Matthew Lang

Field Notes have joined the ranks of paper planners with their own take on a planner. I love the fact paper based tools like this are making a comeback.

via The Cramped

At a buck or few per app, how could it be otherwise? That type of pricing will work for Angry Birds and a handful of other games, but very poorly for most other types of software products. The scale you need, the sustained influx of new customers, well, it’s a place for mega stars, and people who think they can beat the odds at becoming just that.

That’s why I’ve been discouraging people from chasing dreams of a successful, sustainable software product business by pursuing paid apps. Far better be your odds at succeeding with a service where the app is simply a gateway, not the destination.

— Don't Base Your Business on a Paid App by Signal v. Noise

Refreshing to hear an argument for web based subscription services that are proving be more financially stable and profitable than paid apps.

Always great to see what people have done for their first sketchnote.

Learning to #sketchnote with my new notebook at the ready. 1st page done! @rohdesign your Sketchnote Handbook is FAB! pic.twitter.com/vHwQgd1qnP

— Rachel Lilly (@RLillyPhotos) July 23, 2015

via Sketchnote Army

Patrick Rhone is back from his personal retreat.

Like Thoreau’s Walden Pond cabin, each hermitage is a small, single room cabin with an attached screen porch. Each one is sparely appointed with just the essentials — a bed, a rocking chair, a small table, a couple of stations for washing and cooking, and a small altar for those who wish to pray. A delicious basket a food is supplied and refreshed daily — a couple of loaves of (oh-my-goodness-so-delicious!) homemade bread, some fruit, some local cheese, and some jugs of water. They have been doing this for years so every amenity is well thought out and centered around reducing any stress or desire.

— Some Thoughts on Solitude by Patrick Rhone

Sounds like the perfect place to disconnect from the digital world.

A superb autumn night captured by Ian Dick.

via iand.net

Is paper making a comeback or did it simply refuse to budge from the digital invaders?

When reports came out last month about declining ebook sales, many reasons were offered up, from higher pricing to the resurgence of bookstores to more efficient distribution of paper books to increased competition from TV's continued renaissance, Facebook, Snapchat, and an embarrassment of #longread riches. What I didn't hear a whole lot about was how the experience of reading ebooks and paper books compared, particularly in regard to the Kindle's frustrating reading experience not living up to its promise. What if people are reading fewer ebooks because the user experience of ebook reading isn't great?

— On the declining ebook reading experience by Kottke

Whatever the reasons, ebooks will never be able to fully replicate the experience of reading a book.

via FGGT

I started the El Capitan upgrade process last night by kick starting the download before I went to bed. Woke up 15 minutes early this morning to start the installation. Took Ethan to school, did my morning pages with a coffee and then started client work on my upgraded MacBook.

Upgrade problems? None. Well played Apple.

PS Love the pinned tabs in Safari.

Can't wait to see if it can be used as a frame material for bikes.

Today a team of material scientists at Pohang University of Science and Technology in South Korea announced what they're calling one of the biggest steel breakthroughs of the last few decades: an altogether new type of flexible, ultra-strong, lightweight steel. This new metal has a strength-to-weight ratio that matches even our best titanium alloys, but at one tenth the cost, and can be created on a small scale with machinery already used to make automotive-grade steel.

— Scientists Invent a New Steel as Strong as Titanium
by Popular Mechanics

Yesterday I reached something of a milestone. I filled the Volant Moleskine notebook that I was using for my morning pages. 94 pages of writing. It feels like I’ve finished a warm up to NaNoWriMo. I didn’t write every single day and I didn’t always write 750 words, but on most days I did fill my quota. The notebook itself contains roughly 24 days of writing. Not bad.

When I started this I set myself a couple of guidelines.

• I only write during the week.
• I aim for 750 words a day which is roughly four pages worth of writing in the Volant notebook.

Writing during the week is easier than writing at the weekend. At the weekend the kids aren’t at school or nursery and so the mornings become a great chance to kick back and make something decent for breakfast or it’s a dash to get them out the door. Clearly not a great time to write. Now you might also suggest that I get up early on the weekends before these little monsters wake up but to be honest I rather sleep for an extra hour. The time of the writing is working well so it stays the same.

750 words a day is easy. Especially when you’re typing. Hell, I could probably manage 1500 words a day if I was typing, but I’m trying to distance from myself from technology for this exercise. I spend enough time glued to the my laptop that I don’t need to be sitting at it writing for half an hour before putting in an eight hour day in front of it. So I decided to do it the old fashioned way. Pen and paper.

I picked the Volant Moleskine notebooks mainly because they were thick enough to hold a good number of days writing without being too big to write with. I have another notebook that’s 250 pages thick that I started writing with a few months ago. It became rather uncomfortable to write with due to the number of pages in it. At 96 pages thick the Volant notebooks are ideal. I’ve been using a number of different pens for this. I don’t think I’ll ever stick with just the one.

With this notebook then I’ve been able to write about four pages of writing. The length isn’t a huge problem, but I usually start this after doing the school run and before my client work begins which gives me a 30 minute window. Typing 750 words in half an hour is easy. Writing them? Not so much.

So the question I asked myself is this.

Do I want to keep up writing four pages a day at a slightly rushed speed or would I rather write two or three pages at a more manageable pace?

I’ve decided to decrease the number of pages I’m writing to three. Writing four pages is fine when the morning is your own and you can devote a whole hour to this, but I’m using my morning pages to outline and draft pieces. I’m not too worried about fitting a single draft into one day, but I would rather take the time to draft a single piece of writing over a couple of days. Rushing this exercises feels counterproductive to what I want to achieve. Scaling it back to a number of pages that I can manage at a comfortable pace is the better choice because I’ll have the chance to write.

I’m glad to have made it to this milestone and looking back through my notebook there’s a few things in there that may feature in future pieces. Let’s hope the second notebook yields even more writing to use.

by Tanmay Vora. Amazing stuff!

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

New website but always the same great content.

It would be amazing if the night sky looked like this.

Always good to see a website I worked on go live.

I participate when directly engaged. I try to make sure that what I’m posting is of a positive nature. I try to only post things that I believe are worth the time of those who might be reading it. I rarely engage in debate or argument— and when I do my intention is to try to learn from an opposing view, not to rebuke it. And, more than anything else, I try to be helpful in any way I see that I can be.

— Right Effort by Patrick Rhone

Read Patrick's full post. Worth remembering next time you want to binge post on your preferred social media outlet.

A quick story about Steven Pressfield and the power of saying no.

After an incredibly difficult year of wrestling with those inner demons and avoiding all temptations, he did it. He finished his first book. It wasn’t a success, but it didn’t matter. He had finally beat The Resistance. He went on to write many successful novels.

— Saying No to Everything Else
by Derek Sivers

In the last few months I've made an interesting discovery. I'm crap at building and marketing products. Really bad in fact. From now I'll just build stuff, give it away for free and keep plugging away at the client work. I'm happy with that.