I’ve been flying under the radar for the last couple of weeks due to circumstances beyond my control. Now that everything is settling back to normal, I can follow my usual plan and get a few things back on track.

I spent the better part of a day preparing a section of the garden for the new greenhouse. Now, I’m reaping the benefits of a hard day’s work by chilling on the couch with a rum, watching golf, and doing some Rails coding on my MacBook.

@vincent, I think that's why I am finding it confusing. I'm coming at it from an existing codebase perspective and would like to use DigitalOcean for hosting. I understand the guides can't cover everything, but the steps I have followed so far haven't allowed me to successfully deploy my app. Going to go through it again over the next couple of weeks.

Hats off to DNSimple’s contact form for support. It includes a dropdown of accounts you are logged into. Being able to select an account makes contacting them much easier and narrows down the location of the reported issue. This is a simple but effective way to improve customer feedback.

My initial experience with Kamal hasn’t been great. At the start of the year, I spent a few days at best with it, but I kept running into issues, which eventually got forgotten. I’m restarting again with Kamal, as I feel it could be of real benefit in hosting my own apps.

Micro.blog cup, tea edition.

I missed some glorious golfing weather over the weekend as I finished painting the hall. With that done, all our major home decorating plans are complete, and I can enjoy the outdoors and golf until around October.

@Ianbradbury Kobo being a Canadian subsidiary was a big deal for me, even if it is part of a bigger company that might not be better. But without trying out a Kobo, I'm never going to know.

@Ianbradbury I can't see any significant difference between Kindle and the Kobo, which is good. I guess I'm looking for something that reduces my Amazon footprint.

@Ianbradbury Can't be any worse than my Kindle which is acting really flaky lately. I was considering a new Paperwhite, but seeing the recent reviews on the Clara made me think about changing.

I’m starting to come round to the idea of replacing my Kindle with a Kobo.

@ChrisJWilson I have just noticed that they also have similar prints on the inside of the covers! It must be new, as I haven't seen the prints on the inside before. Even better!

Picked up a couple more of these notebooks from Atoms to Astronauts.

Good quality paper and the covers are superb. Picked up the astronomy and geology notebooks this time.

They’re catching on in the Lang household as my youngest asked for a couple as well.

The quest for more offline reading continues with the first edition of my Wired subscription.

Spring, the planning season: matthewlang.me

I finished reading Dust, the last of the Silo series by Hugh Howey.

I thoroughly enjoyed the books. It’s also good to finally have finished a series of books, as it’s been a while since I’ve done that.

The wee yin had a good lesson today working on his short game. I hope he remembers it all for tomorrow when he plays his winter knockout tie.

@davidmarsden When my oldest was younger, I used to cycle while he was on his scooter. I was more like a sheepdog trying to keep him in a straight line, as he was quite wobbly on his scooter, to begin with. 😂

First Paragraph - Dust: matthewlang.me

Last year, I relocated my office to the back of our home with a south-facing window. I now use light themes more frequently when the sun is bright during the day. The Noctis set of themes for VS Code is ideal if you’re looking for light and dark themes in a single extension. Recommended.

Less-than estimation: matthewlang.me

@gregmorris Congrats! Looking forward to giving it a try!

Trying to stop making daily trips between VS Code and GitHub and handle pull request work within VS Code when I can.

@patrickrhone Thank you! I will pass it on! I already sent birthday wishes to Beatrix for the disco! I hope it was a great night for all!

I’m ending the week on a high with my wife’s birthday today. My wife is off to yoga this morning, and then we’ll spend a couple of hours in the garden, preparing it for the good weather. Finally, I’ll be cooking the birthday girl’s requested dinner, which is one of her favourites, chicken pie.

@patrickrhone I hope it's a great night. Sending our best wishes for Beatrix for tomorrow!

The wee guy wanted nachos for dinner. Combine that with some salsa and guacamole, and that’s a pretty good dinner. Definitely one of my favourites.

I didn’t think they would follow Jurassic World Dominion with another movie in the franchise, but hey, dinosaurs! I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t interested in seeing this.

youtube.com/...

I see Paper Apps at the top of Hacker News (snapshot courtesy of the HN snapshot tool). I’m sure this has been posted to Hacker News before, but I’m glad to see it surface again.

As much as I love paper and pen, web versions of these apps would be good, but I can see the appeal of the notepads.

@peroty Those are wonderful pictures, but yeah, it's treacherous weather. I've only experienced it a couple of times during family visits to Canada.

Building my own technology radar with SVG: matthewlang.me

First Paragraph - 12 Rules for Life: matthewlang.me

Joan Westenberg’s post on going viral has this little gem that could be considered a mantra for those who want a more sustainable path to building something.

Build for the minimum viable audience. Create work that matters for people who care. Focus on depth over distribution. Let your ideas spread through trust networks instead of trending algorithms.

— Trust Me. You Don’t Want To Go Viral.

I love that Bookshop.org still supports local bookstores with their new ebook sales. However, why can you only read these ebooks with the Bookshop.org Ebooks app? I would have liked the option to read my purchased ebooks in other ebook readers. Still, I’ll be checking it out.

@jsonbecker That's a good way of doing it, and you also have a history of changes!

@cheesemaker It's just a manual edit from time to time, but I have been prone to leaving it unchanged for long periods of time. I'll be updating it more frequently from now on.

My now page is updated. Projects haven’t moved much since the start of the month, but I am glad to have finished two books.

@patrickrhone And you'll always be welcome!

@patrickrhone There's so much to be gained from meeting in person or online (if distance is an issue). You can lose the tone of the conversation when you're online.

Over the next few years I will find myself in Canada and the US a bit more often, so it might be time we meet IRL once again!

@gregmoore Wow! Amazing colours! 😍

@maique Congratulations!

@jthingelstad Surprised by the number of points the Vikings were held to. It couldn't have been easy coming off the back of the defeat to the Lions as well.

@matthewlang.me Already following! I do wish we were in the same time zones. I’ve not always got the energy to sit up for the Packers games when they’re televised late here in the UK.

@jsonbecker I’m sure the horizontal scrolling is for collections. I might be wrong. Still, it’s a great way to see multiple photos on the app.

@patrickrhone It's also the three stables of my ideal breakfast now. If I'm in the mood, I like to add a little bit of toasted or even fried sourdough.

@jsonbecker It's the new collections feature. You can create a new collection on the Uploads page and add photos to that collection. Then, you can use the reference to the collection in your post.

It's the first time I have used it. I would love to see the horizontal scrolling on the website as well.

@JohnPhilpin I find myself being polite—please, thank you, that sort of thing. I have no idea why, though. I do find it strange to see others interacting with LLMs. I find that I am pretty verbose when asking questions. I think it's a good thing, though, and I will stick with the niceties and verbose prompts.

@pratik Beautiful pictures with amazing colours!

@davidmarsden I'm using the Apple app, and the reinstallation worked fine. I got a notification about your last reply.

@davidmarsden Resolved with a re-install of the app.