2018.01.26.

I’ve just deleted Viber from my phone. It annoys me with stupid notifications about stickers and I can’t turn it off. I could turn off Viber notifications completely, but that’s not that useful for a messaging app. I wanted to use it as a Facebook Messenger replacement, but it’s worse.

Mindfulness does indeed slows down the current moment:

One antidote might be mindfulness, the researchers suggest. People who try to live “in the moment” may better appreciate the uniqueness of those moments once they have passed, making it less likely that they’ll be swallowed up into a “chunk”. Meditation and engaging with art may perhaps also help, they write, since “these experiences have the potential to re-sensitise us to the satisfaction of simple things and, perhaps, counteract life’s quickening pace”.

2018.01.25.

Rands in Repose on writing:

Randomly think of a thing. Let it bump around your head a bit. If the bumping gets too loud, start writing the words with the nearest writing device. See how far you get. The more words usually mean a higher degree of personal interest. Stop when it suits you.

This is exactly what I should do more. I often have random ideas but never get them into Ulysses because they are just thoughts. Maybe I should keep way more drafts and see where they lead me.

(Instead of Agenda Ulysses can be used for journaling as well. Maybe I should keep everything in one app.)

Integrating Agenda into my workflow

I'm still thinking about what's the best way to use Agenda. I'm not going to talk about its features, MacStories has a great overview of that. At first, it looks like another notetaking app, but having the ability to assign dates to notes is making me consider to use Agenda instead of Day One for journaling.

The main pitfall for me with Day One is still its own sync backend. They switched over to it more than a year ago now, but I'm still not comfortable using that for personal journals and photos. I've used iCloud sync with Day One which always worked fine for me. iCloud servers are maintained by Apple whom I trust more from a privacy point of view than a small 3rd-party developer. Agenda uses iCloud for syncing which is a big win for me.

My other problem with Day One is that it feels like an app that made for writing a personal diary instead of a journal (yes, there's a difference). I'm not really into writing diaries, although I have 1100 entries in Day One at the moment. Agenda, on the other hand, feels like a digital version of bullet journaling. There is no separate view for each note, everything is in a scrollable timeline. Notes can be edited inline which makes the whole journaling process quick. I really enjoy this aspect of the app.

Agenda still misses its iOS counterpart and the ability to add attachments to a note—each of these features are coming according to the developers—but I've started using it for the following:

  • I'm developing my first iOS app and I've started documenting the whole process in Agenda. At the end of each day, I go through my git commits and make one or two notes about changes and ideas I have for the app down the road. I'm also collecting a list of things to talk about with the client. This is where Agenda's ability to attach notes to calendar events comes in handy for meeting preparations.
  • My commonplace book was also migrated from Day One to Agenda. When I'm marking a paragraph in a note with the #reference hashtag, it's gets added to my "Commonplace Book" saved search. It's nice to see quotes, links and all kind of small wisdom in one list.
  • I'm having bowel problems again lately, so I've created a project to heal and started tracking my food intake there. Throughout the day I keep Agenda open with it's Today view next to Things. This way I can easily see my daily food log here and append new things to it.

What I'm still struggling with is the missing iOS version of Agenda. I can collect stuff into my Inbox with Things then transfer it into Agenda on my iMac, but having access to my journals, especially from Calendar on meetings will be very useful when the iOS version arrives.

2018.01.22.

Agenda is a very interesting app, but there is no iOS version yet. It would be a great alternative for a commonplace notebook and a work journal instead of Day One which starts to be a bit overwhelming for me. And I still don’t like that they switched to a custom sync backend.

I didn’t know about this:

Added in iOS 10, Emergency Bypass is a way to ensure that you will always be alerted by a certain contact’s phone calls and/or texts, even if the phone is in Do Not Disturb mode and even if the mute switch is engaged. But this feature is a little bit hidden, so here’s how to turn it on.

You can also exclude certain groups of people from ignoring by setting "Allow Calls From" under Do Not Disturb preferences. It does silence messages though…

Don't want your Mac to go to sleep? You can type caffeinate -t 3600 into Terminal to keep it awake for an hour or 7200 for 2 hours etc.

I’m giving Twitter another shot. I’ve scrolled through my timeline and unfollowed a bunch of accounts that doesn’t interests me anymore. I miss discovering small things that doesn’t reach me via RSS, like new iOS app betas, interesting links etc. But I’m also trying to be more aware when I’m using the service. Here are my rules:

  • Posts, links and statuses will be still posted to Decoding then cross posted to Twitter via Micro.blog. I don’t want to change that since I like to own my content and I can also write longer stuff here than 280 characters. Also there are people who follow this blog via RSS.
  • I’ll reply and interact with people on Twitter as I did before — I don’t care that much about where threads and comments are made anyway.
  • I’m keeping Tweetbot on my iPhone and my iPad, but I’ll avoid using the official Twitter app. I don’t care about polls and ads, the timeline usability of that app is a piece of crap anyway.

So, I hope these rules will make Twitter fun again.

2018.01.18.

Design+Code is really awesome resource with an equally excellent iOS app for anyone who interested in iOS development and design.

2018.01.17.

Fears of the IndieWeb:

Some of my favorite memories of writing online were during the early days of Blogger, prior to the Google acquisition. Personal journals were still a fairly new idea, with fairly few people publishing them. We were a community of people and of writers and we had a connection to each other and a desire to share, help, and enjoy unique content online. This feels like that.

Sometimes the IndieWeb movement feels like that couple of guys starting to learn WorsPress again.

2018.01.15.

I removed Google Analytics from my websites. Since I use 1Blocker to stop trackers following me around on the web, I don't want to be a hypocrite by also having trackers on my site. Now I don't even have JavaScript here other than for TypeKit where my webfonts are loaded from.

2018.01.10.

Just finished adding "icons" for Decoding last week. Safari uses at least 3 type of icons on macOS and iOS together:

  1. one for pinned sites and web clips on your iOS home screen
  2. one for pinned tabs (which is an SVG by the way)
  3. and the usual favicon.ico.

And this is just Safari, I don't have icons for Windows or any other browser for that matter. Somebody should really provide a better way to deal with all that crap.

From MacStories:

Type an RGB or HEX value or color name into each text field, and Aquarelo generates a range of colors between the two you entered. You can even drag a color into the app from the system color picker. One small quibble I have with dragging colors into Aquarelo is that you can only drag them onto the text fields in the app. I think it would feel more natural to drop colors onto the endpoint colors in instead.

You can have thousands of ways to represent a color. Since I've just started doing iOS development recently, I need to tool to convert hex colors into UIColor. Aquarelo just does that, and also looks nice.

2018.01.06.

The Weekly Review is the hardest to implement from GTD, but it’s the most important routine to get myself familiar with. Here’s why:

  • I have a basic anchor once a week, when I became mindful with my commitments and that gives me a relief so I can trust in my system. Nothing slips.
  • Reviewing my waiting fors then pinging people keeps that loop alive. People start to feel I demand stuff from them and they can’t escape from their responsibilities. At least from those that involve me.
  • Reviewing my stuff feels like mindfulness meditation. I pay attention what’s on my mind, then I make proactive decisions about them. This way I can relax.

Panic has announced the “suspending” of Transmit for iOS:

My optimistic take: we hope that as iOS matures, and more and more pro users begin to seriously consider the iPad as a legitimate part of their daily work routines, Transmit iOS can one day return and triumph like it does on the Mac.

Getting enough revenue from an app that you’ve developed is hard, but as a user of every Panic software on macOS and iOS, I’m angry. I’ve already made my comment regarding this change, so I’m not going to repeat it, just quote:

I know iOS is hard, but why not charge more or add subscription or something? This is not the first time you guys complaining about developing iOS apps, but I’ve never seen any new business model tried from Panic, so can’t really feel sorry yet. Paid up front and thats it. I mean there is Omni Group, they’ve transformed every Omni app to “try for free then pay a reasonable price” model last year. They also delivering reasonable upgrades constantly. On the other hand Coda for iOS still missing a lot of basic features, like Open in Place support and a simple Quick Open. And don’t get me started on the “still in the works, but it’s coming in the next 100 years” version of Coda for Mac or Panic Sync which is still buggy and way more annoying than the old iCloud Sync, which you’ve dumped…

Transmit on the other hand works fine, I use it daily, but sunsetting an app which I rely on that much is just annoying. Coda’s file management isn’t the same. For example there is no share extension which I use a lot, especially with Workflow. So instead of complaining about iOS app business models all the time, you guys should put more effort into developing iOS. I’m a customer, I’m using and loving all of Panic’s products. I would even pay for the Panic Creative Cloud monthly, but apps needs to be kept updated with new APIs and usable features know from the desktop, not treating them like “baby software” as Steve said.

After weeks of messing around with Swift Playgrounds, I'm ready to deep dive into a new iOS project. Although using my iPad for learning Swift made want Xcode more for iOS.

2018.01.05.

I love Workflow and Working Copy together! I’ve just migrated my blog over to Jekyll, and created a workflow which grabs a piece of text like this, creates a file in my git repository with Working Copy, commits it automatically, then pushes the code to the server. All this from Today view or a Share sheet in Ulysses.

Ben Brooks on social media:

And that’s what makes the end of 2017 stand out so much to me, because it was during this time where I read article after article about how negative social media as a whole is for people. That’s general people, meaning all of us. Social networks are not good, and have not been designed to be good for you. Sure, you could cherry pick arguments all day long, but there’s simply not been a compelling case made for these networks being good.

I haven’t really tweeted much for months now, and I have no desire getting back on Twitter. It’s big, crowded, full of annoying people and hate. And I don’t want to be a part of that. I’m not deleting my account as I did with Facebook, because I know a couple of people from the early days of Twitter and sometimes I receive DMs from them. But, I won’t be on it, I even deleted Twitter from my iPad and my iPhone back in October.

I was an initial Kickstarter backer for Micro.blog, but haven’t paid much attention to the service since then. As you can see I’m moving my stuff over to this blog — this is why I’m posting this much today — which is mine and I can use Micro.blog to share my content to a new community which at the moment feels like Twitter back 10 years ago.

2018.01.04.

2018.01.03.

I still use RSS as a way to get my daily dose of content. It’s fast, convenient, and there are a lot of nice paid alternatives from small indie developers since Google Reader was killed.

I’ve got so sick of Twitter in the last couple of months. Let’s see, maybe Micro.blog will be better as a community.

2016.06.09.

Reconsidering Twitter

I'm standing in the line at the grocery store. I grab my phone, open Twitter, then start mindlessly scrolling. These moments blind me with a two minutes fog of consuming links and other people's thinking. I feel like some kind of blob that has so many things and opinions floating around in it's head. Meanwhile the line gets shorter, I return to the real world, and feel like somebody who has just woken up.

I hate this melancholic state of mind, but, somehow my brain always wants a short amount of information dose which causes a temporary chemical pump, then I turn back to a less happy state. This is what Twitter does with me. I'm not familiar with the science behind this phenomenon but I'm sure it's making me less happier and less focused.

Twitter was a fun place couple of years ago. This feeling has long gone, most of my timeline contains politics and pessimism. Pessimism towards everything. I've always hated this attitude, it makes me angry too. I was trying to filter this out, but what can I say? Couple of days ago, I unfollowed everybody and then followed back some Apple related bloggers, writers, and developers. I've also started tweeting in English. From now on, I will use Twitter for two things: talking about my content, and following Apple related stuff. Twitter is great as a backchannel for my blog. No more politics, religion, and more importantly, pessimism. When somebody isn't interesting anymore I unfollow.

I've also changed how I consume Twitter. Safari has the Shared Links section which is a dumb RSS reader but it can show links from Twitter as well. My RSS reading habits are fine, I read RSS usually once or twice a day, so mixing it with links from Twitter makes sense. I removed Twitter from my phone too, I can still use it from Safari if I want to.

Now let's talk about Facebook for a minute. Couple of my friends use it but I've never really paid too much attention to Facebook. While people on Twitter were arguing about it, Facebook became the communication app that everybody uses around me. Messenger is huge now, nowadays, I mostly use iMessage and Facebook Messenger on my iPhone.

Facebook has been working on their stream in the last couple of years to make it more interesting. It's still just a blob of crap by default, but I can tune it to my liking. You can actually follow stuff on Facebook as you do on Twitter, but you can also prioritize what you like, it's going to learn your interests. Basically this is what Twitter should has been evolved into now, but, I'm not planning to check it daily, since it's way less in volume.

What I'm definitely going to use Facebook for is connecting a bit more with my close friends. I can plan a garden party with them using Events, check out where they are with Nearby Friends, or just talk with them on Messenger. Having connection with friends is way more important than following bunch of random people. I've also made friends on Twitter but it starts to form into some kind of real-time news whatever. They even changed their category in the App Store from Social Networking to News. I'm starting to understand why.

2016.05.06.

Learning English the Hard Way

I've started this blog more than a year now and I haven't written much lately here. I've found podcasts are the best way to express myself on the web quickly. Almost everything I was going to write about got mentioned in my podcasts. Blogs still have a place on the web and I've wanted to do something with mine, so I came up another idea: maybe I should use this site as a way to get experience writing in English, which alone is really interesting, but also very scary for me. I've never written anything longform publicly in English. It feels like a fresh start, although I haven't changed the subject I'm going to write about: it's still technology and productivity. I've just changed the language.

I'm working with a swiss company where we speak English daily, but that's a completely different thing than writing on the web, where anybody can read your stuff and be mad about it. As we know, everybody knows English better than the next person, so I'm trying to use this "collective knowledge" to my advantage. I'm open to every advice related to grammar — you might want to fix some of my phrases too — although I have no idea what type of feedback I'll get. I'm sure I'll have problems with the language since I'm not a native speaker. We'll see.

Keeping a blog is a big challenge alone and I have no prior experience writing in English other than daily emails and Skype messages. The best way to learn is to do it the hard way and write. Also, there is a couple of people who might enjoy following this challenge. I have no other goals with this blog currently, but it may form into something else later.

I started taking an English class to learn grammar again back in March. I also had English in high school, but I never paid much attention to the class and forgot a lot of stuff since then. Years passed by and I had to relearn lot of words and phrases by watching TV shows, movies and listening to podcasts. I've been reading almost everything in English since I started working as a web developer. It's okay to start with, but the problem remains: my grammar sucks and I want to get better at it. My English class has ended and I haven't practiced the language enough.

But why this matters so much? First, not knowing English well enough is a problem. I usually work with people abroad, so great communication is a key. Second, I have same plans to do stuff for international readers, but that's still far away. Currently I'm not even comfortable with the longform writing of English. This is going to be a multistep process.

Couple of months ago I thought I'm good at English, but I'm not. I'm just as bad as anybody else. Writing stuff comfortable in a different language is a skill I can learn, but I have to practice it. So, here we go, I'm doing it. Just follow my stuff here and don't hesitate to fix my mistakes, but also follow up with me in email regarding topics I'm going to write about. I'll try to learn from every feedback I get. Just be nice. ?