Content from 2018-10

So I've been saying for a number of years that I'd really like to get into app development, but have never really had a project to work on. This is usually my struggle. I am the sort of person who learns by doing, but until I have a need to do something I can't bring myself to learn.

Note: I have contributed translations to the Elementary OS project and have been an active Patreon supporter since April 2018. I don't think of myself as particularly biased, but it's best to mention these things

Summary (For Those Who Don't Want to Read)

I like Elementary OS. It does plenty right and offers a minimalist system with decent keyboard control, a healthy environment which encourages users to invest in developers, and it largely keeps out of my way while offering the power of Ubuntu under the hood. The system is not without its bugs (which I expect to see ironed out as reports come in), and there is still a little too much in the system for my liking personally. However, the vision of Elementary has been realised no clearer than in this release. I won't be covering everything in this post, just some initial thoughts and reactions. See the official release notes for a better technical rundown.

Let me get this off my chest right now. I hate Apple. I hate iOS. I hate macOS. I hate the software, the hardware, and the ethos of Apple. To my mind, Apple represents the very worst of the technology industry: devices which are hard to use, easy to break, and difficult to fix. Therefore, I'm never surprised when I see news stories like this one.

This post is more of a rant than anything technical. In fact, it's more of a moan born of recent frustrations. Nevertheless, this is my website. Where better to moan?

I've recently started a new job working for a software company. My day-to-day work mostly includes rifling through SQL databases and making changes as well as searching for causes of issues faced by customers. This job has me using a work-issued MacBook Air and a copy of Windows 10 running in a virtual machine. It's the setup used by every employee of the company bar one tester, who gets to use GNU/Linux.

I hate this.

As the astute among you may have noticed, this site has undergone some changes over the last couple of days. That's because I've now completely moved away from Wordpress and destroyed my old server in favour of a different provider.