Matthew Lang

I gushed over the new Kindle Paperwhite when it was released a few weeks ago, however after reading Scott Hanselman's review of it, I'm glad I've not been able to buy one yet.

It's fine. OK, it's "fine." But let's be serious for a second. Every technology site is gushing about this device. They're saying this is the e-reader to end all e-readers. It's glorious, it's perfect. Friends, it's not. And this is from a Kindle Fan.

— Amazon Kindle Paperwhite 3G WiFi Review by Scott Hanselman

Read the rest of Scott's review if you're considering the Paperwhite. Scott goes into more details than many of the so-called technology sites.I can see me holding on to my Kindle Keyboard for as long as it's serving up my books. I too like the physical buttons for page turning and the keyboard does come in handy for taking notes on books (which I do a lot of). I don't know how I would get on with a button-less Kindle.

Nicholas Bate gets us geeks. It's a shame that others don't.

Organisations love to use the term geek in a derogatory manner. Often dismissive. Often excluding. And yet when we have a problem be it IT, medical or simply plumbing we would love to have access to a geek. A person who is so good that they understand the simplicity the far side of complexity. They look at the problem and they know what to do.

— Instant Business Speak 38 - Geeks by Nicholas Bate

This type of riding by Martyn Ashton would sure as hell shake up the Tour de France if it had a trials stage. Maybe we need a stage like this to combat the dopers? After all, you can't get bike skills like this through doping.

via BikeRadar

How appropriate for today's massive tech companies.

Rode to work on the fixie this morning. I would have preferred drier roads this morning, but the Scottish weather gods demand that our country gets rain for most of the year.

I am looking forward to more autumn mornings like this where I can walk the boy to school and then jump on the bike to the office, taking the back roads for a leisurely cycle. It won't last long though, winter is just round the corner, and with it comes a new set of riding challenges.

It's been good getting back on the bike, just riding about.

This post has it all. Tolkien, words stats and a smattering of programming fu.

Nicholas Bate's Instant MBA is now free on Amazon.

Read it.

... with Nicholas Bate.

The trick, I think, is to make a better shared space for a remote/local team than the physically shared space they already have. A space that is just as fluid, fun, and useful as a physical space and
available anytime, everywhere is more compelling because it affords its occupants (aka team members)
more hours in their day (no commuting, flexible hours) and permits all sorts of non-traditional work locations (coffee shops, trains, sofas at home, a summer trip to Europe).

— A Better Shared Space by Adam Keys

Locking in your team to a particular time and place is a real constrain on getting the most from them. And it's not just about location and time. The way your team communicates over different locations and timezones is just as important.

Given the vast number of SaaS products on the market that allow teams to manage projects, clients and meetings, why do teams and companies find it so difficult to let go of the traditional "everyone in the office between 9 and 5"?

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

... a Blog Readership. Hats off to Dan Shipper for a great post on blogging. Definitely today's required reading.

... is coming fast and freelancing is on the rise as a result. Interesting.

So the real business opportunities are in enterprise solutions we’re told but no one is building for enterprise. Why is that you ask? Well the title gives it away, it’s not sexy.

— Of Cours People Aren't Building for the Enterprise, It's not Sexy by Curtis McHale

Of course no-one finds the enterprise sexy, exciting, cutting edge or anything like that. Also the vast sums of money needed to build enterprise products is also a road block. Attracting new developers and businesses to build enterprise products is quite a challenge. I've always wondered what a ERP product built using Rails would perform like.

Anyone need an ERP product built using Rails? I've got the time, if you have the money.

... with Nicholas Bate.

Essential reading for today. Make sure to set aside some time for this. And Happy Birthday Patrick!

Golf ... more golf ... and even more golf. Ryder Cup weekend begins today and me and my oldest son are going to be glued to the television cheering on Rory, Graeme and the rest of the European team.

These Bombtrack bikes are fantastic. Especially love the curve on the seat tube.

via PEDAL Consumption

One thing that has continually bugged me about the Journalong journal entry screen is the social widgets that I put on there. They serve no other purpose than to inform the user about how popular Journalong is within each social network. When you are about to write your daily journal entry, the last thing you want to see is the tweet count for Journalong.

I also believe it's a pointless measure of success and amounts to nothing more than a popularity poll. I'd like to think that the customers Journalong is attracting, base their decision to subscribe on getting value from a plain text journal they can write to from anywhere.

So last night I removed the social widgets from Journalong and it's already looking like a much nicer place now.

I wants one of these ...

29" wheels and a double chain ring at the front. Ticks all my boxes.

via shedfire

... The Big Paper Exercise with Mike Vardy.It's amazing how often the lo-fi techniques that require just pencil and paper are so much easier to do than their digital counterparts.Definitely giving this a go over the weekend.

Firefighting. I've been doing this for most of the last three weeks. It's the onslaught of unforeseen tasks and issues that take you away from the work you had planned to do. It's the ad-hoc requests and "emergency" problems that try to rob you of a productive day.There's nothing less motivating than firefighting most of your time at work and gradually seeing those deadlines slip again and again and again. Thing is, too much firefighting can be averted in most scenarios. Here's a few tips which I found quite good. It's mostly common sense, but I sometimes lack this human trait!

• Identify the source of your firefighting - First of all make sure you know where all your firefighting issues are coming from. The most important step. More likely it's a single person or organisation than a random number of people or organisations.
• Filter all incoming fires - Make sure to route all firefighting issues to the right person. As a developer, I'm often mistaken as the "go to guy" for a particular project or software. In reality, these issues should first go to someone else first, before they come to me.
• Schedule time for firefighting issues - Once the issues have come in, block off some time later on in the day or week for dealing with these issues. It should be a maximum of two hours per day. Spending too much time on firefighting issues is counter-productive and a real motivation killer. Believe me, I've been there.
• Think about a long term solution - Firefighting should be a short term phase. You shouldn't allow this to be come part of your daily work. When resolving issues of this natrue, ask yourself "could this happen again?". If the issue probably will, then think about a long term solution that will stop the issue continually coming back to you.

Most firefighting work is work that we can put off for a later part of the day or week.​ Don't let your day go to pot with putting out fires.

I wish I read this list by Michael Wade last week when I was at my wits end with an issue at work. I probably shouldn't have sent the email, but I did anyway. As soon as I read point three, I knew I shouldn't have sent that email.

3. Are you so upset that you shouldn't be near a computer? Don't e-mail when angry.*

Twitter's third party app lockdown continues with the removal of Twitter Triggers from IFTTT. I think the only way for Twitter to go from here is downwards. With it's focus on advertising, Twitter in my eyes is just another Facebook.

via The Verge

I wish I had a local spot like this for some leisurely cycling.

via FGGT

So, far its been good; most apps I use are web apps. I spend 70% of my time in a terminal, and 30% of my time in a web browser. Honestly its the perfect computer for me right now. So, I’m waving goodbye to the ecosystem Mr. Jobs built, and moving to the world of linux full time.

— Thanks Mr Jobs, but it seems I can use my Linux laptop now by Hyper Geometric

It's hard not to argue that Apple products are great. I particularly like my iPad and tomorrow I'll pick up my new iPhone. As for my main development machine at home though, I've started looking at using Ubuntu on an old PC. So far, I've only installed the minimum development tools I'll need. I'll be able to give a more fuller review on using Linux. Stay tuned!