We were fed up with our Nectar memory foam mattress. Well, I was. A few years ago, it developed a dip on my side of the bed - insert weight-related comment here. It was still in warranty, so Nectar sent out an independent company to check it. The guy who came out acknowledged there was a dip, but it wasn't a big enough dip for Nectar to send out a replacement. Thanks Nectar.

I don't know why I continued to put up with it. But, after a couple weeks of sustained bad sleep and waking up achy and sore over Christmas, enough was enough. This time, we've ditched memory foam completely and gone for a medium-firm pocket sprung mattress. My back cannot wait.

I don't like the thought of leaving my thirties behind, to be honest. It's definitely worse than leaving my twenties behind. That said, I don't feel forty at all. I eat better than I ever have, look after my body better than I ever have, and I sleep... well, two out of three ain't bad! Maybe this is the year I start going to bed earlier. Maybe.

There'll be no wild celebration or party to usher in this latest milestone - that's not really me. Just eating good food with my best people. And maybe some DJing, definitely some gaming, a game of football, a walk in the forest, and a gym visit too.

Forty doesn't actually sound too bad at all...

I remembered pretty much everything I needed to do. The only thing I had forgotten is that you need to leave the adhesive on the inner tube for a minute or two before you apply the repair patch.

It was also nice showing Ellie how to find a inner tube puncture by submerging it in water and looking for the bubbles!

I've also just had a week off, spent down in Devon in a small town called Brixham, near Paignton and Torquay.

We took Ellie to Paignton Zoo, enjoyed beach days, ate good food, and enjoyed the coastal walks. However, I will not miss driving on the steep thin roads.

Isn't it weird how momentum works? You spend time and effort generating good momentum and posting becomes an easy habit. Then, for whatever reason, you miss a few days and if you don't force yourself to post, you lose it all. Back to square one.

It's not like I forgot to post, either. About two weeks ago, I realised I hadn't posted for a while and told myself I had to get back into it. Then a weird thing happened: because I'd lost the momentum, jumping back in felt harder to do. The momentum I had previously felt unachievable, or the effort to get it back was more than I was willing to put in (at the time).

Little and often. That's the key. Let's see if I can build a habit of posting at least once a week.

Introduction

If your Ghost setup can't send transactional emails - such as user invites and password resets - then you probably haven't configured your mail settings correctly.

Step 1: Create Gmail app password

1. Go to https://myaccount.google.com/apppasswords and login (if you cannot create an app password you may need to enable 2FA first)
2. Enter an app name that's easy to remember (e.g. Ghost SMTP)
3. Copy your password and write it down (once you close the popup you won't be able to see it again)

Step 2: Update Ghost mail config

1. Go to your project directory cd /var/www/ghost
2. Open and edit config.production.json
3. Copy and paste the below config, replacing user and pass with your own credentials:

"mail": {
    "transport": "SMTP",
    "options": {
      "host": "smtp.gmail.com",
      "port": 587,
      "auth": {
        "user": "mygmailaccount@gmail.com",
        "pass": "your APP password"
      }
    }
  },

4. Restart Ghost

Conclusion

Hopefully, that should fix your SMTP issues and allow you to send password reset requests, etc. Don't do what I did and accidentally type smtp.google.com instead of smtp.gmail.com and then spend ages trying to figure out why it didn't work.

If you are still having issues, on my search for answers I did find some people had issues with Digital Ocean (DO) locking down port 587. This site is hosted on DO and I didn't have that issue, but if it is for you then that might be a good place to start.

Resources

Here are some threads and posts that I found useful on my quest to solve this issue:

How to deliver Ghost emails from your local dev setup

How to get Ghost sending mail from your development install, without a whole lot of extra fuss.

Spectral Web ServicesCathy Sarisky, Ghost Expert

How to setup basic SMTP for Ghost

Disclaimer I’ve just started to use Ghost as a platform for blogs. Before that, I’ve been…

DEV Communitychakzefir

How to setup basic SMTP for Ghost

How to setup basic SMTP for Ghost Almost everybody has Gmail, right? But a small amount of those knows, that it also includes free SMTP service, which is the same as other Google products: fast&reliable. Everything you need is your email and dedicated app password (for security reasons). 🗝 To gen…

Ghost Forumchakzefir

My worst habit during time off is going to bed much later than normal. I still get up around the same time each morning, so I feel more and more tired the longer that I let it go on.

Anyway, the time off was enjoyable. We went swimming, played crazy golf, visited the Winchester Science Centre and its awesome planetarium, had BBQs and spent time with family over the Easter weekend.

There is so much chocolate to eat and I'd rather we didn't have it in the house at all because it is derailing my summer body goals.

A tinny-sounding 'Gotta Get Thru This', the 2001 Garage anthem by Daniel Bedingfield, was playing through the shop speakers. "Tune!", I thought to myself as I walked past the carrots and potatoes, chucking a bag of organic spinach into my basket.

It wasn't until I was back in the car that it dawned on me: the music playing in Tesco now includes songs from my own childhood. No doubt picked to make shoppers feel nostalgic and happy.

Did it make me feel more nostalgic? Yes, but that's not the point. I'm now one of the old guys in Tesco and I don't like it.

CSS Grid and Flexbox brought incredible layout tools to the web, but they don’t yet do everything a designer might want. One of those things is a popular layout pattern called “masonry” or “waterfall,” which currently still requires a Javascript library to accomplish.

The full article is below and I won't lie, reading parts of it hurt my head. But it's an exciting concept that will create a new set of unified properties and values for Flexbox and Grid.

Item Flow, Part 1: A new unified concept for layout

CSS Grid and Flexbox brought incredible layout tools to the web, but they don’t yet do everything a designer might want.

WebKitJen Simmons, Saron Yitbarek, Elika Etemad, Brandon Stewart

There's no need to ask me how I find that out. You can probably guess.

One of the most frustrating parts of being a homeowner is discovering that the previous owners cut corners or didn't take the same level of pride in their work as you do. "Out of sight, out of mind", is good enough for them.

Anyway, one of the best mindsets you can adopt is that whoever did the job before you did it badly. Kill the power at the fuse box first and always test wiring with a voltage detector before you touch anything!

The WalkingPad Z1 has been such a good purchase, I'm really happy with it and I will write a more detailed post about it soon. However, step count aside, I've noticed an additional benefit that I've not seen mentioned before: focus.

My ability to focus and crack on with a work task has surprised me. It's like part of my mind is occupied with walking and that makes it easier to concentrate.

I know that music, or certain genres of music, such as those with a consistent beat or rhythm can help some people with concentration. Walking, like running, is rhythmic, so this makes sense.

I'll have to do some digging and see if there have been any studies into this.

Helldivers 2 continues to be hugely frustrating. One day you can play for hours without any problems and the next day it'll crash back to Windows within 30 seconds of starting a mission.

I'm not alone, either. This is a problem that huge numbers of PC players are experiencing, as a search for 'PC crash' on the Helldivers subreddit highlights.

I've also had issues with No Man's Sky and Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, although recent Nvidia driver updates seem to have ironed those out.

At least I'm learning lots about PC optimisation in the process. I think I'll look to buy a larger SSD soon because I can't currently fit my most played games on the SSD Windows is installed on because there's not enough space!

After the hectic week I had working on the latest No Man's Sky update, the lovely Hello Games team sent me a big box of chocolates to say thank you.

The No Man's Sky updates can be huge and sometimes stressful, but I enjoy working on them. So thank you, Hello Games, you're good people!

A couple of years ago, I added 'notes' to the site. This was essentially what the microblog is now: short updates without headings organised in a feed.

I've decided that I want to post more on this site and the microblog is a friction-free way to do that. But, as the microblog would contain a lot of noise that wasn't work related, I was keen to separate it from my design and dev posts.

Lots more to do but happy to put this live tonight after about an hour of work.

New Year's Eve celebrations don't really happen when you have young kids. But this year, now Ellie is six years old, we decided we would go and watch the fireworks again and she could experience it for the first time.

Ellie wasn't too happy about being woken up at 11:30pm to get in the car but by the time we got to the marina she was wide awake and excited to see the fireworks.

Happy New Year to you all. Here's to a great 2025!