Most of my side projects are destined for obscurity, and not many even make it to the lofty heights where I would write a blog post about it. And that’s fine. I rarely start something with the ultimate aim of world domination, most come from an idea to scratch my own itch, and often my own satisfaction is enough.

But our itch this time is to improve what we drink, by having an easy way to track and visualise that data. And we’re scratching that itch with Drank.

Not many side projects take over a year to get to 1.0, and Drank went through many iterations with internal testers before we found the right balance and feature set so ship an MVP.

Together with Eddie Lee, we believe we’ve shipped an app that helps us drink more water, and less caffeinated or sugary drinks. Being able to see a breakdown of my fluid intake over time has really encouraged me to have a glass of water over another cup of coffee in the afternoon.

But this is only the beginning for Drank, we have many more improvements and features in the backlog: ideas for even better visualisations, making it even easier to add drinks, and smarter notifications. And we are definitely looking at Siri integration with iOS 12.

Follow me on Twitter, or follow Drank, to stay up to date as we develop it.

I’ve used Squarespace as the host for this website since 2012, and I really enjoyed trading small monthly fee for never having to worry about how any of it worked.

However my blogging has become very sproadic, and the content of this website has become much more static — often months or years between updates.

But if I were being honest, I was really looking for an excuse to fiddle around with something. And after taking inspiration from my friend Eddie moving his blog to Gatsby, I decided — under the pretence of saving money — to migrate my website to Gatsby as well.

Gatsby

Gatsby is a static site generator for React. You design and build your web site locally, including all the content in Markdown, and the build process produces a pre-built static website that can be hosted (in my case, for free on GitHub Pages).

The Gatsby Starter Blog template project is an excellent way to learn about Gatsby, and you may be able to tell this website is heavily based on it.

The Migration

Gatsby content is defined by Markdown files on the filesystem. Squarespace exports your content into a WordPress export format file. But even if you used Markdown content blocks in Squarespace, the export will only give you content as HTML. Damn.

So how do I convert Squarespace’s export into something I can use with Gatsby?

WordPress to Gatsby Migrator

An old saying goes: “there’s an NPM package for everything”. In this case Turndown for converting HTML into Markdown, is exactly what was needed. Sprinkle a few more packages to help parse the RSS format export, string them all together, and out came my new tool wordpress-gatsby-migrater.

Modern programming 101: why reinvent the wheel when someone smarter than you has already reinveted it.

After running it, with only a few tweaks to the starter project and the new website is finished.

Was it all worth it? If I converted the number of hours I spent on this and how much Squarespace costs per month, it would probably have paid for years of Squarespace service.

But doing this was easily way more fun, and it may even get me blogging more.

I had some time off over Christmas, so I decided to scratch an itch I’ve had for a while now. Instapaper has been my go to place to save…

Tomorrow is Apple’s big iPhone event day, with a dash of Apple Watch and software thrown in. However Mark Gurman reports no new Macs at…

It wasn’t long ago that travelling on a trip longer than two weeks meant lumbering a laptop with you the whole way. I’ve just recently…

Every year I tell myself I don’t do New Years Resolutions, they have a tendency to set one up for failure or have goals that are so benign…

Google are doing some questionable things with new TLDs, and the Internet is letting them get away with it: My point is that if you think…

I like this new advert. It’s another peek of Apple’s transition into a post-Steve era. You can almost hear the cries of “Steve would never…

I find that the longer I run the site, the more resistant I become to the idea of ever giving it up, even if I need to take the occasional…

Apple’s interest in Beats Electronics got me thinking about their headphones. I know Apple is probably buying Beats for their music…

Marvin Rounce and I are thrilled to announce dot net notts , a user group for .NET stack developers. We hoping to build a first-class…

As far as cases go, Snugg’s Bamboo Case for iPhone is a pretty good one. I’ve never really used cases, much to the detriment of the…

Why push back against 24/192? Because it’s a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist, a business model based on willful ignorance and…

“Don’t be evil” is synonymous with Google, it’s their corporate identity. But have you ever stopped and wondered why? Why does Google need…

Lots of people were worried when the new-old Mac Pro was released last June. It was an incredibly incremental update, with slightly newer…

Apple’s new budget iPod Touch is the first iOS device with a black bezel and silver metal back since the first iPhone. It’s no coincidence…

David Celis: Just send your users an email. The activation email is a practice that’s been in use for years, but it’s often paired with…

What’s that about a reality distortion field?

My favourite iOS podcasting app now out on the Mac.

The new interface is said to be “very, very flat,” according to one source. Another person said that the interface loses all signs of gloss…

It didn’t matter that every major U.S. electronics company assembles its products under the same working conditions — or worse. Or that…

Glad to see Maddox back at his best. Tablets can take pictures, but tablets can also slice cheese, stop doors from closing and fix wobbly…

Similar to last month’s BBC gaff , CNN reports that Siegel+Gale found in a ‘survey’ that Samsung Galaxy phones are simplier than iPhones…

The most interesting plan here is to use .search to operate a redirect service on the “on the ‘dotless’ .search domain ( http://search…

We did not interpret the content in question as involving any particular sexual orientation, and frankly that would have been a completely…

Matt Drance: Google knew what it was doing when it made and marketed Android as an “open” system. It surely anticipated forks by handset…

The New York Times: One of the group’s model bills, “ The Animal and Ecological Terrorism Act ,” prohibits filming or taking pictures on…

Devices using iOS 6.1 and later with VPN On Demand configured to “Always” will behave as if they were configured with the “Establish if…

What’s the one thing iOS lacks? No it’s not real multitasking, inter-app communication, or reliable data syncing. It’s never had an animated…

40 years since the first mobile phone call was made, the phones themselves have come a long way since. I’m not sure the Motorola Rokr and…

Yesterday, Tim Cook did something Steve Jobs hardly ever did, he apologised . Steve Jobs was a master at dealing with the press, he knew…

Just when you though Yahoo might be getting back on their game by appointing Marissa Meyer as their CEO and rejuvenating Flickr, they spend…

I think the manager-free model only works for a business that has high margins and depends more on creating hits than cutting costs. The…

From the people that made Snapseed , a collection of Photoshop, Lightroom, and Aperture plugins designed for photo editing. $149 is a great…

Buy him out boys!

In June, 2010, I posted an essay on Core77 entitled ” Design Thinking: A Useful Myth .” Since my essay was posted, I keep encountering…

I’m sure Google PR doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

Eric Schmidt in not telling the truth shocker.

All of the vulnerabilities can be exploited without privilege and according to Paleari, stem from “Samsung-specific software and…

CCTV paid Chinese celebrities to post anti-Apple messages to Weibo to promote their “820 Party” TV programme. But one of the celebrities…

Last night, Apple approved the latest Hackers update. While the version number may have just increased by a paltry 0.0.1, you’ll find lots…

Brutal: “The voice over is terrible, the audience will fall aslepp” “This movie gets worse every screening” “Deckard at the piano is…

Apple, now the big player, has to take the hits that big players get: But that’s how news reporters increasingly are treating the state of…

Microsoft’s biggest weakness is that they still don’t realize how much they suck. They still think they can write software in house. Maybe…

“When they replaced sharing with +1 on Google Reader, it was clear that this day was going to come,” he said. Wetherell, 43, is amazed that…

Not so open after all.

I’m not entirely sure what to make of this, but Rubin’s replacement Sundar Pichai has proven himself with the Chrome browser and it will be…

Graham Hill describes what happened after he sold his first start-up in the 90s: My life was unnecessarily complicated. There were lawns to…

Whether the WSJ has an agenda or not, they’re certainly producing more link bait about Apple than any other company.

Daniel Eran Dilger rips into a Bloomberg “news” article seemingly based on a Samsung press release about how well they’ll survive after…

The revised Apple TV isn’t using the quad-GPU A5X chip that was speculated in January. However the new revised A5 is smaller than the old…

We launched the WebM Project in May 2010 with the goal of providing the web with a high-quality, open, royalty-free video codec that anyone…

I wonder if he’ll continue this as a long winded three parter.

Since the iPhone 3G, Apple has recycled old iPhone models to be the low end model. As Apple produces more of each model, it’s profit margin…

Psst Americans, leave your litigious culture in the US.

The reliable Rene Ritchie from iMore has a source which claims that Apple has considered launching the next generation of iPads in April…

Apple has a lower P/E ratio than Amazon, Facebook, Google, Microsoft and now Dell, to name a few. I find this baffling and I would challenge…

The simple but powerful message is this: ‘Enjoy The Journey’. Remember the smile on Andy’s face when he disposes off the pieces from the…

Today I released my new iPhone app, Hackers , which I’ve been working on for the past few months. Hackers is an iPhone app designed for…

Fantastic news, payment processor Strip finally comes to the UK. Just in time for a project I’m working on.

John Gruber’s detailed and well sourced article about how great products thrive and bad products don’t, and being open or closed has little…

This has to be his biggest controversy to date.

FOSS Patents does some sleuthing and discoveres the judge that ordered Apple to publish an apology to Samsung, and then rewrite that…

The UK High Court has ordered UK ISPs to block more torrent sites at the whim of the BPI, a private company representing the interests of…

Doug Kass, where have I heard that name before ?

Why are people still surprised when Twitter kills your app? Goes to show that you can’t make a viable Twitter app while selling it for under…

Who would’ve bet that Google would be the first company to release a competitor to Apple’s MacBook Pro with Retina display? Certainly not me…

Matt Drance on Sony’s strange Playstation 4 announcement: People would have happily waited longer for a comprehensive, exciting product…

HP is selling key parts of it’s webOS product to LG, although interestingly HP are keeping the backend services such as cloud sync and the…

Could this be the catalyst App.net needs for a resurgance? I know many people who were interested in App.net, but put off with a service…

Jacob Goldstein’s on Marco Arment’s magazine, The Magazine: “What I saw was a fluke in app store pricing,” he told me. “If you have an app…

A highly impressive notebook from Google, I love the industrial design and of course the 2560x1700 resolution display. It has an aspect…

Movist has long been one of my favourite video players for the Mac. The simplicity of it’s interface and it’s speed has kept me from using…

I have seen the Android brand disappear over time. First, it was the Nexus, then Samsung came with the Galaxy brand, who made Android less…

‘iHKDesign’ responds to an idiotic article on CNN claiming that Samsung is ‘out innovating Apple’: It seems to me that today, innovation…

Tim Cook refers to integration and a great team as unique Apple advantages (but also note the references to magic and belief.) It’s a better…

The problem with Microsoft’s online service offerings isn’t that their TV campaigns are lame. It’s not even that the products are bad. But…

In a world where companies communicate with corporate PR speak, I applaud Elon Musk’s tone in his response to John Broder’s review of the…

Roh, who was a lawmaker for the opposition Progressive Justice Party, has been a vocal critic of Samsung, South Korea’s most powerful…

Some great ideas, like the rubbish bag packaged inside a rubbish bag.

The biggest mistake Microsoft could make is back down from the progress they’re making with Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8. It’s good to see…

It was like this for Mac users until around 2008.

Nick Quaranto at 37 Signals describes writing the Basecamp app with RubyMotion so he could avoid using Xcode and learning Objective-C. When…

People complain about iTunes and Calendar apps, but the App Store app is by far the worst app Apple makes.

Without asking permission, Google sends developers the personal details of everyone who buys their app from Google Play. According to…

Nutrition is probably one of the least well understood sciences, this piece looks at the biggest misconceptions we’re told by governments…

Jim Dalrymple cuts out the bullshit PR.

My local (Northern Virginia) Microsoft store sold out in 15 minutes, which means there wasn’t much to sell. The local Best Buy sold out too…

Design is now so ingrained with taste that it’s quite hard to form partisan arguments, but Rian van der Merwe manages it: Dieter Rams…

In an interview this week, Mr Heins hailed the success of his company’s new phones, saying that sales in the UK were “beyond expectations…

In late October, researchers at North Carolina State University alerted Google to a security flaw that could let scam artists send phony…

Good reporting from Ed Bott, when comparing the Surface Pro to a MacBook Air the amount of free space is about the same. The problem is that…

This is Dell’s Battle of Britain. This could be his finest hour or it could be him and his ego, like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid’s…

Discourse is a new ‘discussion platform’ to replace the old, slow, and over-complicated forum software like phpBB. First impressions are…

This will be the best thing you will read all day.

Victor Chebyshev analyses one of the most invasive pieces of malware on the Google Play store.

Braden Thomas analysis the exploits found in iOS 6 used for the first unthethered jailbreak .

The Galaxy brand is fast becoming more popular than Android, I wonder if Google feel threatened by this or if it’s part of their master plan…

Tim Berners-Lee spoke at a Linux conference today about mobile platforms and native apps vs. HTML: “The right to have root on your machine…

Mike Lombardo explains exactly why Eminem is such a good lyricist.

Marco Arment speculates that a 5” iPhone isn’t as unlikely as it seems, and mocks up how it might look. Why would Apple release this? First…

An Apple spokesman told TNW that the new Apple TV model is just a in-season silent upgrade: “We sometimes make component changes which…

Tapbots, makers of Tweetbot, has made it’s App.net app Netbot free to encourage App.net adoption. For developers of other paid App.net…

Three weeks ago Alicia Keys announced to her fans: I’ve become an iPhone junky! Today she’s been named as the new Global Creative Director…

The only way I can understand the current valuation of Amazon is if they’re expected to eventually gain a monopoly over the entire internet…

Brian Klug from Anandtech has discovered that a reference to an as yet unreleased Apple TV 3,2 found in the latest iOS 6 firmware suggests…

Rene Ritchie at iMore imagining how a larger iPhone would work. If Apple were to make a larger iPhone, I would guess a 4.8-inch screen with…

The hysteria surrounding Apple’s business performance and its market positioning has led to perceptions about the state of Apple becoming…

Oracle doesn’t seem to be able to retire Java gracefully.

It seems Ballmer is making a lot former Microsoft employees his enemies. Although I’m not sure I agree with Kempin’s asssessment that…

Max Rudberg has a well-reasoned and moderate article on mobile design. The hardware and UI have different roles to play. The hardware is…

I have come to believe that the true cause is something bigger than all of this. I think the right answer is that Apple just fails to pass…

A lot of times I was short at my hedge fund, I would create a level of activity before hand that could drive the futures, it doesn’t take…

Mark Rogowsky at Forbes has a great article about yesterday’s Wall Street Journal ‘weaker iPhone demand’ report. The latest rumors about…

Yesterday, Wall Street Journal’s claim that Apple had “halved” orders for iPhone 5 displays has caused a few stirs around here. Are the…

Nice timeline of Apple’s products by Pop Chart Lab.

Aaron Swartz was not the super hacker breathlessly described in the Government’s indictment and forensic reports, and his actions did not…

The 787 Dreamliner has been vexed since its inception. The company was convinced by one or more management consulting firms to outsource…

The guys at The Wirecutter have cut out all the bullshit from CES and compiled a list of best gadgets in the show into one article.

Today we found out that CNET writers don’t have the independence from their parent company CBS after they banned them from letting Dish’s…

Samsung spends over ten times more than Apple on advertising and marketing.

At least 20% of the comments left on the Guardian website each month come from only 2,600 user accounts, who together make up just 0.003…

“What do you think?” he asked. I honestly didn’t know what to think. My mind was a blank because I just didn’t expect it. The name seemed to…

Basically, fragmentation is still a problem especially if your app is CPU or GPU intensive. If you look at the amount of energy we spend on…

Two million iPhones sold in three days. But because there wasn’t country-wide riots like previous iPhone releases, the press thinks it’s a…

This affects the Samsung Galaxy S2, S3, and Note 2. It gives malicious apps downloaded from the Play store root access to your phone and all…

I’m sure the press is straight onto this story like the similar one about Apple Maps a few days ago. Any moment now.

Horace Dediu on John Sculley’s speculation that Apple is moving to a six-month product cycle.

Craig Hockenberry writes about the behind the scenes of the latest version of the original Twitter app, Twitterrific 5.

Google demonstration how to discontinue a free service while sugarcoating the announcement. My family use Google Apps hosting for all our…

The worst UI “feature” in Android is it’s back button. It feels like a superfluous addition from the days when Android was more like…

Anand has found that recent builds of Webkit nightly have drastically better scrolling performance than Safari 6.0.2. It’s not just Retina…

Brett Terpstra offers some sound advice for developers releasing a new app.

Jakob Nielsen points out many usability problems with Windows 8. It’s sad that I’m not surprised when Microsoft release such a shoddy piece…

MG Siegler rightly points out Engadget’s pandering to comment trolls by trying to “remain neutral” on an editorial post . If being neutral…

Fascinating article about the abadoned Japanese island of Hashima which was used as the hide out of the new Bond villian.

Dmitry Fadeyev on the practice of changing the default font smoothing for WebKit for no reason other than misguided aesthetics: Designers…

MG Siegler speculates on the reasons for Sinofsky’s departure from Microsoft: Sinofsky was the driving force behind the “no compromise…

In the video, the speaker explains and demonstrates improvements made to the machine understanding of his English words, which are…

I’m seriously disappointed in Google not standing behind a defective Nexus 7, just because I didn’t purchase it from them. Apple and Amazon…

I don’t understand how Dan Lyons went form insightful pundit to this.

Today’s Dilbert comic is opportune.

An ingenious idea, and probably the fastest way to create a working prototype.

Lukas Mathis: This is a sentiment you often hear from people: casual users only need entry-level devices. Even casual users themselves…

What can I say about the iPad mini that hasn’t already been said ? I don’t miss the Retina display as much as I thought I would, I love…

If you live in the UK and use Safari, this extension redirects your Google searches to google.co.uk.

Don Lehman analyses the ramifications of Apple’s recent management changes: Cook’s task of molding the executive team to work best for him…

Matthew Panzarino on Google’s relationships with mobile phone networks and why that’s the reason the Nexus 4 doesn’t have LTE: The real…

Brent Ozar shares his experiences with the Surface. The videos are particularly telling.

The Surface is partially for Microsoft’s world of denial: the world in which this store contains no elephants and Microsoft invented the…

Bruce Schneier on the convictions of six Italian scientists over a 2009 earthquake in L’Aquila:  [ They were ] convicted because the public…

Steve Ballmer told the BBC: “Is it fair to say we’re going to do more hardware? Obviously we are… Where we see important opportunities to…

New iMacs and MacBook Pros I think everyone welcomed updates to long neglected Macs in Apple’s line-up. The biggest one being the new iMac…

The best Twitter app for the Mac is out on the Mac App Store. Completely worth $20, it’s head and shoulders above any other Twitter app on…

Loren Brichter is back: In 2007 I left Apple and started my own company. In 2010 that company was acquired by Twitter. Today I’m giving it…

Amazon’s goal should be for Kindle typography to equal print typography. They’re not even close. They get a pass on this only because all…

1536x1152. The current iPad is 2048×1536. What if Apple simply used the exact same panels they are currently using in the new 9.7 inch iPad…

Motorola had promised owners of the Photon, Electrify, and Atrix an upgrade to to Android 4.0, known as Ice Cream Sandwich, which would…

Not quite CoffeeScript, but Microsoft’s new TypeScript language claims to be a superset of JavaScript that complies to JavaScript. Mainly I…

It seems like Google is adding stuff to Chrome just to add it. It’s as if they feel like they can’t do nothing feature-wise, so they come up…

Do no evil? I guess Susan Wojcicki didn’t get the memo.

John Paczkowski on the reasoning behind Apple using their own mapping service in iOS 6: Spoken turn-by-turn navigation has been a free…

Anyone who has used Netflix knows how great it is. The simplicity of the interface, the syncing, and the speed of streaming makes it a joy…

DisplayMate analyses the iPhone 5’s screen: The display on the iPhone 5 is a significant improvement over the display on the iPhone 4. Apple…

Now, I’m not disputing that Maps does give a lot of strange results to a lot of people all around the world, but for a large, large number…

A common complaint I’ve seen is “I don’t want to install (company)‘s shitty app in order to get their storecard on my phone”. You don’t have…

Windows clients can’t connect to an Airport Extreme network with an Emoji name, this could be a useful feature.

Sam Biddle at Gizmodo: There was a time when you could buy something that was compact, fast, and beautiful. That time is over. “Smaller” is…

Google effectively bought Motorola to use as its personal patent troll.

The thing to remember is that UI design is like selling a restaurant, where you can’t just serve up good food in order to run a restaurant…

FOSS Patents has an insightful article about the Apple vs Samsung verdict: Samsung has issued a statement that claims this jury verdict is a…

Some years ago, executives at a Houston airport faced a troubling customer-relations issue. Passengers were lodging an inordinate number of…

Marco Arment on Twitter’s blocking of Tumblr “find friends” access Twitter will now only permit large services to add value to Twitter, not…

Dave Winer being right again about tent.io:  “Think of a protocol like a road. You could have a wonderful road. Well paved. Wide lanes…

Gruber delves deep into the abyss of iPad mini rumours.

I’m sure Mike Daisey is already at the Samsung factory gates.

Swampash explains why Apple has to take Samsung to court: The Fender Stratocaster was released in 1954 and totally changed the then-new…

Tesco demonstrating why you shouldn’t let your customer service team make sweeping statements on Twitter about your websites security.

Bad news: We failed. Hopefully there can be a true successor to OAuth 1.0 because the whole request signing process still gives me a…

John Siricusa writes the only 26,000 word review of OS X Mountain Lion worth reading. Make sure you do.

I wonder how you’re supposed to use Google Earth without an internet connection.

I was going to write a post about Sparrow’s talent acquisition by Google, but Rian van der Merwe did it for me: I paid full price for every…

BoingBoing gets it.

I don’t think anyone saw this coming : While we’ll be working on new things at Google, we will continue to make Sparrow available and…

Not really , but the proliferation of “vintage” effects for photo apps is starting to make every photo on the internet look the same. The…

Matt Alexander posts his thoughts on Windows Phone : Boasting a colorfully angular interface, the promise of smooth transitional animations…

Matthew Panzarino speculates that Apple will drop the iPhone 4 rather than the iPhone 3GS when “the new iPhone” is released later this year…

Former Yahoo engineering manager Sriram Krishnan has some unsolicited advice for Yahoo’s new CEO : Make a huge sign with the phrase ‘the…

I like the new look of Office 2013  and the “cloud” integration, but as The Verge reports: The touch experience isn’t great from my own…

Better sharpen your knives.

I can’t believe ReadWriteWeb let Antone Gonsalves write a follow-up post to his piece on the MacBook Pro with Retina Display . And of…

I wouldn’t normally link to a link-bait article such as this , but the comment from another staff writer at ReadWriteWeb is quite revealing…

Channel 4 is bringing back Charlie Brooker’s Black Mirror for a second series of three episodes:  The first series prompted 322 complaints…

I sell an app for money, then I spend less than I make. Bingo. Source: What is the Readability & Instapaper business model? - Quora

It seems BetaWorks is  buying Digg for their technology , and not so much the brand. That is the price for being the loser. Update : it…

Things you used to find on Twitter back when I first joined.

Where there’s smoke .

The best Twitter app for iPhone and iPad is now on the Mac. A public alpha has been released today . More from the  Tapbots blog : “We’ve…