Michael Wright

Giving away 470ml of blood in 7 minutes!

Fri, 17 Feb 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Donating was a great experience!

After a lengthy questionnaire, asnwering proving questions of varying levels I had my veins checked to see which arm was best to donate from. To the surprise of the nurse, both arms had ideal veins for donation, so I chose my non-dominant arm (left).

Next was the test of blood iron levels - pretty straightforward prick in the finger and a drop of blood extracted. Might have mildly shocked the nurse when the blood started pouring out my finger when it was pricked.

Finally, after everything was okay, I was hooked up to the extraction system (needle and bag swinger), and 7 minutes later, my bag was full and it was time for snacks and drinks before exiting.

Go donate if you can…

I know from the questionnaire that not everyone will have a lifestyle, or history that allows them to donate, or may suffer from fear of blood or needles.

If you’ve considered it before, but not been sure, I highly recommend you go donate if you are able. It’s painless, easy, and in some ways fun - the nurses are good fun to chat with!

Eating Michelin Food @ Angel at Hetton

Sun, 13 Jun 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Dinner!

Stopping for lunch on a yorkshire road trip with my friends for a 7 course meal, I (as a coeliac) was given the gluten free menu, and with every course just as elegant as my friends’ standard menu I didn’t feel like I was missing out.

We opted for the wine pairing in addition for each course, and the menu was:

Snacks

Potato
Betroot
Chicken
Lavash & hummus

Sole

Lemon sole, oyster cream, Yorkshire asparagus & Jack by the hedge

Tomato

Tomatoes, basil, lovage ice, essence, curd & nori

Turbot

Steamed turbot, elderflower, courgette, smoked pike roe & bronze fennel

Lamb

Nidderdale lamb, caramelised onion, shitake, broad bean & local pak choi

Savoury

Winslade, pickled Thai shallots & minus 8 vinegar

Strawberry

English strawberries, fermented juice & crisp, marigold, hay smoked fresh clotted cream

Peach

Poached, compressed & frozen peach, peach kernel Chantilly & dark chocolate

Ditching Google Chrome for Apple's Safari

Thu, 06 May 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Preface

Google Chrome was released in 2008, I remember talking to some of my online developer friends about it in the run-up when the Beta dropped, and it was revolutionary. Fast, new features, and build by Google, who were building amazingly powerful applications online, and this was surely going to be amazing too?

How correct we were - it was a great browser, truly transformational for the speed and quality of browsing online, it was great to use and helped advance development of the web standards and availability of new “cool” things.

What happened?

I’m big on Apple products, I use Mac, I have an iPhone, I recently purchased an iPad Pro. I don’t own anything Windows in my house (unless you could an Xbox Series X). I’ve used Apple products for years, the Apple watch has helped push forward my activity and get me generally healthier as a human.

Personally, ignoring the big corporation stuff, I feel that Apple care, unlike Google, about the privacy of the people using their apps and services. I found Apple’s huge shift over the last couple of years to better web standard compatibiltiy, more rapid development of Safari and better feature parity with Chrome.

Safari started to become a good competitor to existing browsers.

I thought you tried this before?

I tried a year or so ago to switch, but there were some nuances that were annoying me about it. They were issues with 1Password’s browser plugin compared to Google Chrome’s, and also issues with dynamic favicons being cached forever and never updating.

Unfortunately, the 2nd issue isn’t resolved, so the unread email count in my pinned Google Mail tab doesn’t change much - very frustrating! But, 1Password released a hugely updated Safari Plugin which improved the experience 100 fold, and made me want to use it, tied in with the shared browsing history with my iPhone & iPad it was a no-brainer.

The final thing that pushed me to switch was that Google Chrome was actually being pretty resource intensive when leaving it open for a long period of time. I’m one of those people that never turns off his computer, never closes anything, and rarely installs updates - literally the worst technical person in the world. But I’d have to close Google Chrome once a week at least because it was being a huge hog of resources and memory on my MacBook & Mac Mini. However, Safari, just sits there, working away quite happy. Now I just have to restart maybe once a month, and it’s wholly down to WhatsApp Web being a resouce hog (Note to self, switch to the WhatsApp desktop app).

What about development?

The dev tools in Safari aren’t as great as those in Google. I find using Safari helps a lot with reviewing our work internally, as most of our team use Chrome etc I can pick up other bugs before it hits our full QA cycle. But fundamentally, I still have Google Chrome installed, I still open it once a month to use the developer tools, but it never persists cookies, login details or anything. It’s just there for one-off usage.

Apple will have to halt support for Safari for me to consider switching back - I’m pretty locked in with the browser now. Privacy and speed (for me) were more important than using Google’s browser. The whole integration of the ecosystem is too valuable to lose.

Zoom meetings are getting tedious

Thu, 29 Apr 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Preface

I’ve always been a huge advocate for remote working, and making sure that the team that I’ve grown around me can work unhindered as much as possible to get the best out of them, and them the best out of me. We’ve been using Zoom as a company for a very long time, using it before the pandemic really hit for meetings with customers, and staff when they were at home. (We did use Slack calls for internal meetings, but they were flaky at times!).

Since the pandemic, we’ve been working from home pretty much full time, and with that we’ve been making extensive use of Zoom for meetings with the team, the company and more broadly clients as well.

I’ve had a taste of the “old times”

Recently, we had one of the team’s from the company in the office for a sprint retrospective and planning session and it was great. The energy was high, the concentration remained throughout, and people were excited. Albeit a lot of this excitement might be tied to the fact that 60% of the team hadn’t been in the office before, or met each other in person, but it was the most productive meeting I’ve been in with that number of people for a long time.

This is what it used to be like. Having as much of the team onsite in person for a planning session, bouncing ideas off each other and being suitably energetic about the future project plans and the previous sprint that we smashed. But this isn’t the future either…

What is the future?

I don’t want to drag the team to the office for any and all meetings. I don’t want to sit at home and do all meetings remotely if there are some of the team in the office on a set day each week. We’re working on our return to office plan, and it’ll strike a very good balance between office and home working. Developers want to get their head down, at home, and work unhindered. Juniors like to be surrounded by knowledgeable people to ask for help. I like to make sure we’re making best use of time in meetings or working.

Zoom meetings have become tedious and tiring when ran back to back. So the future, is a balance between all of the above. Big meetings in person, really pushing creativity within the team. Small meetings, remotely, when they fit in around the developers work schedules. Hopefully overtime, the environment that comes with working in an office will entice a few team members to want to work more in the office than not.

But until then, I’ll be doing less lengthy Zoom meetings. Running shorter meetings (45 mins or so max) to enable some decompression time between meetings. Clawing back some of my own time and flexibiltiy that is automatically experienced with in-person meetings. For some reason, I feel worse being late to an internal Zoom meeting, than I do to an in-person meeting - it’s weird.

I am sunsetting codular.com

Wed, 16 Sep 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Preface

Back in 2012, I started a site called Codular. It was originally purposed as a tool for me to place information that I frequently needed as a reference. Over time I realised other people on the internet were keen to understand and learn from clear, and concise, articles. The site grew in popularity, was featured on a few other sites and widely shared amongst people on Twitter, Stack Overflow, Reddit, Facebook and many other forums and educational networks.

But Why?

Well, time.

I’ve not had the time recently (or motivation) to keep writing articles in a way that can lend itself to continue education and teaching new developers.

Additionally, I have found myself taking more of a step back from active development to a more hands-off role, and as such my experiences don’t lend themselves well to a website dedicated to development educational articles.

I have migrated some of the key articles over to this site that many people loved, and that trended highly in search results or had regular and frequent traffic as per Google Analytics. If you’re reading this, and missing one of those articles, please feel free to reach out to me on Twitter and I’ll migrate it over to here for you.

Thanks

Finally, thanks to all of the people that have read, shared, learnt from, used or just shared feedback on any of the articles that I wrote, it means a lot.

Reviewed: Defending Jacob

Fri, 14 Aug 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Preface

Based on a 2012 book written by author William Landay, Defending Jacob is a crime drama TV show made up of 8 episodes, originally released weekly exclusively on Apple TV+. The TV show follows a family who are dealing with the prospects that their son, 14 year-old Jacob, is a murderer.

With a very star studded line up, including Chris Evans as the father, Michelle Dockery as the mother and Jaeden Martell as the son - Jacob.

My Thoughts

This is one of very few TV shows that I’ve watched religiously every Friday straight after work while eating my lunch. Normally I end up getting bored of a TV Show if I can’t sit and watch it all back to back or binge watch it over a few days it’s a dreadful habit, but hey-ho!

For me the TV show had a very dark undertone to it, in terms of how it was filmed, the underlying mystery around the family’s history, and also around the actual murder case. Jadean does a great job of portraying a slightly troubled teen who witholds enough information from everyone around him to promote the idea and feeling that he is indeed the murderer.

There were a few dips at points towards the middle of the show, where not much exciting actually happens. Mostly related around the ongoing trial case that was taking place, and without much forward movement. However, that aside, the TV show consistently drew my attention and kept me focussed throughout the show, with multiple unexpected twists & turns.

Without ruining the show, all I’ll say is that it’s probably got one of the best and most unexpected endings of a TV show that I’ve seen in a very long time. It left me sat for a very short period after wondering what I’d just watched and what the hell had just happened.

Rating

I tend to watch a lot of TV Shows on Netflix, Apple TV+ or Prime Video, and as mentioned before tend to have a few watching scenarios for a TV show. Either it’s on in the background in the evening while I try to switch off from work, or while surfing around the internet, and finally something that I fully engage with and get deep into without distraction.

This is one that fits squarely into the very last category, and so with that I highly recommend this to anyone that’s looking for something new to watch and who is a fan of the the cast members and loves a great crime drama.

It’s one of the best crime TV shows I’ve watched in a very long time.

How to use GitHub's Special Profile Repository

Sat, 08 Aug 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Preface

GitHub profiles are generic, and while there are ongoing design updates across GitHub currently being rolled out, one new feature has been made available to members.

This repository allows you to specify a README.md file, which will display the contents correctly on your profile’s page - as per the image above. As it’s a markdon file, you can do all the normal formatting that you could do with a wiki or similar on GitHub.

But Why?

Well, it’s to add some extra personality to your own profile, instead of using the (slightly) limited existing fields that GitHub offers. Some people may use it for showing off their latest work, or images, some might use it to link to the other site(s) or social media that aren’t possible through the usual processes.

It’s a slightly less limited way to add some personalisation to your profile on GitHub, and can be a kinda cool way to get some new attention for yourself when sharing your profile during job recruitment, outside of just having lots of great repositories.

I’ve just used mine (for the purposes of this article) to hold the same paragraphs about me as are on the “Who am I?” page.

How do I use it?

Well, it’s pretty simple, and straight forward.

Create a new GitHub repository
Set the repository name to be your username
Set repository to “Public”
Tick the “Initialize this repository with a README” checkbox
Create repository

When you’ve created the repo, you can go through and modify the README.md file, or you could jump straight over to your profile & see how it looks out of the box.

If you make some cool changes to your profile README file, please shoot me a link over on Twitter to show it off.

Can you really ban TikTok in the US?

Sun, 02 Aug 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Preface

TikTok is a very popular video app that is used by millions of users across the globe, with a rumoured 80+ million users in the USA. It’s widely used by the younger generation, and at times has been used to raise awareness of issues that might not otherwise get raised.

TikTok is owned by ByteDance, a Chinese company, and Donald Trump recently said to reporters that “We maybe be banning TikTok”, sparking many videos on the platform of people giving alternative ways for followers to continue after it’s banned.

Will it really happen?

There’s a lot of speculation online that realistically the US Government are just using this to try to put pressure on China, and the company itself. With the fear that ByteDance might be selling data to China (a fact that they strongly deny), this is probably just the next step in an ongoing dispute between America & China.

But the problem is, it’s very difficult to actually ban a mobile app, and isn’t something that’s really been done before. Sure, apps have been removed from the App Stores in places due to regional pressures from governments, but to shut one down exclusively in a region (including for users who have already downloaded it), can be tough.

How?

Well, first you’d have to stop the continued download of the application, this means that Apple & Google would be forced to remove it from their App Stores. Ignoring the fact that you can distribute Android apps outside of the store, this would stop people downloading it.

But what about people who already have it? Well, in 2014 Apple & Google were nearly forced by a Brazilian judge to remotely wipe apps from people’s phones. So the technology exists already to get the companies to do that, but they’d have to be compelled to. I don’t think they’d just voluntarily go through with it.

Alternatively, you’d have to look at blocking all of the DNS entries for TikTok within the USA to stop the application working at all. But doing this would most probably be possible to circumvent by using a simple VPN app, or similar. This was done in India when they decided to ban TikTok.

But will it?

I don’t think so, I think there’re a lot of moving parts, and in the moden day there are more ways around these sort of things that there used to be.

Personally, I think there’ll either be a lesser blocking of the app on specific people’s phones (eg. government official’s), or TikTok will be purchased by another company. Microsoft are supposedly in discussions to buy the US branch of the company, but whether that’ll work out - who knows?

Watch this space…

TikTok has been great for a lot of people, and I think there’s a lot of good coming out of it. But there are concerns about the spread of China’s involvement in a lot of popular technological areas throughout the Western World currently - look at Huawei, and how they’ve been banned at integrating in core networking areas in many regions now.

I think this is just more grandstanding by Trump, and he’s very reactive to things, and this is just something that he sees not just as a threat from China, but also as a threat to his run for a second-term.

Hiding Home Screens on iOS 14 Helped Reduce My Anxiety

Wed, 29 Jul 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Preface

iOS 14 brings with it a lot of new features including widgets being available across the various home screens on the phone, and updates to certain UI elements like Siri and incoming calls etc. One of the smaller features that really caught my eye was the ability to hide (or switch off) an individual home screen on the phone.

I’ve been using iOS 14 since the first developer beta got released, and while it’s a small feature it might require a bit of understanding of my usage of iOS to understand why I find it so great.

On my phone, I have one screen dedicated to what I’d class as “work apps”, apps I exclusively use for my day job. Things like Basecamp, Slack, Email and GitHub all reside on this screen. Most of them are set to only show badges for notifications, and not to send push notifications to me.

Before iOS 14, I would swipe between pages on my phone, notice one of these apps had a new notification, and open it. Almost instinctively, without actually thinking about it consciously. I was struggling to switch off completely from work over the weekend or when I was away on holiday. It turns out there were some people who agreed with me, when I first shared that I did this…

Holy shit this is a game-changer

Not for hiding work apps, but to add more resistance into the process of habitually opening dopamine-inducing apps that steal our attention every 4 minutes
— Sean Spooner (@spoonersean) June 26, 2020

Hello iOS 14!

But now, with iOS 14, I’m able to simply hide that screen. The apps are still there, there’s nothing weird, or different going on, it’s just not visible to me.

On a Friday at 12:30 (I work half-days), I’ll switch off the “Work Screen”, and enjoy my weekend. Then on Monday morning, after I’ve checked my emails/Slack/Basecamp on my Laptop, I’ll re-enable the screen, and will start the week at zero pending notifications on my phone.

Removing this screen has been immensely helpful when taking holidays as well during the week, with work still continuing. If I want to check-in, then I can do that at a point I choose, by just searching for the app itself.

Overall, by no longer seeing a sea of red notification badges, I’m more able to relax, and have much lower levels of anxiety when swiping through screens on my phone. Being able to disconnect from work is great, and sometimes fundamental changes like this one iOS 14 make it easier without adopting any more tedious workarounds (eg, putting all apps in a folder).

There are so many other great iOS 14 features coming, but I really would just love to see the ability to independently switch Notifications on (or off) per app between specific times. But for now, Do Not Disturb helps a lot with that late-night switch off as well.

How do I do this?!

The screenshot above shows how the user can select which screens are displayed or hidden. You can see the screen that’s currently unselected is my own “Work Screen”.

To activate this, enter wiggle mode by editing the homescreen, then tap on the bottom screen indicator section. Then tap on the screen that you want to show (or hide), and click Done.

Buying the Perfect Domain

Fri, 24 Jul 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Preface

For years, I’ve been jumping between domains to use, I used to have a personal .me domain that I used for my own site. I also (used to) write a lot on Codular. But I never had a proper personal identity online.

Enter my new domain - wright.uk - enabling so many posibilities from a personalisation perspective. I don’t think the “perfect” domain exists, but I think this is probably as close as I’ll be able to get for my needs.

Just need to make sure I remember to renew it regularly, as I don’t want it picked up by the same domain purchasers that I just bought it off.

What is this?

I’m not one that wants to really stick to a strict regiment of blogging, or writing lots of regular arcticles, but it’s good to have somewhere to write a bit more long form instead of sticking it all in multiple threads like I tend to on Twitter.

There’ll be updates as time goes on, adding new sections and what not, but mostly just a place for me to post nonsense and have a bit of presence on the little corner of the internet that contains my thoughts and learnings. As well as acting as a reference point for my own information as well.

Oh, and if you’re one of those people that loves an RSS feed, then feel free to register with the RSS Feed for the site.

What are you using?

Well, in the past I’ve tried things from custom built solutions, hosted solutions all the way through to WordPress. But I’ve decided to make use of GitHub Pages. It does have limitations in place, which may result in me switching away, but for now it serves as an easy option.

Additionally, it takes Markdown files, and if I ever go towards my ideal of using an iPad as a main work device - instead of my MacBook Air - then it’ll be easier/great to use.

Also, because I’m no designer, I decided to stick to a custom made theme that I’ve slightly modified to suit my needs, and hit some of the accessibility requirements of the modern day internet.

Anyway, on with the writing…