Matthew Lang

I've been using an iPad Pro as a web development device for a few months now. Overall I've been surprised at the ability of the device to handle this type of work. Apps like Working Copy, Textastic and GoCoEdit have certainly helped as has the split view on iOS and more recently the ability to drag and drop between apps.

One drawback amongst all this though is the browser I use. Safari has been my browser of choice for iOS for a long time. I've had brief dealings with Google Chrome and Firefox, but they've never lasted in terms of use. I keep coming back to Safari.

As browser's go, there's little to fault about Safari on all the devices it supports. It works well on my iPhone and the smaller iPads I've used over the years. With the iPad Pro though, it feels that Safari is short-changing me.

Pinned tabs

Right okay. Pinned tabs aren't on everybody's list of priority features for a browser but I've been using them for so long on other browsers it seems that they've been around forever. That's not true in the case of Safari for macOS though. Pinned tabs have only been around for a couple of years with Safari which seems like a very short amount of time given that they have been available in other browsers for years.

So why pinned tabs on Safari for iOS?

Well, largely it's an organisational thing. There's a number of tabs that I keep open through the day and pinning these tabs in the browser allows me to quickly jump to them through the day.

Given the screen space on the iPad Pro models and even on the iPad Mini models, I'm surprised that the pinning of tabs hasn't already been done.

Web inspector

I was surprised to find that the Web Inspector on Safari for iOS is only available when you connect your iPad to another Apple computer.

Now while a web inspector is probably a big ask on a device that probably wasn't intended to be a web development device, I think it's a fair request. People are turning to the iPad Pro and looking for a device that replaces their laptop or even their desktop. The inability to run the Web Inspector without connecting the iPad Pro to a MacBook or iMac doesn't exactly

However, while you might not be able to use the Web Inspector for Safari iOS without connecting to another Mac, there is an app called Web Tools that replicates this need feature rather nicely.

Support for pinned extensions

I toyed with the idea of calling these starred extensions but pinned extensions might be a better idea, but first I have to explain what this is.

At the top right of the Safari app on the iPad is the share button. This button allows you to share the current URL with a number of other apps on your iPad or iPhone. I use it a number of times every day, mostly for sharing links to my Instapaper, Pinboard and Bear apps. I also use it quite a lot for opening 1Password. The share button on the iPad Pro is a quick and convenient way for me to share a link. It's also one more press on the screen than I care to do.

If you take a look at the Safari interface on my iPad Pro, you'll notice that there is some whitespace on either side of the address bar. What if this space could be utilised in a better way rather than just leaving it blank. What if (and only if your screen size can support it) you could pin a couple of your favourite share extensions to the Safari toolbar?

By pinning your share extensions to either the left or right of the address bar, you're putting your share extensions in a more convenient place.

There are obvious restrictions to this like screen size and even the orientation of the device which governs how much space you have, but surely the developers at Apple could make this happen?

The expectations of a Pro device

When you name your device as 'Pro' there is a certain level of expectation of it. I must admit I eye-rolled when I first heard that the new iPad would be called an iPad Pro, but as I heard more about it and watched the first couple of iterations of the device, I could see where Apple was going with this.

To support this new family of devices I think that there needs to another level up of apps that are targeted at the Pro line of devices only or at least variations of the apps that support Pro features.

These apps might be specialised and target a specific market of people, but given that the iPad Pro is already being seen as a viable option to a laptop and even a desktop, I think it's important for Apple to offer that extra bit of functionality that users may look for in an app.

These features that I'm looking for in Safari for iOS might not be a priority for the Safari team or even on the list of new features for Safari, but I'm sure that if Apple is looking to push the iPad Pro device to more professionals then there should be some distinction between the normal apps for iOS and those for Pro devices.

... with Patrick Rhone.

I’ve recently re-adopted something I learned in a high school creative writing class. I’ve been keeping a Field Notes notebook in my back pocket and capturing stray interesting thoughts that pop into my head and things I overhear from others (conversations, movies, reading, etc.) There’s no specific reason or purpose for these random snippets, for now. Just listening, observing, waiting, and writing down anything that catches my attention.

— Capturing the Wild Snippet by Patrick Rhone

Saddened to hear that Carrie Fisher has passed away at the age of 60.

It wasn't until a few years ago that I was aware of her career off screen, including an author and an advocate for mental health.

Thanks for being a huge part of my childhood and the childhood of my kids Carrie.

So apparently Evernote employees now have the ability to read the notes in your Evernote account. There is an opt-out feature in the settings but I wonder how many people will do this?

I started using Evernote when it first came out. Since then I've closed and re-opened my account a number of times. To me Evernote feels bulky and awkward. I've tried to use it a number of times, but each time I find the product too difficult to use. I last tried Evernote just over a year ago. I went for a couple of days before I closed my account again.

Evernote started it's life well as a product but in recent years it has taken a lot of criticism for it's usability, support, pricing and now it's stance on privacy. With the growing criticism you have to wonder if there's life left in the Evernote product and whether it will stand the test of time.

It's starting to look like Evernote has lost its lustre, which is a shame. I know a few people that use it daily to help them run their business.

If I was still an Evernote user today then I would be considering looking at alternatives. I use Simplenote myself for notes and there's also Bear which was named one of Apple's best apps of the year in their App Store.

Whether you're an Evernote user or not, you always have to consider the lifetime of the products you use. It's a small percentage of products that stand the test of time and maintain their status as a wonderful product.

For everything else you have to ensure that if your product of choice folds, you can take your data elsewhere with minimum fuss.

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

The 50 best film scores have been compiled over at the Playlist and feature scores from movies such as The Dark Knight, Solaris and the Ocean's trilogy.

A few gems in here that I'll be adding to my own playlists.

via Kottke.org

It's great to see movie crews and especially stunt performers, going to extraordinary lengths to get shots like this for movies.

Can't wait to see Assassin's Creed!

Amazing work here for the movie. I particularly like the foldable spear.

via Ian Dick

An interesting point about technology companies and how even just a small price change can have a negative impact on customer numbers.

Hastings blames the media, sort of. He says reports about the price hike Netflix is instituting this year, which raises the price of its most popular plan by a dollar a month, confused people and got them to stop paying even before their actual price hike kicked in.

— Netflix blew its Q2 subscriber numbers, and blamed it on press about its price hike by Recode

As a regular viewer on Netflix, I'm happy with the current service and even the price hike. The more money that Netflix can get behind it, the more quality programming they can create.

I have one gripe though. Having sorted out my in-laws Netflix account while on holiday in Canada, I did notice that in Canada you get a much better selection of content than we do in the UK.

I don't know if the same selection of content applies to both Canada and the US but I would love to see a better selection of movies and programmes here in the UK as part of the upcoming price hike.

(Trying something new. Mini posts on the last weekend of the month.)

Made a home cooked dinner on Friday night. Sat down with Jen to watch a movie.

Saturday morning bike ride with Ethan. Lunch and then a family walk with the boys on their bikes. Coded my own replacement for an online product I pay too much money for. Another home cooked meal on Saturday night.

Sunday morning painting the fence. Dropped Ethan off at the golf. Trip to the garden nursery for the rest of us. Tidy up the garden before dinner. Picked up Ethan from the golf. Sunday dinner. A couple of hours on the PS4.

Yip, the weekend was pretty great.

Great to Matt Damon and Paul Greengrass working on the new Bourne movie.

In its final version, the basic income would replace other benefits people currently receive, and would therefore be rather high, as indicated by Kela’s Research Department Director Olli Kangas. It is considered that all Finnish citizens would be paid an untaxed benefit sum free of charge by the government, 800 euros a month in the final version, 550 euros monthly in the model’s pilot phase.

— Basic income: how Finland plans to implement the first nation-wide project in the EU by Finland Politics

It will be very interesting to follow if this is a success.

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

Moleskine. Black.

Two words that many people might associate with each other and with good reason too. When Moleskine notebooks started becoming popular a few years ago, black was the only colour available. I've owned a number of them over the years, but a couple of years ago my wife bought me a burgundy coloured Moleskine that was released to tie in with the release of the first The Hobbit movie. Instead of a plain black cover, it's burgundy with embossed detailing from the original maps that Tolkien created for The Hobbit book. I didn't give the colour change much thought although I did like having something a little bit different.

Having finally finished this notebook and in need of a few more notebooks to fill the gap I went straight to Amazon to order up a couple of Moleskine notebooks in black. Then I remembered Matt Gemmell's piece on colours that I read the previous day.

Black is boring. Dark grey is boring. Even white is boring now, after a brief few years of distinction.

— Colours by Matt Gemmell

Matt is right. Black is boring. So I clicked through to see what other options there were and decided on a couple of packs of Moleskine Volant notebooks. One emerald set and one blue set. They arrived over the weekend and have been assigned their seperate roles. As you can also see they are definitely not black and definitely not boring either.

These will be definitely more interesting over time as I fill these notebooks and order others in different colours.

A film about the early life of Han Solo has been announced by Disney. Good to see that Disney are moving forwards with Star Wars.

via Kottke.org

Be honest.

I'd be surprised if most organisations managed to even get three out of seven on Nicholas Bate's seven point audit.

From my experience the best company I've worked in managed five of these points. However, each company has failed on the parking. For some reason the director had to be the nearest parking space to the door. Maybe he/she just wanted to be first out the door.

Adults will have their own variations on this ranked list of Pixar's movies, but has anyone asked the kids to order these films? Chances are the kids probably couldn't seperate any of them.

via Kottke.org

I would have to say that the Jack Ryan reboot was by far my most disappointing movie of 2014.

Chris Pine seems suffocated to be playing the straight-man hero (he is more at home in Stretch and Into the Woods), Kenneth Branagh is really not Russian, and really you just want to weep for Keira Knightley, whom everyone assumed would have a secret role to play in the film but is merely there to have a light bulb shoved in her mouth while she tearfully waits for her man to save her.

— 'Exodus,' 'Maleficent' And The Worst Films Of 2014 by Forbes

My own cinema going experience for 2014 was limited, but I'm glad to see there's a few must-see movies for 2015. Roll on 2015!

The new Bond movie, Spectre, is out next year but that's not what I was interested in. I'm not a petrol-head, but you can't deny that the new Bond car looks great.

Yes, another Terminator movie. Anyone else think that these movies will keep going and going with the inclusion of a time machine in the plot?

Still, looks like it will be good fun to watch, especially with Emilia Clarke as a younger badass Sarah Connor.

Apple's choice to remove the ability to upgrade the internals of their products has me asking decisions about my own preferred hardware setup for work purposes.

Our house is light when it comes to computing power. We have a handful of devices between the family and there's a games console there for when I feel the need to be humiliated at Madden by my oldest son. As for actual computers though, with the keyboards, mice and monitors, we have a single laptop in the house. Mine.

My MacBook Pro has been my workstation for over a year now. Solidly built and still just as fast as the day that I bought it. It's also the laptop the family use to sync their photos and music to external disks for long term storage. I've been careful about seperating content between work and family. I've got a couple of external hard disks for storing pictures and music as well as a third external hard disk for Time Machine backups. Anything work related stays on the laptop, while videos, movies, pictures and music are all located on external disks.

The setup we have is fine for our needs for the moment, but ideally I would like to have seperate computers for work and family. Keeping the two seperate would mean that if one was to go, then it wouldn't be a major impact on me working. If my MBP was to pack in tomorrow then the home computer could serve for work purposes until I was back up and running with the hardware that I needed for work again.

After hearing the news of the updated Mac Minis in Apple's product line up, I was excited. These little boxes of technological joy have been on my radar for a while. While the lovely iMac has been on the wishlist for a while, the cost of it is out of our budget for what would be a computer that would be used intermittently. The Mac Mini was the next sensible choice then. With a monitor already on my desk, it makes much more sense to just buy a computer than can plug into it and allow me to use my own keyboard and mouse.

However, joy quickly turned to dismay when I found out that as a consumer, I won't be able to open up the Mac Mini and upgrade the parts that I need in the future. Like it's MacBook and iMac cousins, the Mac Mini has it's memory soldered onto the motherboard which makes upgrading in the future impossible. If you want something more powerful, you need to buy another Mac Mini with the specs you need. Hardly ideal given that in order to make these Mac Minis viable as long term computing products, the upgrades on the Apple website are higher than the market prices for similar upgrades you could do to a more open computer.

It's sad to see that Apple's products are going against this with memory now being soldered on to each of their product's motherboards. It's got me thinking again about how much do I want to invest in computing hardware in the home as I am clearly becoming more and more dependent on Apple's products. As a technology platform for ordinary consumers, Apple's products are hard to beat. They work well and the software that they provide for OSX and iOS is easy to use. I don't think for everyday use I would switch to another platform such as Google or Microsoft. It just works, it always has.

The geek in me though has me looking at Linux barebones boxes and alternatives to traditional desktops such as these miniature Linux desktops as a replacement for my laptop. I definitely want something longer lasting but also upgradeable. I'm just not sure at the moment what that setup will be. Ideally a desktop running some Linux distribution as well as a small form laptop such as a Chromebook, without the Chrome OS, could serve me for my mobile needs which at the moment are rare. That could change though.

A few decisions to make here, but I think the first is whether I could use Linux as my work environment on a daily basis. I should probably decide on that first before making any decisions regarding my desktop hardware.

I'm trying it again. I've made a number of these attempts over the years with my longest attempt lasting just a couple of weeks. Now though I think the time is right for a final go. You're probably wondering what the hell I'm talking about. My fellow programmers might have an idea.

I'm talking about making the transition to Vim as my preferred text editor for writing code.

For years now Sublime Text has been my only text editor. Its flexibility, plugins and stability make it such a great editor to use. It made my job easier since I first started using it and continues to do so. So why would I want to upset my workflow and change to something else? Curiosity. For a long time I've watched other developers wield Vim with such ease and fluency. I'm fluent with Sublime Text but there's something about Vim that makes me think I could be more fluent.

I've tried to make the move permanent so many times over the last few years but it's never successfully happened. The main problem with each attempt to use Vim has been the initial stumbling blocks that make an impact on your typical work day. Sublime Text has worked for me so well since I first started using it and switching to Vim will take a while but my patience always takes a battering and then I move back to Sublime Text.

This time it feels different though. After a couple of days using Vim I'm making headway with the basic actions of managing panes, buffers and basic text manipulation. I'm taking notes as I'm using it and I'm practing some of the shortcut keys that I discover each day. There's still a few teething problems with the setup I have but I'm prepared to see it out for another month at least.

We'll see how it goes.

Brett Terpstra released a new version of his Cheaters cheat sheet system. Brett recommends two options to get this running. The first is using the Automator application in OSX and the second is using the Fluid app.

The one change I wanted to make was to make Cheaters run as a local Rack web application with Pow rather than from the already installed Apache instance. It's easy to do.

1. Create a Gemfile

Create a Gemfile within the root of the Cheaters source and include the Rack gem:

gem 'rack'

Jump back to the command line and run the bundle command to install this gem.

2. Create the Rack App

Next create the Rack file that will serve all the pages and assets from the Cheaters source. I've used this same code for lots of Rack applications.

require 'rack'

$stdout.sync = true

use Rack::Static,
  :urls => ["/css", "/js", "/images", "/cheatsheets"],
  :root => "."

run lambda { |env|
[
  200,
  {
    'Content-Type'  => 'text/html',
    'Cache-Control' => 'public, max-age=86400'
  },
  File.open('index.html', File::RDONLY)
]}

Put this in the root of the Cheaters source.

3. Symlink Cheaters

Now I'm assuming that you have Pow installed already. With Pow installed, change to the pow directory and symlink your Cheaters directory:

cd ~/.pow && ln -s /path/to/cheaters

I also use an app called Anvil that gives me access to my running web applications in Pow from the menubar. This can also create the symlink for you if the terminal is too scary.

Done!

That's it. Now if you visit [cheaters.dev](http://cheaters.dev), you'll find the Cheaters page. The reason I prefer this is that I already have a number of application running locally that I like to use, so running it from the browser is fine with me.

Last night I posted to App.net an idea for a premium newsletter that aggregates and reports on activities and news happening within the App.net community. The response I got back from people was very positive. A lot of people expressed interest in the newsletter.

Why a newsletter?

It's a question I asked myself a few times while writing this blog post. App.net members can already find out this information on App.net itself, the only problem is that they might not know the correct hashtag or account to follow to get that information. The newsletter is not just a way of letting you know what's happening on App.net but also as a way of bringing App.net members together.

I'm trying to foster a better way of brining people together on App.net.
Since signing up for App.net I've enjoyed being here and I want to continue enjoying that experience. That's why I thought about introducing a newsletter for App.net members. A unified way of getting up to date information in one place. You can still use your own methods if you prefer, e.g. searching for the right hashtag for the book club or finding out when the next writers challenge is. The newsletter isn't compulsory, it's optional. It's your decision how you want to interact with App.net.

Why premium?

When I say premium, I mean a newsletter you pay for. Why would you pay for it? Well why wouldn't you? It takes time to collate, write and edit newsletters and while most free newsletters rely on ads, I don't think that ads are what people want to see in the newsletter, although I haven't validated this yet.

App.net started out as a premium service that indicated right from the start, no ads. I was hoping that the newsletter would follow the same path.

On the other hand I can appreciate those that wouldn't pay for such a newsletter and would want to receive it for free. If you're not paying for an App.net account then why would you pay for an App.net newsletter? Also we're trying to foster participation in this community and many people have free accounts. Why would they want to pay for information that they can get that information through other means?

Then there is those who are already paid members. Do they really want to pay for a monthly subscription on top of their membership? To bo honest, I would. The newsletter would have to deliver value though.

I've been thinking about this and while I can see the benefit of a free newsletter for one and all, I see little reward for those that could be contributing to the newsletter. That fluffy feeling you get from doing something for free for someone can only get you so far. What if the newsletter takes off and demands more of my time?

I started a poll last night (thanks @abraham), to get feedback on whether people would sign up for a premium newsletter on what's happening in App.net. For me the number of responses are too small to definitely say that yes most people would be interested in a paid newsletter. At 9am (GMT) this morning the responses were as follows:

• 61% (11 votes) of respondents indicated that they would be interested in a premium newsletter.
• 33% (6 votes) would be interested in a newsletter if it was free.
• 6% (1 vote) said they wouldn't be interested in a newsletter at all.

Clearly there is demand for a newsletter, but a premium one? I'm not sure on that yet.

What's in it then?

Here's the good part. I've been able to get a lot of great feedback from people with very interesting ideas for content for the newsletter. Here's some of the suggestions so far:

• App.net meet ups across the world - Really just a list of where App.net members are meeting in the next couple of weeks. Usually I hear of these things through App.net itself, but having these delivered to your inbox is a better way of finding out when they are happening.
• Community calendar of events and activities happening on the network - Really what I think we have in mind here is dates for events like #thememonday, #wedc as well as book clubs or movie nights that are happening across App.net.
• New apps and services - Got a new app that you want everyone to know about? Then why not spread the word through the newsletter. We'll also let you know when apps and services get important updates as well.
• New interesting users - I'm not talking about celebs. I'm talking about writers, photographers, thought leaders, musicians. If anyone important joins App.net we can let you know through the newsletter.
• Tips and suggestions - Did you know that Alpha supports the Markdown syntax for embedding links in your post? Not a lot of people know that, but wouldn't it be great to see tips like this and getting more from App.net with other titbits like this.
• Featured photo - Every week a photo taken by an App.net user will be featured in the header of the newsletter with a link to credit that user.
• Member profiles - Every week we could feature a user in the newsletter and do a small Q&A session with them. This could include the ADN staff as well if people wanted this. The point to this is that everyone in the community is important so featuring users in the newsletters would be great to foster connections between people.

What's the next step?

Providing I get enough positive feedback from App.net members then I think a simple first edition of the newsletter is required. Something for everyone to enjoy. What I also need is actual content as well and a structure for that content that will make up the newsletter. I've created a patter room for the ADN newsletter as well as an account on App.net for the newsletter.

The internet is an amazing platform for the world to communicate and innovate on. It can provide volumes of information at our finger tips, allow us to communicate with others on the far side of the world and if you're brave enough, it even allows you to publish your own creations such as books, music and more.

And yet, it is continually misused the world over. Where most people see it as an open communication tool, some see it as a surveillance system. Where most people see it as an e-commerce tool, others see it as a tool for defrauding and cheating. Where most people see it as a tool for change, others see it as a tool for control.

Unless you have been living under a rock for the last few days, you'll know that Ben Affleck was chosen to play Batman in the next Batman/Superman movie. It's been met with mixed opinions, but the decision to cast Ben Affleck has prompted a petition on Change.org to have Ben Affleck removed as Batman. It hardly seems a worthy use of the tools that the internet provides.

I've signed a number of petitions on Change.org that I have identified as being of benefit to individuals or whole populations. In each case, the petitions that I have signed would be of worthy benefit to others if action was to be taken as a result of the petition.

I refuse to sign a petition that calls for a casting choice for a movie to be removed. It simply doesn't rank as important enough a topic for me to get upset or passionate about it. And it shouldn't even have got as far having a petition on Change.org.

I'm not saying that the internet can't be used for debate and entertainment. I frequent a lot of websites on a daily basis where discussions take place over the best programming languages, the best text editor and other topics. Yes these are discussions that aren't a priority, but the debate is entertaining.

What I find wrong is when perfectly good tools for helping people are mis-used.

All around the world there people that require your help. As an individual you may feel powerless to do anything on your own but by taking the right positive action, you could be another cog in the wheel that will eventually turn and provide people with the beneficial changes they really need.

So with that in mind, why not be a good responsible netizen and use your web tools wisely. Used correctly, they can bring good to others.

It was my oldest son's parents night at his school tonight. We had a fair idea what his teacher was going to say about him and his progress. We weren't disappointed.

The format is simple. You get 10 minutes with the teacher in which time they will go over the your child's progress (that you have already read the week before) and then you get to ask any questions about your child and identify any area where they can try and make improvements. Fortunately our son is doing great so there was just a couple of minor areas for him to improve on.

If you think the format is familiar then you would be right. Parents night is just the kiddie version of the annual review that many permanent workers go through. However, how is it that organisations can get this wrong when the basic format seems so simple?

I've experienced the annual review first hand in a number of companies. Very few of them actually did an annual review on a regular basis and even fewer followed through from the previous annual review.

A neighbour of mine worked in a really well known international bank where annual reviews were not done by your line manager but by someone even higher up. In an organisation such as this where the number of employees runs into thousands, there was a good chance that the person doing your annual review doesn't even know you to look at. In this case our friend did indeed get their annual review done by a director who had only met him twice. Not exactly a good example of an annual review.

Twice a year my son's school give a parents night without fail. They provide a report for your child that you get a week before parents night so that you can raise any questions during parents night. They give feedback on your child's progress and give suggestions on areas where your child can improve. They do it for all the kids in the school. That's hundreds of kids.

It's not hard to do.

Yet when the units of the veteran 17th Waffen-SS Panzer Grenadier Division arrived to recapture the castle and execute the prisoners, Lee’s beleaguered and outnumbered men were joined by anti-Nazi German soldiers of the Wehrmacht, as well as some of the extremely feisty wives and girlfriends of the (needless-to-say hitherto bickering) French VIPs, and together they fought off some of the best crack troops of the Third Reich.

— World War II’s Strangest Battle: When Americans and Germans Fought Together by The Daily Beast

How could this not be made into a movie!

via Execupundit

When I worked for an ERP consultancy, I would frequently no sooner get my backside at my desk in the morning before the phone would start to ring. Customers looking for support, developers asking for tests to be done and the managing director looking for that new feature for the high profile client of the week. Some days I would simply keep working right from the moment I got to my desk through to home time without a thought about working on the right things. Then I would realize that the day has completely passed by and I’m not even sure if I had done what I originally set out to do that day.

It was at this point that I started giving myself 5 minutes each day of breathing space. At the start of each day I would block out some time to get my day into order. Just a chance to ask myself a couple of questions:

• Did I leave anything undone from the previous day?
• Are there any high priority issues that I need to resolve today?

Once I got into the habit of doing this I started to see where my day was going and the progress (or lack of) that I was making. Updates for customers were taking too long, support calls were being left for too long and most days I wasn’t doing the work that I wanted to do.

Once I spotted these recurring issues, I started to clear them off my backlog of work one at a time. Each day I was making this list smaller and smaller. I was starting to see some real progress.

I do this little routine every day now. It’s just a few minutes of my time, but the benefits are worth it. I’ll sit down with my notebook and review the previous day’s work and pull forward any outstanding tasks to today. I’ll then check my master list on TaskPaper and include any work that is scheduled for today or the current week.

Now that I am freelancing and working from home, it’s important that I continually measure my progress and ensure that I am always making progress on projects and products but more importantly on client work. I need to deliver good results for my clients and ensure they are getting value for money.

Having this little moment of breathing space is a great way to start the day. It’s just a few minutes of time reflecting on what you need to get done today, but it is time well spent.

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.

It's been a year since I started Journalong. It's been a real learning experience. While it might not be the success that I envisioned it to be, the experience of building a product has taught me a few things that I would like to share.

1. If there's no market for it, don't build it

When I first hit on the idea I immediately created a small Google Docs form that asked two questions.

• Would you be interested in using Journalong?
• How much would you be prepared to pay to use Journalong?

Feedback was quite low. Well, really low. Looking back now it was clear that there wasn't demand for Journalong. I should have abandoned the idea and moved onto something else. I didn't though. I wanted Journalong to use for myself so I built it anyway, and added the ability for others to pay for an annual subscription to Journalong if they wanted to use it. Was I building Journalong for myself or others?

What I should have done was simply build Journalong for anyone to use for free. Interest in the product was so low anyway that it wouldn't have made much of a difference anyway. With the focus taken away from trying to market the product to customers, I could have focused on delivering a better experience in using Journalong for myself and others.

If there's no market for your product, then don't build it and put a price on it. Of course you can build it for yourself, just don't expect to profit from a personal project with low feedback.

2. Measure user interaction

The only way to know if your product is being used is to measure key activities in the product. I didn't do this, so it was difficult to see how often Journalong was being used on a daily basis other than looking at page views provided by Google Analytics.

Decide on key activities and interactions you want to measure and build the monitoring of these straight into the product.

For Journalong I should have measured one thing:

• How often were people writing to their journal?

As Journalong writes journal entries straight to Dropbox, I didn't have any record of how often journal entries were being written for each user.

Building metrics like this into your product is just as important as the features your product has. Metrics like this can provide you with data on in-frequent users of your product. You can then survey these users to determine what's stopping them from using your product more frequently and possibly taking a higher tiered plan if you have them.

3. Gather product feedback frequently

Getting feedback using surveys on your product is critical. It let's you find out what's not working, what's attracting users and what's missing.

When I say survey I don't necessarily mean a 10 point questionnaire on the users experience with your product. Bogging users down with surveys like this can turn them away.

A couple of questions would do or you could do something as simple as a 'like' button beside a new feature. A simple button next to a feature could prompt the user when they use the new feature for the first time and ask them if they like it. Once they click it, the response is logged and the button disappears. If they don't click it for a few days then simply remove the button to stop the user getting annoyed.

Using the metrics that I mentioned earlier, you should also survey users that don't use the product very often. The feedback may turn out to reveal a missing feature or an obstacle in your product. You want to convert as many users as possible to using your product

The last place to survey your users is when they delete or cancel their account. This is your last chance to find out why your product isn't to their liking. Is it too expensive? Does it lack something?

Getting the feedback from the customer here, allows you to refine your product for the better to stop users cancelling their accounts for similar reasons.

4. Iterate often

This is important in the early days of your product. After I built Journalong I sat back for a couple of months and watched the activity on Google Analytics. Looking back it wasn't a wise move.

Metrics and surveys will point towards missing features or changes you could be implementing. Getting these in as quickly as possible will mean that less users stop using your product and will attract others. Be selective of the features you implement though. You don't want to burden your users with changes to the product every day. Common sense prevails here. If 90% of your surveyed users are asking for a specific feature that falls inline with your product, then implement it and ship it.

5. Adjust your price based on facts

I've made three pricing changes to Journalong over the last year and making it free next week (that's another blog post) will be a fourth. Pricing products is difficult. I arrived at my initial price based on the value that I thought Journalong would be offering to users and on how much people were offering to pay for the product from my initial survey.

Three pricing changes later and there's still no bite for Journalong. These pricing changes didn't come from any information I had though. I simply thought that reducing my price might spark more interest in Journalong. A stupid assumption to make and one I advise you don't do.

Adjusting your price isn't a big issue. In the early days of your product you should be continually refining the product based on the feedback from your customers. The pricing of your product is no different. Adjust your price based on feedback from customers. They use your product, they'll tell you if they are getting value for money from it.

6. Set a product trial period

Don't flog a dead horse. I've spent far too much time on thinking how to get customers for Journalong when I could have been using the time to build other products. After six months I should have called it a day for Journalong and moved onto something else but I didn't.

Setting a trial period for your product gives you the chance to review if the product is heading in the right direction. Are you getting sign ups on a daily basis? Are you converting enough users to paid accounts in order to be sustainable?

They say Rome wasn't built in a day but that doesn't mean you should continually hold out for a stampede of new users after you deploy that new fancy feature for your product.

After six months ask yourself:

Is it worth investing another six months of my time into this product?

If you have a number of paying customers using your product then it might be worth pursuing the product for another six months. If not, then I say stop working on that product and move onto something else. Six months working on a product is a lot of your free time taken up. If you're like me and have a backlog of other ideas, then it might be better to leave your product and pick something else up.

There's no secret formula

I started this product with the full realization that it could end up like this. A handful of customers and sign ups that bottomed out three months ago. Not all products end up being successful, but there's no rule to say that your product will definitely be a success. Coming to terms with this fact will make the day you give up on your idea a lot easier.

It's not the end of the road though. There's always that next product idea!

It's been a while since I went through all the incoming data I receive and did some house keeping on them. Over the last few weeks I've been increasingly adding more and more waves of content that come to me. Anything related to freelancing invariably gets added, but I'm now at the stage where I've spread myself to thin. There's podcasts I haven't listened to in the couple of weeks, books sitting on my reading list that haven't been bought, and RSS feeds that I need to unsubscribe from.

It's time to put up a breakwater.

Books

One technical book. One non-technical book.

That's the rule I employed a few years ago, but in the last year it's been thrown out the window and I've only been reading one book every few months. Part of the reason for this is that I've simply been distracted by other things. Home life, career, finances, programming, gaming, movies and other things have meant that I just haven't read as much. This isn't about limiting what I'm reading, but having more time to read by limiting other distractions.

Podcasts

Since I started freelancing I've been subscribed to a number of podcasts that focus on this topic and on the Ruby programming language. Truth be told, I haven't listened to anything on this topic in the last month. It's merely due to the length of the podcasts themselves. At over an hour each, I find it too long to listen to these. I'll be unsubscribing to all podcasts with the exception of three. I haven't decided which three yet, but I need to put a limit in place here if I'm to get any use out of them.

RSS Feeds

I'm currently sitting at just over one hundred RSS feeds in Feedly. Quite a lot if you ask me. My aim is to get this down to 50. Maybe two or three RSS feeds for each topic and selection of my favourites to take it to 50. I could never completely stop using RSS feeds. I find it such a convenient way of reading good content from my favourite blogs.

Half the feeds I simply skip over these days as I've found that some blogs just aren't that active anymore.

Subscriptions

This is paid subscriptions to things such as Railscasts or Caesura Letters.

I've got a couple of subscriptions in here that I could do without for the moment. Cutting the subscriptions back that I don't need at the moment would give me back time to be doing other things.

One thing I have found though is that the email subscriptions I have can largely replace some of the blogs that I am following. Although this does mean more emails hitting my inbox, but my email is quite healthy these days with everything labeled and routed to the appropriate folder when it arrives in my inbox.

I want to make things

Rather than digesting, I need to be producing. Whether it's a service, product, application or some writing, I'd much rather be making things than reading about what others are doing. In the past I've been guilty of worrying too much about what others think and maybe distracted myself with a dig into what's in my RSS feeds that day. Maybe it's time to get over that and simply produce something that will intentionally make people think.

I watched Miguel Indurain as a kid. He is a legend in cycling. When I first started watching cycling, Indurain was already on three Tour wins with a fourth on it's way. I watched him take his next Tour title and I was hooked on the sport.

We didn't see the likes of another Indurain until Lance Armstrong came on the scene. After chalking up a succession of Tour wins, there was just no stopping him. There was an aura about him. He just looked like he belonged there. Now today, his credibility as a sportsman is in tatters, but Lance Armstrong isn't the only guilty party to disgrace the sport. His is obviously the most widely covered and most damaging to the sport due to the number of Tour wins he achieved in his career, but there are others.The last 15 years of cycling have seen an increase in the frequency of doping scandals that have been reported. Year after year, riders are accused of doping and what's surprising to me is that riders are still testing positive for banned substances. Enough is enough.

For me the sport has been dogged by too many years of scandals which in turn have led to rumours of corruption higher up in the sport. My love of road cycling is definitely over. As a Brit I should have been over the moon to see Bradley Wiggins on the top of the podium in the Tour last year, but I barely paid much attention to it.

Maybe in a few years, if the sport has really tidied up its image then I'll watch again. However, it's no more road cycling for me.

... with your own creative director, Nicholas Bate.

... 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.