Greg Thinks Things #26

5 Mar 2021 • 6 min read

I lost some people this week. They didn’t die or anything - at least I hope not - but I broke the newsletter quite spectacularly trying to fix a bug

Hello friends,

I lost some people this week. They didn’t die or anything - at least I hope not - but I broke the newsletter quite spectacularly trying to fix a bug and as such I’m not 100% sure if everyone has been restored from a backup. So, if you're reading this online, and disappointed that it didn’t arrive in your inbox this week please sign up again - and I’m sorry!

Other than this minor hiccup, there has been a fool's spring in the UK, so everything is starting to improve. For those not familiar with this period which happens each year. It is when the sun happens to be out a little bit, and everyone gets over excited and thinks it’s summer. Then two days later everything comes crashing down again when it goes back to normal temperatures and rains. It is always raining in the UK, but I even saw some people in shorts!

When the restrictions are lifted for schools in the UK this week, I plan to return to making a few videos for work and pleasure so my creative boost hopefully will bleed through into these. Chris Wilmshurst got 10,000 subs this week, which is far too low for his awesome videos, but means my challenge of getting to 1,000 needs to start moving forward!

I Don’t Have Much Extra To Say

Since moving my blog a few weeks ago, I have less and less saved to into my newsletter. The ease of publishing, and the increase in my focus to publish have meant that I no longer leave things festering in my notes app very long, so have no treads to pull on when my notification tells me to write another edition of GTT.

Publishing to the internet is something I wonder why I do it, but it brings me so much joy to just hit publish that it is a little disappointing that I don’t have much extra to add that is exclusive to the newsletter. At this point it would be easy to just not do it, but I enjoy it far too much to stop now.

I enjoyed mopping up all the smaller notes that I had added last edition and I had quite a bit of feedback on the small clips that it seems like a promising idea to include them going forward.

Going Offline

To get the most amount of work in my day I have had to completely disconnect some days. Do not disturb doesn’t seem to work for every Mac app, and it’s too easy to get distracted by emails or Teams messages. Meaning that pulling the plug is the only way to just bury my head in a task. Theres just one problem with this approach, some of the tools I use seem to have neglected an offline mode entirely.

Not the only offender, but one that has been in the tech news again recently is Notion.so. An extremely powerful app that allows me to share information with people easily and manage my entire life. That is until you realise it needs an always on internet connection to even update pages!

I am lucky enough to live in a world where it's rare that I don’t have connection, but when you get issues such as your ISP goes down like Sky did for an entire day last week where I live. Or you just want to pull the plug, like I do, not being able to even type information into the service you rely on is enough to make you ditch it entirely. Having the ability to disconnect from the internet isn’t too much to ask from the service you use. Not synchronising is to be expected but designing products that should be able to loose connection sometimes should be a given!

Challenge All The Things

The daily blogging challenge started on the 1st, and a few people have joined in already. Using the prompts to write something can be a powerful tool to building a habit, and even though we are a few days into the month it’s still not too late to join in.

I really enjoyed posting photos during February thanks to the micro.blog challenge. Even though I cheated a little and used old photos, it was great to think about the prompts each day and find a picture that is in my camera roll. I already miss it so I might have to work out what challenge to do next. A little something to focus on and keep my mind of all the rest of the stuff happening!

Third Party App Stores

For the longest time I have been a huge supporter of keeping iOS locked down as tight as possible. Not budging a single inch, because that is what is best for the consumer, and I shudder a little when I think about a future with Android style ‘openness’ on my iPhone.

Sure, Android provides much more customisation than iOS. It allows you to do a lot more things. Not absolutely anything you want, but not far off it. But it’s a long time since I desired anything like that from my phone, and much prefer the tap square get app way that iOS works — that’s just me. I would still gladly pay more for Apple to manage all my payments, and if truth be told I trust them much more than any other brand. I’m no fan boy, but when it comes to putting all my information on a bit of technology, I just trust them more and have confidence in the decisions they make to keep my information on my phone.

The Apple App Store is so full of scammers and so lousy at search that if Apple ever did allow third party stores it is certain that a properly curated third party store would be much safer for users. So Apple arguing that the App Store makes users safer is utterly bogus.
— Peter N Lewis (@peternlewis) February 1, 2021

With all these things said. This trust I have in my fruity overlord is slipping, very quickly, and stories like the above keep popping up. I don’t ever think Apple will give up control of their platform, and nor should they, but they need to seriously step their game up to prove Apple's arguments correct. Keeping control needs to be better for customers and as it currently stands, it is but not by a lot.

Links

A posted link is not an indication of my point of view, or even a suggestion of my feelings towards the post - they are just interesting.

Before I Go

Special shoutout to those that donated to my 4 x 4 x48 run last week. I am delighted to have made it to £1000 towards a charity that is very close to my heart. Depending on when you are reading this, today is the day (Friday) or I am deep into the runs. I finish Sunday at 4pm UK, and hopefully I will be able to tweet some updates along the way.

Take the very best care of yourselves my friends.

🤙

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