If using a ThinkPad on holiday has taught me one thing, it's that my next "main" laptop will have some form of a matte display. Whether it's some form of Linux laptop, or a MacBook with the new coating, being able to use a laptop with zero issues in the sun feels like a revelation after all the years using a Mac with a glossy screen.

Every single I see this advert, I'm amazed at how brilliant just a single bit of conversation is. It's probably my favourite bit of marketing ever.

Person 1: *spots Head and Shoulders*

Person 1: "I didn't know you had dandruff?"

Person 2: "I don't."

Is it weird that I find that absolutely brilliant? If you have dandruff (luckily I don't), then what better way could you have a product marketed to you?

★ Favourite: To question is to consider, not refute | Derek Sivers

This post is confirmation that I have somehow managed to set up blog posting via the Quill web interface

It also means that I have enabled IndieAuth correctly, and have built a Vercel function to power a micropub endpoint that creates and stores posts in the GitHub repo as Markdown files. Very interesting stuff.

Isn't the Indie Web great?

I wrote recently about how I don't have much time (or effort) to do spend much time on things like blogging. And that because this blog is a custom Eleventy site, which uses Markdown files, with specific frontmatter, kept track in GitHub, and then hosted via Vercel, it's becoming a bit of a faff when I want to quickly write and publish something to my blog.

I've spent 2 days looking into the possible futures of my blog, which essentially boiled down to WordPress or Ghost as the primary options. And to be completely honest, I wasn't happy enough with any of my attempts that I'd be willing to spend time in the short term to migrate to another platform.

With both platforms, I tried using various import tools, even using Perplexity to build various scripts that would take my Eleventy blog content and produce the correctly formatted files for each platform.

The one for WordPress was the most accurate, but the photos weren't working properly, so I'd have to go through all of the posts manually anyway. Which is one thing I really wanted to avoid.

Earlier today, I did even quickly sign up for a Business plan on WordPress.com, because it mentions it includes a free migration. Unfortunately, an Eleventy blog isn't the easiest to migrate, so they told me either to do it myself, or to pay $499 and their team would work with me to build "5+ pages". It's what I expected, but still unfortunate.

That leaves me with the realisation that any switch away from Eleventy will be quite a major undertaking. As in, it will require more than a few days effort on my part. 😅

So I'm going to try a bit harder to make my Eleventy blog work for me. Maybe there's an automation for publishing that makes it easier to write posts on my phone, and I'm sure there's a lot more I can be doing with Obsidian templates.

The bonus is that I'm now off work for nearly two weeks. So I've got a bit more time than usual to try and figure something out. Although, I still have a four month old child, so it's not a lot.

I became a father just over four months ago. While that is one of the best things that's ever happened to me, it means I have less free time to spend on the less important things.

That includes keeping up with my RSS subscriptions, being active on social media (Mastodon), and sharing photos and updates on my blog.

I don't want to be negative though. It's just a fact that I have less time to spend on these things and that I also want to spend less time on them. I have much more important things people I want to spend time on. But it does mean I post less to my blog, which is something I want to change.

I'm not sure if it will happen or how long any real improvement will take, but I think one first step has to be migrating this blog from Eleventy to something like Ghost.

The geek in me doesn't like the sound of that realisation. But with Eleventy, although I have total control of my site, how pages are built, the logic behind each template, and can also make changes to every minute detail, I don't find it that easy to just write a post.

Typically I use Neovim to write posts, which many people may point to as the main reason behind this friction. But it's also that my posts are plaintext Markdownfiles, with very particular frontmatter for the metadata, which is then committed to a Git repository, and deployed to Vercel.

That's cool, and somehow Vercel even hosts this blog for me for free. But it means it's a bit of a workflow to get even a simple blog posts published.

I'm sure there are various weird and wonderful workflows to publish to an Eleventy blog. But I don't have the time or patience to set them up. Which means when I have a quick idea for a post, or I just want to share a photo from my phone, it seems like too much effort and I just don't post anything.

I don't know if or when I will move my blog to something like Ghost or WordPress, but I'm starting to think that it's a likely future. Mainly because surely, whatever blog platform I move to, will require at least some level of migration work. And as the title indicates, I don't really have much time!

So you can take this post as an indication of where this blog may go soon, possibly a hint of positivity that I may end up writing more often in the near future. Or you could just take this as a sign that I'm still alive, and that there's at least a desire to keep a blog.

I guess I'll be back soon?

Many people say things like "Don't announce anything until it's done", and there are many other people who work in public, as in they regularly announce shorter updates on their progress towards a certain outcome.

What I've found, is that for many of my projects, getting praise early on in a project kills them.

I can name countless examples, some potentially big projects like an RPG game I had started working on, some potential essays that I had thought of, and some others that are a lot smaller, but yet still end up in the same place. Nowhere.

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When you're sharing news of an idea you've just had, or telling the world how much closer you are towards your goal, itcan feel pretty good to receive encouragement and praise. Maybe someone tells you your idea is great, or that after waking up at 4 am twice a row, you're clearly on the way to becoming the most productive person ever. Either way, in that moment, it can feel like you've already made it.

And that is the key part of the problem.

If you've already had the same experience of achieving something, what's the point in continuing the journey? If after the first mile of a marathon, everyone celebrates you like you've won the race, do you need to finish it?

Well, maybe it gives you some motivation at first. Maybe you run the second mile and third mile. But by that point, people have already seen you do the same thing three times. So it's not going to be rewarded with the same level of attention that you would have expected.

It's likely you're not running a marathon, instead, you're probably working on a blog post, creating a video, developing an app, etc. But they each have their own milestones, and when praise is given too early in the journey, it can lead to you either wanting more and more praise for regular progress, or it can lead you to lose motivation to actually reach the finish line.

It's not just praise either. Criticism too early on can have a similar effect. Someone without the same motivation as you can provide uninformed criticism about what you're doing, and if you're still in the early stages, you might just think"Well, they may know better than me, I'll just quit before I go too deep".

Most people would probably agree that you should take all praise and criticism with a pinch of salt, but when it comes down to it, it's not as easy as it sounds. So why not just postpone any requests for feedback until it's really necessary, or at least beneficial?

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When dealing with early praise, it's not just the current task that's affected. I know through my own experiences, that it leads you to want to shorten the feedback loop as much as possible. Just so you can get that boost of dopamine a bit quicker than last time.

It's like an itch. You start thinking about an idea, writing something down, starting a project, and you just want to announce it to everyone straight away.

I get it a lot. When I'm writing a blog post, I start to think "Do I need to really read this through again? It's only a quick post, nothing more". Or if an idea pops into my head that I think could be developed into a short essay, maybe I'll just post something short and pithy on social media. That way I can get a few likes and maybe people will reply saying it's a good idea.

The short-term effect of early praise is that it can kill your motivation and desire to continue working on a project. The long-term effect is that you design your projects and goals around this desire.

Being told how great you are (or how great your work is) isn’t always helpful. It steers us away from the real work that actually deserves good feedback. A pat on the back after you've finished something worthwhile feels a lot better than getting a few cheap likes on social media.

In a lot of ways, it boils down to just plain attention-seeking. We want to feel like our thoughts and opinions are being heard, and that what we're working on is worth it. But the downside to that is that it makes us lazy.

Being snarky and pithy on social media is lazy. Being contrarian just to prompt an emotive response is lazy. And I have the feeling that the desire for "minimalism" in every aspect of life can also sometimes be the rush for applause, which is just laziness with a mask on.

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I don't claim to be the wisest person on the planet, or the one with all or a few answers. I just want to plant a seed in people's heads that makes them think just one time more before making an announcement.

Not all social media posts need to be essays, not all morning runs need to be a marathon, and you don't need to turn every project into your life's work. However, don't sell yourself short, reach the finish line. Enjoy the journey, and when it comes to receiving praise, I'm sure you and your work would have earned it.

I just wanted to write a quick appreciation post for the white iPhone 16. It's a great size, it's super light, it feels great to hold, and it just looks god damn beautiful.

I had imagined there would be at least somewhat of a regret about going from a 15 Pro Max to "just" an iPhone 16. However, I can confirm that this is not the case. I do not regret this decision at all.

As an aside, I have this in the yellow (Star Fruit) silicone case most of the time, and it still looks great. But I do have to pop it out every now and then, because it is such a good looking phone.

In just a few weeks time, I'll be heading off on on a work trip to China. It will be the first time I've ever been to Asia, and also the first time I've left my partner and my 3-month old child since she was born (apart from going to work), and I'll be away for around 10 days. It's going to be a very new experience for me on many fronts.

One benefit of it being a work trip, is that it's 100% company funded, and I get to travel around multiple locations in China. Two of them being Hangzhou and Shanghai, where my work has big offices, so I get to meet up with some colleagues that I haven't met in person, even after working together for many years. And the other being Guilin, where we are spending the weekend. We will be going to visit some incredible pillar-shaped mountains, which is where I've read, James Cameron filmed some of Avatar.

I'm going to try and focus on seeing colleagues, travelling to new places, and having new experiences. But I think the only thing stopping me from being attached to FaceTime for the trip will be my data allowance. (That's one thing I haven't sorted out yet.)

The only tricky part of the planning so far has been the Visa application, since I require a visa suitable for business trips. Turns out, as a British citizen/passport holder, and a first-time applier, I'm likely to only get a 2 year multi-entry visa. But that's fine. I'm hoping it also means I can try and get another (probably smaller) trip again in the future.

There's so many things I'm thinking about, because it's such a unique trip for me, and one I definitely want to make the most out of.

For example:

• Do I take a real camera? Do I need to get something new and minimal that I can carry everywhere to stop my phone going flat?
• How many clothes do I need to take? And what sort of bag can I carry it in?
• Will I have time to do anything apart from working, eating, and socialising with colleagues?
• What devices do I take? I have to take my Work Mac, but what about my personal Mac, iPad, etc?
• How the hell can I cope with a 12-hour flight?

Last year I purchased an iPhone 15 Max, and for the first time, I was presented with a new customisable button on the side of my phone. For an entire year I struggled to find a purpose for it.

Do I keep it as a mute switch? I didn't really ever use the previous mute switch. Do I make it launch a fancy Shortcut? Maybe that could have been clever, but I've stopped using Shortcuts. Or how about I make it a launcher for something like the camera app? Well that sounded good, but it doesn't work on press, you need to hold it down, so it always felt slower than swiping left on the lock screen.

Well, I've now got an iPhone 16^[1], and because of the new "Camera Control" button on the side of the device, I now have a way to launch (and control) the camera pretty quickly. So that removed one option in my head.

And then it came into my head, it should be to toggle the torch. I have a baby now, so I don't always want to turn the main lights on, so sometimes easier to just switch the torch on quickly.

Maybe that's a sign that sometimes too much customisability isn't always the easiest to deal with. Or maybe it's just me. Either way, it literally took me a year to find a use for the Action Button.

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1. Not Plus, not Pro, not Max, just 16. ↩︎