Matthew Lang

A few weeks ago I had an idea. A newsletter that would provide help and guidance for a particular type of organisation in using the Internet and social media to promote and connect with their target audience.

To make this happen, I decided to use MailChimp to handle the sending out of the newsletter. I’m already a subscriber to several newsletters that use MailChimp, so if it’s good enough for them, then it’s good enough for me.

I was able to put together a template for my campaigns over a couple of hours. One thing that I had to do some digging around for though was how to send welcome emails out to new subscribers. I eventually found this and was able to have that email setup in about half an hour.

The final task was to update the landing page with the correct form attributes so that email addresses are sent to MailChimp directly. Again, straightforward.

I spent a couple of hours over the holidays putting together a landing page where people can sign up; I just needed the MailChimp form to complete this. The first pass is pretty much on par with every other landing page I’ve seen for such newsletters, so I’m happy with the results. It will be tweaked over time though to encourage sign-ups.

I already spent a couple of hours last week writing the first campaign. After a further few passes at it and some feedback from Jen, I had an initial campaign ready to send out.

I spent about 30 minutes testing the two emails that get sent out. I spent a bit more time on the first campaign, tweaking parts of the email design and ensuring that I had all the correct information in the right place.

MailChimp allows you to preview email and include live merge tags in your preview so that you can see what your subscribers see, but the real test is in sending out a test email. A test email allows you to look at all parts of the email as the subscriber should see it. Great for checking that everything is in place and that it reads fine.

The next part of this little project is to send out a few invites to organisations that would benefit from this newsletter and invite them to subscribe. With the first campaign sent out, I have an example of the content available through the newsletter for organisations to see.

I’m not expecting a massive rise in sign-ups over January, but I’ve got a goal in mind, so I’m aiming for that.

I was surprised by how quickly I was able to get a mailing list up and running on MailChimp. Previous attempts using MailChimp have always resulted in me turning away from it. This time though, I kept it simple, so I just got the absolute essentials in place. A welcome email and a first campaign.

Over the next few weeks, I'll be spending a bit more time digging into MailChimp and seeing else it can help with in maintaining an email list.

It wasn't Ethan's day at the Stanley Morrison Trust event down at Dumfries & County GC yesterday. A lack of concentration and fast greens seen him finish well outside his usual scoring zone.

Still, he had a good time and great to see that one of the Renfrewshire Golf Union groups walked away with a prize.

Looking forward to seeing Ethan playing this event again over the next few couple of years. Still time yet for Ethan to bag a prize there.

It's back to basics over the next few weeks with some work to be done with his short game and putting.

If stamps, scruffy-looking nerf herders and laser blasting walking carpets are you thing then these stamps by the Royal Mail might be right up your street.

It's been a long time coming, but it's finally here. A couple of weeks ago the first major update to the publishing platform Ghost was released.

I was on holiday at the time so I decided to leave upgrading until I got home. It's been a few days now since I got back but this morning I decided to upgrade the two sites I have running on Ghost, this one and my DigitalBothy website. The upgrade process itself was straight-forward. Warnings were provided to indicate deprecated helpers in the themes for each site, but aside from that I didn't have any trouble upgrading.

The new UI is a welcome change and includes a number of beneficial changes but perhaps the most important change is the editor itself. Gone is the side by side editing and preview panes (although you can still use this if you need to) and instead there's a single pane for writing that is editable and displays your writing in a better format. Bigger, bold text for headings, links highlighted and many other improvements.

This is a welcome update to the publishing platform and I look forward to spending more time writing for my blog than I have done recently.

The morning routine of reading, writing and planning is nothing more than a distant memory these days. I once used to start the day with some writing, some articles from my reading list and a last check that everything was in it's place for the day.

These days I'm sitting down at my desk with a coffee, opening Slack and Trello and picking up the next card of work for the client. Before I know it, it's 5pm and the troops are walking in the door hankering for their door.

It's time reboot the morning routine and get back a sense a of order in the morning.

It's come to my attention that I am hardly the good faring blogging citizen I was a couple of years ago. This is going to change this week with a set of single topics. Today's is what to look for in a blog.
When it comes to looking for other blogs to follow, it can be a bit hit and miss of subscribing to that blog is going to be worth it or not. There are a number of things that you can do though that can increase the success rate of the blogs that you subscribe to or regularly read.

A generalist or a specialist

Blogs tend to fall into one of two types when in comes to content. There’s the specialist who focuses on a single topic and there’s the generalist who post regularly but across a wide range of topics.

The specialists have the inside knowledge on the topic that I like to read about. I like reading blogs of this type as the topics often align with what is going to be of benefit to me.

Take the blog of Curtis McHale from British Columbia.

I have read this blog for a few years now and his blog has been a continual benefit to myself as I traverse the world of freelancing. Curtis McHale's blog is about being a business owner and everything that it entails. This is his specialty but the his field of knowledge on this isn't restricted to what happens during office hours, it also includes the other 18 or so hours of the day when he's not working for clients. This includes balancing family life with running a business, the books you should read as a business owner and the tools and services that can help you as a business owner.

A generalists blogs focuses on a greater range of topics. I find that most blogs I follow of this kind are people’s own personal blogs. They post what interests them.

That’s definitely the case of the blog of Kurt Harden from Ohio.

Here you find a blog that covers not just one topic but links, quotes, and many pictures of what's on the grill that evening. I like this type of scrapbook though and it's worth having a few blogs like this to follow. The reason being is that while Kurt's blog doesn't focus on a particular topic, it does include content that is relevant and interesting. And that's a good thing. I've never met Kurt, but I've read his blog for so long that I've come to understand what makes him tick.

Whether you’re looking for a generalist or a specialist is down to you. If you’re looking to learn about a particular topic then I suggest you look for specialist blogs. For anything else a generalist blog is just fine.

Consistent posting

A consistently published blog is a great blog. It doesn't need to be daily. It doesn't need to be a number posts a day or even a single post a day. As long as that person keeps a schedule going that doesn't involve weeks without a post then it's a blog worth reading.

The single exception to this rule is when the person behind the blog announces a period of time in which they'll be unavailable. Patrick Rhone's blog is essential reading for me, but in March of this year Patrick announced that he would be stepping back from his blog to focus on a project of his own.

We can’t always post regularly and there are times where we need to step back for a bit and they say so on their blog. This is the exception to posting consistently. It's not because you're being lazy, it's because you have something more important to do and that's a good thing. I know that when Patrick comes back he'll have garnered enough new insights for his blog for another year at least.

An RSS feed

An RSS feed is the easiest way to follow a particular blog. Using an RSS reader like Feedbin or Minimal Reader you’ll be able to follow all the blogs you're interested in. Some of you might be thinking that with a blog an RSS feed might be a given these days. Sadly that isn't so. I've noticed a number of websites that have blogs on them but lack an RSS feed to subscribe too.

In this case I would skip over subscribing to a "blog" like this. They've made a decision to not include an RSS feed so that they have more traffic to their blog or they just have a bad CMS that lacks an RSS feed. Regardless of the content that the blog includes I would skip over blogs like this.

Looking for blogs to follow can be a bit of a hit and a miss but if you know the type of blog you want to follow, they're a consistent blogger and they have an RSS feed to subscribe to then you should be onto a winner.

You can even follow this one if you're not already doing so!

Yesterday I attended the Nicholas Bate's Deep Productivity seminar in Oxford. It was a great chance to meet a fellow and much respected blogger and at the same use the course to gather up all the important bits about productivity.

The venue of the seminar was in the Magdalen College School. It was unlike any school I've ever visited and is also the oldest school that I've ever been in. If you like Harry Potter you will love this place.

I arrived a bit early being just around the corner for accommodation. I got speaking to Nicholas and a few other attendees to the seminar and then the hard work began at 9am.

The seminar was extremely valuable and it was a good opportunity to re-visit some strategies to help stay focused and productive. I also walked away with a number of books from Nicholas that have been added to the top of the reading list.

So what did I get from this seminar then?

Well, the whole point of this wasn't to learn something new. I'm a big fan of Nicholas Bate's blog and his material so I was already familiar with a number of strategies, but where I previously got this information over a long period of time, the seminar provided the opportunity to consolidate all of this information into a single form that I could digest more easily and refresh my brain.

It was also a great opportunity to meet Nicholas and other attendees.

All in it was a great investment of my time and I hope that it can yield some great results in the weeks, months and years to come.

Thank you Nicholas for putting on a superb event and it was great to finally meet you good sir!

For the attendees, I've managed to go my first 24 hours without bread as my first actionable item. Started yesterday during the seminar (thanks for the nudge NB) and made it to this morning by having cereal and a smoothie rather than toast. Yay!

Lately I've been thinking a lot about marketing.

While making my afternoon coffee I was running some editing changes through my head on a post I'm writing. And then it struck me.

If you're not writing, you're not marketing.

I've struggled with marketing my freelancing business in the past, but I certainly could start making a step in the right direction by writing more for my freelancing business.

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.

Patrick is now nonline for at least the next year.

As of March 4, 2017 I’ve stopped all online publishing. This includes my websites and social media accounts. No blog posts, no tweets, no status updates. I’m nonline. I expect this to last at least a year. In that time, I’ll be writing. My goal for that writing is to become a book.

— On Sabbatical by Patrick Rhone

I'm glad Patrick is still going to be running his newsletter during this sabbatical. A little opportunity to see how the writing is going and what else he's been doing.

... it isn't.

The sequel to Alto's adventure is coming soon. This will be one sequel that I know won't disappoint.

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.

via The Verge

Seriously. Why isn't it December the 16th yet?

... and they're making bikes. Proper beautifully made mountain bikes as well!

Kind of makes me wish I had a grand and a half burning a hole in my pocket.

Full review available from Singletrack Magazine.

A few weeks ago my wife bought a Fitbit Alta. She’s been on a health kick for the last couple of months and she wanted an easier way of tracking factors that were contributing to her progress. Simple things like number of steps in a day, calories burned and the amount of time she spent being active are all little things that can help. After reviewing a few different health trackers she eventually decided on the Fitbit Alta. A couple of weeks later and she was regularly meeting her steps goals and seeing general health and fitness improvements.

It was a couple of days later and I my own Fitbit Alta arrived from Amazon. Having already setup Jennifer’s Alta, setting up my own was a two minute job and within a few minutes it was tracking my step count.

Like many health trackers, the Alta looks like a ultra-modern watch and yes it does give you the time. I don’t tend to wear a watch during the day and only opt to wear a watch when I’m going out. At times like this I’ll move the Alta over to my other wrist and wear it there for the time I’m out.

The tracker itself is fairly narrow and with the screen being more longer than it is wider, you’d probably miss it if you seen it on my wrist. The slender design is one of the reasons why I liked this particular model. Too many health trackers try and replace your watch with a huge screen but I’m not using it for telling the time or keeping an eye on my running distance. It’s purely to track my movement over the course of the day.

After three weeks of use I’m starting to see the benefits and drawbacks of health trackers.

The Benefits

On the plus side there’s the ability to see how well you’ve done over the course of the day. Number of steps, walking distance and number of minutes I’ve been active for are three factors I try to keep on top of. Anything else is a bonus. You don’t realise how much walking you done when you look back at your day. I never considered walking Ethan round the golf course to be much of an exercise, but the tracker picks up the activity and works out how many steps I’ve taken.

I took the Alta out on a bike ride to our favourite deli. The tracker worked well and could workout that I was on the bike. Comparing the time spent on the bike with the time logged by Strava (which I also use for tracking bike rides) proved to be consistent.

The Drawbacks

The downside of the health tracker is the accuracy of such a device. Like any technology fan, I’ll take their promise as being accurate with a pinch of salt. I mean, how accurate is it?

I did do some research on the accuracy of health trackers, and there has been some debate of the accuracy of health trackers. While I know there is always going to be cases where steps were missing or added, the health trackers today do a good job of tracking your movements.

I’m not completely sold on the calories tracker within the app. I do a lot of home cooking and portions and ingredients can vary from those foods listed in the Fitbit app. For that reason I tend to ignore this part of the app.

My own cooking is fairly healthy so I don’t see that as being a big issue in the march to better health.

Room for Improvement?

With such a small screen on your hand you would think that it’s hard to read incoming messages on your phone. Well it does only display the first few words from your message, but that’s not a deal-breaker. The display is good and the information that you display on it is adjustable from your phone. I would like to see more customisation though on the information that I can display.

The one feature of the tracker I’m disappointed in was the reminder to move setting. During each hour you set the Alta up to track your movements, it reminds you 10 minutes before the end of the hour to fulfil your hourly quota of steps. Seems a little silly to remind you 10 minutes before the end of each hour.

When I read about this feature I thought it would allow you to configure the Alta to notify you at set intervals to get up and move about. Having just completed a running course of physio to get my back into shape again, the physiotherapist reminded me that I shouldn’t be sitting for any longer than 15 minutes at a time. I thought the Alta’s reminder to move would be configurable to do this but sadly it isn’t.

Overall the purchase of the Alta has been a good thing. I'm more aware of the amount of sleep and exercise I'm getting. I'm also cutting myself a bit of slack as I now know that I'm getting exercise in just by getting a few walks in during the week. Whether that's walking Ethan to school or round the gold course, all the steps add up.

It's taken me a while to warm up to purchasing a wearable but the good thing about it is that I'm getting a clearer sense of the exercise I'm doing. As long as I'm getting in a daily dose of exercise then that can't be a bad thing.

This has to be the definitive list of books on running a successful business.

There is room for a few more but starting with the recommendations from Curtis is a great starting point.

Many people use Buffer as a tool to automate the process of sharing links to social networks. I even used it for a while to do this. I have no complaints with the Buffer product. It's reliable and user friendly. A couple of weeks ago though I decided to cancel my subscription with them. There's a number of reasons why I did this.

Limited value in sharing

One of Buffer's unique selling points is that it automates the step of sharing a link at a specific date and time. This allows you to queue links to your social media accounts so that you gradually share these links over a period of time. Recently though I've started to question the value in regularly sharing other people's links on social media.

My preferred programming language is Ruby. I already subscribe to a number of blogs, podcasts and newsletters about this language and the Ruby on Rails web framework. As a web developer I see the value in consuming these links for myself but I don't see the value in sharing these links on social media. There's already a good content funnel for digesting these links, other developers just need to find it.

I do share the odd link every now and again but not at the volume that warrants my use of Buffer.

Better analytics with Twitter

When Buffer first started one of its unique selling points is that it has analytics on the links that you shared to your social networks. I can't say how good these are for other social networks, but the analytics on Twitter links are good.

Recently though I've added the analytics on both of these accounts and I've found them to be more informative than what Buffer has to offer as Twitter's analytics cover more than just clicks. I'm not religious about my analytics but once a month I'll check them to see if there was anything that received significantly more clicks.

Minimal social media footprint

I've got two accounts on Twitter that I use. One is my own account and the other is for my freelancing business. With just two accounts to manage and the fact I only use one account for sharing links on a frequent basis, I can't see the point in using Buffer for queuing up links when I can easily do it on my own.

Buffer is a useful tool if you have a content sharing funnel that needs regular updates to your social media accounts, but as I'm running just a freelancing business and regularly post in my own links to my blog, I don't see the value in having a Buffer account, even if it is just the free account. The benefit to this is that I've got one less account to worry about.

Excited about this bike with it being a steel hardtail, but I really wish we could settle on one or even two wheel sizes for the mountain bike industry.

via Singletrack Magazine

Yesterday I wrote about the value of Twitter on a personal level. While I don't place much value on my personal Twitter account, I have found that having a seperate social media presence can let me split my time online and have that time spent in a more focused way.

I operate as a sole trader in the UK which means I trade as a business under my own name. It also means that I can use a trading name for my freelancing work. The added benefit to this is that I can give myself a corner of the web dedicated to that aspect of my life. I could publish technical articles under my own name and on my own personal blog but as I already blog on a frequent basis on other topics then I would end up two different audiences on the one blog. To keep them separate I decided to start a separate blog for my web development writing.

This year I decided to apply the same tactic on Twitter and so I created a new account (@digitalbothy) for my freelancing business. The idea behind this is to act as a social media funnel for the web development blog I mentioned above to be able to found on at least one social media network. As I’m already on Twitter it made sense to start there.

There’s another benefit to this. Lately I’ve been trying to limit the amount of people I follow on Twitter, but it seems that no matter what I do I end up with more people on the list that I would like. Fear of missing out syndrome is hard though, and even though I unfollowed most of the occasional tweeters there’s too many people to follow.

Instead of cramming all these people under one account, why not bump the web developers, freelancers and other people that mainly tweet about this topic over to my Digitalbothy account? So that’s what I did. I started following most people related to web development and programming from my freelancing account and unfollowed them on my personal account.

Having two accounts running side by side isn’t much harder to manage than having two lists under the same account. In fact I would say that it’s probably easier.

Tweetbot’s multi-column feature on OS X means that I can see both timelines through the day when I’m working. As a rule I don’t check my freelancing account out with my usual business hours. If I’m checking Tweetbot on my phone it only has my personal account on it which removes the temptation to check on work related topics when I’m not at home.

I might not place much value on my own personal account, but at least now I have a place for the work aspect of my life online and it's another way that I can be found by prospective clients.

There's little doubt that the world wants free online services. Darren Rovell's poll on Twitter might not be completely unbiased as it was conducted on Twitter, but the results of the poll are clear. People want free stuff.

When it comes to online services and apps, I tend to favour those that come with subscription plans or a one-off cost for a license. Why? Well, because I want to support the team behind the software and the money they get from me helps towards keeping that service alive and running.

The pitfall of a free service though is that once you've dug that pit and put a sign up saying it's "It's free!", everyone wants to jump in. It then becomes hard to get those people back out and into paying for the service.

There are exceptions to this rule, such as companies that offered the right incentives to get customers to pay or services that rely on ads to subsidise the free service. These are the exceptions though and success in their service doesn't means that others using the same method will be successful as well.

Traditional businesses (retail e.g.) never give anything away for free. You always pay for something. It's simple numbers. If you want something you have to pay for it. More and more online services are realising this and bootstrapping their service from the beginning. It's good to see. I just wish more of the services that I love to use online would have stayed clear of the "It's free" pitfall from the beginning.

We've all seen them. People showing off their GoPro footage of a mountain bike run down the alps, snowboarding down the Rockies or even those crazy people that enjoy free climbing tall structures.

For me though, this is the best use yet of a GoPro.

Next year it will be 10 years since I purchased my Specialized Langster bike. It's still running well and is a solid bike. Like any bike fan though, I do crave that chance to purchase something new. Will 2016 be the year to purchase a new Langster? It's looking that way.

The amazing story of a family living deep in Siberia without contact with the world for 40 years.

It was a clearing, 6,000 feet up a mountainside, wedged between the pine and larch and scored with what looked like long, dark furrows. The baffled helicopter crew made several passes before reluctantly concluding that this was evidence of human habitation—a garden that, from the size and shape of the clearing, must have been there for a long time.

It was an astounding discovery. The mountain was more than 150 miles from the nearest settlement, in a spot that had never been explored. The Soviet authorities had no records of anyone living in the district.

— For 40 Years, This Russian Family Was Cut Off From All Human Contact, Unaware of World War II
by Smithsonian

If you know me and you read my blog on a regular basis you’ll know that I’m an advocate for paying for the software you use. It’s simple, support the software that supports you. Lately though I felt that I was paying for software that I rarely got any use from. As I checked my recent outgoings I noticed that there were a number of software services I was using where I couldn’t justify the monthly fee for using them.

For the last three months I’ve been using OnePageCRM for managing leads and deals. It’s a nice and simple CRM for small businesses and it does a fine job of managing leads and contacts but I was using it just once a week. It cost me £8 per month to use but when you multiply this by four or five similar services, I was looking at £40 in software that wasn't necessary.

OnePageCRM didn’t fit the bill but I still needed something that will let me manage my contacts and deals but on a free plan. Then when the time comes for more functionality and there’s room in the budget, I’ll be able to scale up to a paid plan.

In the past I gave Highrise a short spin, but at the time I couldn’t justify the $29 for the Solo plan. It was simply too much money for what I needed but I didn’t give the free plan a look.

After a quick import of contacts from OnePageCRM I’m now up and running on Highrise’s free plan. Okay, I’m not paying for it now but in time I’m hoping that with a busier schedule and more clients, I’ll be able to spring for the solo plan and it will continue to help keep my business ticking over.

Paying for the software you use is good to do, but when you your own needs are for a service that gives functionality on an ‘as and when’ basis then free plans are an ideal way to make sure that you get the functionality you need while also ensuring that you can upgrade to a paid plan in the future.

We end up with needlessly difficult lives because we have trouble recognizing ease when it’s hidden behind difficulty. It’s hard to see, for example, in that difficult moment when you’re about to walk into a gym for the first time, that you are taking the path of greater ease: if you get yourself through that short, difficult experience, your life quickly begins to lose a lot of difficulty. Beyond the gate, your health situation is easier, dating is easier, clothes shopping is easier, and so is virtually any physically demanding task you can think of, possibly for the rest of your life. All of this ease is bought for three hours a week, which themselves quickly (and permanently) become many times easier than they were the first time.

— Life is Easier When You Take the Stairs
by Raptitude.com

Having ridden the 650b wheel size for the last three months, I've been impressed with the larger wheel size. I can only imagine how much fun riding the bigger 29 inch wheels will be. Especially on this beautifully built Victoire Cycles hardtail.

via CycleEXIF

Dog-walking, Shakespeare, baseball, Beethoven and hot dogs.

All available at Cultural Offering.

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?

Lots of cities could learn a thing or two when it comes to figuring out how to get the best of both worlds for drivers and cyclists.

For the last month I've been pouring over mountain bike websites and magazines in the hope that I can pick up a decent bike at a reasonable price.

In the distant past this was a no-brainer. I would head to my local bike shop and ask about some recommendations. The advice was always balanced towards the models they had in the store or could order in. To be fair most local bike shops carry a fair range of mountain bikes, and if these were the only ones on offer then you can always find something that will suit your needs. Things are changing though with the introduction of Internet based bike companies. These small companies offer better specced bikes for less than the majority of bikes that are available in your local bike shop. They do this by selling directly to the customer, cutting out both the distributor and the local bike shop.

On-one have been a favourite of mine for a while. Their initial line of singlespeed steel hardtails were sold direct to customers from their website. Within a few months they were a success. Today they now carry a bigger range of bikes and frames for all different types of riders.

Bird are another mountain bike company that have recently surfaced using the same business model. With just one hardtail frame and full-suspension frame in their product line, they offer a number of build options for each frame according to the customer's budget.

Both of these companies aim to do one thing. Save money on the amount you pay for the bike by selling to you directly.

The business model is great for customers. They end up saving money on a similarly built bike offered in their local bike shop or they can get more bang for their buck by spending the same amount at the online retailer than they would at their local bike shop. Ask most people where they would probably buy their bike and I'm willing to bet that most would pick the online retailer. This is bad news for local bike shops though. Bikes are big ticket items, and if the trend towards buying from online retailers gains momentum, it would

I'm still on the fence about it. The Bird Zero is great value for money in terms of its specification. The other bike I'm considering, a Whyte 901, is distributed through bike stores and while it carries a higher price tag than the Bird Zero, it's not too far off my budget for a new bike. Both bikes match my preferred riding style, so there's no problem there. At this price level, £200 more for a bike isn't going to break the bank, but it does mean that I'm supporting a local bike shop. On the other hand, buying from an online retailer means saving a bit more money. I am swaying towards buying a store bought bike, but the decision isn't final yet.

The last two months have been something of a blur. Client work has taken up most of my day now and even into the night as well when I shouldn't really be working. A pattern, or lack of pattern has emerged.

It started a couple of months when I decided to scale back on my daily writing. I thought that not writing as much would let me focus on getting other chores and such done. Truth is, it was the start of a slow decline in what I had carefully built up over the best part of a year. The daily routine.

My work day pretty much had the same format for the most of last year and it worked for me. I had the same routine in the morning for preparing for the day ahead and the same routine at night for reviewing the day. It worked for me.

Once I stopped writing on a daily basis though the routines started to be skipped, and then the calendar was running empty, the task list built up and before you know it, my daily routine consisted of nothing more than simply putting out fires. I've been in that place before and it wasn't a good place to be.

I ended up reacting to problems rather than anticipating problems and setting time aside for them. I was context switching multiple times a day and losing focus. My inboxes and lists were stradily climbing with not view of the bottom of them.

No more. The routines are back in place, the daily writing will be started again and a plan of attack has been formalised. Let's see where this goes.

I've been reluctant to explore other services for hosting web applications, but with costs for even a small application on Heroku I've been considering other options.

Last week I successfully transferred the hosting of my blog from Heroku to Linode. Performance wise Heroku was ideal for this website and it handled the traffic well enough considering that I ran the site on one dyno. So if performance and uptime is satisfactory then why make the move?

I've got a number of other Rails applications that are sitting on Heroku. One is a production application, while the rest are simply prototypes and work in progresses. For the production application I've enabled a number of addons to ensure the application responds well to traffic but these addons come at a price. By the time I've added the minimum addons needed I'm looking at close to $100 dollars a month. That's expensive for just a small application.

The beauty of Heroku is that it requires little maintenance. Need more dynos? Add them on. Need more worker processes? Add them on. Everything is easy to maintain through the Heroku web interface. That maintainability comes at a price though and it's a price that I think is becoming too expensive. This is where the move to Linode comes in.

At $20 per month for their basic server it's much more cheaper than keeping a two dynos running on Heroku. This is only half the story though. The other half to this puzzle is Cloud 66. It's a fully configured application stack that sits on your Linode server. It's geared towards Rails and other Ruby based applications so it fits my criteria nicely. The nice thing about Cloud 66 is that it handles the setup and maintenance of your application stack giving you the choice to setup servers with different cloud providers if you need to.

I'm still in the early days of using Cloud 66 and Linode but so far I'm liking what I'm seeing. The end goal is to move all my main Rails applications over to Linode and with some running using Cloud 66 and some just running on a bare server without Cloud 66. Heroku is a great service for hosting Rails applications but it's price is far too expensive for me and when there's cheaper alternatives out there that don't require as too much maintenance.

The other benefit to this move is that I'm starting to learn more about the internals of hosting Rails applications again. I'll use Cloud 66 for most applications, but I will aim to have a Linode server for small Rails applications that are just ideas. Learning how to host Rails applications without all the Heroku magic can only make me a better developer as it broadens my knowledge as a developer. That's all I'm aiming to be, a better developer. And if this hosting move help me do that then I'm happy.

Stopping a project isn't easy to do, especially when that project is based on an idea that seemed to be within your grasp. Sometimes though it's the best thing to do, but to ensure it's dead we need to kill the project.

I had an idea a few months ago for a service for users of App.net. It was a service that curated the most interesting or popular posts from your timeline when you weren't there to check it. For the most part this could be when you're in bed or at work. So if you wanted to see the best posts from your timeline in terms of highest replies or stars, it would filter out the best posts for you and email them to you in a summary on a daily basis.

I've spoke to a couple of people on App.net about the idea and they were favourable of the idea. After months of incubating the idea though I want to abandon the idea. I never wrote any code for it, registered any domains or even tested the idea. The idea might be a success, but given that the number of users on App.net isn't as much as Twitter, I'm making an educated guess that it won't be profitable as a service. I want it off my radar for good. It's too distracting having it sitting in my master list thinking I might do it one day.

I'm killing the project then. I'm not abandoning it, deleting it or putting it off. I'm killing it. Permanently.

With this action comes a sense of relief. No longer will it sit on my radar demanding another few minutes of contemplation. I can get rid of it permanently.

I've only done this a few times in the past and each time it was necessary to simply kill the project. For as long as it remains in a list or in your head, you'll always spend a bit of time thinking that you'll get round to it.

The first time I did this was when I killed my mind mapping blog, MindMapSwitch. I had gave up writing about mind mapping but I left the blog itself up in the hopes that one day I might go back and write about it. I didn't. In fact for about two years it just sat there as another dead blog on the internet. A couple of years ago I decided that the blog had to go. No longer would I need to the account to keep it running. I wouldn't be writing on that blog ever again. So I took it down. Gone was all the work that I put into it, but despite that, I felt great about the decision. Another little project that has been sitting on my radar is now gone forever. I don't need to worry about it, spend time on it or even get it started. It's gone for good.

That's why it necessary to kill a project. There's no sense in having a project or an idea sitting there on the shelf gathering dust. Yes, one day you might get round to it, but chances are you won't. Better to kill the project and move on then have it pecking away at your conscience. Once you've killed that project you'll feel a weight off your shoulders and you'll have rid yourself of a commitment.

Too many beautiful bikes here to recommend one.

Nice to see a few rigid singlespeed steeds in there.

Working as a freelancer doesn't offer the flexibility that I first thought it would, but is that a bad thing?

I've been freelancing for over a year now. It's been a great journey so far and long may it continue, but when people ask me if I have more flexibility in my hours, they react with surprise when I say no.

When I first wanted to freelance, one of the benefits that drew me to it was the fact that I would dictate my hours as I would see fit. I would work when it suited me the most. If I wanted to work in the morning then I would. I could take the afternoon off and then do more work in the evening. That's not how it has worked out for me though.

I work four days a week doing client work. Typically my day runs from 9am to 5pm with maybe an hour or two extra done at night if needed. Sounds like your typical work day right? Well that's largely in part due to the fact that is the hours that my clients work. They have typical work hours like most other people so it suits everyone if I work to the same hours as well.

The flexibility doesn't then come from the hours that I work then, it comes from the fact that I work at home. I can do the school run in the morning and the afternoon as well as be home for deliveries coming to the house, giving trades people access for repairs and decorating when the need arises and because I am already at home, I can use my work hour more productively by running a few errands during my lunch break when I need to.

To a degree freelancing does offer me more flexibility. I work the days that I want to and take time off as needed, however it isn't the flexible career that I first thought it was going to be. Yes it is flexible, but only in the fact that I can do a few more things extra in the day as I work from home. Work hours wise though, I'm not much better off than many others but that isn't a bad thing. Keeping to a working day means that I've got time for the family when it comes to the evening and the weekend.

These are definitely one of the best brand of lights I've used for cycling. Great to see they're getting more and more powerful but still use USB to charge them.

Must check the LBS to see if they have the Blinder Arc 1.7 in stock. It would be great for son's bike.

... 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 mentioned in a previous post about this year's theme being smarter budgeting. After a sort of successful year in 2013, I asked myself where I could improve and one area was very clear to me, budgeting.

Many of you might be thinking that this is something to do with just finances. It isn't. This budgeting for money and time.

When it came to my freelance work, my own projects and family time, I spent far too much time working on things and not making any real progress.

Let's take my new App.net newsletter for example. The idea for Netterpress started in October, however it's taken until now to get the first edition of it released. All in I've probably spent way more time on this project than necessary. Spending extra time on something isn't the only problem though.

Last year I didn't go out on my mountain bike at all. Shocking. I love mountain biking, I really do. Last year though I didn't even give myself the time to go for a quick ride at the weekend or even a night ride during the long summer nights. What a waste.

Last year's theme of being independent isn't quite complete, but I'm getting there. After focusing on this year for a year, I'm now at a point where it's part of my end game to be independent. To help this along though I need to budget my money and time so that I am getting things done and working towards independence.

I've already started allocating myself a fixed number of hours each week for client work and products, as well as blocking off the weekend from all work and using the weekend for reading, cycling and family time. It will be interesting to see how this pans out over the year.

Even if you don't drink coffee, this is a must buy if you're a cycling fan.

via PedalConsumption

At any one time there are usually three devices sitting on my desk. A laptop, a phone and a tablet. They all have different apps running on them but some of the apps they use are for the same service. So for App.net I have an app running on my laptop, but a different app running on my phone and tablet.

Here's the problem. I haven't really paid too much attention to configuring notifications for each of the apps so sometimes I end up getting multiple notifications going off on the different devices for the same event. For example, in App.net when I get a new follower, I get an email notification in my phone as well as a notification from Felix, and also a notification on Felix on my tablet. Just little bit overkill if you ask me.

So here's my question to all of you. What's your strategy for dealing with notifications on multiple devices?

I sit in front of my laptop for most of the day, so ideally most of my notifications should come through there, but then what notifications should I enable for my phone? Are there any type of apps that you recommend I should completely silence?

If you've got any thoughts on this then please reply back to my original post on App.net or drop me an email here. I'd be really interested to hear your views on this.

Meet my son Ethan.

He loves playing golf. He's also quite good at it. He might not be the next big thing in golf, but he's better than most kids his age. He attends golf lessons for one hour a week and this year we even got him in as a junior member at a golf club in the area where most of his family play. A chance for him to meet other kids his age and also to get out onto a proper golf course for a change.

Now as parents we all want the best for our kids. It's natural. The best criteria though is interpreted different by different parents though. My interpretation is that I want my kids to be happy and do what they enjoy the most.

Me and Jen don't do the pushy parent thing. He plays golf when he wants to play golf. We don't make him practice for hours on end at home, nor do we make it his exclusive hobby. Just for variety he goes swimmming, plays tennis and wants to up upgrade his bike to a mountain bike for Christmas so that he can go mountain biking with me.

He also does all the usual things kids do, watches television, plays video games, plays outside with his friends and a whole heap of other things that kids are supposed to do (and sometimes not supposed to do!). Quite a good mix for any kid if you ask me.

I'm hoping that this no pressure approach to his golf gives him enough breathing space to be himself and not be put under pressure. He's still a kid and needs to experience his childhood. Sure we still give him a gentle nudge now and again, but that's all it is, a nudge.

When I first started considering the idea of freelancing a couple of years ago, I started to subscribe to a number of blogs of already established freelancers. It was during this time that I discovered Curtis McHale and his excellent blog.

Currently based in British Columbia, Canada, Curtis writes openly about the trials and tribulations of freelancing, writing and products he's working on as well as family life and of course cycling. Just the right mix of categories I would say that almost mirror my interests.

His blog has become a valuable tool in my freelancing career. When I struggled at the start, Curtis provided some great advice for me during that first month and continues to do so today through his blog. I've even signed up for his new book on running a viable freelance business.

It's great to have someone like Curtis there, writing about his freelance career. He's proof that while freelancing is hard work, it's also very rewarding work if done correctly. And that's why I'll continue to read his blog on a daily basis.

This is the hardcore hardtail of the big wheel world. I don't know if I'm convinced that bigger wheels are better for mountain biking, but I'd be prepared to give it a try with a frame like the Bigwig.

via Ragley Bikes

Today I did my first Capistrano deployment. Yes, that’s right. My first. Any experienced Ruby developers might be wondering how I haven't used Capristrano in the past. I simply chose not to use it.

When Rails was in its infancy, Capistrano emerged as the default way for Rails developers to automate their deployments, but one thing that put me off was the amount of work that would be involved in getting it up and running. Scripts, SSH, source code management, web servers and databases. It all sounded a bit much.

Then Heroku came along and I smiled. I could deploy my application with a single command. In the past I’ve always opted to use Heroku and during my brief stint in an agile team we used Engine Yard for hosting our applications. Again deployment was as easy as a click of a button.

I’ll admit it. I’m lazy. I hate having to muck about with configuration settings, command line arguments, options and other little details to get things working.

As a developer I’ve come across hundreds of tools, editors, applications, libraries and services that help me do my job. One thing that sticks for my preferred selection of tools that I continue to re-use are the ones that just work and require little work to get working. Platform services like Heroku and Engine Yard fit this criteria perfectly.

Yes I probably should have some knowledge on using Capistrano but the ease of a single click deployment is hard to beat.

At the end of the day I just want to ship code.

This goes right to the top of the wishlist. I've wanted to own a Rocky Mountain bike since I was a teenager, but only if it's was one of their top end bikes.

via Singletrack

Curtis McHale sums up why clients should wait for their favourite consultant.

Think of Gandalf (Lord of the Rings wizard if you don’t know). He was always running from one place to another. Someone always needed his help. He was a busy dude and couldn’t just take on every issue at the drop of a hat.

Any decent consultant is going to be like that. Really if you need more than a few hours of work, you should be expecting to wait.
— Wizards are Busy People by Curtis McHale

Never thought of myself as a wizard before though, but I do like the idea.

For a while now I've been running an essay style blog and a tumble log. They've both got a fair number of subscribers, but one of the complications I have is that in moving my blog somewhere else is that I need to decide whether to bring both blogs over separately, combine them or just bring my essay style blog.

Combining the blogs might mean that I lose readers, but then the offset is that I am brining two audiences together and hopefully they will like the bringing together of content.

Maintaining separate blogs could be a pain, in fact it is a pain. I think I'd like to simply maintain the one blog for the moment.

Bringing my essay style blog over is the most appealing one but letting go of my tumble log might be a bit difficult to do. It's quite personal to me as it contains topics and stuff that interests me personally. However it is only a blog after all.

Journalong is up and running and I'm happy with it, but there's another itch building. Another itch to build something else and DecisionMail is it's name. The product bug has bitten me, but this time around it's slightly different. I'm not building a product as a revenue stream, I'm more interested in how the product is used and people's perceptions of using software in the decision making process.

So what is the new idea?

DecisionMail is simply a way of getting feedback on a decision through the use of email. You write the question that you want your colleagues to give you feedback on, list those people who you want feedback on the decision from, and then DecisionMail will email that question along with a link, to each of the people you want feedback from on the question.

Your colleagues receive the email and simply click their response to the question. From your select group of people you should then have a clear idea what the group's decision is.

One of my key concerns is that the email from DecisionMail to someone who has been asked for feedback on a decision will either be automatically dropped in a spam folder or will be completely missed in the inbox. I'm aware that the inbox is becoming a horrible place for people. Some people get hundreds of new email every day. I don't know how they manage it, but if this person was involved in a decision, then how can you be sure that that person will respond?

I'm not building this product to solve a particular problem, but I'm instead building this to delve more into using software as a decision making tool. I've already built a number of decision support systems for clients, but I wanted to build something simpler that involved the minimum number of steps to get feedback on a decision. Email is too complicated already for gathering feedback, which is why the email from a DecisionMail account holder, will only require the respondent to click the answer to the question that they agree with the most.

I initially perceived this as a product for virtual teams who have members across different countries, but the anyone could use it to make decisions.

The next few weeks are about getting the basics up and running. Watch this space!

TechCube is a world class space for technology startups in Edinburgh. It provides affordable office space, services and community support for companies trying to tackle big problems. Situated two minutes’ walk from the University of Edinburgh and directly adjacent to the Meadows, TechCube is at the heart of Edinburgh’s rapidly developing startup scene.

— Scotland Opens First Privately Financed Incubator by The Wall Street Journal

It's great to see Scotland on the technology map once more. I'm really looking forward to see what TechCube produces in the next couple of years.

via Snook

Great advice for people like myself that edit their work wrongly! I don't how many times I have re-read back to myself my writing from the screen and failed to see all my mistakes.

Print Out Your Work

Always do this. Always. It's a pain, but when you're talking performance reviews, that 20-yard hassle of a walk to the printer could mean the difference between a 4% or a 5% raise.

Here's why: As any writer or editor will tell you, critiquing someone else's work is much easier than deconstructing your own, because outside eyes bring a fresh perspective. To approach your own work critically, you need to simulate this "outsider" perspective by viewing it in a form other than the one you wrote it in.

— How To Edit Your Own Writing by Lifehacker

Steel frame? Check.

Rigid forks? Check.

29" wheels? Check.

On the wednesday wishlist? Check.

via Genesis Bikes

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

I've managed to write 3 posts over 3 days for my blog, but the writing well is running dry with ideas.Anybody want to see something on the blog that I haven't written about before? Contact me.

Which is why I love working on Journalong. The small problem I had with keeping notes and thoughts in plain text that I could pick up on any of the devices I use was the problem. Next thing I know I'm running a small product on my little corner of the web.

Today, why not start something small?

The complete story of cycling legend Eddy Merckx. Who can say no to that?

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.

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.

Pretty gnarly if you ask me, and I'm more of a mountain biker than a roadie.I ride fast descents through rocks, twisty trails over roots and even make the odd jump here and there on my mountain bike, but riding at these speeds over cobbles with thin tyres is a true test of skill. Yip, Roubaix is pretty gnarly.

Thanks for the video Curtis!

So tonight, I deployed my first version of a plain text journalling product to Heroku. It's finally up and running! Those little hours here and there are finally paying off and now I have scratched the initial itch and provided a better way to write to my journal from anywhere.

After the excitement of deployment and seeing it work I was then tempted to power on through for another couple of hours and start the real work of implementing basic features, styling web pages and other things.

I'm going to hold back though and wait for another window of time to work on it. For the moment it's doing the most basic functional thing it needs to do, which is better than nothing. Yeah, it might be great sitting up for another couple of hours, but I'll only be robbing myself of energy from tomorrow. Also by the sounds of the weather on the window, I think it's going to be a hell of a cycle getting into work in the morning.

So until I can schedule more code time with my side-product, I'll hold back.

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.