Matthew Lang

A while a go I wrote about my move to Feedbin from Feedly and my reasons for the move. At the time I was still getting used to something other than Google's great RSS reader. Feedly in itself was fine but it didn't have the staying power I wanted. I had to login back in on different devices and there wasn't much in the way of new features. So I moved to Feedbin and over two years later I'm still using it. Here's why.

Features, Features, Features

Feedbin is under continual development and every few of months there's a new feature released or small improvements made to the user-interface. It might seem like a lot of time in between releases, but from the start Feedbin already did everything that was essential. You could subscribe to RSS feeds and read them when you wanted too. Everything that has followed has been "nice to haves" and each one of them makes the experience of using Feedbin even better.

A Great Web Interface

From the start the Feedbin web interface was good. Overtime it's been gradually tweaked and made better. Add to the mix a customisable interface with settings for fonts, text size and themes and you have a web interface that negates the need for any desktop RSS reader. Just use it in your browser.

Also the keyboard shortcuts allow you to move about your feeds without having to reach for the mouse. Even sharing articles to your favourite services like Instapaper and Pinboard is easy because you assign keyboard shortcuts to each of your share locations.

The Notifier App

Finally there's the notifier app. Now maybe I'm alone in this but RSS feeds are a great way of monitoring and tracking services. Funneling these notifications into a single device means that you can stay on top of essential services for clients. As a freelance web developer I have clients that need to know when their websites are likely to face downtime.

To do this I keep a track of the different service they use by subscribing to their status page's RSS feed. In the Feedbin notifier app I can then get notifications of these updates as and when they happen. If a client is likely to see downtime on their website I can give them a heads up on it and we can arrange suitable changes for them if needed.

Feedbin is still one of my essential tools as a web developer, both for consuming content and for keeping up to date with any urgent news. I highly recommend Feedbin if you're in the market for a versatile RSS reader.

“These close-up images, showing the diversity of terrain on Pluto, demonstrate the power of our robotic planetary explorers to return intriguing data to scientists back here on planet Earth,” said John Grunsfeld, former astronaut and associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. “New Horizons thrilled us during the July flyby with the first close images of Pluto, and as the spacecraft transmits the treasure trove of images in its onboard memory back to us, we continue to be amazed by what we see."

— New Horizons Returns First of the Best Images of Pluto by NASA

Yes please!

Another great new series from NB.

This is why I love American football.

A nice reminder that there are more pressing matters in the world than the growing number of icons in my menubar.

We are becoming disconnected from collective issues for want of personal entertainment. If continued, informing the masses on domestic and foreign affairs could very well devolve into an exercise in herding cats. While the individual might not see this as an issue, the collective should because it will influence entire generations. Those who cannot see past themselves are doomed.

— The Public Square of You by Caesura Letters

via PEDAL Consumption

Tilt shifting is the effect used in photography to simulate a miniature scene, but I've never seen it done on such a scale with these tilt shifted photographs of galaxies and nebulae.

via Behance

Evolution of the Bicycle from Visual Artwork on Vimeo.

A wonderful video showing the different designs of the bicycle over a period of 300 years.

via Kottke

I've been a fan of email subscriptions for a long time. The direct delivery to your inbox might not be everyone's idea of digital heaven but for the content that matters the most, it's the best way of receiving it. I used to use RSS for everything but even RSS has its limits. I've got a large number of feeds in my list which makes it hard to filter out the great content you want to read every day from the good content that you will get to at a later time.

And while email subscriptions are nice (when managed with rules in your inbox), there comes a point where you just end up getting too much email. That my friends was today.

I flicked through my newsletters folder in my email client and was astonished to find a number of high quality subscriptions still lying there unread. Were they simply not worth reading? No, I subscribed to these for a reason. Some I even pay for, but when you don't get round to reading them then what's the point?

Everything in moderation. That's the famous quote right? While I don't stick with it for a lot of things (you can never spend too much time on a bike!), it does make sense when it comes to managing your digital inboxes and my newsletter inbox was running over.

So if you're reading this and I've unsubscribed from your list today, don't be offended. The quality of the email subscriptions I removed myself from today are high but when these gems of content end up just lying unread in my inbox then I'm afraid there is little point in still continuing to subscribe to them. In the unsubscribe comments I did leave as nice a reason as possible indicating my reason for unsubscribing though. That has to count for something.

Brett's latest bookmarklet is great for programmer. Turns code blocks into plain text and make them ready for copying. Nice!

This blog has been gradually winding down in activity for the last few weeks. You've probably noticed. It's been hard to watch as I used to be a frequent poster. Daily blog posts, links and other trivial things that might interest you the reader.

Truth of the matter is that client work has all but consumed my week. I've got two projects on at the moment and I'm splitting my time between them in fortnightly periods. The work is good and it looks like it will carry through to the new year which I've no complaints over.

The problem has been dividing my time so that I'm not always hunkered over my desk. My desk is where you'll find me through the day, usually wrestling with some code, but sitting there outside of my client hours makes it difficult to 'switch off'. Lately though, once the client work is finished you'll usually find me playing with the kids until bedtime and then its television for an hour or two before the exhaustion kicks in.

A couple of years ago I had a good routine going. Writing in the morning, 3 periods of client work throughout the day, as well as time to work on new languages and frameworks and working on side-projects. I was getting things done. Not just that, but I was also getting out on the bike and keeping the weight off. Last time I was out on the bike was a few weeks ago with Ethan. I haven't been out on the bike since.

Last night I took a look at the heat map on my Timepage app for December. Aside from the usual calendar functions, it shows your calendar as a heat map where you're busy and not so busy. Almost nothing showed up. There's a day where Ethan has golf coaching and a day for the Star Wars showing. Apart from that there was nothing. It seems I have lost sight of one of the fundamentals of any productivity system. Schedule it.

Client work has become such a big part of my day that I no longer plan for anything else getting done. Without the planning of the day most stuff falls through the cracks. It's usually the little things like writing and side-projects. They've suffered the most.

Out of sight, out of mind. If you don't see something often enough you tend to forget about it. Like my calendar. I didn't plan for anything and therefore didn't see the need to look at my calendar. Everyday was turning into the same work getting done so why bother scheduling anything?

I've just proven to myself that there's nothing gained from an empty calendar. Time to change that.

Not the first time I've linked to this bike for Fixie Friday and with good reason. It's a classic track bike.

via Cycle EXIF

... I'm breaking down the technical debt concept for product stakeholders.

The Cap movies are my favourites in the MCU and the series looks to get even better with Civil War out next year.