Matthew Lang

Jason Kottke shares his.

I love this idea as a recurring post.

A lot colder tonight than last week, but glad to get out for a hit with Ethan.

Enjoyed a few holes with Ethan out on the course tonight.

It's back to work for Ethan with the first RGU under 14s session of the year. Plenty to work on!

Might be time for another batch of these. The one on the Langster is starting to look a bit worse for wear and Drew is starting to cycle as well. Ethan already has one for his mountain bike for cycling to school.

Also I'm fed up with picking out mud from the back of my forks. The Mudder might help with that problem.

I often joke with Jen that my mid-life crisis will involve buying a top-end mountain bike without telling her until I take it out the shed for it's first ride.

I think I've found the very bike.

Parents with young kids on long haul flights rejoice!

In all seriousness though, it's about time Netflix added this feature. It's surprising how many places still lack a decent signal or even wifi.

The Rogue One movie is coming out soon and so is the last expansion pack for Star Wars Battlefront.

For the first time an expansion pack will feature content not from the original trilogy. Of course Rogue One is set just before the beginning of A New Hope so it's as close as you'll get to the original trilogy.

Star Wars Battlefront has been a real joy to play over the last year. Enough game play variety to keep you interested, great graphics and source, and lastly of course it's Star Wars.

Games like this don't come along very often but when they do you find yourself playing for hours at a time. Great fun. I can't wait for the new expansion pack to come out.

via Electronic Arts

A fair argument about abolishing timezones and the whole planet using Coordinated Universal Time. I like this reason the most though for ditching timezones.

Perhaps you’re asking why the Greenwich meridian gets to define earth time. Why should only England keep the traditional hours? Yes, it’s unfair, but that ship has sailed. The French don’t like it either. “The U.K. would turn into a time theme park,” suggested an English Twitter user, John Powers, “where you could experience 9 o’clock as your grandparents knew it.”

— Time to Dump Time Zones by James Gleick for The New York Times

Still taking it easy from my back spasming out last month. It's put a lot of things on hold but I'm getting back to normal. As a result there wasn't much to report from this past weekend. It wasn't completely uneventful though.

My mum and dad celebrated their Ruby wedding anniversary with a meal at our favourite Italian restaurant in Paisley.

Little Drew had been suffering from a cold and cough in the last few days but he rallied round for the meal. He'll do anything to get some chips and ketchup!

Ian Dick writes about his farewell to Evernote.

This year though a couple of things changed. Firstly Evernote tweaked there prices so I’d be paying more going forward. Secondly, Apple Notes improved and also offered a way to import Evernote content as did Microsofts Onenote. There also seemed to be a lot of grumbles in the many podcasts I listen to about what Evernote had become and how viable was it’s future.

— So Long Evernote

Evernote's proprietary format has been a reason why I don't Evernote. It's easy to get stuff in but hard to get it back out. I tried Apple Notes for a while but it's Simplenote that gets my award for best notes app.

I had a great time with Ethan yesterday playing at Paisley Golf Club.

All this week I’ve been writing about finding value with social media. Social media as a mainstream communication is already ten years old if we start the clock from 2006 when Twitter began. In that time, it’s seen an explosion of growth but as it becomes more mainstream is it’s attraction and value wearing off?

I don’t think so. I think more people are simply using social media in a way that suits them. I know that my own way of using social media has changed over the years. No longer am I sending over 20 updates a day. I keep my interaction down to a minimum preferring to only dip into my timeline a few times a day. Sure I might miss something, but I gave up on staying on top of my timeline a long time ago. It just isn’t possible.

There’s also the changing landscape of social media. In the beginning there were people. Just people chatting away and sharing links, pictures and other content. Then the corporate companies got wind of the possibility of getting the brands and products in front of these millions of people. I’d like to say it’s a good thing, but the use of ads as a revenue stream is a poor way of ensuring your startup is profitable unless this is the startup’s business plan from day one.

Then there’s the new kids on the block. Snapchat is fast becoming as popular as Twitter and Instagram (from what the kids tell me), but I think I’ll stick with what I know. That is until they are eventually surpassed by other social media platforms.

There’s still value in social media, but it needs like anything else, time spent curating the good from the bad, managing your time on social media wisely and knowing the limits of social media. That's how you get value from social media.

I have an up and down experience in finding value in using social networks. Twitter is definitely not my goto place these days and App.net is now a distant memory due to it's lack of participation. It was these two networks that I always thought I would spend my time on when online. What has surprised me in the last year though is that I'm regularly turning to Instagram as my preferred social network.

I always thought of Instagram as just a photo sharing app. I can already share photos on Twitter so why would I bother doing the same thing on Instagram?

Here’s the thing though. Instagram is just a photo sharing app. It allows you to share photos simply and easily. The biggest change I’ve seen in the time I’ve used Instagram is probably it’s user-interface overhaul a couple of weeks ago and yes I do love their new icon. Since joining I’ve yet to see any major change in the way Instagram works as an app. And that’s because it doesn’t need to. It works well without needing to continually change.

Since coming back to Twitter, it hasn't been everything I thought it would be. I have a public account there and I like sharing photos there but I don’t like to share everything. I'm also on Path but that's a private app and is mainly for keeping in touch with the family. Instagram fits the gap in-between the two. My account is private and I keep followers down to a minimum.

In this case Instagram is well worth investing some time in because it doesn’t demand too much of my time. I can drop in when I want to and because the timeline is visual, it’s easier to scroll through without getting sidetracked. It has value for me because I can easily keep up with friends and family across the world and it offers a simple way to share online.

Being a valuable social network isn't always about having the most features. It can be about having a minimum list of features, but making the most of these features and Instagram certainly ticks that box.

Another Sunday, another medal under the belt. Ethan's settling in well at Paisley Golf Club and the boys in the junior section have been great in welcoming him.

In a quest to get back on the blogging bandwagon, I thought I would take a look this week at the different benefits that blogging offers.

Ownership might not be the most obvious answer but for me it’s the most important reason why I blog. I’m not just talking about the blog itself, but the words and the content and how my writing acts as my soapbox in the world today.

Owning Your Words

The most important reason why I blog is because it allows me the opportunity to put something out there that’s mine. They are my words, my opinions, my stories, my views. It might not always be gold, but that’s okay. They are my words.

It can be a short post, an article, some long form writing or even a short story. It might be a quote a link or even just a word. Just a single word is enough to convey some message across about where you are.

Owning Your Space

Another reason why I blog is the fact that I want to own my words. Lately there’s a lot of chatter about the pros and cons of hosting your blog in Medium and whether it’s a good or a bad thing. I can see why people would choose Medium as a blogging platform. It’s a great entry into writing online.

However I do prefer having more control over my blog and where it gets published too. Medium is snowballing as more and more people make the switch from their own hosted blog to becoming part of the Medium network, but the problem with this is that it becomes difficult for anyone but people on Medium to see your and follow your blog.

The other great benefit of owning your words is that you can take your blog with you to other blogging platforms if you find that you have outgrown your blogging platform. I started blogging on Tumblr years ago. I then moved to Posterous (now Posthaven), then to Jekyll and now I’m using Ghost. Throughout this time I’ve been able to take my posts with me so that nothing gets left behind.

Own It

The ability to own your little corner of the Internet and carve a niche out for yourself is why many people blog, but being accessible means owning your words and the space you blog form. You don’t have to run a fully configured server with a custom Wordpress install on it. There’s plenty of great blogging platforms out there that allow the world to read what you have to say.

Write it, publish it, own it. It’s as easy as that.

Today marks 20 years since Ocean Colour Scene’s Moseley Shoals entered the British charts. It was the band’s second stab at success: their self-titled 1992 debut sunk without trace and they’d been honing the follow-up for four penniless years. “We knew it was good,” said guitarist Steve Cradock. “We spent a lot of time working on it.” Championed by Radio 1’s Chris Evans – who loved The Riverboat Song so much he made it the theme tune to TFI Friday – it screamed in at No 2 and stayed in the top 10 all summer, buoyed by support from Paul Weller and Noel Gallagher. The real reason for its success, though, was simpler: it was an absolute gem of a record, by a brilliant group of musicians.

— Ocean Colour Scene: the band whose chief crime was being too normal by The Guardian

I can't believe it's 20 years since Moseley Shoals was released. I'm still an avid listener of Ocean Colour Scene today. Can't fault them at all. Recommended.

Ethan played in his first competition of the year at Paisley Golf Club. He's still struggling with the longer tees in these competitions but he enjoyed the challenge. Looking forward to seeing him out on the course a lot over the rest of the year and getting his handicap down.

Last week my wife Jennifer was looking for something to read during her lunch break. She stumbled across this piece on reasons why we appear to be so alone in the universe. Read at your peril. The numbers are mind boggling.

As many stars as there are in our galaxy (100 – 400 billion), there are roughly an equal number of galaxies in the observable universe—so for every star in the colossal Milky Way, there’s a whole galaxy out there. All together, that comes out to the typically quoted range of between 1022 and 1024 total stars, which means that for every grain of sand on every beach on Earth, there are 10,000 stars out there.

— The Fermi Paradox by Wait But Why

AgileBits have announced their new plan for families.

It’s never been easier to share 1Password with your whole family. There’s no sync service to set up, vaults appear automatically, and there’s an Admin Console where you can invite people and manage sharing with your family.

Every family member gets their own copy of 1Password, and their own personal space to store private information. With this, you can give them the tools they need to stay safe without taking away their independence.

— Introducing 1Password for Families

1Password itself is an excellent tool, but this just makes it so much better.

Love these Atom themes that only use two hues for your syntax highlighting.

I've been a Solarized user for years but I might give these a try.

I was just reminded this morning that it was two years ago that the ice storm hit Toronto and the surrounding area. We were visiting Jen's family in Toronto at that time.

Having never experienced an ice storm, it was quite strange waking up that morning and seeing the amount of ice everywhere. I captured a few shots of the aftermath over the next couple of days.

We were more fortunate than others. We didn't experience any power cuts and we were able to get stocked up for Christmas day.

Aside from the ice storm, we had a great time spending Christmas and New Year with Jen's family. Hoping to do it again soon.

My plan for celebrating the day (which, truthfully, I started last night) is to open up past year’s journals, logs, and notes and tease out any ideas that may have gotten lost in the shuffle and see what I might want to put into action the coming year. On August 10, 2014 I noted that my wife and I were a pretty good canoe team after a jaunt out on the lake at our family cabin and that, perhaps, we should go canoeing more often here in town.

— Today is Journal Day by The Cramped

I'm just getting mine ready for the new year.

Black Friday does not mean shopping; it means we watch the first Christmas movies of the year - Die Hard, followed immediately by Die Hard II - and start with the sounds of the Christmas season. This schedule will provide four solid weeks of Christmas music - plenty of time to become tired of the stuff.

— Exactly when... by Cultural Offering

What a fantastic Christmas tradition! Starting the Christmas holiday season with a real Christmas movie.

Me and Jen watched this religiously years ago. It's great to see it coming back.

Jason Fried answers this on Twitter.

Why do I like to write? Because words are fucking fun to play with. Writing is playing. Can't think of a better reason.

— Jason Fried (@jasonfried) September 17, 2015

To me the sports are not comparable; they are simply different games. I prefer to watch football in my home. I can yell, cheer, and make a fool out of myself with only my family around to see the spectacle. Baseball is a game I truly enjoy watching at the event. It allows me to observe the preparations, and many interactions I simply don’t notice at a football game.

— Sunday by Kurt Harden

I completely get where Kurt is coming from. Me and Jen love going to the baseball when we visit Toronto. You get to see the baseball game more up close than you would a football game. Also the beer and hot dogs aren't a bad thing either!

Loved this. So many times I'll say I don't have the time but it's not actually true. I do have the time, just not the attention.

But really, as I thought about it, I realized I had the time. Every day is the same 24 hour cycle. Every workday around 8 hours. Surely I could have found even 20 minutes a day to work with him. But it wasn’t that. It wasn’t that I couldn’t find the time. I couldn’t find the attention.

My mind fills up with a few key projects and that’s it. I’m absorbed by those. That’s where my attention is. Had I made 20 minutes here and there for him, I’m be physically present in that moment, but mentally I’d be elsewhere. And that’s not fair to either of us.

Time and attention aren’t the same thing. They aren’t even related.

— The difference between time and attention by Jason Fried

Ethan's back at school today. Having to adjust to the house being quiet again. Back to work for me as well I suppose.

This post highlights the benefits that youngsters get from playing golf. Ethan's first year on the junior team has been a huge learning experience for him. Learning etiquette, being responsible and managing your emotions have been at the forefront.

I'm glad to see Ethan developing with his golf. It's definitely a great sport for youngsters.

Returning to Twitter hasn't cracked up to what I thought it would be like. Good to see instead that people are entertaining the idea of microblogging from their own sites. I recently started following Jason Rehmus and I'm on the look out for more people who are returning to microblogging. I might even try it myself.

I had big plans for this week, but it was effectively written off as our youngest son was ill all week.

The great thing about my work being flexible is that I can schedule work around times like this. Yes, this week was a bust, but there's always next week or the week after.

Some people might view it as a week lost, but I see it as something that needed to be done.

Our youngest is finally on the mend and laughing and smiling. Seeing that happen is definitely more important than any work I could have been doing.

Great to see the US government using leading engineers from Silicon Valley to work on their digital infrastructure.

Lisa had just spent time on the upper management teams at Hulu and BET. She decides, reluctantly, that she’ll go take the meeting, which includes this guy named Mikey as well as this other guy named Todd, and turns out to be in the Roosevelt Room in the West Wing. Then President Obama opens the door and surprises everyone, and over the course of 45 minutes gives the sales pitch to beat all sales pitches. They need to come work for him. They will need to take a pay cut, the president announces. But he doesn’t care what it takes—he will personally call their bosses, their spouses, their kids to convince them. The crowd laughs. But he gravely responds: I am completely serious. He needs them to overhaul the government’s digital infrastructure now.

— Inside Obama's Stealth Startup by Fast Company

It's certainly not impossible.

You may wonder how we get our kids to eat kale and clams, and here is the answer: we make them (we're warm but firm), and we don't offer choices. Psychologists will tell you that kids respond to consistency and confidence. While I can't say I'm great at this when it comes to bedtime, I never waver at the table. People don't want to hear this because we live in the Age of Coddling but I strongly believe that kids need and actually crave guidance and direction, especially when they're young. And since I also believe that we should eat the same meals as our kids—showing unity and companionship—I don't want to eat boring food, so they're not getting boring food.

— Parenting, Lunchmaking, and Hoping Your Kids Will Love Food by Food52 - Amanda Hesser

Our oldest son is more of a challenge in this respect but he's getting there with the different meals we make. Our youngest couldn't be happier though. He loves trying new foods, especially when he opts to just use his fingers!

via Kottke

Learning tends to come from acquiring the knowledge of topics that we're not familiar with. This is why as kids we all went to school. At a young age we have limited knowledge of how to read, write and count. Through years of education and study we eventually acquire enough knowledge to allow us to learn and understand each of these topics. We can specialise in this new found knowledge by going to college or university or moving into the workplace and getting a job.

What about what we already know?

There I was this morning setting up a new database for an application I've been working on for a client when I noticed that the application's scripts to setup the database wouldn't run due to a dependency on data in the database that was always assumed to be there. Simply put, I couldn't create the database from these scripts.

So my knowledge of the application has changed and I have learned something new. What I have learned isn't a new topic, just a tiny part of a topic I already know. My experience with the database scripts has taught me that basing the build process of the database on data that is already assumed to be there is wrong.

While we tend to seek out to learn from new topics, we forget that we can also learn from experiences. At time we might think that the knowledge we have is correct, but it's only through experiences that we find out whether it is correct or not. In this case I have raised my concerns with the client about the build scripts for the database and proposed a solution to correct it in the future.

Always be learning. Whether it's from new topics we know nothing of or by fine tuning the knowledge we have through experiences.

The BBC earth mini-site aims to explain what happens when you fall into a black hole.

After all, the event horizon is not like a brick wall floating in space. It's an artefact of perspective. An observer who remains outside the black hole can't see through it, but that's not your problem. As far as you're concerned there is no horizon.

Sure, if the black hole were smaller you'd have a problem. The force of gravity would be much stronger at your feet than at your head, stretching you out like a piece of spaghetti. But lucky for you this is a big one, millions of times more massive than our Sun, so the forces that might spaghettify you are feeble enough to be ignored.

— The Strange Fate of a Person Falling Into a Black Hole by BBC Earth

I had to read this a couple of times to get it. Well worth the time to read though!

I'm on the fence about whether switching off CCTV cameras to save money is a good or a bad thing for the public. What sent alarm bells off for me though is the mention of CCTV camera being classed a counter-terrorism tool.

Last night the Police Federation said the deactivation of CCTV cameras would introduce “vulnerabilities” to counter-terrorism operations and “deny justice” to the victims of sexual offences and street violence. But civil liberties groups said there was little evidence of the cameras’ effectiveness and that councils were right to keep them under constant review.

— CCTV cameras secretly being switched off by cash-strapped councils by The Independent

The use of 'terrorism' as a reason for keeping CCTV cameras switched on was a step too far though.

Always loved these posters but never got round to buying one.

via Star Wars

A slightly biased article towards cyclists that points the finger at the motor industry to blame for what they call crazy helmet laws. I disagree.

I wear a helmet not because I'm afraid a car hits me. If I fall off my bike at speed due to a car, pedestrian or even a pothole, then I stand a better chance of walking away from the fall.

Put it this way, would you take a chance with your kids not wearing a helmet when they're cycling?

After a rocky start to the year, it seems that Ethan is finding his form again. It was a big ask for Ethan to beat James in his match but despite losing, his scorecard was made up of fives, sixes and sevens. Well done kid!

Elderslie Golf Club continues to be a great place for Ethan and the rest of the juniors to develop their game. Hat tip to Scott and Craig and everybody else involved in helping develop the junior team there.

Kids have the wonder and curiosity that adults have spent many years replacing with logic and skepticism. To a kid, what looks like some moss on a rock is, in fact, a fairy chair. That skyscraper is a rocket ship. A few trees in a park are a mighty forest where woodland creatures come alive. A kid will shoot the truth they see.

— Give your camera to your kid ... by Patrick Rhone

... and his drive to keep Dropbox being a successful product.

Excellent interview with Dropbox's founder. I've been a happy Dropbox user for years. I see it's single biggest benefit has being platform independent. You can run Dropbox on Windows, OS X and Linux. If and when I decide to switch from OS X, it's good to know that I can take everything with me.

In case you didn't notice, it's been real busy here at Lang HQ. Client work, side project work and volunteer work have been the focus of the week as well as one important family commitment this week. I'm hoping next week isn't as busy.

It was a good weekend for the members of Elderslie's Junior Newton Shield squad. Coaching on the Saturday with the club pro followed by an opportunity to play on the course for all levels of members in the junior section on the Sunday. All those involved with this in the club should be commended. It's great to see kids of all ages being encouraged to play and compete.

Last weekend our son came home with the school quarterly bulletin. As always we familiarised ourselves with everything that was coming up in the next few months, asked him what events he would like to go to and made sure there was nothing else that needed our attention. One last thing caught me wife's eye though as she read through the bulletin. The school are looking for volunteers to help re-vamp their school website.

The next day I phoned the school to let them know I would be willing to help out. I got a call back a few minutes later with a date and time to speak to the assistant head teacher at the school who will be handling the website. All good so far.

The school's website is okay as an information portal but it definitely falls short in terms of how it looks. Well, when the site says that the school kids contribute to the look and content of the site, you're not exactly going to be expecting something that wins web design awards. Looking at other web sites in the area, and it's clear that the school web site isn't a primary concern for some schools. There is more an emphasis on getting the school children involved and that's not a bad thing.

Today's school children though are far different in terms of technology exposure than school children have been in the past. In the last ten years, mobile technology has become so engrained in day to day life that homes often have two or more mobile devices with kids often having their own tablet or even smartphone.

It got me wondering about the approach to take in getting the school children involved in the new school website. Is it better for them to know how to edit and update web pages by hand or will the kids be more interested in maintaining the school website through something like Wordpress?

I might be jumping the gun here a bit, but I've been keeping a list of questions like this to ask at my meeting with the school this week.

The main good thing to come out of this though is the chance to do something for an organisation in my local community. Yes, I'll be doing the work for the school for free but with our oldest already a pupil there and our youngest due to start there in a few years, the chance to contribute something to their school can't be a bad thing.

Minor setback this week as a couple of viruses knocked me and Jen out of contention for a couple of days. Last day and half has been me trying to get back on track with work.

Almost there.

I've noticed a lull in my posting frequency here. Towards the end of last year, my posting frequency shrank to just one or two posts a week.

Despite attempts to re-ignite the spark, I haven't been able to return back to that time when I was posting more frequently.

It's only in the last couple of weeks that I have noticed the source of the problem. It lies in the fact that I define each post I am writing as a single task.

Writing Isn't a Task

I've learned this the hard way. Since collecting all my writing ideas in Todoist, I've struggled with writing on a regular basis.

In Todoist I collected ideas as tasks and worked on them when I could. The writing process isn't simple case of hitting a word count and being done. It is for the first draft of anything you write but self-publication involves a continual loop of writing, reading and reviewing. It only ends when we feel that what we have written is ready to be published.

Instead of using Todoist, I'm going back to using Trello to mange my content funnel for the blog. From a list of ideas, I'm hoping to be able to gradually move cards across my board until they're ready for the blog. Writing is a process, not a task.

Writing Takes Time

Another hard lesson learned. In the past I would outline posts and write them on the day of publication. That might be okay if you have a couple of hours a day to review what you have written, but I don't have that time. I'm lucky to get an hour a day set side for this. So I need to use this time in a better way.

Rather than writing one post a day, I'm going to start writing parts of different posts each day. I might work on one or two posts, review another post and ready another post for publishing, but in no way should I be writing, reviewing and publishing in the one day. If I want to get the most from my writing then I need to give ideas and drafts more time to incubate.

Whether you're writing, reading, reviewing, editing or publishing, it's all starts with a simple habit of getting those words down on the page.

I'm hoping that by the end of the month, I'll be back to at least four posts a week. Let's see what happens.

Marco Arment provides a detailed breakdown of his sales figures for 2014 for his app Overcast. More interesting though is the benefits he mentions to being self-employed.

I can work in my nice home office, drink my fussy coffee, take a nap after lunch if I want to, and be present for my family as my kid grows up. That’s my definition of success.
— Overcast’s 2014 sales numbers by Marco Arment

Couldn't agree more.

... with NB.

Surprise them. Shock them even. Don't even complain once. About having eaten too much, the vacation being too short, the ridiculous queues at Starbucks on New Year's Eve afternoon. Don't let that stuff get to you. It's a little friction in the wheels of life. It may be the first week back. Heck it's the first Monday of the new year.

— Back to Work? by Nicholas Bate

Click through for the reason why you do this.

It's that catch again. This time looking at the tech behind Odell's gloves.

Beckham’s are custom-made versions of the Nike Vapor Jet 3.0, which features molded fingers, a “strategic mesh,” and “MagniGrip CL” on the palms and fingers. MagniGrip CL is a sticky material made from a mix of neoprene and silicone designed to help receivers hold on to a ball.

— Odell Beckham’s Helping Hands—the Tech Behind the Catch by Nautilus

Whatever Odell was wearing on his hands, I've a feeling that his 10 inch hands are the main reason that he made the catch look so easy.

When it comes to working with clients, there's a shared responsibility to ensure that both parties are using the right tools to work together.

For the last few weeks I've become increasingly uncomfortable in how I work with a client. In the past we've used a particular collaboration tool to manage projects and communicate through, but in the last few weeks this tool has been abandoned in favour for development requests through a chat room. At first it was minor requests like tweaks to the UI and changes to the messages that were displayed to the user when a form was incorrect. Steadily though it's increased to bigger changes and feature requests. Instant Messaging Driven Development if you wanted to put a label on it.

After explaining an issue in the code with the client I took the chance to talk to them about the increasing use of the chat room for requests rather than the collaboration tool that we originally used. I explained my worries about the trend towards this and the drawbacks that the client will inherit as a result of the continued use of the chat room for sending requests for software changes.

The issue was heard loud and clear from the client and for the next hour of the call we discussed plans to move back to the collaboration tool as well as guidelines for using the tool and what we can do to reinforce its place as the go to point for projects. It was a successful discussion.

When you and your client agree on a particular tool to use for collaborating on projects, then it is important that you stick to this. These tools are initially picked for a reason and that's because both you and the client are happy to use the tool and it will serve both your needs. When either side of this arrangement doesn't use the tool then that's where things can go wrong.

Collaboration tools such as Trello, Basecamp and other tools are there to ease the burden of remote parties working together. Parties can share information, assign tasks, check overall progress and much more. Other tools for communicating like IM, phone, text and email are best at communicating but they're a bad choice as collaboration tools.

Who's to blame? Well, in this case both myself and the client. On one hand the client should be adhereing to the agreement of using the collaboration tool. On the other hand, I could have mentioned this to the client sooner rather than let it continue for the few weeks that it did. I admit I was hesistant about bringing this issue to the client, but they were understanding about my concerns and promised to start using the collaboration tool again.

The next time a client deviates from the collaboration tool we've chosen, I'll politely remind them of our preferred place for such things. And yes, I would expect them to do the same to me.

There's a time and a place for client work. Rushing out the door on a Saturday morning isn't one of them.

Over the weekend I made mistake in some code I had changed for a client. After pushing the quick change to Github and then to the test environment for the client, I then realised the mistake I had made. With no time to correct the change, I decided to leave it until Monday morning. After seeing my mistake in all it's glory this morning, I admitted my mistake to my client and then proceeded to fix the code correctly.

There's no excuse for the mistake that I made but making the change on a Saturday morning when I was due to leave the house probably wasn't the best time to do it. Also I didn't read the message fully from my client that prompted the change. In my haste I missed the last sentence which would have changed the way I updated the code. A hard lesson learned.

Freelancing is definitely a learning experience and with each mistake you make you see the correct process you should be following. In this case it's client work. It should be reserved exclusively for your typical working day. In my case it's during the week at my normal office hours and only when I have at least 30 minutes to carry out the work and review it accordingly. The only exception should be for emergencies and when carrying out that work it should receive your complete focus.

It can be tempting to be the ever accommodating freelancer and provide help on your client's every request and wish, but going down that path will only degrade the quality of your work. Your clients will come to expect fully working changes when they demand them regardless of the hour of the day. Responding in this way isn't in the best interests for you or your client. Instead, defer fixes for client work for first thing the next morning or even before your main day begins if you have the time.

There's a time and a place for client work. It's during the agreed times that you already have with your client. Keep it that way to ensure your clients get the complete attention and focus they paid you for.

A festive idea for your kids or those just pretending to be kids.

Even the best kept habits require a break. Regardless of how well you think it's working for you as a habit, it's only when you step back from it, breaking the habit, that you can see the true impact and value of it.

If you're like me, you'll have tried to introduce hundreds of habits in an effort to improve your health, your career, your finances or even your relationships with people. For me some of them have truly stuck over the years. Keeping a journal is one of them and something I do on an almost daily basis. Whether it's a family event, work or even a thought, it gets written down and saved for a future review or reflection. It took me a number of months to get this habit down on a daily basis and while I can see the benefit of it, I've never taken a break from it.

Last week though I decided to drop the journal tools for a few days and just enjoy the time off I had with the family. It was a real eye opener. In that time I realized that although keeping a journal is a good thing for posterity and also for remembering where I was with some work, I was missing something.

Looking back at my journal entries over the years and months, there has been a subtle trend in my journal entries. In the past I would journal once a day with a review of the day, now though I'm logging journal entries multiple times a day. Whenever I complete a bit of work, whenever I have the inkling of an idea, or even when a link catches my eye but I want don't want to just read it later, I want to read it from a particular angle. Every day I'm working I'm writing multiple journal entries as I'm working. When the weekend rolls around, the context of my journal switches and I focus on one entry for the weekend if I did something with the family that was fun.

Before I didn't recognize the pattern of my journal activities and how I was switching between work and family journals. Having stepped back from the habit of keeping multiple journals, I can see that the shift in change is better for me. When I read the last month's worth of entries I found it so much easier to read the frequent updates per day rather than the single monolithic update done on a daily basis.

I also realized something else. I put too much emphasis on writing a journal entry every day when it wasn't necessary. Having not kept a journal for the best part of a week, I can see that it's okay to miss a few days here and there. It's taken a break in my habits to see the true value I'm getting from keeping a journal.

Sometimes we end up switching to automatic-pilot when we habituate processes that we think will make us better people. Truth is though, we need time away, a holiday from these habits so that we can properly evaluate and review their value. Only when we can do this can we see how that habit is truly working for us.

Yesterday was such a glorious day in terms of weather. An ideal day to get Ethan back out on the golf course. Unfortunately the course is still a bit damp from the last couple of weeks of rain but hopefully it will dry out soon.

... Thomson (yes that Thomson) are making frames now.

Click ahead to the frame in all its beauty while I wipe the drool from my chin.

I always keep my ear to the ground when it comes to local businesses starting and closing in my local town. You never when an opportunity might arise.

A couple of months ago I noticed that a hairsdessers, whom I used to be a customer of and got to know the owners well, had closed down. This morning I found out that the owners (a married couple) were still working locally, but had decided to rent chairs in another local hairdressers so that they could continue to serve the customers that they had built up in their own business.

Being a business owner with staff is a huge responsibility and one that isn't easy to depart from. Once your employing staff and delegating duties to them, it's your responsibility to steer the business in the best possible direction, whilst also ensuring that your staff contribute and are paid well for their duties.

I've been in enough small businesses over the years to see this first hand. Sometimes the business owner does a good job and sometimes they don't. The majority of the time though, I've seen the bad side of this. The business as an entity isn't doing well enough to support it's staff which usually results in the laying off of some or all of those staff.

For whatever reasons you have as a business owner for closing down your business, it can't be an easy decision to make when there is staff involved. If you've built up a loyal army of staff over the years that can be depended upon, how do explain that they no longer have a job when your business closes?

As much as I would love to expand my freelance business over the coming years into a registered company with staff, I keep having to remind myself that there's a huge responsibility to employing staff and ensuring that there is enough there for people to be paid. I've been on the receiving end of three redundancies. I'd rather not be the guy on the other side of the table giving them out.

For the moment I'm happy to plod on as a single freelance developer providing a service and value to my clients. I only have myself and my family to look after and that's enough for me.

Last year was a great year for me in terms of blogging. I managed to write posts for most week days with just a few weeks off, I kept my Fixie Friday posts going and last but not least, I used my blog to share links. Mission accomplished I would say for 2013 but what about 2014?

Next year poses some challenges. I want to keep blogging but I also want to increase the quality of my posts without decreasing the frequency of my posts. I've been thinking about this over the last week during my stay in Canada.

In my review of last year, I certainly skimped on technical posts from my development work. Not that I want my blog to turn into a developer's only blog, but I do want to write more technical posts about my work as a web developer. Maybe one a fortnight would suffice as a starter.

I also kept my posts rather brief with maybe just one post a fortnight being more than 500 words. I want to write one post a fortnight that is more than 750 words with the time taken to research and edit the piece before I hit the publish button. I rarely did any editing on my blog posts with just a skimp over it to check for spelling and grammar mistakes. That's not a good habit to get into, so there will be more of an emphasis on editing everything I write, but in particular the longer blog posts.

To help with this commitment to better writing, my working week is going to be slightly different. I've reserved four days a week for client work with one day a week being reserved for my own work. This gives me a chance to get some writing done in the morning and also curate some content for the Netterpress newsletter while it's in a trial phase.

I'm intentionally not over commiting to doing too much on my blog. I've got other areas where I also need to focus on, so these two changes I've highlighted above are a good place to start. I'll review this after 3 months and see if it's working for me. No reason that it shouldn't, it is after just a small change to my blogging habits.

The start of next year will mark my one year anniversary as a freelance web developer. It's been an amazing ride this last year. I can't believe I'm still doing what I am doing. Working from home, flexible hours and of course working with Ruby on Rails are all great benefits but what's it been really like?

Clients

As for the client roster I'm dealing with just a handful of clients at the moment. The clients I have I can a manage at the moment and I haven't got to the stage where I would be looking for another developer to sub-contract work to. It has been at the back of my mind the last few days with the amount of work I have lined up for next year, but I'll cross that bridge when I get to it.

I've managed to build a nice relationship with the clients I have at the moment. I would be the first to say that I'm not really a people person, but the feedback I've had from clients has been excellent. I think being in constant communication is key to building a great relationship with clients.

Work

The work itself has all been Ruby on Rails work. All the applications I am working on are 3.x applications but I have rolled out a couple of Rails 4 applications of my own just to see any differences so that I can prepare for any upgrades I may have to do in the near future.

I do all back end development work. I don't do any design work or front end development at all. It's amazing the number of people who think I do the design work. A designer I am not but I am looking to expand to doing some front end development work next year. It's important to be not only providing value for clients but also providing options. If I can provide additional services that they would go to someone else for then that benefits

Adjustments

I've had to make a number of small adjustments to my daily work routine in order to survive working from home.

I keep to a 9 to 5 work day purely for the fact that it works well for not just me but everyone in the house as well. What's the point in me working all evening and missing spending time with my family? However I do have to sometimes do work at night, maybe once a week. Things like invoicing and admin work I do at night so as not to split my time on client work during the day. It's extra work that needs to be done.

Jen works half days on a Thursday and a Friday. When she comes home with our youngest son on those days, we have a chat about our day so far and have some lunch. Then I retreat back to the office to finish my work for the rest of the day. She understands the importance of me finishing my work for the day and I only get interrupted by Jen if something is really urgent.

An adjustment I've recently made is no client work on a Friday. I made this decision so that I could get some time to work on side projects and hopefully turn them into income streams. Client work is important but my freelance business will need to weather the ups and downs of demands for my work. In order to get through those hard times it makes sense to have other income streams from products.

Benefits

Working for myself is a real benefit to me at the moment. We have a young family with one at school and one at nursery. With myself and Jen both working child care has always been an issue. Up to last year though we were quite fortunate in our circumstances but if I continued working full-time we would definitely need to consider child care for both our kids, which at the time was an expense we were hoping to avoid.

Working for myself though means that I am able to be more flexible in my hours. I still do a 9 to 5 day most days, but having the option there to take my oldest son to school and pick him up means that we only pay child care for our youngest. I always catch up on work at night if I need to but it's usually only an hour or two which leaves me time to spend with my family.

Drawbacks

I'm usually quite good working on my own, but I do miss the banter of working in a development team. Not just the chance to work with others but also the banter, the jokes and the other perks that come from being part of a team. That's the only drawback to my freelance career so far. I can live with working on my own. The benefits far outweigh this one drawback.

A Great Year

It's been a great year working for myself. It's always been something I've wanted to do, but the opportunity just hasn't been there in the past. Now that I've completed a year working solo, I'm prepared to put the work in to maintain my freelance career as long as I can. It just offers so many more benefits than a full-time position. I'm looking forward to writing another post like this at the end of next year. It's going to be hard work but it's going to be enjoyable hard work.

My wife mentioned the other day that she was thinking about her New Year's resolution for 2014. I said to her, "Did you keep last year's resolution?". "No", was the reply. In fact she freely admitted to never keeping resolutions.

"What's stopping you from starting now?", was my next question. It got her thinking and she's decided to start making plans now to implement some positive changes to her health and fitness.

Why do we feel the need to wait for a milestone to pass before we start something? New Year's resolutions are never kept. I never kept mine. In fact, it was only a few of years ago when I abandoned the whole idea of starting and keeping a New Year's resolution. I do keep a theme for the year that I can group goals under, but that's all it is. A theme for the year.

Don't wait.

Start now.

Write down what you want to achieve next year now and start making a list of next actions towards making those achievements. Do it now.

What's the point in waiting for a holiday or birthday to roll by before you start taking action? Age is just a number and so is the year. There's nothing special about them that will make you achieve your goals.

Get the notepad and pen out and start that list now. Start working towards your goals now. Get the jumpstart on the year and start it knowing you've already achieved something before the this year is finished and that the next achievement is just around the corner and not 12 months away.

New Year's Day is just another day on the calendar. So is today. Don't wait for the end of the year. Start now.

This has to be the goal of the season.

via kotte.org

The console war has begun for the next generation of gamers, but choosing between either of these consoles as my next gaming platform has still left me mostly undecided. In a games shop, I even asked one of the staff what they thought of the specs and which one they would buy. His answer, "buy both", is hardly the best answer you're looking for when you're an occasional gamer.

Currently I have an Xbox 360 with a handful of games. I don't play very often and I certainly don't have the time to co-ordinate myself enough to play online against friends and family, but I do like sitting for a couple of hours each weekend and working my way through a few games.

The first consideration is my oldest son. He likes playing a few games on the Xbox 360 including his favourite game, Minecraft. Most of the games he does play are usually available on both consoles and there will be a version of Minecraft available for the PS4. However, what other titles are there on the PlayStation that are suitable for him to play? Mostly the same titles that he's played on the Xbox previously, so I'm not concerned about availability of suitable games for him.

There's very little between the two consoles in terms of specifications, but having had previous experience with the Kinect, I would have to say that I wasn't completely enamored with it. There just hasn't been enough games for it since its release. Yes, there's all the usual fitness and dance games but that's not the games I play.

If I had to choose between the two, I would choose the PlayStation 4. Simply out of curiosity really, nothing else. I've had a an Xbox for a couple of years now, might be time to try the other camp. Still I've got a few months to think it over before I commit to a purchase.

I first started following Kurt's blog, Cultural Offering, on the recommendation of Nicholas Bate a few years ago. What I love about Kurt's blog is that his is more of a journal than anything else. Political stories, current affairs, sports, family life and of course the occasional shots of what's being cooked on the grill. A true slice of life on the American side of the pond.

You just need to take a look at the categories that Kurt has listed on his blog to see the diverse range of topics he blogs about. There's everything here. And that's the key thing I love about Kurt's blog. Diversity. I like specialist blogs, I really do, but Kurt's blog really stands out because he just posts what interests him.

Always a pleasure to read and always different. That's Kurt Harden.

Me and Jen took the bus home from Niagara Falls on Thursday, a first for us as we usually drive back. We've been to Niagara Falls countless times over the years and this is the first time we've seen the old parts of town. A lot of interesting buildings here that have sadly seen better days. I'm glad we wandered off the beaten track this time. We wouldn't have seen these buildings if we hadn't decided to take the bus.

Carl Holscher recently wrote about the sharing culture in social media and his preference for remaining private in some of the services he uses.

Yesterday I signed up to the habit tracking service Lift on the recommendation of Curtis McHale. Lift at the moment say they have no settings to keep your profile private, however they do have a setting there to say that you are interested in such a feature.

Habit tracking is definitely something I'm interested in but this is something I would like to remain private in the long term. While I'm only in the initial phase of evaluating this product, I'm prepared to put up with a public profile for the moment. I don't wish to share on Lift mainly due to the reason that I don't know that many people using it and if I wanted to share, it would be with people I know.

And that sums up my rule really for sharing. If I'm a user of a product or service that involves such actions, I'll restrict my account settings so that I remain private or as private as I can be. If there's a number of people I know on that service, then I'll be a bit more public.

I like sharing, but I prefer my daily interactions such as habit tracking to remain private or only to be shared with people I know. So how do you know people without ever actually meeting then? That's another blog post for another day.

Keeping up with posts on a daily basis is becoming a little more work than I anticipated. Previously I would try to write a couple of blogs every couple of days and then maybe a couple at the weekend.

In the last two months though this plan have suffered. Scheduling time in during the day is quite difficult with the the day starting early with a school run and then I need to hit client work as soon as I get back home. At the end of the day it is time to get the kids their dinner, have a play with them and then get them ready for bath and bed. By the time that's done and everything is ready for the next day, it's nearly 9pm and the thought of sitting at the computer is just not that appealing.

I need a plan of sorts. Simply picking off ideas for writing every couple of days is becoming difficult. I have enough ideas, I just need a plan to get them written.

Here's what I'm thinking. I should schedule what I am going to publish in my calendar and then work towards writing the articles that are due to published in the coming week.

One benefit of this is that deciding what to write about is taken out of my hands at an early date. I'm planning on scheduling blog posts at least a month ahead. The second benefit is that I can start writing posts even if they are not due to be published for a week or two.

I'm tired of deciding what to write about not the actual writing itself. So I need to schedule ahead and take that decision out my hands at an early stage. Time will tell if this idea for a publishing calendar pays off or not.

... and Steven Pressfield knows it.

The person who is going to change is going to change anyway. She has no choice. She is impelled by inner necessity. While the person who is not going to change is not going to change no matter how many seminars or retreats she attends or how much money she pays to those who promise to help her make the change.

— How hard is it to turn pro? by Steven Pressfield

I might not approve of Curtis McHale's choice of journaling tool (just kidding), but I do approve of his reason for journaling.

I’d like to think that they will want a better picture of what I was in my 30′s as my family was starting. I’d like to think that I’m interesting enough to leave a legacy for them that they’ll be interested in.

— Knowing those that came before you by Curtis McHale

I have a new hobby, sort of. Last weekend I bought myself a new set of golf clubs and last night I took my oldest son to the driving range for a boys night. He got to fine tune his swing and I got the chance to become familiar with the first set of golf clubs I've had in 20 years. It's sure been a long time since I played a round of golf, so I wasn't sure what to expect with a new set of golf clubs. The surprising thing was that I could actually hit the ball reasonably well.

This new hobby isn't about me though, it's more about my son. Being a great little golfer means I want to get him on the course as often as possible, but access to golf courses for kids isn't easy, especially when you thrown in the unpredictable Scottish weather. Also he's a bit young to be out playing a round on his own.

So I decided to arm myself with some clubs and get into this golf thing with my son. Hopefully over the summer and autumn I can get him onto some public courses near us, but more importantly he can teach Dad how to play golf!

Thanks to Execupundit for this reminder that it is 70 years since the Dambusters raid. The Spitfire was my favourite as a kid and still is.

At the moment I'm working on an application for a decision making tool for groups that uses email to track people's responses to a question that forms the basis of the decision. Basically this application sends an email to all the people you want feedback from regarding a decision. In the email are the responses they are allowed to reply back with. They click the appropriate response and it's done. With me so far? Good.

Collaboration tools like this in teams are okay because everyone knows one another and the team work together for the greater good of delivering a great product or service. In a team you expect to get emails from other team members that want your input on a decision.

What happens though when you receive an email asking for your input on a decision, when you know that person but not as well as you know your family or friends? Another way to look at it is this:

How would you feel about giving feedback on the decisions of others you know in only a professional manner?

This is where I am having trouble with this idea. On one hand I know that teams are always going to respond to one another's questions, but say we have a decision making tool for the masses that anyone can use. You want feedback from a group of people that you know on a professional level who opinions you might value, especially when it comes to getting feedback on a key decision, but your worried that they won't participate in your decision.

If these people who opinions you value, mark your request for feedback as spam, are they really people you want feedback from or are they simply too busy to provide feedback?

This has been a stumbling block for me for a while and it's led to two different strategies to allow people to be included in decisions.

First Strategy: No Restrictions, Include Everyone

This was the initial idea for the product. The decision maker can include anyone they want feedback from on a decision. Whether it's a member of their team, someone from a particular social network they interact with, or just someone who opinion the decision maker values.

Emails are sent out to everyone requesting feedback on the decision. The main benefit to this is that you can include anyone in on a decision easily and quickly. However there are a number of drawbacks:

• What if the email is marked as spam? - It doesn't do well for your product to be perceived an another form of clutter in the inbox.
• Should the user have the option of blacklisting themselves from all future emails from my product? - To combat the possibility of the emails from my product being marked as spam, users could have the option of automatically blacklisting themselves out from all future emails. This gives a greater form of control but it does limit the decision maker in who they ask for feedback.
• Should the user have the option of blacklisting themselves from this decision only? - A spin on the previous option, but again it does limit who the decision maker can ask for feedback from.

Second Strategy: Verify Respondents First

This is a more controlled form of getting feedback from the right people. You are pre-approving people to be included in your decisions, so you should be able to build a reliable network of people who you can ask for their feedback on any number of decisions. There are drawbacks to this though:

• You just can't include anyone in a decision - Initially I wanted a platform where people can ask others for their feedback on anything.
• More barriers to getting feedback - Even if a person does want to help we require extra steps to include them on your decision. After one click to verify who they are, they might just get bored and not bother taking part in the decision.

Test Group Will Provide Feedback

Thankfully, I have a test group who are keen to use this service to help them make decisions with regards to small investments as a group. I'll be providing a simple implementation of this application for them to use for a while as a group.

As an added test, I will ask the test group to use the application to create decisions that are not related to investments. I want to see if there is a difference in the number of responses depending on the topic of the decision. I expect investment decisions to generate more responses because that is what the application is for.

I still haven't decided whether to go ahead with this product in the long term, but sharing this here did give me a moment to weigh up the two options.

Over the weekend I was looking for a replacement for Google calendars. I was sure that I would be at least using Apple’s Calendar service and iCloud, but I wasn’t sure what other tools would be great to support this. So I asked my ADN friends for their recommendations. Within minutes I got a few from people with their favourite scheduling apps and tools. There was a clear favourite but I wanted to wait for more responses. I left it to the next day for more people to reply. The next morning I reviewed all the responses that people had sent to me.

As a thank you, I composed a single post the next day just saying thanks to all of the people that replied to my question. They didn’t need to reply to my question, but they did and I’m thankful for the responses they gave me. Trawling through the responses was a bit of a chore but I managed to get everyone’s name in one post and sent it. It would be nice if you automate this kind of thing.

It gave me an idea. An question and answer management tool for App.net. It’s probably not on the priority list for many users on App.net, but for those that are looking to streamline the question and answer process and make it easier I had a vision for a small service that would do the following.

1. It would allow you to compose #askadn questions with optional hash tags for preferred answers that people should give.
2. It would aggregate the results and keep totals for each response by looking for preferred hash tags in replies or by looking for recurring words in the replies that are given.
3. It would compose thank you posts for all the people that took part. If all the respondants don’t fit in a single post, the thank you post could be split into a number of posts to thank groups of respondants.

It’s just an idea, but the reason I am putting it here is that someone else might already be in the process of building something similar to this idea. Maybe no one is building it, but perhaps someone will. If no one builds it, then I will.

I’m just throwing this out there.

Last night our oldest son gave us a bit of a scare. He started to run a very high temperature after dinner and through the night he was sick a couple of times. This morning he was shivering and still had a fever. No school for him then.

Why am I telling you this?

It sets the background for one of the key benefits to working from home. In the rare occurrence that your children are ill, it makes child care a lot easier.

Depending on your child's illness you can still look after them and get some work done. I said some work because of course your child's health comes first. Do some work while they are napping or watching a movie. You're never going to get a full days work in on these days, but being a freelancer it is great to have this option.

I would love to sit down and teach my sons how to code, but I think it's more important to teach them about applying thinking to problem solving.

Scott Hanselman rounds it up nicely:

We need to teach kids to think and to be excited about thinking.

— Programming's Not For You by Scott Hanselman

In case you don't know what I'm talking about, let me give you a run down. It's become common place in the last few years for agencies and companies doing the hiring to describe the type of people they are looking for as a "rockstar" or "ninja". Yeah, I know. It's stupid. Here's why.

Describing the type of person you are looking for as a crowd-surfing, alcohol loving musician or as a specialist warrior for hire is just ridiculous.When you describe the person you want as a rockstar, I think of an out going person with the kind of personality that you just can't ignore. The kind of person that announces their god-like skills with a megaphone before entering the office, before biting the head of a bat and then downing a bottle of vodka. Okay, maybe not those last two things, but you did ask for a rockstar.What I think you are actually looking for is a person that has a passion for what they do. If that's the case, they why not just say so in the job description? There's plenty of people out there who are passionate about what they do, but they don't call themselves rockstars, they go by the job title that fits them and describes what they do best.

So you want a ninja instead then? When you describe the person you are looking for as a ninja, I imagine a person entering the office in a puff of smoke and taking out half your development with a single throw of multiple shuriken. Okay bad example, but isn't that sort of what a ninja does?What I think you are actually looking for is someone who works effectively and productively. Someone who knows how to make decisions on the best tools for the job and uses these tools effectively.

So why not just say what you want? Let's stop using these ridiculous terms to describe the type of person you want for a position. Unless you're advertising for a clown or a stand-up comic then I think you need to take the job description a bit more seriously.Oh yeah, and you can't use guru for the job description either.

Can't wait to show my oldest son this!

via Distracted By Star Wars

A single device that can be used on the go as well as having the same functionality as a desktop computer when you dock it!

The Ubuntu phone marks a significant milestone that nobody else in the mobile business has managed to nail yet. It runs the same codebase as the rest of the Ubuntu family, meaning it can be docked and used as a real computer or synchronized with a slab and turned into a tablet.

— Convergence is key by Owened

Michael Wade examines places where you achieve more work.

It is obvious that where we work can affect how we work. Consequently, we need to learn which settings are best. A certain oddness may come into play. I've found that my home dining room table is ideal for some projects and not for others. The reason why has not been discovered but I suspect it may have to do with its height and width as well as the nice amount of light from some French doors.

Our den at home is a place for adults only. It's really just a second sitting room and office but I always find it a great space for working. Minimal distractions and clutter.
— Stacking Deck by Execupundit

The main reason people don’t try to do work they love, don’t even look for it, is because they don’t think they’re good enough. That’s hogwash. We’ve been bamboozled and hornswoggled into believing we are insufficient, that it’s scary to fail, when neither is remotely true.

— Tick Tock by Zen Habits

I'll be honest here, I'm not a very confident person and that is perhaps why I face the freelance career with a sense of trepidation. It hasn't helped that in the last two weeks I've been unsuccessful in a few job applications. It's only a few however, at least it's not hundreds.

An old post from the svn blog at 37signals but a reminder that not everyone's number one concern is the big project at work.

That’s why I like working with the family man or woman. They come in as a cold bath of reality. When people have other obligations outside of work that they actually care more about than your probably-not-so-world-changing idea, the crutches are not available as an easy way out, and you’ll have to walk by the power of your good ideas and execution or you’ll fall fast and early. That’s a good thing!

— Hire Family People by 37 Signals

Bad news.

Got paid off this morning.

Good news.

I now have an opportunity to carve a career that will benefit me. A career that will interest me, let me work on the things that interest me the most.

There's freelancing, contracting, consulting, writing, coding and product building. Lots of opportunities ahead, but decisions need to be made sooner rather than later.

I have a young family to think about, so while I would like to do all the things above, I need to be realistic.

I'm going to start exploring these opportunities one at a time over the next week. No rash emotionally fuelled decisions.

This is an opportunity that can't be missed.

Ever get an email marked as important and then proceeded to wonder why it is so important?

I get them every now and again at work, but what amazes me is that people still send email and mark it as important. Do you really think that little red flag you put on it will automatically kick me into state of tunnel vision, where I stop until the issue in the email is resolved? Be honest, how many times have you received an important email asking you to complete a task and deferred the work to later rather than doing it now. It's not your fault. You know the task is important, but how important is it really? I think we can all agree that most of the time, it's not that important.

Email doesn't convey how important a task is because there is no tone in an email to indicate this. Also, we've lived with email so long now that we question every important email that comes into our inbox. How important is it really?If something is so important why waste the time on an email that may or may not get actioned? That little red flag called 'important' doesn't have any magical powers you know.

If you're about to send an email with a task that you think is important, then stop.

Discard the email and find the phone number of the person you wanted to send that important email to.Phone this person, discuss the task at hand. Provide that person with the all the necessary information that they need to complete the task.

Not only are you conveying how important the task is but you can also clarify any details that you might be asked about it.Next time you're mouse hovers over the important flag, decide whether the task is so important that it warrants a phone call. Most of the time it won't be that important, but when it is important, you'll be glad you conveyed the importance of the task yourself rather than relying on a dumb machine to do it for you.

I've always had a side project going for the last few years. Whether it was a blog, a bit of code or some writing, there's always been something there for me to do. The reason why wasn't really clear to me until I read this:

The Grind is the problem that you beat yourself up over solving every single day. It’s the job you’re in, or the business you’re building. The Grind gets our best hours, our fullest attention, and the whole of our willpower.

Which leads me to the this question: If the company or organisation you work for allowed a percentage of time to work on side projects, would the grind become less of a grind?

— The Grind and Why We Need Side Projects by Rocketr

... brought to you by xkcd.

Otherwise you're project is going to stall and get nowhere.

Know that when you start just a side project, you’re starting so much more. It’ll completely consume you. The worst failure in any side project is to devote time, energy and sanity for any sustained period only to close the doors.

Side projects are a means to an end.

— Side Projects by Andrew Dumont

A passive income stream. That's why I'm working on Journalong. Growth has stalled in the last couple of months though, so I'm looking to rectify that with a site up-lift and highlighting more of the features I've shipped in the last couple of weeks.

... Raiders.

I loved this movie as a kid, but equally amazing is that my oldest son also loves this movie. It's a real testament to a movie when it can be appreciated across multiple generations.

Nicholas Bate gets us geeks. It's a shame that others don't.

Organisations love to use the term geek in a derogatory manner. Often dismissive. Often excluding. And yet when we have a problem be it IT, medical or simply plumbing we would love to have access to a geek. A person who is so good that they understand the simplicity the far side of complexity. They look at the problem and they know what to do.

— Instant Business Speak 38 - Geeks by Nicholas Bate

Essential reading for today. Make sure to set aside some time for this. And Happy Birthday Patrick!

Golf ... more golf ... and even more golf. Ryder Cup weekend begins today and me and my oldest son are going to be glued to the television cheering on Rory, Graeme and the rest of the European team.

How many times have you heard these or words to this effect?​

Keep both plates spinning​

It's really just another way of saying multi-tasking.When you do hear colleagues say this, remind them you're not a circus entertainer or even the love child of Andrew Van Buren. Plate spinning, multi-tasking​ or whatever you want to call it, is a productivity killer. Instead of focusing on one thing, you're given only a small amount of your attention to each task you are working on. What happens when you do this? Yeah, those plates will fall eventually. Trust me.

Instead, give each task your undivided attention and focus. Batch your work into related tasks and tackle them one at a time.​After all, multi-tasking is a myth and I'm not a circus entertainer.

Jason was my reason for taking up mountain biking and remains an inspiration for hundreds of mountain bikers in the UK. A talented rider taken too early from us.

Ride free Jason.

Forgive the cute picture of my 2nd son who was born today, but today's wish is to get this little guy and his mum back home where they belong. Little Drew was born this morning at 11:12am. Welcome to the world little man!

Buster Benson outlines what habit decisions are and provides some tips integrating these habits into your life. Here's an excerpt from the practice tracking tip:

If you’re not someone who naturally tracks everything you do in life, think about breaking off a separate habit decision statement for the habit of tracking. Practice tracking something other than a behavior that’s important to you. Experiment with tracking in a journal, and on a calendar in your kitchen, and with an app on your phone, and see which ones feel natural and enjoyable to you.

— Habit Manifesto by Buster Benson

Yes folks, we have entered new realms of crazy in the mountain bike world. 11 gears.

It was only a couple of years ago that everyone thought we were going to have 3x10 gearing, but now 2x9/10 is becoming more popular and if you have the legs for it, you can go down to 1x11, SRAM's new drivetrain.

With this you can now pretty much get any number of gearing you want (within reason of course) on any mountain bike.

Carbon cranks for the XX-1 set might be a bit expensive though, so I'll wait for it to trickle down the range perhaps next year.

.. and not lose your family. A simple but realistic guide from Eric Farkas.

The world is full of ideas that can be executed with 10 to 20 hours per week, let alone 40

— All or Something by 37 Signals

Not big words, but it's sort of the same thing I've been telling myself for the last couple of weeks. Even if I only get a 5 hours a week to work on something, it's 5 hours towards the end goal.

Once my son is in bed and my stuff is organised for the next day, once all the little chores are done, once my world is in order again, I open my laptop and put in an hour or two.

It might seem that I am not making much progress, but those hours are adding up and my micro-product is taking shape. I've still got loads to do, but I know that with every hour I'm making a step towards getting this idea executed and launched.

And yes we do need another word for startups.

It's no biggie for Buster, and it shouldn't be for anyone else.

The multiverse, the universe, the world, history, everyone alive, your friends and family, you, your behavior, what you are doing right now. You can only change one of these things, and it’s not easy, and you’ll probably fail the first 38,000 times, but by eventually changing it you indirectly change all of the others. After figuring that out, the only remaining problem is figuring out what you want to change and why.

— No Biggie by Buster Benson

What is apparent is that Pirsig, focussed as he is on the peak, is overwhelmed by the climb, and continues to lose his desire and strength with every step. The monks, on the other hand, used the peak only as a guide to mark the direction of their climb; they were more focused on the journey and its enjoyment, and made it to the top with ease.

— You Are Not Running Out of Time by Rahul Bijlani

A fantastic essay by Rahul Bijlani on enjoying the journey towards your achievements. I tend to fix my focus too much on the end goal and never see what's happening around as the journey trundles on.For me I need to stop moving the goalposts, enjoy the journey and realise that it's never too late to start something new.Also thanks to Buster Benson for highlighting this on his blog.

Patrick Rhone's book, Keeping It Straight, is an essay based book that contains all the necessary little insights into life that you need to keep yourself heading in the right direction. Split up into three sections entitled, "You", "Me", and "Everything Else", this book contains small essays that tell real life stories and the ideas and observations that Patrick has learned from them.Rather than getting bogged down in using the right tool or application for the job, Patrick focuses on the actual processes that have worked for him over the years and how you can also use them.

I know Patrick from his writing on his own website and his curated blogs such as Minimal Mac and The Random Post. I have followed his writing for a few years now and everytime I read one of articles, you learn something else that you can apply to your own life and make it better.I don't want to call this a self-help book. Instead you should think of Patrick's book as a guide to getting yourself back on track and working on the things that matter to you and making time to enjoy your life and family. Some might see it as a bit "touchy feely", but the best insights and lessons in life are learned from the real world life experiences of others. It's great that Patrick has compiled this collection of experiences together for the rest of the world to enjoy.