I can't quite figure out what caused this transition, but recently I've been writing my blog posts on the web directly in the Ghost editor, and I'm rather enjoying it. A while ago, I would have only thought about using a native app, whether I was writing on my Mac, iPhone, or iPad.
But writing in the editor feels to me more like I'm actively writing on my blog. Not just writing something that may be shared later on to my blog. Maybe that makes sense, I'm not so sure. But there definitely feels like a distinction in my head.
I've seen some comments in the past about writing in online editors being bad, with them being slow, not having a good UI compared to native apps, and even having the possibility to lose your progress. But I don't think the web is that bad anymore. Or at least the Ghost editor isn't. If you want to check it out, Matt Birchler made a great video about the Ghost admin interface.
I wonder what the current consensus is on writing directly in a web interface. Is this behaviour still weird? Or am I simply joining everyone else on this one?
I wrote previously about something called ASMR rooms. Which I found to be a rather interesting idea, and possible solution to help keep me focussed on a task, by providing my brain some background sounds and visuals to keep any distractions away.
Since writing that post and experimenting with various videos, I'm starting to think of these videos as background environments. In that the idea is to immerse yourself in these scenes, in order to remove distractions from the physical environment in which you are actually located. But I've become fascinated in how the experience could be improved.
My current thinking is that the videos should match the real-world environment and to an extent, local time. Because, I don't think a warm room with a crackling fireplace would be as effective on a sunny afternoon, or icy morning, as it would be later in the day when the sun has set. Because in that case, the video changes from being separate to your physical environment, to an extension of your real-world surroundings. But with some added visuals and background noise.
I can't see it being feasable for a product to be created to automate this, but it would be pretty cool to have something where you'd have a constant stream of ASMR room videos, but they'd also adapt to the time of day, seasons, and possibly local weather. For example, a winters day could feature a snowy courtyard in the morning, followed by a library in the early afternoon, then you could watch the sun set over a vista, and relax by a fire in the evening.
One idea that may work is a livestream to rotate through videos, but maybe localised to a timezone/country to align itself with sunrise/sunset times and seasons. I don't know how interested other people would be with that, but I'd certainly watch it.
This may all seem a bit weird, or just me taking something simple, way too far. But this is the kind of stuff that goes through my head.
The reason I know about ASMR is that as these “tingle videos” grew in popularity, they spawned a sub-genre called ASMR rooms. The goal in these videos was no longer to trigger the classical tingling response, but instead to invoke a sense of meditative calm and focus.One such video, for example, is a mostly static shot of Charles Dickens’s victorian-style writing room, with animated flames crackling in the fireplace and a storm raging outside the windows. The scene runs for close to two hours. The only thing that changes is the intensity of the rain:
This is the first time I've ever heard about ASMR rooms, but I find them rather intriguing. ASMR isn't something I'm particularly interested in, but the idea of having a video used for background noise and visuals seems like it would be useful to me.
He writes about how one of his readers makes use of ASMR rooms to immerse themselves into a single task. They do this by playing one of the videos full screen, with the audio playing through noise-cancelling headphones, and then having a word processor in front of it. I'm sure the bigger the screen the better the effect this would have since it would allow you to immerse yourself even more in the environment.
When I'm home by myself, I find that when I try to try to focus on a single task, I get easily distracted. When my girlfriend is home, or even when I lived with my parents, the television is usually on in the background, and people are moving around me. But when I'm on my own, I have the lights turned down to a minimum, usually, the room I'm in has a very dim light, no other light is turned on, and I'm usually sat in silence.
Sometimes I find myself playing a podcast to keep my brain occupied, but if I'm reading or writing, a podcast can also be a distraction. I have the same issue with music.
One tool I have found to help calm the mind is ambient sounds. Not to aid focus, or remove distractions from an environment, but to help to fall asleep. I have one of the small Alexa devices in my bedroom so I use that for this purpose. As it has various skills where you can say "Alexa play something sounds", and it plays an audio track for one hour. I find that I enjoy rainforest sounds, and my girlfriend prefers rain sounds.
When I'm trying to focus on a task I think I need the background sound and also something visual. That's probably why I've found that background noise with apps like Dark Noise doesn't work that well with me. But the idea of an ASMR room certainly sounds like it could work.
The ones that seem most interesting to me are the ones that relate to Harry Potter. For some reason, the scenes seem rather relaxing. I'm not sure if it's solely because of the scenes that the creators have chosen, or the connection I have to the books/films, but they seem to be the ones that attract me the most.
As I'm writing this post, I've been playing various videos on an external monitor which is located behind and to the side of my laptop that I'm writing this from. I have the audio routed to a HomePod Mini which is also on my desk, and I became a bit extra and I changed the smart bulb in my office to a dim orange to set the mood. It does seem to have helped my focus, but obviously, I'll keep trying this idea and hopefully, it helps me stick to a single task and minimise distractions.
If you want to check these out for yourself, here are a few that I've found:
Josh Holtz, has announced his new app ConnectKit for Shortcuts, which bridges the gap between Shortcuts and the App Store Connect API. Surprisingly, you can access quite a lot of the functionality from App Store Connect over the API, including managing users, TestFlight, app metadata, reporting, and even more!
You can use the built-in token storage for free, along with the action to generate a JWT token that can be used to make authentication requests to the API. But for just a small tip, you can unlock four premium actions which is where the magic is.
There's an action to get your apps, and also your sales and finance reports, which both come with quite a lot of parameters. For the rest of the API functonality, you can use the Make Request action, which lets you interact with the API directly, but you get the added bonus of the JWT token being generated for you automatically.
When I saw this app on Twitter, I immediately thought about how you could combine it with something like Charty to view super custom charts for sales. Fortunately, Josh has gone one step further and provided a ton of examples in the app, and on his blog post. Some you may expect like viewing charts in Charty, and app data in WidgetPack. But also submitting an app for review via Siri.
It sounds great, and I'm very much looking forward to seeing how I can put it to use.
I came across a great thread on Twitter. Joe Parton, spent yesterday designing football shirts for 10 popular supermarkets. They've been designed so well, I think they'd work as a fun quiz, for people to try and match them to the supermarket.
I don’t know how your Sunday‘s gone, but I’ve spent mine making football shirts for every UK supermarket (a thread):
A tidy pin-stripe design for the home shirt, and an away shirt based on the staff uniform. I thought about making a “sweet as nectar” comment but decided against it. #SupermarketShirtspic.twitter.com/z0zspx7TNr
This northern powerhouse will be kitted out in their famous green and gold. I can see that away shirt selling well in the Leeds area, too. #SupermarketShirtspic.twitter.com/6VTqY5Km2O
Put down that papaya and get these in your basket. Although you may need to go without your cashmere toilet roll for a week to afford all three. Elite. #SupermarketShirtspic.twitter.com/hSwl9cawCh
A simple yet iconic home shirt, and that away kit is a “lidl” bit naughty. It tracks your heart-rate as your shopping comes flying through the checkout. #SupermarketShirtspic.twitter.com/bw8EW0zBIH
Everyone’s “second club” (but you never want to admit it). The home kit mirrors the staff uniform, whilst the away kit is straight from the middle aisle. Sehr gut. #SupermarketShirtspic.twitter.com/VPSlALYFdp
Today the hill some seem to be willing to die on is that the Mac will never get a touch screen.“It sucks on Windows, Apple wouldn’t do that. They’ve said no for 10 years, why do you expect them to change?”Optionally, bounce back to the top of this post if you’re not sure where I’m going here. 😋This year Apple added a mouse cursor to the iPad, something a few years ago would have been brushed off as “a Mac thing that didn’t belong on a touch-based OS.” Yet here we are. If you can find a single person who thinks the iPad is worse off for adding a cursor, I’d be very impressed. Apple didn’t just glom the Mac cursor onto the iPad and call it a day, they updated iPadOS in ways that made it work wonderfully.
This is a great piece by Matt, and I think he's managed to convince me about touch screens eventually coming to Macs.
I think I was biased by the touch implementation in Windows, which I don't think is particularly impressive, and also the difference between macOS and iOS where Apple do support touch.
But Apple adding a touch screen wouldn't be just that. There would be a story behind it. And I for one, am intrigued to see what that story will be.
In the mind’s eye of many people, Japan is a land of tranquil Zen gardens, serene temples, and exquisite tea ceremonies. Both traditional and contemporary Japanese architecture, books and magazines are the envy of designers worldwide. Yet for some reason practically none of this mastery has been translated into digital products, in particular websites, most of which look like they hail from around 1998.
The company I work for is owned by Alibaba Group, so therefore I'm exposed to some Chinese-first websites and tools, and I've always pondered the reasons behind the difference to what the western-world is used to.
While this article is focussed on Japanese web design, I think there are a lot of similarities. It makes me wonder if any other cultural differences have an effect on design.
Scientists found that Fritillaria delavayi plants, which live on rocky slopes of China's Hengduan mountains, match their backgrounds most closely in areas where they are heavily harvested.This suggests humans are "driving" evolution of this species into new colour forms because better-camouflaged plants have a higher chance of survival.
In the new study, the researchers measured how closely plants from different populations matched their mountain environment and how easy they were to collect, and spoke to local people to estimate how much harvesting took place in each location.They found that the level of camouflage in the plants was correlated with harvesting levels.In a computer experiment, more-camouflaged plants also took longer to be detected by people.
At first glance, this research seemed novel. Humans being the cause of a plants evolution. But it's not novel at all. We are animals, and like every other animal, we shape and are shaped by our environment.
It's interesting because we don't usually think of ourselves as being part of nature. But discoveries like this will only change that.
Apple in iOS 14.3 is streamlining the Home Screen customization process by simplifying the way that app shortcuts work. With the launch of iOS 14, users quickly discovered that Shortcuts could be used to replace traditional app icons to create an entirely customized Home Screen look.
Unfortunately, while these Home Screens created with Shortcuts looked fantastic, the experience was less than ideal because launching an app through shortcuts required the Shortcuts app to open briefly, slowing the app opening process. In iOS 14.3 beta 2, that's no longer the case because shortcuts no longer have to route through the Shortcuts app.
Such a small change, but yet this is going to make a massive difference. Custom home screens are the thing now, and major component of that is using Shortcuts to create custom app launchers. And until 14.3, they require Shortcuts to open before running the shortcut. But with this change, they’ll start to look and feel like real apps.
I like how Apple have been slowly integrating Shortcuts into the system. Bit by bit, iOS is becoming more customisable, allowing users to really make their devices their own.
My new MacBook Air is proving to be all that I’d hoped, and it’s not just because of the fancy new M1 processors. Since I’m coming from a 2014 MacBook, I’m reaping the benefits of all the other advancements Apple has made to its laptop line in the intervening years, and prime among those is the incorporation of Touch ID: I’ve already enabled it for 1Password (what a lifesaver) and, thanks to a tip from Twitter follower Josef, I can bring it to one of my other favorite places: the command line.
Such a great tip. I wonder why it's not more easily available?
