Vincent Ritter

Thoughts

My thoughts, micro blog style.

Apple News follow-up: I found a setting in Settings that restricts stories in the today view to only channels you follow. Now just to get rid of Spotlight (wishful)...

I really like the Apple News app... it's just a huge shame I can't stop the recommendation part. I just want news from whom I follow and nothing else. I don't care about football, or other outlets... Is that so hard to ask for? Spotlight... can I not turn it off? Would be such a great app if you could tweak it a little.

Upgraded to a new phone. Lost 4 days worth of Activity data in the process. Weird. Random. Frustrating. Not the end of the world though.

Felt inspired by Dark Mode in Mojave so I updated my dark mode on my site. Also fixed the background colour issue - although I think that is just a plain Safari bug of some sort.

Is there an iOS/Mac app that accepts web hooks and sends you a "push" notification when something comes in? I use Slack at the moment for that type of stuff...

The only thing is... website that don't specify a background colour... look like this in dark mode. Anyone know if there is a Safari API that can check if system dark mode is enabled?

I sure love dark mode in Mojave! It's pretty stable too. Development on it works without issue (web dev, Swift dev, npm, ruby etc). As is normal, it's a bit slow at times. Really happy with it so far though.

Our daughter had a successful operation yesterday and we are heading back home today. Totally thrilled. She’s a total trooper and has taken it really well.

Today is WWDC day. Really looking forward to it this evening (in Europe). To celebrate, Apple has charged me for another year as an Apple Developer.

Currently troubleshooting my Mac Mini that somehow forgot how to even connect to a wireless network. Had to move it into another room last week for a meeting, been playing up since I moved it back to the usual spot.

I've updated my Code Challenge page to make space for Sublime Feed and also add a bit more information. Also archived the Simple Schedule posts here, for easy access.

Didn't feel too creative today, however it will do me for now.

I've noticed a lot of sites now employing MASSIVE cookie warning messages and other things that look wrong. I'm really happy that "Reader View" exists in Safari. Just bypass all the noise!

Would be nice to see more 'live' app icon tiles in iOS 12. For example the Activity app could have active activity rings on the home screen. Would be cool.

She certainly can go fast on it without loosing balance. Pedal bike upgrade coming up soon. Loved the way the colours came out. Pink is her favourite!

Opened up Steam today... to be presented with a warning... didn't know it was a 32-bit app on macOS! Wish they updated it too. Doesn't feel very native.

One thing I like about Spotify that Apple Music should totally copy, is the ability to sync playback between devices. Just stopped listening on the Mac, heading out... and here you go... Spotify can resume where you left it on iOS. It's the little things.

Any recommendations on a small, portable and good quality podcast microphone? Not looking for anything too expensive. USB-C is a plus.

For a client whom you indicated a "yes" to for a project, is it OK to cancel the commitment? I haven't quoted yet and said I will get back to them... I came to realise that the project at hand will be too risky for a small return.

After a week in hospital with our daughter, I'm happy to say that we came back yesterday night. My wife and I are shattered... our daughter being her usual self.

Thank you to everyone that reached out. It really means a lot!

Had a mad few days in hospital with our daughter. She was scheduled for an operation but is too unwell for it, now we have to stay until Friday to get her better. Operation rescheduled for beginning of June. Fingers crossed.

After months of nursing and taking care of my Apple screen, it finally decided to die. To stretch the month I bought a really cheap external screen to hook up to the Mini. OH how I miss the quality of the Apple screen already!

Just signed up to a local computer shop e-commerce website... They sent me my password, in plain text, via email. Lovely.

Started on getting my.sublimefeed.com set up. It's got a homepage and a link to the next section. There's also a info modal on the top right that shows the current status of the page. Click to expand :)


Started the very first step of Sublime Feed today. Set up two repos, hosted them on Netlify, pointed the domain to it. Deploying nicely. They're already React JS web apps, which I'll be using to build out everything. A bit excessive at the moment, however it'll be the foundation of the sites - don't really fancy adding it at a later stage.

Just writing a rather larger article to introduce you all to my next code challenge. I'm pretty excited to be sharing it with you soon.

A busy few weeks! A React JS website, a React Native app, playing with Laravel to expose me to PHP more and a big project keeping me busy.

Can't complain. Never felt so pushed in my life. Developing websites and apps sure isn't boring!

I've been trying to go to bed early instead of staying up until late at night and working... sometimes till 04:30 AM. Turns out that going to bed early and waking up early doesn't go too well... Probably just my body trying to adjust. I do hear the alarm and feel awake, but... that duvet sure is nice and warm.

I was banging my head on why some of my initial data check didn't work in React when setting a state on my component. Turns out that setting states is asynchronous, so there is no guarantee that state is updated straight away (when I was running the first check to then return a list of items).

The following code didn't work - only after a second state change did it begin to work:

this.setState({   
    selectedHamburger: selected
});
this.updateHamburgerDisplay();

(Don't ask - I made up that state and method)

However, when first loading the page, there was no "Hamburger Display" showing. It was empty.

Doing a bit of research I found out that `setState` actually has a callback function for when it has updated. So, simply calling my method on the callback worked a treat.

this.setState({
    selectedHamburger: selected
}, this.updateHamburgerDisplay);

I know... basic stuff. But good to find out. A small "aha" moment. Maybe someone will find it interesting.

Trying out Netlify with some of my static sites that I host. Want to see how well it does. Hoping to convert my site to static again so a good test to see how I like it.

I've been using Calcbot for iOS for many years. It has an awesome calculator and most importantly a conversion tool for many things, especially currencies. However, I'm looking for something different. Anyone have any recommendations?

The sun is out, it's warm, the windows are open. And they are cutting the grass across the whole estate of flats... slightly annoying.

I moved, after many years, from Jekyll to Craft CMS last year. But now, I want to go back to a static site... just because. Full on JAMstack style. I think I'll write a blog post about why I want to and what I'm planning on using.

I'm seeing loads of websites these days with a lot of motion when loading content, paragraphs, icons or whatever really (some tasteful... mostly really awful though. - with no taste). I was thinking there should be a reduce motion API or something for websites. Obviously something WebKit has already. Glad that it's there and hope to introduce this on some of my next projects (not that I tend to use much animation in the first place).

Is it me or are "mailto:" links broken in the latest macOS release (in Safari)? It opens a new tab in Safari and that is it... hmmm.

'iCloud for Business' - that would be nice to have available right about now. Perhaps one day...

Have moved my email from long time Gandi account to FastMail. Quite happy with the way it has gone. Plus they have profiles that you can install straight to your devices (iOS/Mac). Mind blown!

Deleting 50,000 images on Google Photos has been a pain... glad it's now done. Next step, delete my Google account and consolidate.

WWDC short wish list - better family sharing built in across the board. Picking two random ones:

  1. Shared iCloud Photos Library (done properly).
  2. Shared Movies and TV Shows etc on the "TV" app.

Perhaps just consolidate Family purchases into one (make it an option). Apple could do so well with this stuff.

Last night I sat down and started sketching out my next idea for a new web service, including web app and iOS app. I already picked out a name. I'm not sure if I'm going to manage full on blog posts this time around though. Let's see.

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