Jas Hothi, wrote a rather interesting piece on why he’s quitting social media, and I tend to agree with some of the points he made. Especially this observation:

As Richard Layard explains in his book, just a couple of decades ago pre-digital age, the comparisons we made were with those who lived on our street, or were otherwise in our social circles – i.e. colleagues, extended family, and so forth.These days, our ‘circles’ have been expanded – thanks to the internet – to thousands of others all over the world. So the Keeping up with the Joneses effect is increased, we compare ourselves more, and we feel unhappier.

The massive scope and scale of social media is where I feel most problems stem from. That can certainly be a benefit in some use cases, but as for the “social” part of a social network, I don’t think it helps.

For whatever reason, we tend to compare ourselves to others. However, comparing yourself to people in the real world is one thing. Comparing yourself to the endless amounts of people on the internet is another, especially given how manipulated and glamorised they tend to be.

One thing’s for sure, I’m very glad my childhood was largely free from social media.

I definitely used sites like Bebo and MySpace when they were around. But I was a teenager by then, and they seemed more like fun ways to talk to your friends than a way to keep yourself “plugged in”.

I’ve had enough thoughts on this idea to span a short book, but I had a moment today where I was just occupied with my thoughts, and I started contemplating using an iPhone 5 again.

A quick bit of a context: the iPhone 5 is my favourite phone to have existed, and I’m also a fan (nostalgically) of older technology.

Whenever I think about an older product like the iPhone 5, or whatever old product or service that I used in the past, I always end up watching YouTube videos like “Does X work in 2022?”.

After going through a moment of nostalgia, I’m always left with the thought that “of course it should work”. Older products don’t magically stop working when newer versions come out. In the same way that if you buy a Game Boy Colour now, and Pokémon Yellow, you’ll have the same experience as you would have done 20 years ago.

Surely as long as the hardware of a product remains functional, and any software updates keep the product working as expected, then technology should theoretically last forever?

When the question whether an older product or technology is still viable in a certain moment, if the need/purpose is still the same, then it is as suitable and capable as it was originally.

Of course, there are more specific arguments that could be made against this. For example, if you have an old iPhone and update it to the most modern version of iOS, while you may have newer features, your device is most likely going to run slower.

There’s a potential argument here that keeping software updates isn’t always the best way to keep something working for a long period of time. But I’ll save that thought for another day.

All I’m trying to say, is that when you think about older products, their capabilities aren’t usually what has changed. They can most likely perform the same function as they did originally. But what has changed is your expectations of what a certain product should provide.

My answer to every “Can you still use X in 2022?” question, is that if your needs have not changed and there aren’t any software compatibility issues, then of course you can.

I’ve been thinking about my writing recently, but from a different perspective to normal. This time thinking about the longer-term life of some of the things I’ve written. Not the quick link posts, or the product reviews, or anything like that, but more of the longer-form pieces that I’ve really put thought into.

I’m not sure how to best explain them, but if I could choose a few examples that fit into this category, which I’ll be calling “essays”, they would be these:

• Weeds are Subjective
• So-Called Imperfections
• Tricking Yourself Into Being Productive
• Focussing on the Wrong Things When Starting a Blog

These all range roughly from the 500 to 1300 word mark. So, it’s not always a certain length. But I would say that what I call an essay, is a piece of writing that you could print out and have it stand on its own, without needing to be supported by the context of my blog.

I’ve gone through my blog and found 25 posts that I feel fit this category, and organised them with the “Essay” tag, which is available to read individually, and has been added to the main navigation bar at the top.

I’m mainly thinking for archival purposes, but the thought of having my writing in book form, especially a physical copy, sounds very appealing.

Maybe those books could be available for others, although I would guess that they would only ever be available digitally. But it’s certainly something I want to look into soon.

The concept that I think would suit my writing best would be a collection of volumes, where perhaps Volume I has X pieces of writing, and then Volume II has the next X pieces of writing, and so on.

I think that’s my first project for 2022. Curating my best writing so far, and making a book. First for myself, but also potentially for others.

There’s a type of content, that I can’t quite put my finger on what it is, but for quite a long time, I’ve itched for it to find a place. There might be a word or phrase for it already, but I can only describe it as informal, ephemeral, and sometimes very meta.

I think for some, this is social media. But as a person with a blog, I’ve always felt as if it should be more like that, instead of writing on a closed platform like Twitter. That has led me to trying to use Micro.blog multiple times, and also Mastodon recently (which I haven’t been active on for a while).

The only places where I’ve similar content to what I’m talking about is actually on Micro.blog. However, not those that use Micro.blog as a Twitter replacement, which is what I essentially did. But instead, those that really leant into Micro.blog as their sole blogging platform.

Part of me always wants to steer towards hosting all of my writing in one place, and keeping it live and accessible forever. Which is the reason I always end up giving up on platforms like Micro.blog, but I’m starting to think I might just have to accept that it’s probably the best fit. Because the alternative is to share it here on this blog, and I really don’t want to go through all the hassle where I have essentially a full blog and micro blog merged together, but also separate.

I think I’ve talked myself into microblogging again.

Should I use Micro.blog, or keep it self-hosted and syndicate it to Micro.blog (and everywhere else)?

Mike Rockwell, has put together a great blog post introducing Mastodon and his experience with it. If you’re interested in Mastodon at all, or are fairly new to it, then I recommend giving this a read.

The premium photo-sharing platform, Glass, has now introduced likes. However, they’re not quite like the likes that you’ll be familiar with.

Instead, as they have written on their blog, the feature is called an “appreciation”. And rather than powering algorithms and fueling the desire of that never high-enough like counter, it’s a quick way to show your appreciation for a photo that someone has shared.

There’s no visible counter on a photo, and you don’t even have an easy way to find the total for your own photos. But, you do receive a notification in the app that shows that someone has shown appreciation for one of your photos.

The way I see it, it’s a cleaner way to replace the “Nice shot” or “Great photo” comments. I think it both cleans up the comment section, and also allows more people to show their liking for a photo. As I know that I personally have felt that there are photos where I want to just show somehow that I’m a fan of a certain photo, but didn’t really want to add a typical short comment.

It might result in less comments on photos, which maybe goes against the idea of a community where photographers share their thoughts on each other’s work. But that’s not necessarily a sign of people not communicating with each other, it’s just a different method of showing appreciation.

Greg Morris has been able to use the update for a few weeks, and his thoughts seem to be similar to mine:

My takeaway from the update (I’ve been able to use it for a couple of weeks now) is almost all positive. Being able to leave a small token of appreciation will replace the hundreds of times I write “great shot” or “love this” and means the comments I do leave have more thought in them.

Lee Peterson also shared his thoughts on the new feature, and while he had some initial hesitation, in it’s current form, he also seems to feel the same:

I think as long as it’s treated like a quick comment and not a popularity contest we’ll be ok. Let’s see where Glass take it next but I’ll be keeping a close eye on it’s next step.

I don’t mean to point out the hesitation as any kind of put down, as I believe it’s well warranted. Most social media platforms nowadays love these little interactions, because they can add counters everywhere, and it can drive that feeling of wanting more, and never being fully satisfied. Like Lee, my opinions are based on it’s current form, and if it does change into the “like” button that you see on every other platform, I’ll soon change my tune.

I’ll start by saying that I’m the sort of person that prefers to use the command line for Git commands. But there are still occasions where I just found it annoying, such as managing huge amounts of branches, reading old diffs, and also when making a big commit, and wanting to get a quick overview of what’s being added.

For those occasions, I used Fork. Although I’m sure for my uses, I could have probably used any Git GUI. However, I’m now using a terminal UI called Lazygit. I think it’s incredible. It lets me stay in the terminal, but gives me the functionality (that I use) of a typical GUI app.

This is what it looks like:

Because it’s a terminal app, it’s full of keyboard shortcuts, that make everything super fast. For example, to pull changes, you just use a lowercase p, and to push it’s an uppercase P.

Most of them are that simple that you just tap one key, but they tend to be limited to the active panel. For example, if you want to manage branches, then the branches panel needs to be the active one. Once it’s active, you can use things like space to checkout the selected branch, n to create a new branch, d to delete, o to create a pull request, etc. There’s honestly so many that if you were to check out Lazygit, I’d recommend having a glance at the full list of key bindings.

This is obviously a small example, but here is the experience of committing files:

It’s not limited to the keyboard though, you can navigate Lazygit using the cursor as well:

After installing Lazygit, I haven’t needed to use a GUI application at all. I know some may prefer to use a GUI, but I certainly have found Lazygit so much easier to use. Especially because of the abundance of keyboard shortcuts, and also because it lets me keep my Git activity to a single terminal window.

Lazygit works everywhere, macOS, Linux, or Windows, so if you want to enhance your Git experience in the command line, I’d definitely recommend checking it out.

You may have heard about Vinegar, since it’s been doing the rounds recently. However, if you haven’t, It’s essentially a Safari extension that makes YouTube videos look better, and act like standard HTML videos. Which means they use Safari’s native video player, which means that you have slightly more control over the video, but at the same time you do lose some functionality that YouTube has in their player.

As you can see, the video player still lets you change the video quality, use subtitles, stream to an AirPlay device, etc. So the basic functionality is there. And it makes Picture-in-Picture a lot easier to access, as the YouTube player requires three clicks, and the native player has a button in the top-left corner.

And as much as I would say that YouTube looks better with the native player, and that it’s easier to use, there are still downsides. For example, autoplay doesn’t work, you can’t access the YouTube Miniplayer, you can’t toggle Theatre Mode, and you can’t pause/play the video using the space bar.

The downsides will have different levels of importance to different people, and I’m personally a bit in the middle. I’m definitely keeping it installed, and going to be using it by default, but there are certainly ways it can be improved.

What I can say, is that it’s definitely worth it’s £1.79 price. Which seems to be an opinion shared by others, as it’s currently sitting in second place in the Utilities category of the Mac App Store in the UK.

Since starting to use Linux, I’ve been hearing more about window managers, and especially tiling window managers. I started to play around with them on my Linux install (I’m now using Kubuntu), and after some getting used to the keyboard shortcuts, I found it to be really useful to quickly be able to rearrange windows, and also have everything visible at once.

That’s why a few days ago I tried to see what I could achieve on my Mac. I’d tried BetterSnapTool recently, but wanted something with a bit more control. After watching a to of demos on YouTube of people’s setups, it seems as if yabai was the most popular option. I was starting to get the feel of it, but it never felt stable. Sometimes as I was typing in Safari’s address bar, the windows would attempt to readjust as if I’d moved something. But it just resulted in a bunch of flickering. Add on that you need to disable SIP before installing yabai, it never felt like a great choice.

But, I looked a bit more, and I discovered another option, Amethyst. I checked out the website, and it looked reasonably simple to grasp the basics of, while also offering an absolute ton of options. This is what I wanted ideally, as I want to be able to use it straight away, but I didn’t want to be stuck with a really restricted experience.

By default, it has over 50 different actions that are configured with keyboard shortcuts. Right now, I’m using about five of them regularly, and I already feel faster on my Mac.

There are a few default layouts, and you even create them yourself, but I’ve been using the “Tall” layout the whole time, and I think it’s certainly enough for now. That basically means that there’s one window to the left, and all other windows are in a vertical stack to the right.

Here’s an example of how my Mac usually looks:

On the left, I have the “main” window, this is usually a web browser or text editor. Then on the right, there’s usually at least one terminal window, and maybe a few extras.

How I’ve been using the right side is that I’ll have a handy terminal window to perform quick commands, like managing a git repository, but also windows that I might want to occasionally check out. So if I’m writing code, I might have a terminal to the right for git, and a web browser while I’m looking at how to do a certain task.

There are times where I’d like a full-screen app, for example when I’m writing, I like to have just Ulysses open, or if I’m reading a long web page, I might want to also have that as big as possible. For this, I usually use a different desktop. Amethyst does have a bunch of shortcuts for managing desktops, but I’ve not got the hang of those yet.

As for the shortcuts that I do use, I can adjust the width of the focussed window, by using SHIFT + OPT + L to make it bigger and SHIFT + OPT + L to make it smaller. And if the window you have focused is in a vertical stack, then they are all resized at the same time.

To move focus between windows, you can cycle through them clockwise with SHIFT + OPT + K, and clockwise with SHIFT + OPT + J. Most of the time I do this via the trackpad, but the shortcuts can be useful.

But I’d say the most useful is SHIFT + OPT + RETURN, which swaps the focussed window with the “main” window. Essentially making it the big window on the left of my display. It becomes key when there are three or more windows on the right, and I want to quickly make it bigger. Then when I’m done, I can just focus on the previous window and make that the main window again.

There are definitely some drawbacks to using a tiling window manager. The main one is that you can’t have two big windows, with one behind the other. This has forced me into multiple desktops, but also hide or quit applications when I’m finished with them.

The only thing I’m not sure about is how it will deal with multiple monitors. Maybe I’ll try that out soon.

For now, I’m enjoying how fast it feels to navigate between windows on my Mac, and hopefully, I’ll get the hang of some more shortcuts soon.

There's certainly a lot of opinions about TikTok, and technology that originates from China in general. But putting aside cultural and political differences, I've been reading about the rules that Douyin (China's version of TikTok) have put in place for its younger users, and to be honest, I'm a fan.

I've got a pretty strong opinion that in general, social media isn't a good thing for children. But I'd have to admit that it does have its benefits. Especially given how intertwined social media is with the modern world.

According to Kerry Allen, a BBC China media analyst, these restrictions have been coming for a while:

For the last three years, official media has been warning that the growing amount of time young Chinese people are spending on the internet is having an impact on their physical and mental health.

I'm sure it isn't a surprise to most people that young people's physical and mental health can be affected by the internet, and in particular, social media. But I can't think of any other platform that has actively tried to combat the effects.

As for the rules and differences that apply to Douyin's younger users, here are a few:

• Under 18s require consent from a legal guardian to use the platform.
• More educational content is being produced, which will target younger users.
• Under 14s can only access the platform between 06:00 and 22:00.
• Under 14s can only use the platform for a maximum of 40 minutes per day.

The restrictions for under 14 year olds is known as "Youth Mode", and it requires what they call "real-name authentication", so I'm assuming that some form of identification is necessary, which would certainly be a controversial topic in the west.

However, I still think it's good to see that at least one social media platform is putting the health of its younger users before engagement metrics.