interesting take on the Arc Browser which is a browser that continues to fascinate me with it’s experimentation and UI. For some reason I can’t get it to fit into my work flow easily. I might need to give it more time, but I think a large part of the …

Lovely cocktails to start dinner this evening. Had a delicious feast of Bao and BBQ with Bao bread and butter pudding to finish!

More to do app explorations, came across an app called TaskFlow which handles lists and kanban but in a native app this time. No shortcuts though…

Can’t stop drooling over these notebooks and stationery stuffs from MARK+FOLD…

I’m down the rabbit hole again. TickTick has been downloaded and looks promising. Kanban mode, list mode, calendar integration for time blocking, shortcuts that work on macOS… playing will ensue later.

I’ve been using Todoist for the last few weeks. I like it’s ability to have projects in lists or as a kanban style board. I really dislike it’s inability to work with shortcuts on the Mac. Anyone know of a similar to do app that has boards and lists together?

An interesting post that sums up how exactly how I feel about these new AI writing tools that are appearing in apps like Craft and Notion. It will be a long time before anything can replace a human actually doing the work of writing something new. Over the weekend I saw someone say that students …

Trying to customise a Micro.blog theme, but I can’t tell if it’s not working or if Safari on iPad caches too aggressively. Should’ve bought my aging MacBook Pro.

Over the last few days I’ve come across more and more people moving from Twitter to Mastodon. It’s caused me to poke around Mastodon a little and I’ve added some users to my Micro.blog timeline. Whilst the technology behind it is great something about it feels a little bit like a …

I remember when I first discovered @NetNewsWire it had a send to MarsEdit button in it. Anyone know if that feature is in the new version or does it rely on the share sheet on macOS?

I might spend some time this weekend trying to customise my micro.blog site. It needs a bit more me in the design…

Just discovered that the new micro post interface in MarsEdit 5 has a universal keyboard shortcut. Love that. This is the kind of thing that got me posting to Twitter lots in the early days.

An unusually productive Monday today. Fewer meetings more design time is always a good balance.

Had a little look at the upcoming OmniFocus 4 this morning. I can’t put my finger on why, but I always find the UI of Omni apps slightly off that puts me off using them.

In a lovely post from Patrick Rhone he comments If I were to paid to dig ditches, I would discover that the ditch is for a water line to a new house that means someone gets clean water, once I think it through, I can find my passion in the ditch digging. It made me look back at my career and the …

Shocked at England’s dominance in the football today. I know we were playing Iran, but given recent performances it was surprising. ⚽️

This morning is very much a dark mode morning.

The sermon in church this morning was all about suffering. A timely subject given recent news about my Mum’s health. Sometimes even as someone who as been a believer for decades you need reminders of the basics. ✝️

I’m resorting to pen and paper to get a proper overview of all the “tasks” that I have assigned to me. Starting to question if digital task managers create work and black holes of stuff.

David Sparks on his journey To Day One and Back Again. I’ve been on a similar thought cycle recently. I have been a long time sporadic user of Day One, and I’ve journaled for a while in Obsidian as well as pen and paper. But recently I’ve decided it’s back to Day One. …

Removed Twitter from my iPhone last night, not because of the Musk thing but because I can’t take all the culture wars. Talking to my counsellor last night I realised how much of a toll it was taking on my mental health. Not worth it at the moment.

My Arc experiment is over. It broke my long established flow for reading RSS and turned what is normally an enjoyable part of the day into an annoyance.

Matt Bircher: I Don’t Think People Really Want Another Twitter… I think he’s right, people don’t, but I do think people want a simple way to share little bits of information easily. Whilst I think a lot of people are overreacting to Musk buying Twitter, I do hope it causes a renaissance …

Giving Arc a go as my default browser after reading about it again.

It baffles me that you still can’t make a reminder from an email message in Mail.app. Reminders is becoming very powerful yet still feels crippled by this.

The sad demise of the smartly dressed traveller: The sad demise of the smartly dressed traveller… It’s not just the smartly dressed traveller that’s disappeared. I recently saw a film of the streets of London in the late 1930’s, everyone looked smart, well dressed, and respectable. Yesterday a trip to buy some groceries revealed …

The iPhone 14 Pro is still massively hard to get hold of. Delivery is not until 8th November, and collection is non-existent.

All in on Micro.blog: A little under four months ago I made a decision about my blog and moved it to use Ghost with the aim of building a more regular posting habit. Needless to say it hasn’t really happened. So I’ve decided to make another decision and go all in on Micro.blog. Recently I’ve been on a slow and considered …

My copy of Somebody Feed Phil the Book arrived yesterday. Forgot I had ordered it so it was a nice surprise.

I really want to find a widget that can recreate this kind of style on iPadOS.

Finished watching season 2 of Tehran on Apple TV+. I really enjoyed it, definitely one to watch, more and more gripping as the season went on. 📺

You know it’s a long day when I brew a coffee at 16:30… 🥱

I am constantly torn when it comes to Google. I don’t like their data collecting strategy but the design of their products is very attractive and appeals to me which makes me want to use them…

Mid morning coffee in Cheltenham’s newest espresso bar. Tastes as good as it looks. ☕️

Goodbye Your Majesty, and thank you for everything. 😢🇬🇧

I have never known life without the Queen, she was a women of great integrity and dedication. I never met her but I will miss her in a way I can’t quite put into words. May God bless her as she finally gets to rest in His presence.

The new default theme in Obsidian is a big improvement, but I think I still prefer Craft. The only thing missing is some kind of graph view.

New Obsidian theme looks good, but I think I still prefer Craft. I do miss the graph view though, especially the local graph for the relationships with the current file.

A spade is a spade, let’s call things by what they are: The last few years has seen the prolific rise of the content creator the people who create content for other people to consume. I dislike this phrase. I don’t like it for a few reasons, but the primary one is I don’t consume content and I hate to break it to you, but neither do you. If you read …

A spade is a spade, let’s call things by what they are: The last few years has seen the prolific rise of the content creator the people who create content for other people to consume. I dislike this phrase. I don’t like it for a few reasons, but the primary one is I don’t consume content and I hate to break it to you, but neither do you. If you read …

I’ve just heard someone use the phrase “minor attracted”. Excuse me but that’s called paedophilia and should never be tried to be legitimised by changing the language.

I’ve really enjoyed this episode of Thoroughly Considered discussing the Sonos Move and the whole Sonos ecosystem. Made me reasses how I’m using mine. Just wish the Mac app wasn’t so horrendous.

It’s Coldplay day!

Moved back to Overcast from Pocket Casts because Overcasts CarPlay app is better…

Saying good bye to this faithful friend after 10 years and thousands of miles. Happy retirement.

Couldn’t help myself…

There are very few celebrities in the world who I would like to meet, but I think Phil Rosentahl is one.

Never really enjoyed women’s football but this final has been good. Come on England! 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿🧍🏻‍♀️⚽️

My fan died this morning. Thank the Lord it made it through yesterday’s heat.

Decided to have a very early start for work today to try and avoid having to work during the hottest part of the day. Quite enjoying the fact it’s 9:00 and I’ve already done a good hour and a half of work…

Went to upgrade to Alfred 5 and discovered I’m a mega supporter. Forgot about that. Free update!

Experimenting with Craft for my note making: For the best part of the last year I’ve been all in on Obsidian for my note taking. I’ve enjoyed writing in it, seeing it evolve, and playing with it’s theming engine (a bit too much sometimes) but recently I’ve been finding a few issues that have been getting under my skin. The experience of using …

Considering installing the iOS and iPadOS betas… anyone done so yet?

Experimenting with Craft for my note making: For the best part of the last year I’ve been all in on Obsidian for my note taking. I’ve enjoyed writing in it, seeing it evolve, and playing with it’s theming engine (a bit too much sometimes) but recently I’ve been finding a few issues that have been getting under my skin. The experience of using …

Just discovers that yesterday Anne Franck was trending on Twitter because she had “white privilege”. I’m disgusted, dumbfounded, and lost for words. Fuming.

A personal update: We’re a week into July now and my decision to write some personal objectives for the quarter to go alongside my work objectives is proving to be an interesting experiment. I’ve begun to try and build some new habits to help me achieve not just my personal objectives but also my work ones. The first …

A personal update: We’re a week into July now and my decision to write some personal objectives for the quarter to go alongside my work objectives is proving to be an interesting experiment. I’ve begun to try and build some new habits to help me achieve not just my personal objectives but also my work ones. The first …

Moving to Ghost: A year or so ago I moved my blog from Wordpress to Jekyll, going from a CMS powered website to a static site generator. The idea behind it was to make designing and building the site easier from my iPad, and in the hope it would give me a push to post more often. It didn’t work. So I find my self …

Went for a walk with this little lady today. Had a fun time, she settled down with me after a few minutes walking.

More googling helped and I’ve managed to get it all imported.

Trying to get my blog content from Jekyll to Ghost is not proving easy. I’ve got my content exported but there’s a step to do in between that and importing which I don’t understand how to do… anyone have experience?

Trying out posting to Micro.Blog using shortcuts supplied by Humboldt.

It’s been a while since I shared a Home Screen but just made a few tweaks.

Interesting that the latest update to Matter supports RSS, might give it a try on a few feeds to see how it works.

Today can mostly be summed up with one sound. “Achooo…” 🤧🌱🚫

Intrigued by the new update to iA Writer. I wasn’t expecting them to add wikilinks or anything along those lines to the app. It’s an interesting development and the fact it’s not electron is appealing. Looks good on my iPad.

Does anyone know of an inbox app? A universal Quick Capture, where I can shove anything throughout the day. Links to read, ideas, tasks, basically anything, then at the end of the day process the inbox and send things where they need to go.

Reliving my teenage years while designing this morning. 🎶

Picked up a copy of How To Take Smart Notes with a gift card I got from work and had forgotten about.

Connected Matter to Notion to give it a try as a place to store all my reference material. Starting to wonder if how I’m using Obsidian is the way for me or whether I need a combination of apps to replace it. Notion for databases, Day One for Journal, something else for notes/writing…

Really want this for the wall by my desk. Dieter Rams10 Principles Limited-Edition Letterpress Print

My personal Mac has reached the age where it’s not eligible for new updates to macOS. My iPad Pro is a 2018 one that won’t work with the extended desktop. I bought the iPad with the intention it would replace my Mac but it doesn’t feel like it’s progressed enough to do that …

Watching the WWDC keynote. Interesting start to iOS 16.

WE DID IT!! NOTTINGHAM FOREST ARE IN THE PREMIER LEAGUE!!!!!!!!! ⚽️ 🌳🔴

Happy play off finals day! Half time and Forest are 1-0 up… we can do it 🫣 ⚽️

Happy Jerusalem Day! 🇮🇱

I love articles that show the tools of choice for designers and artists like this one from Jonny Ive. Some of the items are a little unrelatable but still fascinating to look at.

Inside arun.is · Writing: Over the last few months I’ve come across a number of personal blogs which have been inspiring me and fuelling my own desire to blog more. One of those is from Arun Venkatesan. His most recent post about his writing process is fascinating and worth a read. I like how each of his posts is seen as a …

Decided to give the Fastmail app a go on my iPhone instead of using mail. We’ll see how I get on.

I made a mistake and read the comments. Never. Read. The. Comments.

Enjoyed watching Mr Gregory Porter at the Jazz Festival tonight. Wonderful music. 🎵

I enjoyed David Sparks’ calendar tricks webinar about getting the most from a digital calendar. I’ve tried some of his tips in the past but I think it might be time to have another look at them.

Love this project by Max Braun to bring an iSight back to life. I bought a Logitech stream cam as it was the nicest high quality webcam I could find. If only they still made the iSight.

In Atomic Habits author James Clear states: The greater the obstacle—that is, the more difficult the habit—the more friction there is between you and your desired end state. This is why it is crucial to make your habits so easy that you’ll do them even when you don’t feel like it. If …

Giving Ulysses another go to see if I should keep the subscription or not.

Happy Easter! “He is not here; he has risen, just as he said. Come and see the place where he lay.” ‭‭Matthew‬ ‭28:6‬ ‭NIVUK‬‬

Having a culture of writing at work: Chris Hannah with an interesting post about writing at work. I go through phases at work where I will write a lot to help me clarify projects and make sure the problems we are trying to solve are clearly defined. Chris highlights a few other reasons he writes at work, with this one in particular …

Having a culture of writing at work: Chris Hannah with an interesting post about writing at work. I go through phases at work where I will write a lot to help me clarify projects and make sure the problems we are trying to solve are clearly defined. Chris highlights a few other reasons he writes at work, with this one in particular …

The missing link: This post was written when this blog was based on Jekyll before I moved back to WordPress. I have kept it as part of the history of this blog. When I moved the blog to Jekyll last year I made several decisions about the posts I would bring across. One of those was to drop several of the post types …

Work, Family, Scene - Pick two: Life is about tradeoffs. When we know what to say no to, and we know why, we can say yes with comfort and confidence to the things that matter. To the things that last. In conversation with one of my favourite authors Austin Kleon, Ryan Holiday finished a post with this quote. They were discussing …

Work, Family, Scene - Pick two: Life is about tradeoffs. When we know what to say no to, and we know why, we can say yes with comfort and confidence to the things that matter. To the things that last. In conversation with one of my favourite authors Austin Kleon, Ryan Holiday finished a post with this quote. They were discussing …

The missing link: When I moved the blog to Jekyll last year I made several decisions about the posts I would bring across. One of those was to drop several of the post types that I'd added over the years leaving only a normal blog post as the type of content I could post. I hoped that by stripping out all the cruft I …

What about this for an Apple lineup? MacBook, MacBook Studio, and MacBook Pro with iPad, iPad Studio, and iPad Pro. When you consider it alongside iMac, Mac mini, Mac Studio, and Mac Pro it kind of makes sense…

Spent the evening watching the football and adding link posts to my blog. Still some refinement to do but should be able to go live with them by the end of the week.

It’s world book day today, how did I forget!? To celebrate, what’s the book that’s like a blanket on a cold day and you keep returning to over and over? 📚

Opened this beautiful coffee this morning ☕️

Not quite sure why, but each day I’m chipping away at my Obsidian interface to get rid of some of the janky electron feel. It’s getting there, the focus of the last couple of days has been the right sidebar.

It’s both palindrome and ambigram day today. 22022022. Very cool…

My Obsidian has never looked more Mac like.

Face ID really needs to be able to work when it’s raining without the need to take my glasses off.

Also finding myself intrigued by Mastodon having never really given it much thought before.

Spent the morning playing with a ClassicPress install… made some good theme progress. Still not sure it’s the way forward for me, but it’s a step up from the last version of WordPress I used.

I’ve rediscovered Stickies on macOS recently. Anyone know of a more modern version? The collapsed state it not very friendly.

Wordle made its move to the New York Times website and I’ve lost all my stats. I thought that wasn’t meant to happen…

Today was a hard Wordle day, turns out some words are 5 letters in America but 6 in the UK… 😑 Wordle 235 5/6 ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬛🟨⬛⬛⬛ 🟨⬛⬛⬛🟩 ⬛⬛🟨🟨🟩 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

Having a real crises of blogging at the moment. Backed myself into a corner by using Jekyll on my long blog so considering moving away from that. Thinking about using Micro.blog all in, but for link sharing I want tags…

This week has been a battle. All I’ve wanted to do is sit on the sofa and read, maybe with a bit of writing as well. It’s a feeling I’ve never experienced before, but despite that I managed to push on and remain productive for work.

Tried using Obsidian to manage my work tasks for a tighter integration of their associated notes. A worth while experiment but I’m moving tasks back to Things with Hook based links instead.

Finished reading: The Return of the King by J. R. R. Tolkien 📚

WhatsApp now works with the Focus mode feature of Apple devices. Time to give it a proper go since I can now let messages through from particular people who don’t use iMessage.

Today is Holocaust Memorial Day. We must never forget what happened to over 6 million Jews, and we must never let it happen again. With antisemitism on the rise, especially in Europe, it’s just as important to remember now as it has ever been. 🇮🇱

Was caught between the answer and another word for the third guess. Went the wrong way… Wordle 222 4/6 ⬛⬛⬛⬛🟩 ⬛🟩⬛🟩🟩 ⬛🟩🟩🟩🟩 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

Anyone remember Yojimbo? Didn’t realise it was still being updated although it looks a bit long in the tooth now.

Wordle 220 5/6 ⬛⬛🟨🟨⬛ 🟩⬛🟨⬛⬛ 🟩🟨⬛⬛⬛ 🟩⬛🟨⬛🟨 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 Brain’s a bit slow this morning.

In trying to reduce the number of subscriptions I’m paying for I tried to go back to using the built in calendars instead of Fantastical. This morning my Mac was refusing to connect to my work calendar but Fantastical was fine. Guess I’m keeping that subscription for now.

What a win for Forest today. Nothing like beating your local rivals! 🥳🥳⚽️

Had the day off today. Nice to go have some coffee and food in Birmingham for a change of scene. Excellent Greek place for lunch which was a bit of a pick and hope. Turned out well.

Dinner out tonight. Ramen with some sashimi on the side. Full to bursting now. 🍜 🍣

Last year I moved my blog to Jekyll, but I’m considering moving “back” to WordPress in the form of ClassicPress. Anyone got any experience with using ClassicPress with the likes of Ulysses?

Twitter tells me I’ve been a member for 15 years today. Sheesh. That also means I’ve been blogging for a similar amount of time, my guess is 16 or 17 years.

No you sat waiting for a file to publish without realising you hadn’t clicked ok. Thought it was taking a long time 🤦🏻‍♂️

I wrote something about depression. Any day can be Blue Monday

Any day can be Blue Monday: Today, the third Monday of January, is commonly referred to as Blue Monday. It’s considered to be the most depressing day of the year. By this time people are feeling down because they have broken all their New Year’s resolutions and there’s still another week until pay day. Day’s like this that …

Any day can be Blue Monday: Today, the third Monday of January, is commonly referred to as Blue Monday. It’s considered to be the most depressing day of the year. By this time people are feeling down because they have broken all their New Year’s resolutions and there’s still another week until pay day. Day’s like this that …

🟩⬜️⬜️🟩⬜️ 🟩⬜️🟨🟩🟨 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 Sometimes it just clicks but I was fortunate with my first guess.

Reviewing some of my subscriptions that are up for renewal soon. Decided to have a look at the built in calendar app on macOS. Didn’t realise it had support for conference calls built in now, might be able to drop Fantastical now.

At the end of a long week an hour on the sofa reading The Return of the King was exactly what I needed. 📚

I got a yellow HomePod mini for Christmas, it arrived yesterday, and I’m finding it really hard to resist making shortcuts to use with it when I should be working.

Keep it simple…: Part of my approach to the new year involved rediscovering one of my habits. I’ve been trying to write a blog post more often. I initially intended to use my Micro.blog and to post all my content there, but given the chance to reflect I realised I wanted my longer posts to live here. I’m …

Keep it simple…: Part of my approach to the new year involved rediscovering one of my habits. I've been trying to write a blog post more often. I initially intended to use my Micro.blog and to post all my content there, but given the chance to reflect I realised I wanted my longer posts to live here. I'm not …

I really dislike the way businesses refer to people as resources. Four meetings today and everyone has said we need more resources to do something. They are people. You need more people to do it.

Discovered that iA Writer has the ability to publish to Micro.blog. Time to give it another go I think, it’s always been a nice writing experience and it also works with Hook according to the Hook documentation.

Thanks to Hook I’m finding myself looking at notes apps that play nicely with it. Obsidian is halfway there but Craft seems to be the most compatible.

My right AirPod seems to be dying. It struggles to connect and then when it does loses it’s connection, anyone else experienced this?

Bought a bird feeder to stick on a window in my flat. I hope it doesn’t take too long to attract some birds.

Ordered one the new Chipolo Card Spots. I’ve wanted Apple to release an AirTag like this, but I don’t think it’s going to happen since they made a wallet with it built in. This will do for me.

Followed the film with a couple of cocktails. Not normally my drink of choice but they were fun.

Went to see the new Matrix film last night. Enjoyed it ok the whole, but it was a bit of a weird one. Very obsessed with referencing the earlier films. 🍿

I tried to add a micro pub endpoint to my Jekyll blog. Got to the stage of being able to sign in with a client but it won’t post. That’s a problem for another day.

My time for work playlist: Over the years I’ve developed a few strategies to help get me in to the right frame of mind to work. One of the best ones is my time for work playlist, I put it on when I need to focus and it never fails to get me into the right state to focus on a project. I’ve worked out that the best …

My time for work playlist: Over the years I've developed a few strategies to help get me in to the right frame of mind to work. One of the best ones is my time for work playlist, I put it on when I need to focus and it never fails to get me into the right state to focus on a project. I've worked out that the best albums for …

I can confirm counselling in 2022 is no easier than it was in 2021 or 2020. 😞

🟧🟩🟩⬜️⬜️ ⬜️🟩🟩🟩🟩 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 Pretty much smashed Wordle today!

Found myself listening to the Dune soundtrack on repeat today. Really good for working too. 🎵

All the Christmas decorations are down, the new year is well and truly underway now. Since it’s no longer used for Tree lights I now have a spare smart plug, any ideas of how to put it to use?

Straight into a whole day workshop on the first day back to work is a brutal way to start the year. My brain is not awake enough for this.

Really impressed with how well Ulysses works with Micro.blog. Hadn’t realised you could update posts you’ve already published.

I’ve been thinking about how to approach the idea of New Year’s resolutions. I’m not a fan of them, mine have usually failed by the end of the 3rd week of the year, so I’m focusing on developing some habits through small changes. My Mum sent me this article this morning and I really liked some ideas …

I want my hobby back: One thing I want to do more of this year it to write. Back when I started blogging in 2005 or 2006 I used to post everyday, often more than once. It might have been the novelty of being able to write something and have it appear on the internet for people to read that made it easier. It might also …

I want my hobby back: One thing I want to do more of this year it to write. Back when I started blogging in 2005 or 2006 I used to post everyday, often more than once. It might have been the novelty of being able to write something and have it appear on the internet for people to read that made it easier. It might also …

I want my hobby back: One thing I want to do more of this year it to write. Back when I started blogging in 2005 or 2006 I used to post everyday, often more than once. It might have been the novelty of being able to write something and have it appear on the internet for people to read that made it easier. It might also …

Happy new year micro bloggers. I hope 2022 is full of joy and happiness. It’s been a difficult couple of years, let’s hope the next one is a little kinder. God bless.

Forest are unexpectedly on Sky Sports this afternoon after being one of only 2 games in the Championship not to be called off because of a Covid outbreak. Settling in to watch it with my Dad. ⚽️

Any Fastmail users out there tried this email app? It’s the first one I’ve found that uses JMAP.

Well this is my Christmas reading sorted! Enjoyed the TV show on Prime so looking forward to reading this.

Happy Christmas micro bloggers!

I wonder if there is a way to post to Micro.blog from Obsidian. 🤔

Boosted 💉

I’ve found myself watching Star Wars the last couple of days. I wanted to watch a series of films and with no streaming access to the Potters they seemed like the best bet.

Absolute fix! 🏎

I’ve been considering replacing my Kindle for a while since the screen has a few small cracks in it. Starting to look at Kobo’s since discovering they have integration with Libby which my local library uses.

Interesting the Matter has released a plugin to sync with Obsidian. Maybe I need to give it a proper try. I’ve opened the app a couple of times but I find it a bit confusing, is it a weird RSS reader or a read it later app?

Noticed that Icro is being updated again so have reinstalled it to give it another try.

Really like this new Obsidian replacement icon. Straight on to my Mac installations.

Saw Dune at the weekend. Really enjoyed it. Beautifully shot and the design of some of the items was as I imagined it. Looking forward to part 2 when it arrives.

One of my favourite tweaks in Monterey is that full screen apps can now have the menu bar showing all the time. Always missed the time in the top right when in full screen.

Eeesh, Shortcuts in Monterey is rough… I’d heard the reports but didn’t expect it to be quite as bad as it is.

End of the week. Phew. Time to relax and wind down a bit.

It’s come to my attention that Windows is recommending to display at 150% on my colleagues laptops… effectively meaning at 1920px wide screens aren’t 1920…

I’ve noticed a weird trend. I prefer reading on paper books, but when I read on my kindle I find I read more books in shorter time period.

Reviewed iOS apps for Pinboard and it seems like none of them are developed anymore. Scrapping the plan to use Pinboard.

Logged into my Pinboard account again and set it up with Hook on my Mac. Need to spend some time tidying up the load of bookmarks in there that I never really paid attention too.

Nice day out in Bristol. Tried a new coffee place that made coffee that tasted as good as the espresso bar looked.

I made soup for lunch. Forgot to buy parsley to go in it… still tasted good.

It’s a dark mode kind of morning.

Instead of writing I made some design changes to my blog, because why write when you can tinker…

I do not understand people who take calls in public on speaker phone and hold their phone out in front of them. No one wants to hear your conversation.

I now have a mastodon username, never tried mastodon though, so maybe I should look into it.

No matter how old I get or how old the show gets, but Friends will always be like a comfort blanket for me.

Watched the first episode of Foundation last night. Really enjoyed it. Time for episode 2.

Custom domain is now working on my Micro.blog. Been trying to get it working for a while. I finally realised there was a typo in the nameservers so they weren’t pointing anywhere meaning the DNS wasn’t taking effect. 🤦🏻‍♂️

I love my iPad. I can do everything on it I need except for design work. I’ve tried no end of apps, but I can’t get comfortable with it. It’s making me think about replacing my personal Mac in the near future.

Fastmail and 1Password have created a masked email integration. Really great idea, I’ll be giving it a test run.

As a birthday treat to myself I bought a HomePod mini to replace the echo and Sonos One in my bedroom. It’s now handling the audio of from my Apple TV and has removed an Echo from my life. Plus I now have the benefits of my Sonos Ones as a stereo pair in the lounge.

Got given a Lamy 2000 ball point for my birthday yesterday. I love the design, even nicer in the flesh.

Playing with my iPad home screen now I have access to more widgets. Didn’t realise you can rearrange portrait and it doesn’t affect landscape until now.

This Apple Music playlist has been good for my soul this morning. Found it thanks to the “Friends Are Listening To” feature. Thankful to the two friends who had listened before me.

Got my updated driving licence. Why do I always look like a convict in the photo?

I never understand why task management apps truncate the task title instead of wrapping the text.

First day back after a week off work. Finally made it to the bottom of the pile of emails and Teams messages.

Watched the Apple event. Considering replacing my XS with a 13, but not sure if I need it just yet. Can’t tell if the midnight is really dark blue or black, it’s a confusing name but at least it’s not another space grey.

Having a week away with my parents. Went for a wander around Leominster today.

I really like the idea behind the Logi Dock. I’m looking at a dock of some kind for my laptop given I’ll be going to the office more in the coming months and it’s a pain unplugging all the cables each time.

I’ve been looking at Hook again this week. I really love the concept of it and I see that it has more app integrations now. Unfortunately it doesn’t seem to work with the beta Todoist app which has me looking at other task apps again.

Very gloomy weather this morning. It’s a dark mode and headphones kind of day.

Put the iOS 15 beta on my iPhone over the weekend. I actually really like new Safari, although taking a bit of getting used to tapping at the bottom of the screen to start a search.

Blocked off my day into three distinct chunks today. It worked really well. Made progress on three projects so I’ll be repeating the same structure tomorrow.

Not quite sure why, but I’ve made the docks on both my Macs and my iPad match their layout this morning. Muscle memory I guess. Or procrastination…

I wrote a post. First one in a while. It’s about elephants.

Apparently the RSS feed for my Jekyll powered blog isn’t working. That’s a project to fix for the weekend.

Culturedcode added markdown support to the notes field in Things. Since version 3 Things has always felt more like an living document, probably even more so now.

World Elephant Day Is Today: This morning I found out that it's world elephant day. It's one of those facts which has stuck in my mind ever since for the simple fact that elephants are my favourite animals. My parents tell the story of when I was small and we went to zoo together for the first time. There was one animal I …

I’ve found myself working in 2.5 hour bursts today. It’s been much more productive than two larger blocks of focused work. Might try and implement it tomorrow.

New coffee delivery! Looking forward to trying these fun bags ☕️

It’s a big day at work today as school pupils receive their results and get their places at university confirmed. Despite not being on the front line as part of the customer service team, it always feels like the whole business is in it together.

New tyres on my car fitted at the start of the week. Came out to this last night. Inspected it this morning and found a shard of metal in there. Not a great start to Friday.

Apple redesigned their online store. Some major scrolling issues with my Logitech mouse. They seem to be making some big UX mistakes in the Apple design team lately.

I don’t understand the concept of snoozing email… what’s the benefit?

Working in the office today. Had to come in for a breakfast workshop and decided to book a desk to stay a bit longer with my colleagues. Ended up with a sit/stand desk, so using it as an opportunity to test it out. Quite enjoying it so far.

I’ve been trying to use Reminders to manage my tasks lately, but finally got to the point where it’s not working. Back to using Things I think.

Watched the first episode of the new Ted Lasso. Love that Nottingham Forest are in it! You reds! ⚽️

Had a minor panic this morning that my fan was broken. The blades were barely spinning, but a few well placed whacks to the guard seem to have spun it into action. Might be time to find a better one though.

Going to try a little experiment today and keep MarsEdit open while I work in an attempt to be more active on my micro blog.

I’ve been using Apple Podcasts for the last few months, but it’s slow sync is causing me to look elsewhere again. I’ve setup Overcast again, but something about it feels dated these days. Considering PocketCasts since it’s the only one that has apps on Mac, iPhone, and iPad.

My new Jekyll powered blog is now live. It’s an initial release and I plan to iterate on it going forward.

Great win from England tonight, on to the semi final against Denmark. One game at a time. ⚽️🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿

Welcome to version 8 of my blog: As the title says, welcome to the eighth official version of my blog. This one has been a while in the making. It started as a new theme on Wordpress over a year ago, included a short holiday on Ghost before ending up being powered by Jekyll. That makes this the first version of my blog not to be …

Imported my Goodreads library to Micro.blog. Now to sit down and go through my want to read page and actually see how many of the books there still warrant a place on the list.

I’ve noticed a trend recently that I’m not using Alexa that often anymore and instead I’m using Siri on my iPad or iPhone. It could be because I have to rely on Siri in the car and it’s gradually spread from there.

Thinking about installing the iPadOS 15 public beta. Normally I wait until the 3rd one but seems to be more stable this year. Also considering installing the macOS 12 beta on my personal Mac since I no longer rely on it for work and I want to play with Shortcuts.

A great second half from England. Finally we beat Germany in a tournament! 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 ⚽️

Disappointing that the Safari Tech Preview doesn’t sync tab groups across my two Macs running the Preview. Would’ve been nice to test that behaviour.

Downloaded Safari Tech Preview for Big Sur. Not sure about some of the hidden UI elements but I’ll give it a chance and see how it changes between now and release day.

Big Mail has arrived. I was really looking forward to it, but the subscription pricing looks like it’s out of reach for me.

A couple of days off to end the week. I’ve a whole week off at the end of June/beginning of July. Can’t wait to leave the Mac for a bit and relax.

Looking forward to WWDC. Definitely some Messages updates in the works judging by the waiting graphics.

One thing I want Apple to announce tonight is better support for “Do not disturb” on the Mac. Let me set it up so that my Mac goes into DND for meetings and then turns itself off once they are over.

New coffee: Fazenda Recanto, Brazil roasted by Quarter Horse Coffee with tasting notes of Strawberry, coconut, blueberry, and kiwi ☕️

I’ve been building myself a new blog using Jekyll as the back end. I’ve moved a lot of the posts from my Wordpress site, not sure what to do with the link posts since I don’t intend to do them anymore.

I’ve been playing around with my Obsidian theme, it feels really at home on macOS apart from the position of the window controls. Can’t work out how to move them though.

Workout 2 of The Body Coach done. Too many squats. 🥵

Second dose of the vaccine done. 💉

Twitter won’t remove posts comparing Israel to Covid and Nazi’s. Absolutely disgusting.

New coffee: Hacienda Sonora, Costa Rica roasted by Quarter Horse Coffee with tasting notes of Tropical fruit, pineapple, and juicy ☕️

Why is there no universal font size setting on macOS like there is on iOS? It would make working on 4K screens much easier on the eyes.

My promotion to Senior UX/UI Designer at work has been officially announced so marking the occasion with a new notebook.

Day off and the power is off. Wonderful.

I think after a few weeks of continual cleaning my Magic Keyboard is at a point where I don’t need to replace it. The space bar is the only key I really notice it being different, but it’s gradually getting better with each clean. The lesson to learn in this. Don’t spill iced tea

Want to read: Laws of UX: Using Psychology to Design Better Products & Services by Jon Yablonski 📚

Finished work for the day. It’s felt like a slog today but got there in the end. Gradually moving the needles forward on projects.

Apple Music has started recommending some radio shows to me. I approve of this.

Anyone remember Yojimbo? I used to have a massive database of reference stuff in that app, but when the iPad came along and they never did a proper version of it I stopped using it. Last night I was thinking about using a separate app like KeepIt to store reference material in instead of using …

Managed to get Jekyll working locally now. Started to play around with it learning how it works and then the power goes off…

Currently reading: The Two Towers (The Lord of the Rings, Book 2) by J. R. R. Tolkien 📚

Successfully installed Jekyll locally on my Mac, apart from being able to view the site… but the repository is linked to Netlify and that successfully builds.

New coffee: Palmyra Estate, Panama roasted by Quarter Horse Coffee with tasting notes of Caramel, Raisin, and Picnic bar ☕️

New book arrived yesterday. The first in a new series from an author I’ve not read before. Always enjoy a fantasy novel. 📚

Went into the office for the first time since the pandemic began. It was good to do before I’m required to go back in, but I much prefer working from home.

New coffee: Balmaadi natural, Tamil Nadu, India roasted by Ozone Coffee Roasters with tasting notes of Strawberry, milk chocolate, and caramel ☕️

Started time blocking my tasks in the calendar this week, it’s been quite effective. I feel like I’m actually moving projects forward again.

Spent the afternoon working through some wireframes for a new feature. Typically things only started to come together right at the end of my work day. At least I have some clarity of thought to pick it up again in the morning. 👨🏻‍💻

Ordered some rubbing alcohol today to give cleaning the iPad magic keyboard another go. Wishful thinking? Maybe, but it’s worth a shot.

Decided to move my micro style posts from my blog to Micro.blog. I’ll make all the versions on philbowell.com private for the time being.

Anyone have any suggestions for Bluetooth headsets for use on Teams? Fed up of the wires that my work issues Dell headset uses.

My OnMail invitation came through so I set up a free account. Not sure whether to point my email at it to give it a try or not…

Decided to give the dock on the bottom ago on my Mac. Been a dock on the left guy for so long that it might not last long.

It seems operation fox keyboard has not worked. Time to start a fund to buy a replacement magic keyboard. Sigh.

Watching the Formula E. They are racing on a proper circuit, albeit a modified version, which has always been my issue with it. I’m not a fan of the street circuits they’ve alway raced on. Would be good to see them race on an F1 track.

iPad keyboard seems to be mostly recovered. The space bar could do with a bit more cleaning I think, but I might see if it eases up over time. If I can stand it being mushy for a bit.

All the effected keys are off and cleaned. Giving everything a once over again and then reassembly begins. Really hope it works.

Operation rescue iPad magic keyboard is underway.

I spilt iced tea on my iPad magic keyboard a couple of days ago and now I have a mushy space bar. Probably from the sugar. Hints on cleaning it? Can you take the key caps off?

Discovered today that the Kindle app on iOS gives you stats on your reading. Interesting to look back at my past habits and see the current streak.

My iPad is rapidly becoming my favourite computer. Used Keynote in anger today and actually enjoyed building a slide deck for the first time in my life. Excellent piece of software.

Something seems to have gone wrong today. I’ve had two meetings and they’ve both been fairly productive… If only everyday could be like this.

First haircut in 4 months. Feels great 😊

A tool for thinking: Yesterday as I was sat on my sofa watching the Sunday morning church service on YouTube I had my MacBook Pro open on my lap to make notes in Obsidian. After the service had finished I spent a few minutes to tidy up some formatting and make sure the correct bible verses were being referenced, I …

Sad to see that Prince Philip has died this morning and only 2 months short of his 100th birthday.

Yom HaShoah: Today is Yom HaShoah, or Holocaust Remembrance Day, in Israel. Racism has been in the news a lot of the last year or so, and yet we hear very little of the fact that anti-semitism is on the rise. I have visited Israel twice. It’s a place that quickly won my heart with it’s beauty and history. Last …

One thing that drives me mad with Obsidian is that it doesn’t always show the file name as a title and I can never find the setting to turn it on again. This morning it’s not doing it and for the life of me I can’t find the setting to turn it back on again…

It snowed. In April. This time last week it was 20 degrees and I was wearing shorts…

I keep getting lost reading Andy Matuschak’s notes particularly around his evergreen notes concept. Might need to dedicate a bit of time to understanding exactly how it works over the next week or so.

He is risen!

The notes app quest continues: I’ve been continuing to seek out a notes app that works for me as well as I would like it too. A couple of weeks ago I posted about what I’m looking for and since then I’ve been giving a couple of the contenders a try. When I wrote that post I had been using Craft for around a week or so. It’s a …

Realised I hadn’t bought any Easter eggs so went out to buy some. Nope. Everywhere is sold out, never seen that before.

My library has moved over to using Libby for lending of ebooks etc. It offers a download in ePub for use on eReaders like the Kobo, but not the Kindle. I’ve never considered looking into any other eReaders, might be time to explore. 📚

Considering going back to using Instapaper for my read later service instead of Reeders own version. The trouble is I’m trying to reduce the number of subscriptions I have, but the highlighting in Instapaper is really useful.

Trying out scribble on the iPad version of Things today during meetings. Seems like a good way of capturing tasks with the added bonus that it doesn’t look like I’m messaging on Teams!

Decided to try Obsidian again this week after reading about it over the weekend. Found a way to make it feel more like a Mac app which is helping and I’m starting to get my head around the differences.

Installed Ghost locally to have a play and see what the theme system is like. I’ve been thinking of moving from Wordpress for a while so this will be an interesting experiment.

Starting to feel a bit more human again. The side effects from the vaccine are mostly gone now although I still feel tired and lacking in energy.

Had a rough night thanks to vaccine side effects. All in the common or very common category, so nothing to worry about, just very unpleasant.

Trying out the new Ulysses and Micro Blog integration. Nice and simple, I should’ve expected it to be so. Looks like Wordpress blogs got a nice update as well, I’ll have a play with that tomorrow.

Vaccine time. Amazing how quickly this has come about.

Picked up these beers for a weekend treat. Love the labels on them.

Got my invitation to book my Covid vaccine today, a lot earlier than expected given my age group.

I have today off work, and I woke up over an hour before I normally would. I did not sign up for that.

Two blog posts in two days. What is happening with the world!?

Searching for the perfect notes app: For the last 6 months or so I have been using Roam Research as my notes app. The daily note turned into my home from home allowing me to capture things throughout the day. Thoughts, feelings, meeting notes, tasks, articles I read, videos I watched, everything got noted down in the daily note. Using …

I had been thinking about replacing one of my Amazon Echoes with a HomePod mini but Apple killing the HomePod has me thinking not to. How much of a future does HomePod mini really have?

I removed Jetpack from my Wordpress blog last week. When I posted this morning I realised I was using it to parse the markdown from my posts. Anyone got any recommendations for an alternate parser plugin?

It would be great if we could schedule the widgets that appear on the iPad home screen. In the evenings I don’t need to see my time tracking widgets but there are other ones which would be useful to see more prominently.

Speaking of proper native Mac apps. I wish there was one for Teams. The official app is a cludgy mess of a user experience, and it still doesn’t have native macOS notifications.

I really wish there was a native Sonos app for the Mac, one which responds my Mac in a similar way to the Apple Music app. If a call comes in then mute or pause my music, connect with the media keys so I can pause music with a key press if I need some quiet. Those kinds of things

I discovered the Craft and Things integration so I’ve moved all my tasks out of Reminders and into a simplified Things setup. We’ll see how it goes.

Sad to discover that Murray Walker has died at the good old age of 97. He was the voice of Formula One when I was growing up and getting in to the sport. Even now when a race start I hear his voice “And it’s go, go, go”. 🏎

I’ve also fired Day One up again, I used the app years ago and I figured since one of the things I’ve been using Roam for is a daily journal Day One is the logical place to turn to.

Gave the app Agenda a try this morning hoping to use it for meeting notes and capturing inline tasks for Reminders. Unfortunately the integration doesn’t work how I want. The Reminders are created in Agenda but they don’t appear as tasks which can be checked off. Very odd.

Giving Craft a try today. I’ve read a few things recently about Roam’s security that has unsettled me a bit. Add that to the fact I’m getting fed up it doesn’t work well on an iPad or iPhone and there’s no sign of an app in the works I think it’s time to try and …

Back to work today, I don’t feel quite as rested today as I did last week but the show must go on. I’ll brew some coffee before I start my day. At the weekend I got some new beans which are so fruity when brewed, unusual for their country of origin, Papua New Guinea. ☕️

Just realised it’s the return of Formula One this month! 🥳🏎

My Fastmail spam filters seems to have turned themselves up. Found a load of legitimate email in it recently, including notifications that the domain I use with Fastmail is up for renewal.

Today is the start of another long weekend, I have today and Monday off work again. I plan to spend some time painting, but I’m being drawn into looking at some alternatives to Wordpress to power my website and I can feel myself being sucked into a redesign.

Considering going back to Things to handle all my Tasks, or maybe Reminders, I feel like Roam Research for tasks has me missing things.

We’re supposed to be implementing a no calls or meetings policy at work on a Wednesday afternoon, but I’ve spent all of mine doing just that. I feel very drained.

Today is a dark mode day I think. It’s very grey and cold outside, the sun of the weekend feels like a distant memory as I sit here at my desk working by spotlight.

Routines: On my lunch break today as I sat reading some RSS feeds, I came across a [Daily Blogging Challenge] that started on the first of March. As I clicked through to the organising site to find out more I discovered that each day they are sharing a prompt word that everyone taking part should use to …

Always with the accidental screenshots when trying to turn up the volume on my iPhone 😖

The painting continues to progress, lots of repainting things but it’s slowly starting to look a little like me 😂🎨

Realised that I can now post from Gluon instead of the official Micro.Blog app. It’s a little nicer to use on the iPhone and has some features not in the official client.

Really enjoyed this episode of Thouroughly Considered debating the future of the Mac and iPad. I’m not sure where I stand on the debate, but I’m looking forward to finding out what happens.

It’s starting to feel like spring is coming, the sky is blue and clear, the sun is shining, plants are starting to come into bud. It’s a beautiful reminder that God sustains the world and despite all that’s happening in it, His creation keeps on regardless.

Speaking to my parents earlier we realised it’s a year since Mum’s cancer diagnosis. Feels like a lot longer ago than that.

In the spirit of showing my work, the self portrait is progressing. I’m very rusty and it’s starting to look a little bit like the Joker 😂 🎨

Another day of work today as I try to use up my annual leave before the end of March. I’ve dug out my paints and plan to try and make some progress on a self portrait I started last week. It’s been so long since I did any painting, I forgot how hard it is.

Micro blogging again: I’ve recently made some changes to the hosting for my blog and other websites as part of the consolidation of my many websites in to one. I had been aiming to have one website to rule them all integrating my portfolio and my blog into one site. I’m in the process of creating a new theme to help …

Typical that the time I make the decision to try a separate micro blog my domain register is having issues with the TLD I have spare and I can’t change the name servers to point and DNS to point it to micro.blog.

A quick test from the iOS app to make sure I changed the settings properly.

Decided to try a paid version of Micro.blog out for shorter posts while I figure out if I want it all on one domain or not. I have a spare domain name that I can use here.

Lockdown 3: We have been in Lockdown 3 for a few weeks now as Covid-19 continues to spread through the population. The government issued stay at home notices again, but this time people don’t seem to be following things quite as closely. It’s both frustrating and annoying seeing so many people still meeting up …

Domain conundrums: Over the years I’ve amassed a number of domains for various websites I’ve wanted to create. A few of those are related to my former freelance business, and two relates to blogs. This week I got a notification that 3 of them are up for renewal in January, it’s left me questioning if should renew them …

Grey day: Today has been a grey and foggy day, it’s felt like a real reflection of the mood of the last month. As I’ve driven around Cheltenham today doing some bits and bobs, I’ve seen more and more people starting to put up Christmas trees and lights. It’s been nice to see them emerging out of the gloom. …

Thanksgiving: Today is Thanksgiving in America, and despite being a Brit I thought it would be good to try and post something I’m thankful for this year. I started to write this post at lunchtime, and struggled, I couldn’t zero in on something. This evening after my counselling session I realised what it is I’m …

An acknowledgement: I’ve had this blog in one form or another since I was 21, earlier posts have been lost in the many transitions it has made but it’s always been there. A hobby that taught me how to design and build websites that has since become my career. At the moment I think I am in one of the longest streaks of …

Finally sorting my road bike out, cleaned and oiled up. Time to start using her as my daily exercise time and chance to get out the flat.

From my trip to Rome at the end of November, when we could walk freely around a beautiful city.

Took this a few weeks ago when I was walking home one evening. It was peaceful then. Now when you go out at night it feels eery, but there is a kind of beauty to the emptiness.

Got these cakes for my birthday yesterday and Forest followed up with a win tonight to go top of the league!

Bank holiday coffee by the lake.

Lego: I’ve been struggling with my depression again the last couple of months. I’ve been lent a massive Lego kit to build, it’s great for occupying my mind.

07/05/2019, 17:36: Confession time, I’ve never once snoozed an email. I don’t understand why people want to snooze emails, if it needs acting on I turn it into a task and move on.

01/05/2019, 18:34: Starting to play around and appreciate the camera on the iPhone XS a bit more. Only had it a couple of weeks, but it’s a big jump from my iPhone 7.

26/04/2019, 20:51: I’ve been making use of my Starling Bank current account more this month. Starting to think it’s time to make the jump and go all in with them. They seem to be the most promising of all the challenger banks at the moment.

24/04/2019, 21:05: Feeling the itch to redesign my blog for the first time in a long time. Might use it as a way to establish my own base theme as a starting point and then design on top of that.

20/04/2019, 18:48:  He is not here, for he has risen, as he said. Come, see the place where he lay. Matthew 28:6

02/04/2019, 18:48: Excited for this to arrive today! Big fan of @austinkleon’s other books.

13/01/2019, 18:19: Really encouraging morning at church seeing three of the youth get baptised, followed by an afternoon hanging out with my fellow youth leaders planning the a future youth weekend away.

12/01/2019, 21:10: Trying to limit myself to only having two books on the go at any one time this year. One fiction and one non-fiction. Part of that will mean deciding to stop reading a book if I’m not enjoying it or getting anything from it.

12/01/2019, 20:42: How good would it be if we could attach Shortcuts to notification types? For example, if I have a shortcut that makes it easier for me to add purchases to YNAB, I could attach it as an action to Apple Pay notifications so that with one touch the shortcut could take the value and vendor, fill in the …

12/01/2019, 20:36: On a somewhat related note, I have two draws of DVDs that I never use. I feel like I should get them on to some storage and make them easier to watch, but not sure if it’s worth the effort or cost.

12/01/2019, 20:35: Had a productive yet restful Saturday, managed to sort out a load of paperwork and do a grocery shop. Lots of my flat feels pretty organised now, but I still have a few black holes that become dumping zones. Those need to be sorted and reviewed.

11/01/2019, 20:38: Had to reset my Apple ID password, now things aren’t syncing in iMessage. Not a good experience.

07/01/2019, 21:42: Took the church youth out bowling this evening, great fun had by all as far as I could tell. Got my best score in a while so I’m pretty pleased!

05/01/2019, 21:42: Over the last year I’ve been using YNAB to help manage my finances. It wasn’t all plain sailing, I had to start fresh on it a couple of times, but it certainly helped me steward my money more wisely. Going into 2018 I had one big goal: get rid of my credit card debt. On 31st December I made the …

05/01/2019, 21:32: My Apple TV seems to have gained some new flyover screen savers, some particularly interesting ones of London and a great one flying over Italy at night.

02/01/2019, 22:34: Nothing quite like a good old fashioned wet shave to relax yourself before bed. Haven’t used my safety razor for a good few months, opting for the speedier electric shaver out of laziness, definitely need to correct that this year.

01/01/2019, 22:20: Really enjoyed using my iPad so much over the Christmas holiday. Left my Mac at home so I wasn’t tempted to work so all I had was my iPad to do anything substantial on, it really is getting very capable, a few holes still to fill though.

31/12/2018, 15:01: @manton @cheesemaker I can’t sign into my WordPress blog in Sunlit on my iPad, crashes each time I put my password in. Known bug?

30/12/2018, 21:36: Trying to decide whether to make any resolutions for the new year or if it’s time to try a different approach. I like the idea of a Rule for Life, might try and find a Saturday in January to spend sometime on it.

25/12/2018, 20:37:  And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. (John 1:14, ESV) Great reminder in church this morning of who Jesus is and why He came. Grateful for a fun day celebrating with my parents remembering such …

24/12/2018, 19:22: Finally finished work for Christmas, looking forward to a week off and a chance to unwind 🍻

23/12/2018, 21:01: Finally got all the presents wrapped.

22/12/2018, 19:17: Nothing like a little snooze on the sofa when you’re feeling a bit under the weather. Not such a big fan of sleeping on your hands and them being numb when you wake up, it’s like having rubber gloves for hands.

19/12/2018, 21:08: Finally got some Christmas cards written. Tomorrow starts the big wrap, after I’ve bought the remaining four presents.

18/12/2018, 20:40: I keep finding myself looking at the Apple Watch a lot lately, something about the Series 4 is making it a much more appealing device than previous versions.

16/12/2018, 23:06: Finished a lovely weekend celebrating my Mum’s birthday with a delicious meal out.

15/12/2018, 23:17: I’m also aiming to find a way of introducing exercise into my weekly routines. I walk a decent amount already, but I need to do more and regain my fitness alongside improving my diet.

15/12/2018, 23:14: Realising I need to get my diet under control, this year I’ve gained weight rather than lost it and it’s mostly through diet. Anyone got any suggestions for quick, low prep, easy meals for one? Also open to suggestions for meal planning methods, whether they are apps or analog, but one thing that I …

08/12/2018, 14:07: I really dislike WordPress paging and custom queries. No matter what I do it never works and it drives me mad.

05/12/2018, 22:18: Put my Christmas tree up tonight and wrapped my Secret Santa ready for the first Christmas work so if the year. Starting to get into the festive mood now, just need to buy some presents, watch Home Alone, and eat some mince pies.

Two States of Perfection: For as long as I can remember I've had a sketchbook on the go. I think I established the habit when I started senior school, but I remember having them back in junior school as well. They’ve been a companion beside me all that time, whether I’ve been drawing, writing, brainstorming, planning, or …

The Blogging Habit: When I first started writing a blog I was 20. It was my first year of university, and I'd somehow stumbled across a couple of random blogs, I'm not entirely sure how, but I know one thing. As soon as I saw them, I wanted one. I dabbled with a free blogger account, and then in my second year at …

17/11/2018, 21:33: Watched the new Coldplay film, A Head Full of Dreams, this evening. Fascinating insight, and a great reminder why they’re my favourite band all these years later. I really hope they continue making albums and AHOD isn’t their last one, despite what Chris Martin keeps saying.

07/11/2018, 16:42: Spent what felt like an age trying to work out why my WordPress query wasn’t working correctly, turned out I’d typed a hyphen instead of an equals. Typos in code can cause so much stress and frustration sometimes.

05/11/2018, 12:57: New slippers have arrived and I am unreasonably excited by this. They look good, they’re very comfy, and they’re warm. I’m pretty sure I should insert some sort of old man hashtag here…

04/11/2018, 21:25: Saw First Man at the cinema this evening. Brilliant film, wasn’t quite prepared for the level of intensity it has, but absolutely engrossing. The only downside, some of the cinematography made me feel a little motion sick at times, but without it the film wouldn’t have worked as well. 🎥

30/10/2018, 18:59: Man alive the new iPad Pro is insane. I’d love to have a play with one of those, just hope that some of the software I need for it to be a viable work alternative arrives soon.

30/10/2018, 18:05: Catching up on the Apple Event since I couldn’t watch it live while I worked today. The new MacBook Air looks great, I wonder if it’s powerful enough to do frontend web design/dev on.

19/10/2018, 22:16: I told Alexa to speak less, not my Echo just makes a noise when I tell it to change my light setting. It’s exactly how it should be, I wish there was a way to make Siri behave the same way in my iPhone/iPad.

15/10/2018, 20:36: Saw my second NFL game in London last night, the first time the Seahawks have been in the UK so the first time I’ve seen them. What a show! Great atmosphere, even up in the sticks where we were sat. #GoHawks #nfluk

11/10/2018, 06:06: Winter is coming. Leaving for work in the dark. I don’t like it.

10/10/2018, 12:24: Thinking about participating in Movember again this year, did it a couple of years ago and with today being Mental Health Awareness day it’s brought it back on my radar.

04/10/2018, 12:01: My turn to be featured on The Scandinavian Coffee Pod on Instagram!

29/09/2018, 19:18: Autumn has well and truly arrived in Cheltenham this week, it’s one of my favourite times of the year. Halloween is the only thing the ruins it, but the crisp sunny mornings, Football, the NFL, and scarves more then make up for it.

29/09/2018, 19:12: Had a good birthday week, although could’ve done without the mega busy Saturday shift in the coffee shop. Finished the celebrations last night with a good evening out to see Rivers & Robots live. Big fan of their new album, and pleased they played some of the older tracks as well.

24/09/2018, 12:00: Ah man, all these macOS app updates are making me want to update to Mojave as soon as it’s available but I don’t want to break anything. #darkmode

29/08/2018, 21:27: Great win for Forest tonight. Hopefully they can push on from there, played really well, solid at the back, and actually took some chances. #nffc ⚽️

13/08/2018, 15:19: Afternoon naps. 👍🏻

12/08/2018, 15:58: Had a trip into the unknown this afternoon, my parents attic. Lot’s of boxes now in the garage to sort, one trip to the tip, and now chilling out watching the football and playing with my blog.

06/08/2018, 18:11: Decided to do a meat free Monday today in an effort to eat more vegetables. Made basil pesto to serve with tagliatelle, French beans, and potatoes. Added too much garlic to the pesto, so I’d avoid my breath for the next few hours… 😷

04/08/2018, 22:23: What’s the best way to handle locations from Sunlit on a WordPress blog?

04/08/2018, 06:54: It’s football day! There’s nothing quite like the optimism of the first game of the season, but this time it feels slightly more like a genuine chance of challenging for promotion. Looking forward to seeing Forest’s first game of the season for the first time since I had a season ticket.

03/08/2018, 18:30: Turns out, that when the UK has a heat wave, in early August it’s impossible to find navy shorts in your size.

01/08/2018, 18:31: Yesterday I moved my podcast setup to Apple Podcasts. Today I tried to listen to a podcast without Overcasts smart speed and I lasted 10 seconds.

01/08/2018, 14:58: There’s something about having the test match on in the background while I work. It’s as if it’s not a proper British summer without a bit of cricket going on while I work.

31/07/2018, 19:33: Having spent some time playing around with Indie Web features on my WordPress blog, I’m now considering moving to a hosted Micro.blog instead.

31/07/2018, 11:16: I’ve been using iCloud Drive for the last couple of years, since it became able to sync desktop and documents. The one thing that has been irritating has been the lack of folder sharing. Debating about using iCloud Drive for my personal files and Dropbox for storing all my design related files …

31/07/2018, 10:50: I managed to lock myself out of my flat yesterday, the perils of front door that locks on close. An awkward phone call to my landlord to arrange getting their spare key, and a kind lift from my church pastor meant I was locked out for 4 hours in total. The technologist in me kept thinking if I had a …

29/07/2018, 22:15: I really enjoyed Le Tour de France this year, it reignited my interest in cycling. Great to have another Brit win it, @GeraintThomas86 has always been one of my favourite riders, so all the sweeter to see him in yellow. #LeTour 🚴🏻‍♂️

28/07/2018, 13:17: The best Saturday lunch times are the ones when there’s a mixed conditions #F1 qualifying session. Desperately hoping a big gun gets caught out.

26/07/2018, 20:17: Two days in a row I’ve fallen asleep on the sofa for an unplanned nap after I’ve gotten home from work. At least from next week my working week should become more sustainable, looking forward to a work week with more days of design work than coffee work.

23/07/2018, 18:05: Took advantage of an offer in the supermarket yesterday to buy a steak. Just had it for dinner. Absolutely delicious. I’ve tried cooking steak in the past and always been a bit disappointed. So pleased I did a bit of research and followed my findings. 👌🏻 #cooking

22/07/2018, 21:59: Discovered this evening that I couldn’t find the key to my bike lock, which is currently locked to two bikes. I’ve now sorted through 2 big boxes of stuff and two drawers of stuff, thrown out a lot of crap and organised everything more logically. Sometimes misplacing things has a big effect on …

22/07/2018, 18:29: Ran out of hay fever tablets a few days ago and thought I’d see how I would be without buying some more. Turns out not so good if this evening is anything to go by, pollen is on an all out offensive. Itchy eyes, itchy nose and all the sneezes.

21/07/2018, 20:18: It’s been a long week. I’m getting too old to be working on my feet for 40 hours and a further 15 building websites. Completely pooped and my body aches. 😴

20/07/2018, 20:37: Slowly moving all my sites over to Sass as I get to them. Contracting to a local studio has really helped me to learn a load of new things that I should’ve learned a while ago.

20/07/2018, 19:56: Spending my Friday evening playing around with my blog and trying out an implementation of Post Kinds. One thing that has always stopped me previously has been that I always find Indiew Web bits a bit clunky looking, so I’m trying to integrate it as stylishly as I can in my custom theme.

17/07/2018, 21:25: Finished the day with the news that a family holiday has been booked for September. Looking forward to having a week away, I’ll be leaving my MacBook at home that’s for sure.

16/07/2018, 21:27: Is it weird that despite it being so hot – and set to continue being so – that I miss wearing trousers. Must be a good month since I last wore any.

14/07/2018, 14:46: No you were the one getting increasingly annoyed and perplexed that a simple CSS rule wasn’t working only to discover that CodeKit wasn’t running.

03/07/2018, 21:23: Thanks to the England game going to extra time my 26 day streak of 10,000+ steps a day ends here.

03/07/2018, 20:56: Man alive that was stressful! Get in England. #worldcup ⚽️

27/06/2018, 16:54: This hot weather we’re getting in the UK at the moment is causing havoc with Touch ID. I’ve never had it fail on me so often.

25/06/2018, 13:31: This is a very interesting article about the influence of Facebook and Google has over society and the unbalanced discourse that has been growing over recent years. It’s been a recurring concern of mine about Micro.blog and the many calls I’ve seen on there for diversity. They have …

22/06/2018, 16:35: Very enjoyable Friday afternoon designing webpages for the studio I’m working for a day a week. Genuinely really enjoying being able to stretch myself on new types of projects and working in new ways.

21/06/2018, 18:48: Whilst it’s been enjoyable having the World Cup on a lot at the moment, the Championship fixtures were announced today. Forest kick off the season to the team my best mate supports, Bristol City. Great way to start the season. #worldcup #nffc

21/06/2018, 18:43: This week has been the first one for years that I’ve spent more time doing design work than I have working as a barista. It’s been so enjoyable, not to mention exhausting, and at times frustrating but here’s to some more weeks like this in the future.

19/06/2018, 21:23: Productive day working on client projects, managed to solve a problem that had been driving me mad and holding up. Always nice when that happens. Finished up my day with dinner at Wagamama’s for a friend who is moving to Spain and then a nice walk to get my 10k steps done.

19/06/2018, 12:25: Been working with a local web design studio the last couple of weeks, they use Sketch so I’ve finally been forced to use it. Giving it a go with one of my freelance clients now, really enjoying it so far.

17/06/2018, 13:47: Made the move back to Apple Music yesterday. Spotify just doesn’t click for me, I don’t find it as nice to use. Apple Music isn’t perfect but it works for me.

14/06/2018, 09:17: It’s World Cup day, a month of football on tv nearly everyday. Looking forward to it! ⚽️ #worldcup

10/06/2018, 21:20: Finishing the weekend with some music, a glass of wine, and Cereal magazine. Great to have a productive and restful weekend in the sun, even if I do have pink arms now… God is good.

10/06/2018, 14:51: Church this morning and then a chance to continue hanging out with my church family in the sun with a church picnic in the park. Lovely way to top up the vitamin D.

09/06/2018, 09:54: Finally got around to using the latest update of Things on my iPad with a keyboard attached. Incredible work.

04/06/2018, 17:17: Back from work in time for the WWDC keynote just in time. This is usually my favourite event Apple do, software has all the exciting things.

03/06/2018, 21:54: Just back from seeing Solo. Enjoyed it on the whole but can’t work out where it fits in the timeline, some bits just don’t line up.

29/05/2018, 11:14: Switched the domain of my blog this morning from philbowell.com to philbowell.blog. Think I’ve managed to transfer everything all ok, and got the redirect working fine. Wondering if there’s a way to only redirect pages beyond the home page. I’d quite like to make the .com a bit of …

25/05/2018, 19:09: Changing the main domain I use for my freelance design work to use philbowell.design. Not sure what to use as my email: phil@ seems like repetition; hello@ seems ok for initial contact but weird for ongoing relationships; desk@ seems a bit impersonal… any suggestions?

25/05/2018, 18:02: Ending the working with a beer to celebrate an exciting email I got this afternoon while watching the Giro d’Italia highlights from today.

24/05/2018, 16:53: Hmmm, this Instapaper thing seems a bit sketchy. Anyone got any replacement recommendations aside from Pocket?

22/05/2018, 17:37: So 1Password just released a new version of their Mac app. Seems like they are really pushing you towards the subscription model, but something about that just makes me feel uncomfortable.

20/05/2018, 20:58: Reflecting back on a really nice weekend. A great balance of time with friends and family, being productive, and time to myself to recharge the batteries. To go with is all we have the arrival of summer with the sun shining and weather warm enough for shorts all weekend.

19/05/2018, 12:13: If there’s one thing Britain does well, it’s pomp and pageantry. Love it. The Royal Family is a massive part of our heritage, so great. Also, it’s so nice to see Windsor again, forgot how nice a place it is and actually am missing that it was just over the road and that I used to go most weekends.

19/05/2018, 11:18: Relaxed start to the weekend meeting my parents for breakfast. Now watching the Royal Wedding before a bit of portfolio work this afternoon.

16/05/2018, 19:44: A couple of weeks ago I decided I was going to try and watch less TV/Netflix in the evening. I decided I’d allow myself an hour or so when I got home from my shift at the coffee shop to unwind and then I’d turn it off and do something productive or useful. Seems to be working pretty well so far. …

12/05/2018, 21:08: You know you have a good friend when they ring for a catch up and when the call ends you realise you’ve been on the phone for two hours.

12/05/2018, 16:48: I don’t know why it never occurred to me before, but mind map apps are excellent ways of visually presenting a site map. I’ve found them really helpful in the last couple of weeks while reviewing site structures and navigation design.

12/05/2018, 16:11: Spent some of this afternoon going through my old design projects and picking which I’m going to include in my new portfolio site. Found a number of old projects which are going to go in there and ordered a cheap – but well reviewed – light box thing to photograph them in.

11/05/2018, 20:57: 9:50pm on a Friday and finally calling it a day. The curse of double jobbing, a 14.5 hour work day. I really wish I was doing design work full time.

10/05/2018, 20:39: Any web development people know why a htaccess rule to change to php 7 is causing the file to download and not execute?

09/05/2018, 20:45: A real pet hate of mine is when someone from a different profession tries to treat me like a tool to execute their design, rather than letting me use my years of experience and the expertise/knowledge I’ve developed in that time. In no other profession would you approach an expert and tell …

09/05/2018, 17:58: Chopped some chillis up to put them in my bolognese which is currently in the oven. Apparently I didn’t wash my hands thoroughly and itched my nose. IT STINGS!

06/05/2018, 21:20: I’ve been an Apple Music user since the beginning, but decided to give Spotify a go for the month. Using my Echo Dot more and more lately and feel like the music elements give it greater utility. Already found a couple of new tracks thanks to Discover Weekly. 🎵

05/05/2018, 22:36: It’s been a long week with a busy final shift today. Looking forward to enjoying the sun over the next couple of days and relaxing a bit. Probably still end up doing some work though…

04/05/2018, 20:58: Since I’m posting to this site with a bit more freedom and making use of post formats such as status and image to do so, I’ve decided to enable comments again. I’m still ironing out some issues with the new theme, but it’s getting there.

04/05/2018, 20:06: Noticed a weird thing with my posts that any likes etc, aren’t showing up. This one would be a good example. Not sure why or how to solve the problem, I have the relevant plugins installed and facepiles enabled but they don’t show.

04/05/2018, 18:20: The Giro d’Italia started today, the first of cycling’s grand tours to start outside of Europe, and it’s in Israel’s capital. Watching the highlights now trying to see if the course goes through any bits of Jerusalem that I’ve been to. Love it. 🇮🇱 🚴🏻‍♂️

Apologies to my Mum (and anyone else who gets notified by email about new posts) for the couple of hundred emails now clogging your inbox after my Instagram photo import. Didn’t think about that before I started. #oops

03/05/2018, 19:19: Giving the new verson of Micro.blog for Mac a go and importing my Instagram archive to the blog since I’m not really using the app much anymore and posting here more and more.

02/05/2018, 21:07: Connected my Echo Dot to my amp and speakers while I give Amazon Music Unlimited a free trial. Probably wouldn’t switch to that service but I do like just being able to start listening to music by speaking and not having to pick up my iPhone or iPad and AirPlaying.

02/05/2018, 16:49: New glasses arrived. Prescription hasn’t changed since the last pair but factory clean lenses still makes it feel like I’ve upgraded to 4K.

The Bulletin Board: I’ve been reading Austin Kleon’s blog since January, I find the way that he speaks about his notebooks and how he uses them very inspiring. Today’s post is about his bulletin board and how he pins images, clippings, index cards, and various other bits to it for inspiration while he is writing a …

30/04/2018, 09:47: Made a few tweaks to the new navigation this morning. Hopefully it’ll actually work on smaller screens now.

29/04/2018, 20:52: Just realised I forgot to optimise the new blog navigation for mobile devices. Too late now, my brain is shutting down, that’ll have to be a task for tomorrow night.

29/04/2018, 20:46: Really nice to see have my parents visit today, makes my flat feel even more like my home when they come to say hello for the day.

29/04/2018, 20:30: Continued to develop the new theme for my blog a bit this evening. Put a bit of navigation in place along with a short intro paragraph. Feels like it’s starting to come together a bit now, although a couple of bits still need some work. Aiming to switch focus to my new portfolio site this …

28/04/2018, 20:12: Turned out that today was an unexpected free one, bar a couple of hours. Enjoyed the chance to work on an idea for a clients website that I didn’t think I’d get to work on for a while. Good to stretch the brain cells with some CSS3 that allows you to do things previously only reserved …

27/04/2018, 22:41: I’ve a photo I took a few years ago from my second trip to Israel that I really want printed and framed. I haven’t been able to find a place that prints large scale photos, anyone got any recommendations?

27/04/2018, 22:38: Always good to enjoy a catch up with old friends over a good burger and a glass of wine or two!

26/04/2018, 20:59: Fed up of opening Mail.app to my inbox where there might be emails despite there being none moments ago, I’ve decided to try an experiment. I just created a mailbox called Zero that when I’ve finished what I’m doing in the app I now click on. The idea is that when I open Mail I’m greeted by a blank …

26/04/2018, 20:04: The curse of double jobbing. A 10 hour shift on my feet all day followed by some late tweaks to a design project after dinner.

25/04/2018, 21:14: Words are important. A single word can mean so much. It can have many meanings depending on context, how you read it, and what your understanding of the word is. More often than not we take a single meaning for a word and apply it broadly across every instance we come across, but sometimes it’s …

25/04/2018, 11:19: Home try on from Glasses Direct arrived this morning. In need of some new sunglasses but the two for one offer is tempting me into replacing my everyday glasses as well.

24/04/2018, 17:44: An extra day of doing design work tomorrow which I hadn’t expected, unfortunately it means I’m working in The Pod on Saturday which is less than ideal.

24/04/2018, 13:41: I genuinely love CSS Grid. Never before has designing something visually interesting and easily responsive for smaller screens been so easy and fun.

23/04/2018, 17:03: I’ve seen several posts on Twitter today commenting that because the media is reporting about the new Royal Baby, we shouldn’t forget about Windrush and NHS funding. The implication that those items are far more important and shouldn’t be sidelined by something like a birth of a …

23/04/2018, 14:07: Really enjoyed working a piece of print design this afternoon. I really enjoy designing and building websites, but there’s something about designing for print that the web doesn’t always meet. Print pieces give a feeling of working on something that’s more substantial and useful when compared to the …

22/04/2018, 20:55: Always fun to try out a new beta for a Micro.blog app. This time Icro from @hartlco, impressed so far.

22/04/2018, 20:44: Also pleased to get the first instance of the new word mark for my name that I’ve been refining over the last month or two out into the wild.

22/04/2018, 20:41: Just to demonstrate my thinking behind getting a very unfinished new theme up on the blog, I’ve already revised and fixed several things. Now it’s a case of clarifying all the broken bits and features and slowly adding them.

22/04/2018, 19:39: The first part of that is a new theme for my blog, or at least the beginnings of one. I’ve been playing around with it for ages, but decided that if I don’t put it on the site I’ll just keep playing and never actually get it to a point I’m happy to use. There are still many things …

Decided that tonight I’m not going to turn the TV on in an attempt to stop myself wasting evenings absorbed in whichever boxset I’m currently watching. I’ve personal projects I want to start, books I want to read, and music I want to listen too.

22/04/2018, 19:46: Another typical Forest performance. Defensively frail at set pieces and didn’t take the chances we created. Story of our season. Thankfully the celebrations weren’t too exuberant, helped by the distant action of an epic thunderstorm midway through the first half. #nffc

23/04/2018, 10:42: Getting ready to watch Nottingham Forest v Cardiff City with a Cardiff supporting friend. There might be need for a celebration agreement before kick off. #nffc

Had a nice start to the weekend enjoying a couple of glasses of wine, catching up on Designated Survivor while hacking away at a new custom blog theme. Aiming to have the theme resolved enough to put it on the site this weekend and then keep iterating from there.

22/04/2018, 19:49: @colinwalker just exploring your method of adding the date to a tile of a status post, does the code in this post go in functions.php?

Such a beautifully sunny day today, sucks to be stuck looking out at it whilst at work, but something about the sun shining brightly is uplifting.

The world is going mad. I’ve just seen a shampoo advert with one of it’s points being that it doesn’t have any gluten in it… what does gluten have to do with washing your hair?

Downloaded Drafts 5 to give it a go. Any hints for a new user?

I haven’t listened to Beats 1 since Apple Music first came out, but today I discovered that Bonobo did a One Mix a while ago and it’s excellent.

Decided to turn off cross posting from my blog to Twitter for microposts. Might look into doing it on a per-post basis, but I’ve found myself posting less and have a hunch that might be what’s behind it.

Shift 4 of 4 today. Really looking forward to a day off tomorrow, it’s been a long week.

Gah, can’t seem to get iOS to post photos to my blog properly.

Very intrigued by the updated iPad with Apple Pencil support. Since it was released the Pencil seemed like it would be a great fit for me as a designer, the iPad Pro has always been too expensive for me to consider but this seems much more within reach for a future purchase.

The more I use CSS Grid the more I wish for the ability to set a baseline in my CSS. It seems like a logical addition since the two are so intertwined in the print world.

Many years behind the curve, but I now have Windows running in Parallels on my Mac so that I can fix a CSS display bug in Internet Explorer.

Forgot to wear my hat to work this morning. I don’t think my ears have ever been colder than they were on the way home from work this evening. This Beast from the East is showing its teeth today. ❄️

Today is the 30th day of posting to my blog in a row. I set myself the challenge to post everyday through February, started a little bit before and here we are. I aimed to post a bit more than a status post each day, but sometimes life happens and that’s ok.

I was going to start a new running programme this week, but with the weather as cold as it is there’s no way that’s happening!

04/05/2018, 19:25: Enjoyed a little trip to Oxford to see Designing English at The Bodleian Library. Good to get out and about a bit on a Saturday, but now time for serious introverting.

On weeks that have felt as long as this one, a glass of wine on the sofa in front of a great film seems like the best way to end it. Tonight’s movie choice, Gladiator. 🎥📺

Netflix has got some brilliant older films on at the moment. Tonight’s viewing while I sorted my online groceries order, Star Gate. Despite seeing it several times before, it’s oddly engrossing! 📺 🎥

Made the mistake of reading Twitters trending topic for Billy Graham. Disgusted by the hate filled posts, but I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.

A bit of late night work done tonight. Probably not the best idea, but sometimes you just have to run with it when focus and flow arrive when you’ve been struggling to find it all day.

It’s Micro Monday on Micro.blog and I figured it was time to share another nomination since its been a few weeks since my last one. This time I’m recommending @EddieHinckle who has excellent taste in books!

Depression is a funny thing. Sometimes, out of no where, it hits you with a bad day and the prospect of doing anything takes a monumental effort.

Pretty sure there was just a minor earthquake tremor in Cheltenham.

Watching some skeleton in the Winter Olympics. They’re absolutely nuts.

Establishing New Habits Without Apps: I’ve been trying to establish some new habits lately so this was a timely post from CJ Chilvers. I’ve been using the app Streaks like he mentions to keep focused on some of my habits, but there is a certain lack of accountability that goes with it. When a big streak gets broken it’s very hard to …

Watched Slumdog Millionaire for the first time this evening. Not sure why it took me so long to see it, really enjoyed it. 🎬

My Secret Battle – a Grief Shared: This week I can across the blog is Simon Thomas. He’s a Sky Sports presenter and a Christian, known by many in the U.K. He lost his wife to cancer in September last year and has been blogging about his grief. This week he shared a post about his Secret Battle with depression and anxiety. It’s a very …

My walk to work this morning was in day light. My walk home from work this evening was in day light. It’s amazing the effect this has had on my mood today. It actually felt like there was still some of the day left when I got home.

Not sure why I’ve never looked into using svg files for logo’s on websites until today. They look so good on retina displays and more economical than multiple image sizes.

Siri has stopped working with third party apps for tasks, it just keeps telling me I need to continue in the app. Driving me mad.

Starting to feel the value in my recent Sunday night routine, emptying inboxes, last bits of tidying up around the flat and then planning my week out. It makes a real difference to my productivity and focus on a Monday morning.

I saw a post from a couple of weeks ago of someone who had compiled all the Micro.blog discover topics but I forgot to bookmark it. Anyone remember where it was?

I’m not sure if it was a good idea or not, but I found an old backup database of my very first blog and have now imported all the posts to my site. It’s now a complete archive of my ramblings going back to August 2005 when I first started.

Looking forward to a relaxing day watching sport. First the North London derby and then England v Wales in the Six Nations. ⚽️🏉

Quantity not quality: There’s an odd pressure when you’re trying to exercise the muscle of discipline, it’s tempting to want everything you do as a part of that to be the best that it can be. Sometimes you need to just push through and exercise that muscle. When you’re starting out, quantity is often more important than …

Decided I’m going to spend a bit of time working on a new design for my blog this weekend. Time to restructure some things and, since I’m posting more often, have a design that’s more reflective of me and my design tastes.

I just discovered that WhatsApp can do bold and italic text with some basic Markdown syntax. Who knew!

Book Budget: I just added a new category in my YNAB Budget under Quality of Life Goals, it’s name? Books. Since I started using Goodreads in 2013 I’ve read 104 books. That’s an average of just under 21 books a year with a low of 17 in 2013 and a high of 34 books in 2016. Clearly I like to read, so it made sense …

After a long tiring week there’s nothing quite like flopping on the sofa with a good book. I usually have a non-fiction and a fiction book on the go, more and more I find myself reaching for the fiction to wind down. Currently reading Red Rising and Quiet. 📚

One thing about building discipline, particularly in the area of posting to a blog each day, is the need for ideas. There’s a similarity between ideas and discipline, in that the more you exercise those muscles the stronger they become.

Email to @culturedcode’s Things is possibly one of their best features yet. The fact it is able to create a link to the email in mail.app makes it incredibly valuable.

Thoughts On Just Turning Up: I’ve been thinking a little more about the link I posted to Austin Kleon’s blog the other day. I finished it with the line Instead there should just be turning up to write down a thought and seeing where it takes you. It’s a sentiment that you hear quite regularly around the Internet these days. …

Last week I moved Tweetbot out the dock on my iPhone and replaced it with Micro.blog. Haven’t looked back since, a much nicer community to interact with. I’m still checking Twitter but mostly for design/sports news.

Thoughts as Nest Eggs: Today when you say “nest egg” many think of money saved and put away, but a literal “nest egg” is a real or fake egg that you put in a nest to encourage a bird or a hen to lay more eggs there. So what Thoreau is saying is that by simply writing down a thought, you encourage more thoughts to come. …

Firefox is becoming my favourite browser to develop websites in. The new CSS Grid layout inspector is excellent, reminiscent of InDesign in its display and so helpful in helping me to understand how the new layout stuff works.

I really like the idea of Micro Monday, kind of like Follow Friday on Twitter but better. For my first contribution I’m suggesting Colin Walker, his posts are interesting and his contributions to the community all warrant a follow.

I’ve seen a few people on Micro.blog using a thing called Quill to post to their sites. Intrigue got the better of me so I’m giving it a try.

Testing out the new @micron Micro.blog app. For a beta it already has some nicer interactions than the official app, just a bit less finesse. Good so far though.

Finally giving MarsEdit 4 a try, I used to use this app all the time. The new version seems really at home on the newer macOS versions.

Today has been one of those design days where everything felt rubbish. Hopefully when I return tomorrow there’ll be something in the pile worth developing.

Sometimes things need to change in order to grow and find new life.

A really interesting time last night at the cupping event with @StudioRoasters and @PodCoffee. If you’re a coffee fan I highly recommend you go to the next one, it’s fascinating.

Woo! Finally. The Seattle Seahawks are playing in London this year. I need to get tickets! 🏈 #GoHawks

Went to bed early to read, on feeling tired I turned off the light to go to sleep. While drifting off my mind wondered to a project I’m mulling over. I now have an idea jotted down and am wide awake.

Might have to give this method of planning your day a try tomorrow and see how I get on.

Can’t quite get over the Nottingham Forest win this afternoon! Such a good all round performance, hope we get a good tie in the next round.

I’m really tempted to move my blog away from WordPress, custom theming it is such a pain and I can never find an off the shelf one that does what I want. I wouldn’t know what to use instead though, nothing is quite as connected as WordPress is.

This first week back at work after a good break over Christmas has been really long and hard. I’m sure most people find it difficult to get back into working, but it’s just felt much harder and more draining than previous years.

Happy New Year folks! Hope 2018 is a good one!

Great stat from my Dad. Today is the only day in history when every adult was born in the 1900’s and every minor born in the 2000’s.

"Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel (which means, God with us).” ‭‭Matthew‬ ‭1:23‬ ‭ESV‬‬ Happy Christmas folks. Hope it’s a day full of joy. Jesus is here!

The holidays. They have begun! 😴

Anyone been through the process of renaming/rebranding their business and able to share some of their experiences?

A day of tax returns and business reviews. Never fun but has to be done. More business review steps to be done, but ideas are forming and change is a foot.

Bought one thing in the Black Friday sales. A domain name ready for new business developments in the new year. All hush hush for now 🤫

A day of conversations today. Potential collaborations in the day and reminders of the awesome supremacy of Jesus in the evening. I thank God for days like today.

Received my first Christmas card in the post today. In November. Ten days before December even starts.

I really need to reasses my weekend so I’m resting better. Not doing anything often feels worse than a full jam packed week.

Enjoyed beginning to look at a design refresh for this blog. Time it had it’s own custom theme and a good chance to start trying out some CSS grid.

I’ve really enjoyed the Micro.blog photo challenge this past week. It’s been fun to have creative challenge totally unrelated to either of my jobs, I already have about four possible photos for the final days topic.

I seem to have inadvertently found myself on a streak of posting to my blog each day. Some small posts like this, some longer, and some photos. Aiming to make it more of a habit to share my thoughts there.

First day of trying to establish a new routine in my evenings that includes setting time aside everyday to read my bible. The quest to find discipline for things that matter is always tough.

Great to spend a bit of time at the end of the day learning more about CSS Grid. I can highly recommend downloading Firefox Developer Edition and following their intro.

Nothing like the internet being out to make you realise just how reliant you are on it.

A Home Screen Update: I used to post a monthly series that looked at the Home Screens of my iPhone and iPad. Over time though I realised it didn’t change as much as I expected and so I lost interest in the process. Things have changed a lot recently so I thought it was time to post another look at my iPhone. A few of …

Podcasts, coffee, and The New CSS Layout. A lovely way to start the weekend after a bit of a sleep in. As a web designer with a print background, this stuff is what dreams are made of.

Realised I rarely sit down to read web articles saved in my Instapaper these days. If I sit down to read, I read a book. Now find I’m saving articles I know need to read to my Things inbox. Odd how behaviours change.

Love the buzz when solving a coding problem that felt like it had me beat. Very satisfying not to have to resort to help requests just by showing a little more patience.

Started playing around with a new child theme for my blog yesterday. Considering mirroring my Goodreads read list in some way.

Good start to the day. A recurrence of my old back pain from about a year ago, just what I wanted.

Obligatory first post from Micro.blog for Mac. Nice to have access to the service from my Mac, just need to iron the issue of my posts not appearing there now.

Privileged to speak to those gathered at church this evening, praying that The Lord was/is at work through those words.

Realised this morning that I have too many websites so I want to simplify. Question, blog and portfolio together or on separate sites?

Didn’t register it was 9/11 until this evening thanks to the way we write the date here (11/9). 15 years on and I can still remember it as clearly as if it was yesterday. Some events live long in the memory.

England really are the most boring team to watch… 😴

Nothing better than having the test match on in the background while sorting out things in the flat.

Nothing like a bit of trouble shooting on the blog to disrupt a relaxed start to the day.

A bacon sandwich and coffee, the best way to start a sunny bank holiday Monday. #dayoff

NEVER change your Apple ID password. Complete hell hole.

Morning meeting in Bristol and then sampled some coffee from Small Street Espresso and Full Court Press. Both excellent 👍🏻👌🏻

I’m gonna be in the centre of Bristol tomorrow, where’s best for #coffee?

One of the apps on my homescreen changed its icon colour. I know need to rearrange everything to make it look visually balanced.

Someone just tried to login to my Apple ID, iPhone alerted me, I’ve changed password and logged out of all other devices. Any other things I need to do?

Wow, these F1 posters are insanely good. Really love the illustration style.

Giving the new My Chill Mix from Apple Music a play this morning. Off to a promising start, the first track is both new to me and good.

Slightly disappointed in myself for letting the release of new Coldplay music pass me by. Making up for it now though.

Using my iPad for some further ideas generation and realising just how useful an iPad Pro and Apple Pencil would be right now.

Decided to go and do some sketch book ideas work in my favourite coffee house. It’s normal quite peaceful and not that many people sitting in. Awesome to see it’s full when I arrive! Good coffee wins.

Looking forward to 3rd party apps with drag & drop support, especially interested to see how @culturedcode do it with Things. Dragging emails to create tasks in Things from Mail.app would be awesome.

Sometimes you just need to spend a Sunday morning reading, listening to music, and drinking coffee. If you’ve never read Mere Christianity change that.

Just posted my first coffee review over on a new side project, Flat white & AeroPress. Fun to do, looking forward to many more.

Apparently it’s world emoji day. Here’s my day in emoji so far… 😴⏰☕️👨🏻‍💻🚶🏻☕️☕️☕️

Interesting evening seeing a friend launch a book he has a short story in and hearing some bits read out.

It’s been a throughly pleasant day of watching sport. The Lions game, the Formula 1 qualifying and the Test Match. The only break being for a nice walk in the sun to treat myself to a flat white. #winning

Also, waiting for name servers to propagate is rubbish. Just let me start my new project idea!

Another heatwave hitting the UK, I could get used to this. Sunshine is so good for the soul. ☀️😎

Been listening to the new London Grammar album thanks to the latest @ugmonk email. Never listened to them before, absolutely top notch. Thanks for the heads up Jeff!

I’ve been using the free trial of @culturedcode’s Things 3 the last week or so. Superb app. Feels like it suits my way of thinking perfectly.

Just cast my vote. #ivoted

Apple are flying through this keynote, not spending much time on features they might otherwise.

Never mind the new iMac Pro, I want that wireless keyboard! I miss the number pad on my current wireless one.

Finally watching the new season of House of Cards.

Walking: Back in January 2015 when I realised I was ill, and consequently started a course of antidepressants, many people encouraged me to exercise. I had been a keen cyclist and they encouraged me to keep at it and get out on my bike as much as I could. I was told, and in fact read many times, that …

Made some updates to my websites theme, the link posts now behave like the traditional linked list items and quotes have a style more befitting them.

Typical British weather, sunny and hot in the build up to a bank holiday weekend then wet and cooler when the weekend arrives.

Love it when the sun is shining, it always lifts my mood considerably. ☀️😎

Waking up to the horrible news from Manchester. Praying for all those effected.

Pushed an update to my portfolio this morning to make it easier to update and more versatile layout wise. Keep an eye on it for updates through the week.

Sat down after work to do a bit of design/coding for my website, all of a sudden it’s well after 10pm!

Decided to try and experiment this week. Alarm clock set to go off at 0730 everyday – including Saturday and Sunday – and iPhone alarms turned off.

Cooked breakfast with a friend and now a day of introverting ahead of me. Hopefully some progress on my personal site and portfolio updates.

Such a busy day, all I want to do is crash on the sofa, watch the football and tinker with my new blog design.

I just discovered it’s Mental Health Awareness Week here in the UK. Mental health is vital, take some time this week to read up on it and the effects it can have on people.

Ended the weekend doing some structural design for a new personal website. Clear categories and hopefully some less noise by using a separate stream for Micro posts and photos. Just a case of trying to get WordPress to do what I want, the weakest part of my skill set.

One thing I’ve still not sorted to help me use Micro.blog is posting from my Mac. iOS is no problem thanks to the app and Workflow but the Mac, no so much.

Work finished for the week. Time to relax, feels like it’s been a long week.

I’ve been looking into some of this Indie Web stuff for Wordpress that I’ve discovered through Micro.blog, seems interesting. This should crosspost to Twitter.

Hey sleep, I’m over here! 👋🏻😕

I just had this or as close a version to it as I could make for breakfast. Absolutely delicious!

I still have no idea what I’m gonna do with my phil.coffee web domain. I want to do something with it though. Anyone got any ideas?

The joys of bank holiday Monday working in the coffee house. Two and a half hours to go.

In other news, I’m getting a new bed today! Hoping to get my flat all sorted at last, now that all the big events are done.

Slow morning after a fantastic day yesterday celebrating the marriage of @timwallace89 and @svjones02. Congratulations to the new Mr & Mrs Wallace, enjoy your honeymoon!

Big day today for @timwallace89! So excited, honoured and frankly terrified to be best man today. #wedding #wallacejones

No, you’re having your fourth cortado of the day… slow lunch in the coffee house makes coffee drinking all the more tempting.

Excited to have my invite to Micro.Blog through. Just getting everything all set up.

Great start to the day, got my car back repaired from the garage. A couple of bonus things fixed as well!

Found myself randomly searching available web domains. Discovered phil.coffee was available for £3. I now own it.

Just spending the morning learning how to shorten my trousers using Mum’s sewing machine. A nice sense of accomplishment.

He Is Risen!:  Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?” John‬ ‭11:25-26‬

Finishing a largely glorious weekend watching The Masters, engrossing. Come on Justin Rose!

Picked up the keys to my new flat. Excited to see what God will do as a new chapter starts. Let the gradual move begin.

On a somewhat related note, Safari on iOS is very aggressive at caching.

Nothing like a bit of late night Wordpress troubleshooting to solve not being able to sleep.

[gallery size=full columns=1]

Thoughts and prayers with those in Westminster who were targeted in the attack. Also with the family and friends of those who have died.

Dentist stage one complete. Now to wait for the numbness to wear off and then eyes on wisdom tooth extraction on Monday.

Massively enjoyed writing my sermon on my iPad this morning. Ulysses and the Microsoft Universal Mobile Keyboard are an excellent match.

Four weeks in. Five books read. Three novels, one biography and one design theory. Next up, a novel and a Christian theology book.

New web project with a chance to play with columns. Did we really go for column-gap over gutter?

Trying to find a font, seems like the Typekit website could do with a couple of coffees…

Joined the world of Fitbit today with some Christmas money and a discount. Anyone else use one? I need some competition!

Backed my first ever Kickstarter yesterday. Really intrigued by micro.blog and how it can effect micro blogging.

First day of my Christmas holiday, a much needed rest over the next 10 days.

Star Wars time.

Shaved off the moustache yesterday, feel like myself again. Top lip was a bit cold though.

The camera on the iPhone 7 really is excellent, to the point that I haven’t even considered using my old DSLR for anything.

I really dislike the last week of October. It feels like every shop, website, and tv show becomes obsessed by Halloween.

I can’t help but feel like the only useful thing on this new MacBook Pro Touch Bar is the Touch ID sensor.

I still get excited by Apple events over ten years after I started following them. The possibilities new tech provides is exciting.

Been on Twitter all evening with Apple Supprt since the iOS 10.1 app broke the Health app. Nothing seems be fixing it, now being escalated.

Back at work again after a week off due to my back. Spent a lot of the week reading and automating. Workflow is amazing.

I’ve a feeling it might be time to move on from Fever to another RSS engine. Any recommendations for me?

I guess may blog challenge has kind of failed. Stupid depression.

Absolute disaster. Brewed a coffee and then saw then time, might not be time to enjoy it. Tasting notes include pineapple and I could smell it as I ground the beans.

Depression Days: Sometimes a day hits you when things that are normally easy to do become the hardest things. I mean simple things like getting out of bed, going downstairs and making a coffee. That's the nature of depression. When it happens you have to find ways of getting through because giving in to it can be …

The Desire to Tinker: The desire to tinker is strong in this one. I have this problem when it comes to my blog. The more I start to post to it, the more I want to tinker. The more active I am on the site, the more I notice little things I don’t like and want to fix. The more I post to it, the more I want all my internet …

After a good day celebrating the wedding of two friends yesterday, today calls for some serious introverting.

Permission: At the start of last week I set myself the challenge to blog everyday between then and the end of the year. Yesterday I didn't manage to post to this site, in some people's eyes I've failed the challenge already. Maybe I have, but it's not going to stop me carrying on. These types of challenges are …

Starting to gain some interest in the Rio Olympics, might be something to do with the track cycling finally starting. Nothing like the prospect of some British success to pique your interest!

Got so frustrated with my iPhone I spent the morning resetting and restoring it from backup. All of a sudden I have 5GB of space on it!

I’m three days into my new blogging challenge. Enjoying having the extra creative outlet so far.

What Do You Write About?: I know what you’re thinking. It’s only the second day of the challenge I set myself, to post to my blog everyday from now until the end of the year, and already I’m asking the question of what do I write about. I would imagine it’s a familiar story to anyone who’s decided to undertake such a …

The 2016 Blogging Challenge: I've written 442 posts on this site. The first one was written on 17th January 2011, that's five and half years ago. It equates to around 80 posts per year and about 1.5 posts per week. It's not bad going, but it could be better. During those times there's been many spells of inactivity and many …

I had the pleasure of preaching this morning in a small chapel that my church supports. It wasn’t until the end that I saw this sign was on the wall behind the over head screen. When I saw it I was instantly struck by what it declared. Immanuel, God with us. The small group of people that were …

03/05/2018, 19:28: As I was leaving the coffee house this evening something made me look up, this was my view. As I snapped the photo I was reminded of something I once said to the student group at church. It was a small phrase to remind them and prompt them to keep their life in perspective. Look up, look back, look …

Having one of those nights where I can’t sleep. Might be related to the espresso martini I had this evening…

If Adobe were to release a full blown version of Illustrator for iPad Pro I would genuinely sell my iPad Air 2 and buy a Pro. Just spent an hour revising a logo design using Bez and some custom fonts and thoroughly enjoyed myself.

Nothing quite like an afternoon revising and realigning your blog design. When I don’t do my own creative projects, I forget how much I need that time.

I’ve been having email issues on my Mac with Mail.app lately. Not staying connected or able to connect without restarting, decided to give Airmail a try on all my devices.

This week has felt very admin-y, lots of numbers and paperwork, looking forward to spending some time doing some creative bits tomorrow.

It seems to be a day for securing usernames and domains. Just need to the Twitter handle now.

I just secured 18TWO.com. Now the question is, do I stick with .co.uk as the main domain or switch to .com?

The sun is out, the sky is blue, the evenings are lighter. Nothing like a bit of good weather to keep you relaxed after a break. Praise God!

Very proud of my Dad who lead his church through a Passover Seder tonight for the first time. Throughly enjoyed it.

Hello 6 days of holiday, how nice it is to see you! Time for a bit of much needed rest and relaxation, my battery feels pretty flat.

Always good to return to an idea you worked up for a personal project and still think it works.

Also, really enjoying having Ulysses on my iPhone. I can imagine with 3D Touch it would be more powerful as a starting point for all writing.

Finally got a solid idea out for a new personal side project the other night, now all I want do is work on it!

Amazing how a nice sunny day improves your mood, even if it’s tinged with disappointment of not being outside to enjoy it.

I guess the definition of a productive week is one when you meet two deadlines and hardly engage in social media.

12 hour work days really aren’t fun. I guess that’s the price I pay for having two jobs…

Genuinely excited for Ulysses for iPhone to arrive.

Productive mornings are always very energising, even if you feel tired. Always good to make progress on projects early on.

Great day of fellowship in the countryside with the church 20/30’s group today.

Decided to add a little twist to my Now page and track things on it I’ve successfully focused on.

Finally got my sermon for tomorrow night written. Just final tweaks left while I practice tomorrow afternoon.

Nothing like a phone call to a great friend to bring a bit of clarity to some sermon preparation.

My housemate just decided to put some old school music on. He started with Sing by Travis, a song which came out while I was doing my GCSE’s. I am officially old.

Five weeks into the year and I just finished my fourth book. Apparently I’m reading a lot at the moment.

I’m finding that iOS, or my iPad, is the best place to write for my site. Whether it’s a link post or longer, it’s way easier than my Mac.

My third generation Apple TV is turning in to my most used tv box, makes me wonder about the new ones…

I don’t like the idea of giving Google the ability to track all the things I do, but I have to admit, there’s something oddly cool and appealing about Google Now.

A darkened room, four bibles, a book, a notebook and Ulysses. That’s my evening. An hour or two of sermon preparation.

One Twelfth: We’ve done it. All of us. Good job everyone. We’ve made it through January and we’re into February. I always find January a bit of an odd month, it’s full of the initial hopes and dreams of the year ahead, yet it’s a hard slog. We spend the first week getting back into the swing of things, the …

The weeks when Cortex, Canvas and Serial aren’t published sure make for boring podcast weeks. If only they could get together and time the weeks off to alternate with each other.

Just got back from seeing The Revenant at the cinema. Incredible cinematography and engrossing film, not one I’ll rush to see again.

I’ve been using @Ulyssesapp on my iPad since the start of the year, really great app. Looking forward to it turning Universal.

Holocaust Rememberence Day: Today marks the 71st anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, a place which is known world wide for the atrocities that our Jewish brothers and sisters faced during the Second World War. Atrocities that I didn't know the depth of fully until I visited Yad Vashem in Jerusalem on my first …

Also great to be able to post an article completely from my iPad, including having to alter some theme files to make things display correctly.

Great to get a “proper” blog post out tonight for the first time in months. It’s a start and hopefully the first of many.

Got myself sorted with a new Workflow to post links to my blog from my iPad and iPhone. In fact Workflow is very impressive.

My little studio/design den/home office is all tidy and ready for the week ahead. Need some better book storage though.

What. A. Win! #coyr #nffc

Bought my Now TV Sky sports day pass in preparation for #nffc vs #dcfc tonight. Come on you reds!

Finally dismantled two old Macs to retrieve the hard drives and get rid of the rest. iBooks are stubborn devices though.

It really baffles me why people like to celebrate evil when there is so much more to be discovered in the light.

Ugh, I forgot about Jaja Binks.

Might be watching Star War episode 1… want to watch them all before the new one is out.

I have all the sneezes! 😕😷

It seems my old Apple Display just died. Time to begin researching a new external display. What’s everyone using these days?

Interesting read. Who knew “sharenting” was a thing… ift.tt/1MdpsXo

Was also advised not to charge my phone over night to make it last longer. Never heard this before.

Had a play with an iPhone 6s today, 3D Touch works very well. Looking forward to being able to upgrade.

Let me make a note of that: Ever since I got my first iOS device, a 2nd generation iPod Touch, I've been on a quest to work out the best way to take notes. I've tried a shed load of different apps, Simplenote, Evernote, Notesy, the built in notes app, NVAlt… in fact if you can name it I've probably tried it. I've always read …

A bit of late night design work done and now time for an episode of The Newsroom before bed.

Nothing like starting the morning with a Git Pull Request. #winning #progress

Praying for the peace of Jerusalem this morning.

Recently moved all my design projects into Trello. Works as my digital job board and connects with the visual ordered way my brain thinks.

Excellent! Three more #nffc games on tv, love it! #coyr!

On a related note. I’m getting seriously fed up of having a 16GB iPhone. Seem to now get a daily alert about full storage.

Gah! Just accidentally deleted Twodots and all its game centre data. Sad times

Slowly getting used to my new morning routine of waking at 7 regardless of the day.

Well the Aussies have just been better. Too many individual errors from England.

After catching up on Bake Off it’s time ti catch up on Grand Designs while I fall asleep on the sofa… 😴

Just caught up on Bake Off. @florashedden should not have gone home, disagree entirely. First time I’ve disagreed as well.

Enjoying @tweetbot 4, especially like the stats view, even if it does remind me I haven’t tweeted much today.

Pizza, red wine and kettle chips. That’s what I call a good Friday night after a long day!

Already learnt 2 new things today. 1. It’s #LincolnshireDay. 2. Lincolnshire has a flag!

Great little coffee animation! vimeo.com/139500258

Didn’t know this: Low Power Mode all the time. It automatically turns itself off when you charge the battery up to 80% or higher

The iOS 9 lower power mode should auto turnoff when you connect to a power source.

Fun to wake up to see a happy birthday video from my goddaughter!

Society has a real alcohol problem when charities use ideas like going a month sober to raise money.

Just realised it means I have to redo all my mutes on hashtags. Ugh.

Decided to give Twitterrific a bit of a run for my Twitter client on iOS.

iOS 9 seems to have settled down now. Zipping along quite speedily.

Can now access the share sheet from Mail iOS 9. At last an easy way to get things into OmniFocus from my iPhone.

Also, where’s the News app?

Installed iOS 9 on my 5c, so far it seems very slow and laggy.

Guys, guys! Pay attention. Inbox zero!

Suddenly wishing I was back in Jerusalem again. Such an amazing place.

Reminded tonight that one year ago today I was baptised by my Dad in the River Jordan.

Clapped and got a fly that’s been annoying me for ages. #ninja

Ugh, feel rough. Cold is properly taking hold this morning.

You can’t beat coffee brewed with freshly roasted beans.

Another tee that should probably be in my wardrobe… cottonbureau.com/products/…

This is probably a tee I should own… https://cottonbureau.com/products/death-before-decaf?utm_source=cottonbureau&utm_medium=display&utm_content=hero-ad&utm_campaign=death-before-decaf

It’s probably not a good thing when you’ve got a headache in the middle of the afternoon and decide to have a coffee later than you normally would, only for the headache to go after drinking it…

This is very clever. Might have to give it a try. medium.com/@richarms…

Started using Trello to track a large project. Now finding myself using it more and more.

Turkey-stuffed peppers for dinner tonight. Only been in the oven 10 minutes and they already smell amazing!

This is interesting: www.fiftythree.com/coming-so… iPhone 6 Plus and Mac is ever more appealing, instead of iPad, iPhone and Mac.

I figured since I’ve enjoyed growing some tomatoes, peppers and lettuce in the garden it’s time to try more veg. Plus a new hobby.

Not sure if it’s a good idea, or how long it will take to get one, but just applied for an allotment near my house.

If you’re a telesales person ringing me unsolicited, you can at least be polite and not bulldoze over me. Especially when I’m on TPS.

Another evening by myself so watching Fortitude and ploughing through my Instapaper.

Very lame, you can only buy a .uk domain if you own the corresponding .co.uk, .ork.uk or .me.uk.

I really like the concept of HealthKit but it’s still got some big bugs/reliability issues.

Is there a special dance I have to do to get @Lifesum to import work outs from the Health app?

Valuable lesson. Make sure to take your fountain pen out your pocket when you sit down at your desk…

4pm on a Monday and I’ve cleared my task list for the day. Haven’t been out the house yet though…

Typical. I go out and water the garden, get back in sit down on the sofa and it starts to rain.

Finishing off a nice relaxing afternoon with a glass of wine, blog post writing and The Bourne Identity. Nice and relaxing.

Survived a hot and tough training session and got home in time to see England win the Ashes.

The football season is underway! Come on you Reds! #nffc

Tip for you… don’t rub your eye after you’ve been handling chilli’s…

Great to have done a bit of alfresco working at Whole Foods. Nice change of scene.

Curry and beer. Nice way to end a long day of work.

Does anyone use a joint task list with clients? If so how, which service and does it work well?

Just seen the cricket score! I missed a heck of a first 7 overs.

Great to be beta testing the #HeReadsTruth app. Been looking for a new reading plan for my morning quiet times, so it’s come along at just the right time. #ThankTheLord

Managed to find a database of an older version of my blog. Now have posts going back to January 2011, need to do some tidying up though.

I really wish I had got all the posts I’ve ever written at the various blogs I’ve had over the years. Must have some backups of them somewhere…

It’s been insanely windy today, really hoping it dies down a bit before football training this evening.

If you were going to go on holiday in September where would you go?

Anyone know if there is a way to set the Post Format from Byword when publishing to a Wordpress blog?

Got some tomato fruit growing on my tomato plants! The first time I’ve grown them and they’re appearing, as are the sweet peppers.

Notts County Manager: Sign all the players! Chairman: All of them? Manager: ALL THE PLAYERS!

Great afternoon out in sun with friends and food. New watch mark on my arm though…

Although I realise for someone who’s been on Twitter as long as me, it’s not that many.

Just noticed I’m rapidly approaching 10,000 tweets! That’s a lot.

I think I’m starting to use the ellipsis a little too often…

Becoming increasingly aware of how important it is to own my own content on the web these days. It’s my stuff, not advertisers.

Great to see some old uni hall mates today. Can’t believe it’s almost 11 years since I first met them.

Extra organised this week… The Week in Links post already scheduled for publication tomorrow so you’ll be able to enjoy it with your breakfast tomorrow.

Relaxed time with my parents in their caravan. Good to get away from work for a night.

Ideas, Time Traveller, Maker, Path or Grass. What should be my next @baronfig Apprentice?

Noticing a number of websites have flickering type on my Mac over the last couple of weeks. Very weird.

I have a feeling today is going to be a coffee fuelled one. Lots todo, not enough to time to do it…

No news app on iPad 2. That’s sad…

Living on the edge… decided to install the iOS 9 beta on my ancient iPad 2 to see if it’s any quicker.

Typical, it waits until I’m in the car park at the supermarket before absolutely lashing it down.

Everytime I’m on the brink of falling to sleep I hear a noise that jolts me to my senses and I’m wide awake again.

TypeTogether really do make stunning typefaces. I’m finding they’re increasingly becoming my go to type foundry.

Been intrigued by the notion of microblogging on my own domain and then posting to Twitter. Blog post coming soon.

Could really do with a Do Note app for the Mac. Finding it works really well for u distracted tweeting.

Good end to the working week hanging out with @timwallace89 and @svjones02 over BBQ food and beer!

Interesting read, MPs not giving themselves a pay rise. It’s been decided for them and there’s no way of refusing it. ift.tt/1K6XqzP

I don’t like doing it too often, but since finished work I’ve done nothing. Can barely keep my eyes open, time for bed.

Pretty close call, wonder how fast he was going… ift.tt/1TDX6vI

So the new iPod touch matches the iPhone in 3 of its colours. Should we expect pink and blue iPhones in the autumn?

The longer I work for myself, the more inclined I am to look for smaller businesses to shop from.

Another #BuySmall suggestion for @ugmonk, really dig the style of this brand. shop.ugmonk.com

As a small business owner I Love the idea of #BuySmall! No better place to start than @baronfig… www.baronfig.com

Nice to end the day out in the garden. Lawn mowed and fed, tomatoes and sweet peppers growing well. Even the rocket is starting to appear.

Woohoo! Fixed the cup holder in my car!

Any suggestions as to where I can buy some #coffee beans in #Cheltenham until Whole Foods fix their machine?

Yay autocorrect! Who’s Food is of course meant to be Whole Foods…

Disaster! Who’s Foods coffee roasting machine is out of action and I’m out of beans!

“Are we capable of letting creativity born out of boredom take place?” Bored

Bored: I wonder how often the phrase I'm bored… came out of your mouth as a child? I know it crossed my lips a fair few times, during my years at primary school. As I grew older the phrase appeared less and less, in fact I can't remember the last time that phrase crossed my lips and I don't recall it ever …

Really like the new @baronfig Confidant, haven’t stated my Maker Edition yet though, not sure I can justify another one.

In serious need of this mornings ☕️.

Just another test…

Just trying something out.

Building: I'm great at making statements and promises about things that I want to do. It's easy. I think of something I wish to do, decide there and then a means by which to do it, then post to my blog declaring it in the public domain. In principle it’s a good tactic. The public declaration should be …

Rediscovering the Personal Site: It's been an interesting start to the year to say the least, but one positive from it has been the renewal of my interest in both my own blog and the blogs of others. I've been reading blogs, or personal sites would probably be a more accurate term in 2015, since I came across them in my second year …

Thirty Things I've Learned in Thirty Years: When the year turned 2014 I began to reflect on my life, who I am, where I am and what I'm doing. Why should a simple year change cause such a mood to dawn on me? At the end of September I turned 30, it also happened to mark the 10 year anniversary since I left home and moved to university here in …

The One Where I Announce I'm Now Self Employed: There are some posts you dream about writing, posts you'd love to write but never think you actually will. This is one of those posts. A few weeks ago I wrote a post about change. Changing the way I approached something has lead to exciting guidance and a big change in my career. It started with a …

Change: For the last few years I've been praying about something. I'm sure many of you have as well, but this particular thing has occupied my prayers for several years. I've been praying about it in the same way for pretty much the entire time, asking for guidance and direction in relation to the thing. …

Reading Stories, Food for the Imagination: I work as a graphic designer. Like many other folks in my profession I find it hard to turn off. I may not be thinking about projects from work all the time, but I'm always thinking about projects I'd like to do or reviewing the things I see all around me. I see every piece of design and mentally …

Wecloming 2012 and Setting a Few Targets: It's that time once again when many people are posting reviews of the year just passed. I always enjoy reading these posts, seeing the people I follow who have achieved all that or more than they hoped to whilst hoping those who didn't are able to in the coming year. I'm always drawn to writing …

Motivation: These days, I'm sure like many, my primary source of reading material is via the internet, or more specifically my feed reader. There's a lot of great content out on the web and filtering out the cruft to get to it can be a bit of a mission. We are bombarded with information clamouring for our …

Starbucks style Coffee: Nothing quite like coffee in a Starbucks mug. It’s best if the coffee in it is from Starbucks, but I like drinking coffee at my desk with my Feed Reader as my reading material. Lucie’s parents got me a Starbucks gitfcard for Christmas as well, I’m sensing a trend here! A good one …

Happy New Year!: I’m a bit late to the party, but I wanted to wish everyone a Happy New Year!

New Years Eve: Just for fun I shall be taking part in Micheal Heillemans idea. I will take a photo of myself with however I am with every 3 hours. Will be interesting to see how everyone celebrates NYE.

3rd Place Playoff: This is a very weird sensation. I am just watching the 3rd Place Playoff in the world cup and, I think, for the first time ever I want German to win. Mainly because I don’t want the Portugese and Ronaldo to win. All the same its weird.

Google fun!: Ok, so I’m bored. I resorted to googling my name, Phil Bowell, and guess what?? This website is the first and second links to come up!! Woo!!!!

A Quick One.: I’ve just discovered some of my friends have got blogs!! Well actually one of them. She goes by the names of Names!! I alos at somepoint have to work out how to up-grade my wordpress installation as there is a new version out with some securtiy fixes in it.