I came across a tweet regarding an interesting app idea yesterday. The app is called one sec, and it's developed by Frederik Riedel.

The idea behind the app is to enforce a few seconds to take a breath before opening a social media app. So for example, when you go to launch Instagram to mindlessly scroll for a few minutes, you will be asked to take a deep breath, and then you can decide whether you really want to open Instagram or not. A lot of times, I tend to open Instagram or TikTok simply out of boredom. And I think it's become a bit of a reflex. Sometimes I catch myself blindly opening Instagram, but I little kick every time I did would be helpful.

It works via the Shortcuts app, and specifically by using the automation feature of Shortcuts where you can assign actions to happen when a custom trigger is activated. In this case, you assign the "Take One Sec.." action to the a trigger for when a certain app is opened. This way the shortcut is launched every time you launch that app.

The app has a level of customisation where you can select how long you want the "breathing" to last whenever you launch the app, and also whether you want it to apply if you relaunch the app within a specific period. I have it set to a 3 second duration, and also allows relaunches to be allowed if within 1 minute. That way I think it will cause enough friction to stop me from mindlessly launching things, but also not enough that it annoys me if I quickly go back to it a few seconds later. Because this would also apply if you're switching between apps quickly.

While you use/don't use apps after you're told to take a deep breath, one sec is keeping track of all of this, and displays these stats when you launch an app that is behind the "deep-breathe-wall", and also in the one sec app itself.

Another interesting feature is that when you're told to take a breath, you can obviously choose to open or not open the app, but you can also choose to continue breathing. And this time spent breathing, can also be added to the Health app to count as part of your "Mindful Minutes".

I think I'm going to use this for Instagram and TikTok solely, simply because I think I spend too much time on those apps when I should be doing other things. And a little kick will certainly help. I thought about doing it for Twitter as well, but I don't think the mindless scrolling really happens for me there. But we'll see I guess.

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one sec on the App Store

Mary Jo DiLonardo, writing for Treehugger:

Imagine taking a walk in the woods and seeing a deer or a rabbit. You'll no doubt remember the encounter — it might even be the highlight of your outdoor adventure.But what about all the plants, trees and flowers you passed while hiking? There's a good chance you paid little attention to the greenery on your path.That's what researchers call plant blindness.In 1998, U.S. botanists Elisabeth Schussler and James Wandersee defined plant blindness as "the inability to see or notice the plants in one's own environment," which leads to "the inability to recognize the importance of plants in the biosphere and in human affairs."Because of plant blindness, people tend to rank animals as superior to plants, so conservation efforts for plants tends to be limited.

It's an interesting phenomenon, and I think I fall for this as well myself. When I go outside into nature, the plants do take on a more background role. Which makes them much easier to ignore, or at least not focus on, as they tend to blur together as a kind of backdrop.

Not noticing a few plants isn't a problem on it's own. But when you don't notice something that's so fundamental to our environment, it will obviously affect any decision made in regard to the environment. Which when paired with a lack of education around plants, and a higher focus on animals, will most likely create even more ignorance about nature and the environment in which we all live.

Will Mathis, writing for Bloomberg Green:

The U.K.’s National Grid Plc and Dutch power transmission operator Tennet Holding BV are developing a plan to link the two countries’ power markets via giant wind farms at sea.The network managers want to use underwater cables to connect as much as 4 gigawatts of offshore wind farms to the power grids of both countries, a move that could open new markets to sell electricity and cut down on times when wind farms are shut off due to oversupply.Interconnectors will only become more important to Britain as its aging fleet of nuclear reactors shuts down, although a new reactor at Hinkley Point C will boost domestic capacity from 2025. National Grid and Tennet aim to identify a first project to lead the plan by the end of next year and be linked by 2029.

It sounds like a brilliant idea to me. Especially the part about oversupply. Imagine having a renewable energy source that's producing more than enough, so you need to shut it down so it doesn't create too much. That's a pretty stupid situation if you ask me.

Sara Fischer, wrote a great piece at Axios about the algorithm that powers TikTok. I found it fascinating, simply because I go on TikTok quite a lot, and I must admit they always seem to surface videos that I like.

She wrote about why the algorithm matters, the current situation with TikTok in the U.S., and other updates about the privacy and security practices.

I won't regurgitate everything here, but unsurprisingly, the bit I found most interesting was how it worked:

How it works: TikTok's algorithm uses machine learning to determine what content a user is most likely to engage with and serve them more of it, by finding videos that are similar or that are liked by people with similar user preferences.When users open TikTok for the first time, they are shown 8 popular videos featuring different trends, music, and topics. After that, the algorithm will continue to serve the user new iterations of 8 videos based on which videos the user engages with and what the user does.The algorithm identifies similar videos to those that have engaged a user based on video information, which could include details like captions, hashtags or sounds. Recommendations also take into account user device and account settings, which include data like language preference, country setting, and device type.Once TikTok collects enough data about the user, the app is able to map a user's preferences in relation to similar users and group them into "clusters." Simultaneously, it also groups videos into "clusters" based on similar themes, like "basketball" or "bunnies." Using machine learning, the algorithm serves videos to users based on their proximity to other clusters of users and content that they like. TikTok's logic aims to avoid redundancies that could bore the user, like seeing multiple videos with the same music or from the same creator.

Read the full piece on Axios.

I came back from a week trip to Edinburgh a few days ago, and while I was there I took quite a few photos.

Over 300 made it back, which was then refined by removing duplicates, blurry imags, and just bad compositions. I then spent some time in Loghtroom this evening trying to make them look even better, and I've been left with 44 photos that I'm really pleased with.

I've uploaded them all to Flickr, and put them in a single album. But as usual, I thought I'd post a few of my favourites here directly:

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View the full Edinburgh album on Flickr

Instagram is now 10 years old (Wow), and they are celebrating it by releasing a few new updates to the app and platform.

There's a few small change to the platform, like anti-bullying features that aim to hide abusive comments, adding warnings for people that regularly try to post "offensive" remarks, and a few other things like the constantly moving tab/icon arrangement. I'll leave that for Instagram to explain.

I'm interested in two things in the update. The ability to set a custom app icon, and the new Stories Map that you can find in the archive.

Custom App Icons

You now have the ability to change the app icon for Instagram! I know it's possible via Shortcuts, but these are actual custom app icons.

There are 13 to choose from, and they go back to 2010 before the app was even launched.

To get to the icons, you need to go to Settings, and swipe down from the top of the screen (a lot).

I've gone for the "Classic 2" icon. Because surely that's objectively the best option?

Stories Map

The Stories Map is a cool feature, and it's one for yourself. As in, it's part of your own archive, and not visible for other people.

To find it, tap on the menu while you're viewing your profile (What even is this menu called?), and tap Archive. Then you'll be able to see your past stories in a simple reverse-chronological list like before, in a calendar view, or on a map.

I think the calendar view will be the most useful when going back and looking at old videos. But the map view is also pretty cool. Although if you want your videos to appear on your map, you have to add a location sticker to a story when sharing it.

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As much as I get annoyed with Instagram Reels and Shopping taking up more real estate on the app, it's not all doom and gloom.

Oh, and if you want to find me on Instagram, I'm @lordchrishannah. (Yes, technically I'm a Lord, I own a square foot of land in Scotland)

Olga Vasileva, writing at Diff (a blog ran by the WIkimedia volunteer community) about the new look that’s coming to Wikipedia, and also why they’re making the changes now:

Wikipedia has remained a critical and widely-used resource for knowledge across the world for the past two decades. Over this time, the site has expanded significantly to contain unparalleled amounts of reliable and thorough information, including 53 million articles across over 300 languages. While Wikipedia’s content has grown rapidly, our interface has not kept pace. We’re proud that our website is more direct, simple, and advertisement-free than the rest of the internet. Yet, the design of desktop Wikipedia and other Wikimedia Foundation projects have not seen any substantive changes for the past 10 years, leaving certain elements of the site’s navigation feeling clunky and overwhelming to readers and editors whose main purpose is to create, learn, and curate content.

There’s no definitive list yet on the differences that will be coming in the new design. But the improvements will include things like a max content width, collapsible sidebar, sticky headers, more prominent search bar and table of contents, and a few other things. You can see a few of these concepts on MediaWiki.

Continuing on from the McEwans Levy just over a week ago, I've been drinking another ale tonight from a collection I got as a present a while ago.

Tonight I gave the Hobgoblin Ruby a try. It's advertised as having a sweet caramel and fruity taste, with a mix of chocolate and crystal malts.

Since this is only the second time I've tried an ale before, my palate isn't that good. However, I definitely notice the fruity tones, and in general it tastes a bit rich. I think that could be the chocolatey flavour coming through, but it's not something I'm a big fan of.

I'd say that if the McLevys was a 7/10, I'd give this a 6/10. I can drink it, and it's not that bad, but I wouldn't say it's that god either.

As of right now, this blog has been moved away from the previous subdomain chrishannah.me and simply on chrishannah.me. I've wanted to make that switch for a while now, but it didn't seem worthwhile on its own.

However, along with the domain switch, I've migrated the blog from WordPress to Ghost. That won't matter to most people, and I don't expect it to either. But basically, it means the blog is much more lightweight, and I can provide a few extra things like estimated reading time, primary tags above the post to help contextualise, and a few other technical things that only I care about. I think WordPress could achieve everything that Ghost can do, but it comes with a lot of baggage.

Anyway, enough of that.

The only thing that has changed from a reader point of view is the new domain (Or lack of subdomain). I have set up 301 redirects, so if you do visit the old URL, you will be redirected to the new version. However, it's obviously not a permanent solution.

That also means that the old RSS feed will still work, while the redirects are still there. But just to make sure you don't have any issues, the new RSS feed is: chrishannah.me/feed.

While I'm pretty sure everything has migrated over, and it's all working fine. If you see anything odd, please let me know.

I’ll start with the fact that I’ve not been the Apple Watch’s biggest fan for a while. I’ve used a Series 0 and Series 3, but for quite a few months I’ve been watch free.

In my ideal scenario, I’d like Apple to offer a smart band instead of a full watch. But I’ve come to terms that it’s probably not going to happen any time soon. And in a weird U-turn, I ended up ordering a Series 6 yesterday in size 10¹.

The watch I ordered was a 44mm Space Grey Aluminium one with a Charcoal Braided Solo Loop. And it was because of a few reasons:

• The new blood oxygen sensor. Maybe not impressive on its own, but I think having that and the heart rate monitor, the health/fitness capabilities will increase massively.
• watchOS 7. I haven’t had a good look at watchOS 7 before this event, and I was really surprised to see how good it was. Especially the new watch faces. (Matt Birchler has a great review on watchOS 7).
• Going back to work. A big reason why I stopped wearing the watch was because of the lockdown, and that I was no longer commuting to work anymore. Well, I’m going to have to start again soon, and I used my watch a ton while on the way or at work.
• The new straps. The new Loop and Braided Loop straps are really nice. I found it really annoying that the buckle of the Sports Loop always dug into my wrist, so that’s definitely a good thing.
• It’s a decent upgrade. As my last watch was the Series 3, the changes over the past three years have added up to become quite a large improvement. So I’m just generally interested in what an Apple Watch can do for me now.