Matthew Lang

I have old favorites I return to again and again. Stories like Watership Down, The Wind and the Willows, Winnie-the-Pooh, and Washington Irving’s Sketch Book are wonderful re-reads. I’ve read many of Jim Harrison’s works over and over; the same with books by William F. Buckley, Jr., Paul Johnson, Charles Murray, Ray Bradbury, Stephen King, and H.L. Mencken. I recently added Elmore Leonard to my re-read stable.

— Reading and re-reading by Kurt Harden

I have been re-reading a few books from my programming stack. I haven't re-read any fiction for a while though. Might be time correct that.

I've been working with Ruby on Rails full-time now for close to 4 years. Two years as a full-time employee and two years as a freelancer. In that time I've worked with and built all manner of Rails applications. Content management systems, business support applications, healthcare service portals and my own little product, DailyMuse. It's still my choice of web framework for new projects, but I feel that lately I've become too settled with Rails. Yes it's a fine framework to work with and who could argue. It has a thriving community that offers great support and ensures the ongoing development of the framework, but there's more than one web framework out there.

In the last few months I've been trying out the Rust systems programming language. It's been a hit and a miss getting my head round the syntax but largely I feel that I am wasting my time with it. Why? Well Rust is still fairly new and at the time of writing this it's just about to emerge from its 1.0 beta phase. Despite the immeninent release of the stable version of the language, I still think I arrived at the Rust party too early. I've never been an early adopter of technology. I like to sit on the fence longer than normal before making any decisions about investing in a language or a framework. I might re-visit Rust in six months time or even a year to see how popular it is and whether it's worth investing my time in. So, putting Rust to the side has left a space for me to look at another language or framework.

Looking at the market today, there's such a variety in the demand for different languages and frameworks. I've done .NET in the past and while I think there's going to be a steady demand for it in the future, I do want to try something completely new. A language I've never used before. Enter Python.

Okay, it's not completely different to Ruby. It has duck typing and It's dynamic but it is also an established programming language. If I was going to learn a new language then it was going to be something that I could use in my career. Getting a Python contract with no experience might be tricky, but I'm prepared to tart up my Github page with a couple of projects done in Python that could add weight to my cause.

Also, if I'm going to pick a language that gives me extra tools to use then I want something that sits alongside it just like Ruby on Rails sits alongside Ruby. I not only want to learn a new programming language but a new web framework that is made with that programming language. Enter Django.

In the past I've tried to learn different programming languages and failed spectacularly but this feels different. Rather than picking an new cutting edge technology, I've picked an established programming language and an established web framework to go with it. They're not completely different from Ruby and Rails, but that's the idea. I'm a web developer, therefore it makes sense to learn another web framework. This might be a low risk investment, but that's okay. There's enough developers chasing the bleeding edge technology. How many are chasing established technology?

An amazing flyover of the ruins of Berlin after Allied air raids during World War 2.

A brilliant post about the increasing world of digital distractions.

Still, I am an optimist. Most nights last year, I got into bed with a book — paper or e — and started. Reading. Read. Ing. One word after the next. A sentence. Two sentences.

Maybe three.

And then … I needed just a little something else. Something to tide me over. Something to scratch that little itch at the back of my mind— just a quick look at email on my iPhone; to write, and erase, a response to a funny Tweet from William Gibson; to find, and follow, a link to a good, really good, article in the New Yorker, or, better, the New York Review of Books (which I might even read most of, if it is that good). Email again, just to be sure.

— Why can't we read anymore by Hugh McGuire

Remember that the decision to reduce your increasing inbox of digital goodies is down to you. It can be done, it just requires a bit of action and some discipline.

Might start calling my smartphone a dumbphone. It certainly makes me more dumb than smart.

The Zapier blog has been a new addition to my reading list and it certainly hasn't disappointed.

This post about the time-tested task management methods proves that having the killer productivity app isn't the key to being productive. Also great to see Markdown mentioned here.

Keep them coming Zapier!

Always loved these posters but never got round to buying one.

via Star Wars

It's the end of an era as Patrick Rhone calls it a day on his Minimal Mac blog.

This is the final post on Minimal Mac. This project contains what I believe in when it comes to a mindful and intentional approach to technology. After nearly 2,500 posts, I have nothing more to add to what has already been said. As I wrote in my book enough, saying no is actually saying yes to other things. It’s time to say “no” to this project so that I can say “yes” to others (or, in some cases, fully commit to agreements already made).

— The End by Minimal Mac

It's been an amazing journey following this blog over the years and always a pleasure to read.

A work of art. The detailing in the frame is amazing, especially around the seat tube cluster.

via Cycle EXIF

These scenes from Star Wars are amazing in their detail.

... they're teaching the things other business schools don't.

I wrote this on Friday's post:

Building and marketing products isn’t for me. I prefer to be neck deep in code rather than marketing tools.

I've been thinking about it a lot over the weekend.

The pursuit to build something that people will want to use and buy is what many people want. To take an idea, build it, and turn it into a successful product. Everytime I see an app (usually based on a simple idea) rocket to the top of the App Store charts I wonder, "Why didn't I think of that?".

The thing is though, this usually isn't the first idea for that person. It might be their tenth or even twentieth attempt at making a successful product. Yes, it might be their first attempt, but I don't think there's ever been a single attempt at a product that's went on to sell millions. There's always been a few failed attempts before that one successful product happens.

Rather than continually change the idea of Journalong into something that works I simply let it trudge along based on it's same initial idea. If I was really serious about making Journalong into something better I might have changed how it recorded entries, or changed it's target market to a more focused group, or even open sourced it after the first three months of inactivity. It's taken me a couple of years to finally admit defeat.

A continually pivoting product isn't something I have a whole lot of time for. lame excuse you might say. I would disagree. The ongoing testing and validating of a product until it starts to gain the traction of paying clients isn't what I want to do. I want to write software, but I also want to be paid for writing that software. I'm exploring a few options such as open sourcing a few ideas to see what happens, but for the moment I'll be keeping the focus on writing code rather than building products.

Cracking bike, cracking colour, cracking name. What more reason do I need to post this here?

via Cycle EXIF

Journalong has been limping along for a few months now. With almost no interest from myself in rolling out anymore features and a lack of activity from those users that have accounts there, I made the decision a few weeks ago that I would kill the Journalong service off completely and transform it into something else. There were two main factors that influenced this:

1. Lack of Interest & Activity - Journalong started off well with and managed to accumulate over 100 users in the first couple of months. The next few months weren't so great. A couple of users signed up to the service every month since then but in the last few months there has only been two sign ups. From those people that signed up, just a few accounts used Journalong on a monthly basis. Not exactly a busy service you could say.
2. Being Free - In the beginning Journalong was free, then it was paid, then it became free again. If anything from this, I've learned that products and services like this should be paid right from the start. Yes, it can be a hassle coding the payment processing for a web site, but even just a basic monthly subscription should be there if you want the product to become a sustainable business. Once something has been free, it's almost impossible to convince all users of the product or service that they should pay for it.

So that's the reasons for killing Journalong as a service so what next for Journalong? Well I did want to remove myself from managing a dead service, but I think there's still value to having a Markdown journal for your Dropbox. So, over the last couple of days I took the source code for Journalong apart and repackaged it as an open source Sinatra application that you can run on your own computer.

The great thing about this is that I can keep Journalong going at my own pace. Being open source I can make any changes I need or others need in my own time and accept changes from others.

Building and marketing products isn't for me. I prefer to be neck deep in code rather than marketing tools.

via FGGT photo by Father Tu

What was the last thing you discovered? I mean really discovered. Not just a link that you found interesting or an article that you thought was moderating intriguing — but a life-interrupting ‘uncovering of knowledge’ that immediately adjusted your lens on the world around you. When was the last time you had one of those discoveries?

— In Praise of Discovery by James Shelley

The amazing story of author Mark Dawson.

... well, according to Matthew Stibbe anyway.

Curtis McHale knows his limits when it comes to keeping up with the ever changing world of web technology.

It would be super easy for me to longingly dwell on the times when I could devote an entire weekend to learning something new. Really all that would do is make my time with my kids less enjoyable.

Maybe I’d even start resenting them for ruining my perfect weekends of yesteryear.

That’s lame. Instead I just let weekends be what they are and embrace the constrained environment. Because I can no longer dig into new things all weekend or work weekends I have to be more efficient with my time during the week.

— How I Keep Up With Web Technology by Curtis McHale

Faced with the chance of hacking away on my MacBook all weekend or spending time with my family, the latter would win each time. I'm past that stage of my career now where I'm always on the lookout for the next big thing in web technology. I know what's on the horizon in terms of technology, and for me that's enough.

via Cycle EXIF