Recent Posts

Not bad turnaround for a big company that handles thousands (probably millions) of transactions in a day.

Given the choice between using Twitter’s embed snippet or just using a block quote for the tweet, I would use the block quote every time.

First time I’ve had to contact Apple support for a purchase in the iTunes store. Prompt reply within 48 hours and full refund issued.

The Pixar Theory

Jennifer read this over the weekend and suggested I read it too. With two young kids, a Pixar movie is usually on the television at some point during the week.

The theory is that all of Pixar's movies exist within the same universe.

We also learn that this witch inexplicably disappears every time she passes through doors, leading us to believe that she may not even exist. Don’t get ahead of me, but we’ll come back to Brave. Let’s just say, for now, the witch is someone we know from a different movie in the timeline.

— The Pixar Theory by Jon Negroni

Read on for the full explanation. Great fun for the adults being able to piece the movies together.

Repeating the Basics

A tweet by Brian P. Hogan sums up brilliantly what I've been doing in the last two weeks to stay sharp.

Whether you’re playing scales, shooting free-throws, or writing a web page, repeating the basics keeps you ready to perform.

— Twitter by Brian P. Hogan
I've started using this practice in the last two weeks to help me stay sharp both mentally and physcially.

Mental Practice

In the last couple of weeks I've started learning Python. To do this effectively I needed a list of problems and solutions in Ruby that I could compare with Python. I didn't have anything so I started building Ruby implementations of basic data structures like lists, queues and stacks.

The solutions themselves are not complicated but that practice of writing simple classes and tests is something I've been doing almost every day for the last two weeks. What I'm hoping to do is to have a repository of code examples that are easy enough to do in thirty minutes, but can be used a starting point for other programming languages.

So far, I've been implementing similar data structures in Python and so far I've found the learning process to be much easier than if I had simply just started reading a book in Python.

Physical Practice

They say you never forget how to ride a bike, what they do forget to tell you though is that your body usually forgets rather quickly how much effort is needed to ride a bike.

Over the last twenty years I've had gaps in my riding that has sometimes amounted to months. Technically, I'm good on the bike. Shifting weight between the wheels, getting the right gear in place for tricky climbs and maintaining balance on the bike for when things almost grind to a complete halt. These little tips and tricks have been amassed over years of riding bikes. They never leave you. What does leave you though is the rest time that your body needs in between intervals of high intensity cycling.

To combat this physical forgetfulness, I've started doing intervals at my local trails to help get my recovery time down. The basics of bike riding are often seen as having the technical chops to guide the bike fast through obstacles on the trail, but you need more than this to keep the momentum of the ride going. The intervals help by reducing the rest time your body needs through periods of high and low intensity riding. After a couple of interval sessions I'm already starting to see improvements.

Repeating the basics can be applied to any profession or activity. Taking the basics of the activity and practicing them regularly help ensure you never go rusty or get out of shape. It's a small investment in time and effort to stay sharp but it's an investment I'm willing to make for the benefits in the long term.

Communities Need Trust

When it comes to building communities, there's one essential ingredient that can make or break the community. It's trust. Sure there are other things needed to build a community like people and participation, but trust is essential if that community wants to meet its own aim and grow to include to new members.

Without entrusting others to act on the best interests of the community, it becomes nothing more than an organisation that uses bureaucracy to funnel contributions through to 'those in charge'. A community that needs approval on everything from a couple of people who act as the 'heads of the community' is going to find itself difficult to grow and may eventually end up turning people away. No one wants to join a community where all contributions to the community need approval from one or two individuals.

Trusting people to act within the best interests of the community is essential for the community to grow. It's through this trust we can allow people to act in the best interests of the community and make it a better community for all involved.

Take the Stairs

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

Save The Web

Amazing piece about the changes in the Internet since the glory days of blogging.

The centralization of information also worries me because it makes it easier for things to disappear. After my arrest, my hosting service closed my account, because I wasn’t able to pay its monthly fee. But at least I had a backup of all my posts in a database on my own web server. (Most blogging platforms used to enable you to transfer your posts and archives to your own web space, whereas now most platforms don’t let you so.) Even if I didn’t, the Internet archive might keep a copy. But what if my account on Facebook or Twitter is shut down for any reason?

— The Web We Have to Save by Hossein Derakhshan

I had a good week off with the family last week, but it’s back to work this morning.

The 32-Hour Workweek

I work four days a week when a client allows it and most usually do but I will make exceptions for projects that are on a limited timescale. Working five days a week for a couple of months is nothing to me but for full-time employees it can amount to a daily grind which can take its toll on employee productivity.

We’ve proven that you can take it from an experiment into something that’s doable for real companies and real people in highly competitive markets.

— The Case for the 32-Hour Workweek by The Atlantic

Watch the video at The Atlantic for more.

Had a mini test ride on a Specialized Fatboy today. I’m pretty sure my next bike will be a fat tyre bike. So comfortable!

Where's the Value In Writing?

For the last two weeks I've been writing my morning pages. The fact that I have managed to keep this going for two weeks is a good sign and I'm glad to be doing it again. The content of the writing itself isn't important, well not at the beginning anyway.

What eventually happens though is that I do find something to write about after those first few paragraphs. The writing then becomes more focused and I start to see where my morning pages are going. It doesn't always become something of value, most of the time it's just a stream of thoughts on the page but every now again there's an idea or thought there than can be the basis for a blog post or an article.

In doing this I've started to realise something

When we make something easy, we reduce its value.

Writing a word is easy. Anyone can do it, but the value of the word is almost worthless. Without context or surrounding words to form a sentence, the word is nothing but a word. It's worthless.

Writing a sentence is just as easy for most of us. Even writing a paragraph should be easy for most of us. And that's when we start to see a glimmer of value. That's when your writing can become something of value. Beyond this where do we go?

Writing a letter, a blog post, a long form article or even a book. As the number of words needed to fulfil each form of writing is passed, the next form of writing becomes harder and harder to do. At the same time though, the value of that piece of writing increases.

Writing enough words to make a book. That's real value. Assuming your writing is coherent and is of a high enough quality for someone to take the time out to read it. That's real value, but it's also difficult to do and that's the trick with writing.

If you want your writing to be valuable then it needs to be more than a word, a sentence or even a paragraph. Shorter forms of writing should be difficult to do but not out with your grasp. Anything longer than this will definitely be difficult to do but still possible.

Writing is difficult to do, but that's what is going to make your writing stand out from the writing of everyone else (or even their lack of writing). You've taken the difficult road to writing something of value.