Matthew Lang

The morning pages habit trundles on with my Moleskine Volant notebook filling up by the day. Some days it's easy to get started while other days it seems like a struggle. It shouldn't be like this.

Every year we visit Jennifer's family just outside of Toronto. The holiday usually revolves around shopping for the girls and golf for the boys, but on those days where we want to spend the time together as a group we sometimes head down to the lake. It's a great spot for a picnic and a walk, it lets the kids explore and of course there's that love of skimming stones. You spend a couple of seconds looking for a good stone and you throw. There's no concern about the quality of the throw, a few throws is all that's needed to get better. Also you know that once it's thrown that stone is gone forever. Well at least until it's washed back up back onto the shore again.

Your morning pages should be like this. Just writing, seeing where it takes you and never worrying about that writing coming back. It's an exercise to clear your mind and nothing more. Also it doesn't matter about the content of your morning pages. It's all for you. No-one else. Once it's written it can disappear from the eye of the public forever. Just like your little stone skimming across the water and disappearing, your morning pages can hide forever.

This morning I was stuck for something to write about, so I just started writing. Half a page in and it started to get easier. The next time I start my morning pages it won't be so hard to get started. I just need to remember it's just like skimming stones.

Curtis McHale dispenses seven tactics that help getting the balance right between work and life.

New technology doesn't always qualify as modern.

Do you remember Backpack? If you don't, it was a knowledge base web application where you could store notes, images, drafts, attachments and other gubbins. Since 37signals changed their name and focus to Basecamp, Backpack has been left to quietly sit on the sidelines. There was a time that I loved using Backpack but after a while I tried a few others. Overtime though nothing compared to the functionality that Backpack offered.

Frustrated, I've been looking for alternatives to Backpack. Here's a few I've tried in the last few days.

Trello

I use Trello mainly for managing clients projects but I do have a couple of other boards here that I use. I tried to create a board that would serve my needs as a knowledge base board but there's two dislikes I have about Trello. Sharing individual cards isn't possible unless you share the board the card belongs to and viewing a card on it's own has too much clutter.

FAQT

I signed up to FAQT when I first seen it on Hacker News a few weeks ago and initial impressions are good. Markdown based 'cards' that can be categorised and shared. Fulfills most of my needs as a knowledge base and there is a few features I would like to see but my biggest bugbear is that FAQT is currently free and therefore there's a chance the service won't be around forever.

DailyMuse

Lastly there's my own DailyMuse application. It's comprises of a collection of snippets with a single snippet being sent to you daily. It's nice for things like quotes and lists that I like to review periodically but as a knowledge base application it lacks a few features that FAQT has. For a while though DailyMuse has been trundling along as a micro-service with a very focused aim, but maybe it's time to turn that on it's head and make it into some more that appeals to more people. It would offer the same functionality that it offers today but would also include the ability to create and share information in the form of pages. It's an idea I've been thinking about but reluctant to act on.

There's probably more in terms of knowledge base applications out there that do the same thing, but to be honest I would rather be using an existing service for this rather than using another service and having more of my data spread out on the Internet.

The amazing story of a family living deep in Siberia without contact with the world for 40 years.

It was a clearing, 6,000 feet up a mountainside, wedged between the pine and larch and scored with what looked like long, dark furrows. The baffled helicopter crew made several passes before reluctantly concluding that this was evidence of human habitation—a garden that, from the size and shape of the clearing, must have been there for a long time.

It was an astounding discovery. The mountain was more than 150 miles from the nearest settlement, in a spot that had never been explored. The Soviet authorities had no records of anyone living in the district.

— For 40 Years, This Russian Family Was Cut Off From All Human Contact, Unaware of World War II
by Smithsonian

A little reminder that the Internet is simply a facade into people's lives. You need to actually know a person to know the life they lead.

What I share online only represents a tiny portion of my life. Sure, I live a pretty decent life, and really don’t have anything to complain about, but still — it’s not nearly as interesting as a lot of folks assume. And conversely, I’m sure a lot of folks I assume have an amazingly awesome, super interesting life are exactly the same.

— No one on the Internet is living the life you think they are
by Paul Jarvis

I can't wait to get through these. The great thing about these episodes is that they're all fairly short. Easy to watch while you're having a coffee break!

Pearls of wisdom from JavaScript laureate, Thomas Fuchs.

Don't follow the hype

Use what works for you. If you’re productive in PHP, by all means, use PHP. Of course, sometimes technologies come along that actually measurably increase productivity or have other huge advantages, but it can’t be overstated how few and far between those are — perhaps one or two happen in a decade.

— How to actually ship software that actually works
by Thomas Fuchs