Jeff Perry, writing at Rocket Panda:

This is just a quick little tip for iPad users out there. If you are like me and using the Smart Keyboard or any keyboard that doesn’t have an Escape key you can press command . and that will most likely work as a way to escape from any text input you are in.

I think I’ve heard of this vaguely in the past. But after seeing this post, I tried it in a few different places in iOS, and I can confirm that it’s probably the closest escape key alternative.

The escape key on a Mac does all kind of things. Such as cancelling a drag action, cancelling some kind of input, or closing a temporary window. This “escape key” is more limited, in that I’ve only see it escape from text entry. That doesn’t mean it’s not handy though, and I’m sure I’ll use this quite a bit.

A pretty boring day from start to finish today.

I was at work as usual for most of the day, I then went food shopping with my girlfriend, and most of the night I’ve been spent just doing things like sorting through email, Twitter, etc.

The only entertaining thing I did today was listen to the latest episode of Connected, live as it was being recorded. It was a pretty fun episode to listen to.

I also watched a few minutes of the Man City vs Tottenham game, unfortunately although Man City won, Tottenham still progressed to the next round, due to the away goals rule. I really wish they’d get rid of that.

Right now, I should be going to bed. However, what I’m actually doing (apart from writing this) is sitting in my office on my iPad, trying to find a good email app.

There was one other thing, I settled on a “project management” tool for the app I’m currently planning. I went with Trello in the end:

I was thinking about how I’m going to plan this app, and after considering JIRA, Todoist, Things, GitHub issues, and a few others, I’ve settled on Trello.

So far my lists are:
– Ideas
– Features
– Next
– Now
– Done

— Chris Hannah (@chrishannah) April 17, 2019

I chose Trello mainly because of the cards concept, and how it’s not directly related to the code. The different lists should help me manage my scope, and work better with small iterations, while also having a backlog of undeveloped ideas, and fleshed our features.

— Chris Hannah (@chrishannah) April 17, 2019

I woke up with a furry face next to me this morning, which was a pleasant way to start the day. Unfortunately that’s now how the day went on, as after making myself and my girlfriend coffee/tea this morning for our commutes, I put them down to shut the door, and somehow they spilled all over the floor. And then I was greeted with train problems after I got into London.

Luckily, my day at work was alright. So it wasn’t a totally bad day.

Just as I was finishing work, I had a sudden realisation about an app that I want to work on. It’s still a fragile idea, so I don’t particularly want to share details just yet. Which is why I sent out a pretty cryptic tweet about it earlier.

Once I was home, I spent some time writing as much as possible about the idea. And also some form of task/feature list that is going to grow rapidly in the next few days. I’m not rushing into development though, as I want to spend a lot of time planning the project, and getting some tools ready before I start.

That didn’t consume my entire evening though, as I managed to watch the Barcelona vs Manchester United game (Barcelona is my second team), coupled with a pizza!

Right now, we’re just watching another episode of Hanna, and then it will be bed time.

I’ll skip work in this entry, there’s really not much to say.

However, me being at work, and my partner also being at work, meant that our cat was at home alone for the first “large” amount of time. After I got back, it appeared he was asleep in out bedroom, and didn’t show any signs of being in distress, or actually missing us that much!

I cooked dinner again tonight, and it was a chicken curry with the rest of the roast chicken I made on Sunday. It was surprisingly good.

After dinner, me and the cat watched the Arsenal game. Well, I can’t really say that he was paying full attention, but I was. We won 1-0 away against Watford, and although the scoreline is pretty low, the 3 points is all that matters. So it was a very good night!

To finish the day, myself and my girlfriend are watching trash tv, and I’m also catching up on articles in my RSS reader.

I did take a photo of our cat today, but I wouldn’t exactly say it was a good one. I’ll include it just to show the problems I face when taking a photo of a fluffy black cat.

Today has been quite a simple and quiet day in our household.

Of course, we spent a lot of time with our new cat. But apart from popping to our local cafe in the afternoon, we didn’t leave the house at all. And we didn’t do much inside it either!

The day has been scattered with watching YouTube videos, catching on Hanna, playing games, and just not doing anything energetic

For dinner, I cooked our first roast dinner in our new house. It included roast chicken, roast potatoes, Yorkshire puddings, vegetables, and gravy. It actually turned out pretty well, which I was very surprised with.

Sadly there are no photos of Jay to share in this entry. I haven’t managed to get any that are sharp, or where he’s actually looking somewhere near the camera. Maybe tomorrow.

It’s been quite a relaxing Saturday.

The first half of the day was just me and the cat, as my girlfriend was sleeping after a night shift. Therefore, I spent that time playing with the cat, watching episodes of Lost, and also playing games. The games were, of course, the only two games I play on a regular basis, FIFA and World of Warcraft.

While cooking dinner, eating it, and a short time after, we watched the first Thor film. I’m trying to watch a good about of the Marvel films before Avengers: Endgame comes out, so I’ll be watching one tomorrow as well probably. I’m not watching all of them though, because there are some that I don’t particularly care about, such as the Hulk one, and the first Captain America.

I’m now relaxed on the sofa, drinking a bottle of Estrella, and catching up on my reading in my RSS reader.

I did say yesterday that I would try to get a few photos of Jay today. I have a couple that I like, but his colouring makes it very hard to get a sharp image.

Anyway, here are the best two from today:

Cat day!

I spent the day working from home, just so me and my girlfriend could go and pick up the cat we’re adopting, Jay.

It was expected that he would be very shy, and take a while to explore his new home, and also that he may not eat until he’s comfortable. That was completely the opposite of what happened.

We took him to my home office first, as that was a place he could be without any distractions for a while. But he went straight downstairs, explored the house, and within a few minutes he was on my lap demanding affection.

He’s a very vocal cat, and he very much likes to be stroked. So it’s gone pretty well!

Here’s a photo of him where he his right now, sitting with me on my bed.

I haven’t managed to take a good still photo of him yet, as he’s a black cat (although his browns are coming through quite a lot in that photo), and he’s also pretty much always moving. Hopefully I’ll have one to share tomorrow.

Today started with the same work stuff as yesterday. A bit of web development, mixed with meetings, and a few other things.

I also posted a link post to my blog today, which I haven’t done for a while. This one was to a story about how the UK Home Office leaked personal email addresses of 240 EU citizens, because someone didn’t know the difference between CC and BCC.

After I got home, I finished off dinner, which was for myself, my girlfriend, her sister, and her partner. Luckily I could still watch the Arsenal game in the mean time, and we managed to beat Napoli 2:0!

So right now it’s time to start getting sorted for bed. Then in between working from home tomorrow, we’ll be going to pick up the cat! So if you want to see photos and videos, I’ll be sharing some to my Instagram throughout the day.

The Home Office are the people who deal with EU citizens requests seeking for settled status in the UK (among other things, of course), but it appears they made a bit of a mistake when sending emails to some of them asking to resubmit their information:

The Home Office sent the email on Sunday 7 April asking applicants, who had already struggled with technical problems, to resubmit their information.

But it failed to use the “blind CC” box on the email, revealing the details of other applicants.

In another message apologising to those who had been affected, the Home Office wrote: “The deletion of the email you received from us on 7 April 2019 would be greatly appreciated.” – Ross Hawkins, BBC.

Basically, someone doesn’t know the difference between CC and BCC, and now the department may have to make an apology in Parliament. Along with the fact that they breached the Data Protection Act.

I actually did something before work today. I wrote and published a blog post, all within my commute. It was just me sharing some information about the upcoming Harry Potter: Wizards Unite game, and how you can reserve a username.

At work today I was actually doing some cool stuff. I was doing a bit of web development! I didn’t exactly build Facebook, but the product we need, has a minimal web interface, we have a rough design from our designer, and currently no web developer. So I just got on with it. And I’m all about “vanilla” web development, so as much HTML and CSS as possible. No React, oversized JS libraries, CSS frameworks, SASS, etc. Just the web as it should be. The content marked up in HTML, and that styled with CSS. Nothing else is needed.

Once I got home from work, me and my girlfriend did a bit of tidying in our house. As we’re picking up our cat on Friday, and we still had a few boxes of things in the living room from moving in.

We did eventually eat dinner, and watched another episode of Hanna. It’s coming to an end, which is a shame, as it’s a pretty interesting series.

Right now, I’m waiting for my pasta to cook while I write this entry. Because I’m making myself tuna pasta for lunch tomorrow!