Matthew Lang

Amazing work here for the movie. I particularly like the foldable spear.

via Ian Dick

via YES BIKES

A reminder from Derek Sivers that you need to continually do the work to earn that title.

By using a title without still doing the work, you fool yourself into thinking future success is assured. (“This is who I am!”) That premature sense of satisfaction can keep you from doing the hard work necessary.

— Keep earning your title, or it expires by Derek Sivers

The world is going gaga for mobile apps. They are seen as the most accessible form of software and the market for them has moved at a considerable pace. The only problem with mobile applications is that only the bigger companies can usually afford to have their apps available on each of the different mobile platforms. This isn’t a problem for the web though.

For me the web is still the most accessible and reliable platform for applications there is. Using just a single interface (your browser) you can access millions of products and services. Here are a few I use every day to help with my web development work.

Github

Despite a flutter with BitBucket it’s hard to move away from Github. Their product is delivering features on a steady basis and just about every developer has a profile there. The Github community is growing and with more organisations making Github the home for their projects it has become the goto place for sharing code and projects.

Trello

For project management with clients, I like to use accessible and visual tools. Trello fits the bill in both respects. Their Kanban style boards are great for getting an over view of a project and the ability to include checklists, attachments and comments makes it a great collaboration platform for myself and my clients.

Heroku

In the last year I’ve reduced the number of SAAS platforms I’m using down to just Heroku. Gone is my Linode and Cloud66 accounts and replaced with Heroku. For my own projects it’s the ideal platform. I always recommend it to clients who are just starting out with a new project. I’ve moved a number of my own Rails applications to here and now use it exclusively for all my web app hosting needs.

Highrise

My CRM of choice. For a long time I got by on just using an address book, but in time I started to see the need for something more sophisticated than an address book. I needed a tool to record emails with clients, their details and important projects.

I use Highrise on a daily basis and find that it’s ability to send emails to Highrise means that I’m not only collecting my clients information there but also important emails communicating between myself and my clients.

Freeagent

Finally there’s FreeAgent. Still the best invoicing and time tracking solution for freelancers and although I’ve been using it for over three years now, I’m still learning more about it everyday. I’m not using it to it’s full potential at the moment but I am hoping to make better use of it as the year goes on.

Desktop apps are my main tools when it comes to web development. A browser, a terminal and an editor. That’s the absolute minimum applications that I would need to do a days work but there are a few more desktop apps that I also use to help get a good days work done.

iTerm2

My terminal of choice hasn’t changed but what has changed is that I’m now back to using iTerm built-in pane management rather than using tmux. Most days I tend to just have two terminals open side-by-side and that’s all I need. Tmux is a great option if you need more control over your terminals AND you run an editor like Vim but for me it was overkill.

Sublime Text 3

The last time I wrote a post like this Vim was my goto editor for coding. Despite sticking with it for over a year and I eventually switched back to using Sublime Text. I also had a brief spell as well with Atom but I prefer using Sublime Text. It’s what I’m most comfortable with.

Safari

I also switched browsers and moved back to using Safari for browsing and as my preferred browser for building and testing Rails applications. Open source it isn’t, but it’s a solid browser and the ability to sync tabs between different devices is a feature I use frequently. I still use Firefox but more as a secondary browser.

Dash

Not an essential tool but something I’ve come to rely on heavily over the last year. Dash is a document browser and code snippet manager. I don’t use the code snipper manager but the ability to lookup the docs for the different frameworks and programming languages I use makes my day a lot easier. It also negates the need to do frequent searches online.

1Password

Probably my most valuable piece of software. Secure, easy to use and makes handling your passwords a lot easier. I'm also using 1Password for families to allow my wife and son to handle their own passwords. So far it's working well.

Slack

Last year I was a big HipChat user, but the pull to Slack and it's growing set of features was difficult to ignore. Starting with a couple of clients, I gradually made the migration across and now use Slack exclusively as my online meeting point with clients.

Ethan had a fun night at Paisley Golf Club with the rest of the kids that get coaching there on the Friday night. Hats off to Andy Carlton and Claire-Maire Macauley for putting on a great event and bringing all the kids together. No prizes for Ethan but he did score quite well in the putting.

Twinged my back early on Saturday morning which ruled out any work I was going to do in the garden that day. That was nothing though compared to Sunday morning when I completely put my back out and put out any plans we had for the day. A visit to the out-of-hours GP got me some pain killers. My back is on the mend today after a treatment of physio this morning and I'm going back on Wednesday for more treatment.