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Chrome 86 adds yet another obfuscation. Slugs are no longer visible and only visible upon hover. Chrome has been trying for ages now to hide the full URL in its address bar – Ominbox in Chrome’s own terminology – and I find it annoying as hell.

There are so many reasons for me to always be able to see what exact URL I’m on at just a glance… hiding is seriously breaking my flow.

Working from home, for most, includes a fair amount of video conferencing. But, what if the camera on your Mac produces No Connected Camera errors and effectively won’t work or has suddenly stopped working with apps like Facetime, Skype, Zoom or Google Meet?

Well, you can either go for a full reboot of your computer, or use a little command line magic.

I’ve had to do this so many times that I’d figure I’d document how to do it properly. Hope this helps you too!

This is just a reminder to let go. To let go of things you’re not going to pursue. Of things that are never going to get the full attention that they deserve. Of things that are cluttering your todo list. Of things that you feel obligated to do because you once thought of them.

I’m a gatherer of things, a collector of things by nature. That’s my modus operandi. However, as much as I like to collect things, I’m also keenly aware of the power of letting go. So, to that end, I’ve let go of a lot of “things” to in the last couple of days and perhaps you’ll recognize some things to let go of as well in my list. I let go of:

• Mindmaps of ideas I once had
• Domain names I’m never going to find the time (read: priority) to pursue into actual projects
• Draft posts I haven’t touched in a loooong time (think years)
• Trello cards and boards full of ideas
• Reminders in reminder apps full of things I “need” to do still
• Notes in my notes app with information that is no longer relevant
• The content of my Downloads folder
• Old boxes which at one time contained iPhones, iMacs, etc.
• Screenshots of things in my Pictures/images folders
• Duplicate images on my devices
• Any old pair of shoes that were extra to having one pair of backups for painting the house or something like that
• Email subscriptions that I dismiss too regularly
• Screws and other assorted metal thingies in glass pots
• Keys to locks I, for the life of me, can’t remember where they belonged to.
• Electrical cords, chargers, USB cables, etc. You know what I mean, you have one of those boxes as well!
• Old phones that were already ancient in 2004
• Papers no longer needed
• Food ingredients that are way past their due date
• Books I was never ever going to read
• Clothes I was never ever going to wear anymore.

In other words, any and all things that cluttered. All of this I let go because it’s so much better to have a clear focus. And clear focus only truly works if the list is small.

So, what are you letting go of?

My working days consist of my sitting behind my computer all day. I’m not sure what the percentages are of people having similar work scenarios, but I’m guessing they’re pretty high. This sedentary work life is something I struggle with. I like being active during the day, but it’s hard to be active when you’re just sitting in your chair all day.

Apart from the obvious health risks of just doing anything actively all day, I started experiencing mental effects as well. I felt locked up in my own mind. I was having trouble unwind at the end of the day and not think about work anymore after work hours.

So, something had to change. I’m a firm believer in symbioses between a healthy body and healthy mind. To compensate for my stationary work life, I started to work out in the gym. This is years ago now.

In the beginning, all I did was just a little bit of fitness, but I quickly started feeling better mentally. And as I progressed in the weights, I physically started feeling better as well. And while I started feeling physically better, I started feeling better mentally as well. It was almost as if one influenced the other 😏.

Why Am I Sharing This?

A few weeks ago I shared an Instagram story of me walking with a Yoke for the first time, as well as doing a Farmers Walk. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, go ahead and go to my Instagram profile and look for the #fitdad stories.

A couple of people commented on that story and started asking questions. Instead of keeping those answers in my Instagram DMs, I thought it’d be good to answer them here. Because there was a common theme in those questions. I’m also including some other questions I get about working out and what it does for me.

My workout frequently asked questions about working out

Like many of you, I’m sure, I found an email from Mandrill App in my inbox today that explains them merging their service with the parent company MailChimp. I’d be fine with the merge in itself, I love MailChimp, but what I don’t like about this move is this section:

Our billing and pricing model is also changing. MailChimp will generate one consolidated bill that covers your MailChimp and Mandrill charges. Mandrill credits will be sold in blocks of 25,000 emails. Blocks will start at $20 per month. This goes into effect once your accounts are merged.

We’re using Mandrill App for transactional emails on a bunch of WordPress sites to make sure delivery is pretty much guaranteed and we have insights in what actually goes out. Now, I don’t mind paying for a service at all, but some of our accounts are for relatively low traffic websites which would make the switch to Mandrill’s new pricing strategy a costly one. Luckily though, there are alternatives.

I’ve done nothing more than copy and paste their marketing copy, but these are Mandrill app alternatives I found:

MailGun

We don’t just send your email, we deliver it. Our software automatically manages the delivery process to give your emails the best chance of landing in the inbox. And if something happens that keep your messages from being delivered, we’ll tell you.

Through our API or control panel, you’ll always know exactly what has happened to every one of your emails.

Powerful APIs that enable you to send, receive and track email effortlessly. 10,000 emails free every month. No credit card required. Check out MailGun.

Amazon SES

Amazon Simple Email Service (Amazon SES) is a cost-effective email service built on the reliable and scalable infrastructure that Amazon.com developed to serve its own customer base. With Amazon SES, you can send transactional email, marketing messages, or any other type of high-quality content to your customers.

AWS Free Tier offers 62,000 messages per month to any recipient when you call Amazon SES from an Amazon EC2 instance. Check out Amazon SES.

Postmark App

Unmatched email delivery & troubleshooting. Since we send transactional only, ISPs love us. Our infrastructure combined with proper content and delivery practices means higher response rates from your customers.

View 45 days of searchable sending history including full content, bounces, and spam complaints.

First 25,000 emails are free. Check out Postmark App.

SendGrid

Transactional email delivery that is scalable, reliable, and easy to implement. Whether you’re developing apps for the web or mobile environments, you need an effective way to communicate with your customers.

Email remains the most powerful form of customer communication, but building and maintaining your own email infrastructure can be resource-intensive and costly. SendGrid eliminates the cost and complexity of maintaining your own infrastructure, allowing you to focus on developing the next great app!

Send up to 12,000 emails a month on their Free SendGrid Account. Check out SendGrid.

Mailjet

Emails sent after a transaction – order confirmation, password reset, delivery notification – are anxiously awaited by customers and have the highest open and click rates. Mailjet helps you create a consistent experience, enabling you to design and update transactional emails in drag and drop while ensuring a tight IT integration.

Mailjet allows you to send up to 6 000 emails a month, 200 emails / day. Check out Mailjet.

SendinBlue

SendinBlue empowers businesses to build and grow relationships through marketing campaigns, transactional messaging and marketing automation. Our platform combines a robust suite of email and SMS messaging services within a single, user-friendly solution. Reliable Delivery. Ensure your welcome messages, order confirmations, shipping notifications, app alerts, and other important emails reach the inbox.
Get up-to-the-minute analytics on your message deliverability and engagement metrics. Create custom, dynamic messages with our powerful API.

SendinBlue allows you to With the free account you can send up to 9 000 emails/month, 300 emails/day. The free account has no time limits. Check out SendinBlue.

Conclusion

I’m sure there are more out there, but these are the first ones I came across. Some of these services do a lot more than send out transactional emails and you should definitely do a comparison for your particular scenario, but this list should give you a good starting point. Hope this helps in your search.

“I’m looking for honest feedback”.

As someone living in a world of (people working with) open-source software, I see the question above fly by many times a week. By open-sourcing your code, your suggestion, your solution, you are, in fact, looking for honest feedback. And that’s a good thing. It’s what the open-source community thrives on.

I see a lot of people putting in good amount of their free time into writing proposals, suggesting implementations or ways to improve certain things. Sadly though, a lot of times those people end up feeling disappointed and turned down in what ultimately was just a proposal or suggestion on how to improve things. Ultimately feeling disconnected to the very project that had them all fired up to improve upon in the first place!

Now, granted, the way a proposal is written often times dictates how people are going to react. Not everyone asking for feedback is as much in tune with how feedback should be requested as they perhaps could be. But neither are a lot of the people giving the feedback.

However, I propose we all start reacting a bit differently from now on when we feel inclined to give our honest feedback. Instead of just pointing all the things we see wrong about a proposal, how about we start appreciating the fact that someone took the time to start thinking about a solution in the first place, coming up with a proposal in the second place and thirdly, even taking the time to write it out and ask for feedback(!) before we comment.

So, instead of just giving what the requester asks, honest feedback, let us all focus on going the extra mile here and start giving well thought-out criticism based on appreciation and empathy instead of just honest feedback.

I’m sure if we were to approach “giving our honest feedback” in such a manner, we would all – instead of just a few brave ones – start to feel much more inclined to share solutions to problems we see every day.

Imagine how that would make the world better. I am.

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