Phil Bowell

It’s so cold today I’m actually considering going to buy some thermals… it’s almost 11am and it’s still frozen outside.

Followed a few accounts from Bluesky in Micro.blog. Going to see how that goes and then I’ll probably delete my Bluesky account. Essentially I just want one place to go to see all things non-RSS.

Barry Hess in a post about the state of his task manager makes the point that he is DDoS’ing himself with To-dos and Reminders. Essentially there is so much stuff in his task manager and he has lost trust in the way it works to ever see the right things at the right time.

I feel his pain. I have been bouncing around task managers for, at least, the last 6 months trying to find a way that works for me to see what I need to do at the right time. It feels that the biggest issue for me, is that as work dials up its corporate security it becomes harder to wrangle all the incoming jobs in one place. Tasks can be assigned to me in at least three different pieces of software, none of which are able to be integrated. On top of this I have the tasks coming in from chats and meetings, plus keeping track of and breaking down all the tasks into chunks that make them doable.

All of this leaves me with a constant feeling of overwhelm. There’s too much to do and no enough time to do it. There has to be a better way…

Three days into the new year and I’ve already finished a book. In what has become a bit of an annual tradition, my Dad bought me the newest Jeremy Clarkson, Diddly Squat: Home to Roost and I’ve finished this one in 2 days. If I’d have started earlier yesterday it likely would’ve been done in one sitting. 📚

Gah, was looking 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.

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 understand the other’s limitations without learning how to do it themselves. And—in my opinion—you can more easily push the limitations without learning it.

I agree with this and it has been my experience as well. I can code html and css, but the developers I work with on a daily basis are far more skilled than I am. On the occasions where I’ve ceded to their wisdom we’ve ended up with a finished product that’s not quite as good as it could be. In contrast, the time when we’ve worked together to arrive at something closer to my design, we’ve ended up with a finished product that is better than what I created originally. When I’ve pushed them to see how close they can get to something I’ve designed, they’ve discovered that they can do more than they thought and then those new techniques have fed my designs and refined them further.

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.