Ross's Micro Blog

Good grief my Mac is slow after the Mojave update. Used to wake from sleep in seconds. Now takes a minute or two. BUT battery life while sleeping seems longer. Is “deeper sleep” a feature?

Genuinely curious – does having an orange flashing light actually mean that no road laws apply, as this guy who’s 95% blocking a crossing at a busy and dangerous junction suggests?

Been neglecting the Micro blog, so maybe need a splurge of posts…

But also:

My goodness, it’s easy to make a geocaching-/Pokemon Go-type location check-in game.

And:

How on earth do other game (and fitness app!) makers prevent cheating by geeks? Do they encrypt/encode API requests or something? How does no one cheat at Strava?

CONS:
Not everyone (especially young kids) has smartphones and can play
Easy to cheat (esp if you’re a techie like me!)
Lack of physicality when tapping

It would still make for a good ongoing competition between adults, but the school thing would be lost.

Lunchtime thinking: I have a nearly complete front-end for a virtual Beat the Street clone. But building it has made clear the pros and cons of the virtual game idea.

PROS:
Low cost (to run it)
Little infrastructure
More flexible boxes (put them wherever you like!)

My son has made a book. Well, he’s made several. He wants to publish this one. It’s on a topic that ONLY he is enthusiastic about. What he’s made is INCREDIBLE for a 6 year old, but how to tell him it wouldn’t be published without making it sound like it’s rubbish?

A little write up of my tinkering with Geolocation APIs and seeing how hard it would be to build a “virtual” Beat the Street game:

https://rosswintle.uk/2018/09/beat-the-street-virtual-tinkering/

School homework task: “Write a silly story using 10 of your Year 1 common exception words”

Just 10? This is harder than it seems.

How about:

“They once said ‘come here’. Today my house is full!”

👍

People: Do you like the new MailChimp re-design?

Me: I’m the kind of person that looks for clothes with re-inforced knees, sturdy pocket linings and that are non-iron and machine-washable at 30. It still has lists and campaigns. It still sends emails. So it’s all good. 😉

Yay! I did it!

✅ At least 1 kid all day
✅ Both school runs
✅ Little one napped (eventually)
✅ Swim class at 4pm
✅ Everyone fed evening meals
✅ Solo double bedtime (!!!)

I know this is a normal day for many people. But it’s a personal triumph for me as an individual!

I wonder what happens if two people with Gmail just keep using the suggested responses. Would the conversation actually go anywhere?

Helpful IT Notice: Emails with your password in! 😱

https://rosswintle.uk/2018/09/product-ideas/

(Not so) Silly product ideas I have bouncing around in my head:

* The “Bottle Brush”
* The Multi-Lock for Bikes
* 2FA for online and card-not-present bank transactions

Free ideas – someone go make them!

https://rosswintle.uk/2018/09/product-ideas/

Wow. Such a busy week. I’m totally flagging today.

But then I’m the guy that has this crazy idea that congestion is caused by a combination of finite road network capacity and too many vehicles.

🤷‍♂️

I find it bizarre that the council ask the public what they think of solutions to traffic congestion. We don’t have survey data. We don’t have modelling software. I assume the traffic planners do? Can’t we make expensive decisions based on data rather than guesswork and opinion?

Oooh. Email spam with a valid-but-very-old password quoted in it. Interesting. That’s gonna freak a LOT of people out!

Well this was better. Rice flour really did help my issue of the dough getting stuck to the proving basket. Plus I used a less-dampntabke when shaping. Now need to work on the rise a bit! #sourdough

Late, but here’s my summary of last week in projects, posts & pins.

Featuring useful WordPress plugins & resources, a journal for kids’ wellbeing, a post about job titles 🙄 and useful tips for website owners.

https://rosswintle.uk/2018/09/the-week-17th-september-2018/