Greg Morris, writing about how you should write. Not how you should write, but how you should just write, and write however you want, wherever you want:

While you are worrying about everyone else’s opinions on the correct way to do things, you’re not writing. While you’re casting aspersions on other people that do not do things what you consider is the correct way, you’re not writing either. There is enough room on the internet for everyone to publish, and not feel like they don’t fit. There is no way you should be writing, no perfect blogging for you to be doing, and no advise that needs giving.

I would suggest that although there are positives and negatives to some decisions when it comes to writing, for example you might a certain app fits you well, or maybe a specific platform is better suited. These decisions are refinements, and can be done once you’ve started writing. Because the most important part about writing isn’t where you’re doing it, the tools your using, or the look of your blog, it’s the process of writing itself.

As you may or may not know, I’m currently in the process of finding the right writing app for me. I’ve tested many in the past, but so far I’ve experimented with Craft, Werdsmith, and now 1Writer.

The short answer is that it’s yet another app that doesn’t quite fit what I want.

In some ways it seems similar to iA Writer (which is my default app I use as a fallback) in that it has a utilitarian design, and has good Markdown support. And it doesn’t just support Markdown and convert it to rich text, you view the formatting as you write, which is something I prefer, and is something that apps like Craft lack.

One thing I really liked was that you can add external file providers to your library, so this allowed me to use the same folder I use for iA Writer. It’s one of the nice touches that I want in a writing app, because I want everything to have a level of flexibility so I’m not stuck in any specific process.

Flexibility is also a reason why I’m moving away from 1Writer, since I would prefer better automation support, either in the form of dedicated Shortcut actions or at least a URL scheme. A lot of my writing starts off with a shortcut to generate a basic template or link post, and while there is a Share extension, I’d prefer to have this fully automated.

The final reason why I’m not continuing with 1Writer is that it’s only available on iOS, and while I do most of my writing on my iPad, I still write a decent amount on my Mac. Which meant I was using iA Writer on my Mac and 1Writer on my iPad, and I think that’s a rather pointless scenario when iA Writer is available itself on iOS.

So, again I’m left with another app crossed off, but this past week has helped me to redefine what I want in a writing app. I want it to be flexible regarding putting data into the app, and also taking it out and publishing my writing to my blog. I want an app that shows me the raw Markdown, possibly with a few visible formats like bold/italic, but I want to see the raw file as I write it. And I also want this app to be available on macOS and iOS. There are a few other things I would like, but these few points are what I’m setting as a standard going forward.

I’ve got one more app lined up in my experimentation, and that is TAIO. It’s a relatively new app, and I’ve waited to see some opinions of others before I give it a go. Iv’e seen some optimistic opinions on it, so that is where I will head next. After TAIO, I think is when my my decision will be made. As of right now, I’d say I’m heading back to iA Writer, but we’ll see.

Speaking about Hey World, Matt Birchler made a great video about it on his A Better Computer channnel where he explains what it is, how you use it, and the various benefits of using it as a service:

Hey's new blogging service, Hey World, is certainly something that has caught my eye recently. I've got some mixed feelings about it, but I do think that it could be a very good alternative for people that don't want to have to go through various hurdles just to publish words on the internet.

Matt Birchler, using the Hey World service, seems to have similar feelings:

Hey World looks like it aims to simplify the setup process even more, and remove some of the mental overhead that comes with starting a blog. You don't have to think of a name, find a theme, and figure out what service you're going to use, you can just write an email like you normally would, send it to world@hey.com, and boom you've got a blog post. People can even subscribe to your future posts via email or RSS, so they can follow along easily and however they prefer.

Like Matt, I already run a self-hosted blog, and I'm not thinking about making any major changes anytime soon. However the attitude towards treating newsletters more like personal letters is something I can get behind. It's also one of the main aims I have with my newsletter.

In recent years, I think I've become somewhat more of a spectator when it comes to the latest trends in technology. Whereas in the past I would jump on every new social network, blogging platform, or whatever the new hype is.I'm not sure if it's to do with age, and generally not having as much time or effort to jump into all the new things, but I'm beginning to become quite fond of well planned challenges and experiments. I'll be writing more about this in this months newsletter, but I've found them to be very effective in making informed decisions. Especially when used after doing some initial research, limiting the scope, and setting fixed goals/outcomes, rather than having a constant stream of new things being tested.

There are a few things that interest me right now where I'm just waiting on the sidelines to see how they evolve. Such as Hey's blogging service, cryptocurrencies, Clubhouse, and a few others.

I'm not saying I won't try new things anymore, but I'm trying to at least evaluate them properly, and making a decision whether things will actually add value to my life.

As you may or not know, I'm the developer of Text Case, a text-transformation utility app for iOS and macOS. The app now supports tons of various pre-defined transformations and allows the creation of custom transformations, however, the app was originally based around one format, title case.

As the name suggests, title case refers to the capitalisation of text that is to be used as a title. But it's not something that has an objective set of rules. Instead, it's more of a rule that's based around personal style choices.

The most popular title case standards I've heard of are AP (Associated Press), APA (American Psychological Association), and CMOS (Chicago Manual of Style), but there are countless more.

And including the next planned release for Text Case, it will support a total of 9 different title case variations. Some are quite similar, however, as people like to stick to certain standards, I think it's important that there's a lot of options in the app. And since I've had a few questions in theist asking what the difference is, I thought I'd write a post to explain the implemented rules.

Please note, the implemented formats aren't carbon copies of the official standards, as some of the rules aren't exactly feasible to build into an automated tool. For example, a few standards have the rule to keep the second part of a Latin species name lowercase, and AMA seems to have a few rules based around greek letters.

But from the perspective of Text Case, here is how each of them is implemented:

American Medical Association (AMA)

• Capitalise first and last word.
• Capitalise major words.
• Do not capitalise coordinating conjunctions (and, but, for, nor, or, so, yet).
• Do not capitalise articles (a, an, the)
• Do not capitalise prepositions of three or fewer letters.

Associated Press (AP)

• Capitalise first and last word.
• Capitalise major words.
• Capitalise all words of four letters or more.
• Do not capitalise articles, conjunctions, or prepositions of three or fewer letters.

American Psychological Association (AP)

• Capitalise first and last word.
• Capitalise the first word after a colon.
• Capitalise nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, and pronouns.
• Capitalise all words of four letters or more.
• Do not capitalise articles, conjunctions, or prepositions of three or fewer letters.
• Capitalise the second part of hyphenated major words.

Bluebook

• Capitalise first and last word.
• Capitalise the first word after a colon.
• Capitalise all words except articles, conjunctions, or prepositions of four letters or fewer.

Chicago Manual of Style (CMOS)

• Capitalise first and last word.
• Capitalise nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs.
• Capitalise all conjunctions except coordinating conjunctions.
• Do not capitalise articles of prepositions.
• Do not capitalise "as" in any grammatical function.

Guardian

• Capitalise all words except for "a", "an", "and", "at", "for", "from", "in", "of", "on", "the", "to”.
• Capitalise the first word after a colon.

Modern Language Association (MLA)

• Capitalise first and last word.
• Capitalise nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, and subordinating conjunctions.
• Do not capitalise articles, prepositions, and coordinating conjunctions.
• Capitalise the first word after a colon.

New York Times

• Capitalise nouns, pronouns, and verbs.
• Capitalise all words of four or more letters.
• Capitalise "no", "nor", "not", "off", "out", "so", and "up".
• Do not capitalise "a", "and", "as", "at", "but", "by", "en", "for", "if", "in", "of", "on", "or", "the", "to", "v.", "vs.", and "via".

Wikipedia

• Capitalise first and last word.
• Capitalise verbs, nouns, pronouns, adjectives, adverbs, and subordinating conjunctions.
• capitalise prepositions of five letters or more.
• Do not capitalise articles, prepositions of four letters or fewer, and coordinating conjunctions.

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Hopefully this has answered some questions that people have regarding the different title case variants. But if you have any more, then I'd be very willing to hear them. And if you spot something that isn't right, then please let me know!

A lot of the good things in life seem to only happen by chance. Which can be good if it happens to you, but can make you feel a bit jealous if it happens to someone else.

I’ve had my fair share of luck during my life. But I think I also had a part to play in getting that luck.

Because in my opinion, even if you get a chance at something, you still need to be ready for it.

For example, if you get a chance switching to your ideal career, you need to be ready and willing to make that change. Otherwise that chance may just pass you by.

Other times you need to earn your luck.

We've all heard of a few "overnight successes", but deep down we know that no success actually happens overnight. Or at least, it doesn’t happen overnight, without the countless hours of work that went into it beforehand.

So while luck may seem to be spontaneous, you need to put yourself in a position where you can better receive luck, and be ready to take the chance when it arrives.

One thing people always talk about when trying to increase productivity, or as some kind of self-improvement kick, is to work on building regular habits in order to make a certain behaviour happen more often and become routine. But as much as I like the idea of doing things regularly, like blogging or even developing apps, I’m not actually a fan of having a routine.

I’m not exactly much of a planner either, so maybe that gives you a better idea of the type of person I am. Because again, while I like the idea of having a planned life and building plans, I’m not someone that likes to stick to them.

Instead, I prefer to make decisions on the fly, and just to take each day as it comes. Maybe this means I’m living in the moment or something, I don't know. But I know I'd much rather have a day with no plans, and just see what happens, than having regular tasks that need to be done.

I would say the only part of my adult life where I had minimal routine was when I was at university. Maybe that sounds odd, given I had four regular classes, and also worked part-time. However, university was only a few hours a day, and the classes would range from 9 am to 5 pm, so I had a lot of free time in between. But the best part of that free time was that it didn’t match up with anyone else’s. So I was free to just do whatever I wanted. And given I went to university in London, there was quite a lot I could do.

I had a zoo membership, so I frequently popped into London Zoo, and being a skateboarder, I went to Southbank a few times, and I went to the obvious tourist locations too. But in general, I just went to some random places with absolutely no plans. It was pretty fun.

But when I got a job, the routine kicked in, and my workday was (including commuting) from 7 am to 7 pm. So there wasn’t a lot of free time for any spontaneous decisions or trips.

I did try moving my working hours an hour earlier, which made my day a lot better. But nowhere near the level that working from home has.

We all know what’s going on, so I don’t need to explain much. But essentially, since being made to work from home, I’ve had a sense of that freedom, and it’s making life a lot more fun. I can sit in the garden when it’s sunny, go out for lunch (when I’m allowed), and just generally fit work around my life. Rather than adapting to the schedule that my company assigns me.

I think this may sound pretty odd, but one thing I’ve really liked about working from home is the ability to have a lunch-time shower. I can’t work out why that is.

Nonetheless, it’s clear to me that I’m not a fan of having a routine. Especially when it's dictated by someone else.

I visited Ashridge earlier today, which is a rather large forest that's only a short car ride from where I live. I didn't miss up the oppurtunity to take my camera, and there was some absolutely incredible light.

My camera is the Fujifilm X-T100, and I used two lenses, the XC 50-230mm zoom lens, and the XC 35mm prime. But I captured a few on my iPhone 12 too, as teh ultra-wide lens seemed perfect for a woodland scene.

After going through a few hundred photos, I came out with 24 that I really like. I've uploaded them all to Flickr, so you can view the entire album there. But for a quick preview, here are five of my favourites:

View all 24 photos.

With the big #Pokémon25 event happening very soon on Pokémon Day, there was a Pokemon Presents event in which unveiled three new games.

There's a new Pokémon Snap game, which focusses on a new region, the Lental region. I just say, it looks really nice, and I'm sure will be a great game to relax with.

Then there are two games focussed on the Sinnoh region that we experienced in Diamond and Pearl.

The first being a remake of both version, taking it from the DS and bringing it to the Nintendo Switch. These are Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl, and they're being released later this year.

And the last game is based in the Sinnoh region, but not the one we all know. This one goes back in time to the beginnings of Sinnoh, back when the Pokémon roamed free, and it was just a simple village. So instead of completing a Pokédex, your job will actually be to go out and create the first version of the Pokédex.

The gameplay sounds really interesting, as apparently, you'll need to catch, survey, and wild Pokémon. The way Poké Balls work seems to be a bit different as well:

To catch Pokémon in the Pokémon Legends: Arceus game, you can observe them to learn their behavior, then carefully sneak up, aim your Poké Ball™, and let fly!

You can also have your ally Pokémon battle wild Pokémon that you hope to catch. Just throw the Poké Ball holding your ally Pokémon near a wild Pokémon, and you’ll seamlessly enter battle and command your Pokémon by choosing from moves it knows.

That game is called Pokemon Legends: Arceus, and it's the one I'm most looking forward too, mainly because of the change of perspective.

Unfortunately, we'll have to wait until early 2022 for that, but we'll have Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl to play before then.