Author: Ross Wintle

The problem with someone like me being ill is that you sit in bed reading the Whole Internet and being filled with ideas for things you want to do but really don’t have energy for right now.

My todo list has exploded!!

I like @kev’s Pen Pals idea: https://kevquirk.com/penpals

(Apart from the conversation being public)

Anyone want to exchange emails for a month? Seems like a good way to connect with some new people!

Tried out Arc’s search app yesterday. What a strange thing! Not sure what to make of it. Seems to be good at a very limited subset of search types.

But also… will people end up paying for the scraper AI and not rewarding the content creators?

That seems weird. But then… how different is this to what Google search does these days?

Woke up thinking I felt a lot better. (And relative to yesterday I do!) But then stood up and walked about ten paces and…

nope…

definitely still fighting Covid.

I also wrote up a cheeky bit of Facebook scraping I did with JavaScript at the weekend to get birthdays to put in my non-Facebook calendar.

I don’t know if this is useful to anyone else. But seemed good to make a note of.

https://rosswintle.uk/2024/01/scraping-birthdays-from-facebook/

Proper finished off my write up of my new little mic setup for Zoom calls. Not happy with the writing but…

Key points:
– I realised my sound was awful on Zoom calls
– My ideal setup involves no software, is portable, and eliminates as much background noise as possible.
– I settled on a wireless clip-on lavalier mic.
– And it’s a great little gadget!

https://rosswintle.uk/2024/01/audio-gear-portable-mic-for-noisy-room/

From my sick bed we have just watched the final episode of BBC’s Ghosts having only started watching it a few months back.

What utterly delightful TV! Wholesome, quaint, funny, wise. OK the production values aren’t blockbuster-level, but we’ve enjoyed it so much.

I’ll miss them all.

Well THAT was a very lucky guess… #Wordle

Wordle 954 3/6

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I often wish I had stayed in an industry where building software carefully was paramount. (I worked in safety-critical software for a while)

It seems I’m unable to skip on thoroughness.

Standards and automation is what fixes this, but you have to bake it in from the beginning.

Otherwise you have to slow down in the short term to speed up in the long term.

And if your goal is always to move fast, you’re stuck! Which makes you (well, me) slow in the short term and even slower in the long term.

Tax return done. Taxes paid. Quite a lot this year.

✅ Healthcare

✅ Social care

✅ Education

✅ Roads and transit

✅ Foreign aid

✅ Emergency services and police

✅ Environmental agencies

✅ Arts and culture

Yay for contributing to society!! 😃

I have a real issue with statements like “If [the regulation] is anything like GDPR it’s really going to stifle innovation.”

GDPR protects people!

Innovation does not require privacy-invading tracking and complete freedom to do what you want with people’s data.

It’s like saying “seatbelts stifle innovation” or “food safety standards stifle innovation”.

True innovation would be making the new things while respecting privacy so that GDPR isn’t even an issue!!

Interesting UK job working for Justice Digital. Might be a good fit for someone. Python / Go / PHP (“or similar” 🤷) plus some front-end and SQL experience.

Full-time/part-time/flexible working. 24 month contract.

https://www.jobtrain.co.uk/justicedigital/Job/JobDetail?jobid=206

To be clear: I love strong types. I think they make code WAY more understandable, robust, and you get static analysis and autocomplete!

But strict strong types on a code base that you don’t 100% own in a dynamic language is gonna bite you.

So JSDoc is a really nice, pragmatic enhancement. (And it avoids a build step!! 🙌)

It’s interesting that there’s more chatter about using JsDoc instead of TypeScript these days.

I hear it on podcasts. I see it in social posts. It seems it’s “a thing”.

So here’s what I’ve found:

If you’re going _strong_ types you gotta go all in. This is hard when you’re pulling in dependencies as you’re not in control.

So you either:
– build from scratch
– use a language that is strongly typed throughout
– or: consider types pragmatic enhancements

Otherwise you’ll be fighting!!

The Syntax FM chaps are under Sentry now so SURELY they know their site is totally broken if you have ad blockers?

Surely?

Some more little improvements to my notes app overnight:

– A changelog
– An about page
– Show modified dates
– Show last saved time (this may be annoying/distracting)
– Order notes by descending last save time

So fun to work on. Desktop and Chrome/Chromium only (for now).

https://notes.veryuseful.app/

This is an important 5 minutes of audio. Y’all should listen. Taps into so many thoughts I have about playfulness and embracing your own character.

https://thedaily5.xyz/s2/18

Thanks, @aurooba !!

P.S. This is 5 minutes of excellent audio wisdom EVERY day. Highly recommended!

Popped over to Twitter the other day. Kinda can’t believe how many people are still over there sailing on Elon’s ship.

It’s their choice. I respect it. But with ALL that happened it’s just surprising to me.

My weekend-project Notes app now has some… err… design? And the ability to archive notes.

Still not mobile friendly (may never be).

Discovered the file writing API is not in Safari. 🙁

But… actually used for notes at work today. Perfect!!

https://notes.veryuseful.app/