Matthew Lang

Space, stairs, butter, motorcycles and slinkies.

And they say education is boring! I got my oldest to start reading these. He struggles with some of the words, but he gets the gist of the explaination.

Just over a year ago I noticed that working from home eradicated my need for two separate messenger style bags. In the past I've used a North Face bag for commuting to work on the bike and a Fossil bag for shorter journeys off the bike. The North Face bag is great for the bike but it is bulky, even when it's empty. My Fossil bag was over five years old at the time and was starting to show signs of wear and tear. I needed a single replacement for both.

I needed something that could take the volume I needed for errands on the bike but also be comfortable enough to sling on my back if I was visiting a client or working away from home and needed something to carry my MacBook and a few other things.

This time last year I took delivery of a new YNOT Gulper roll top backpack. I had my eye on the bag for a few weeks, but when I found out that it was on sale, I took the opportunity to buy it. Over the last year it's been my go to bag for biking and day trips for when I'm working away from home.

The roll-top style of opening means that the bag can effectively expand to carry a few more extra items or can roll back down for minimal loads. Two deep side pockets offer spacious storage for things like lights, locks and a tool bag and there's a front pocket for smaller items.

Over the last year this bag has proved itself time and time again. It's main use is as my go to bag for when I'm not working from home. I use it to carry my MacBook, a notebook, a smaller bag with a mouse, cables, and a few pens. I don't have a Swoop compatible laptop sleeve to clip my MacBook in but my own laptop sleeve offers enough protection.

It's secondary use is for running errands on the bike. I've taken to using my bike rather than taking the car, especially when the weather is good. The roll-top feature of this bag helps when I've got a lot to carry. In a matter of seconds I can expand the volume of the bag. I did initially have a concern about how much weight the back will take and while I have done a number of runs with the bag full loaded, it's thankfully still in one piece.

The Gulper has been rock-solid in its use as a bag for both on and off the bike and it's massive volume makes carrying even the biggest loads easy. With more biking planned for this year, it will be put through its paces again.

Lurvely!

via FGGT

Podcasts and screencasts can eat up a lot of time. I've started to see a swing towards listening to podcasts and watching screencasts and less time spent putting what I get from them into practice.

For the last year I've been a healthy listener of a variety of podcasts. They are centered around software development, programming and freelancing. Every week I listen to about five or six different episodes on these topics. While they're entertaining to listen to, I'm starting to see that I'm not getting as much value from them. Sure there's sometimes a glimmer of programming language knowledge that you didn't know about, but is it worth putting in a good half hour of your time for that one little morsel of knowledge?

Then there's the screencasts. I had a few of these going last year, again on the topic of software development. Screencasts definitely need more of your time as you can't watch them when you're out on the bike or in the car, they need you to both listen and watch. In terms of getting time to watch these, I simply didn't have the time available. And then every few weeks I would simply declare screencast redundancy and remove them from my list to watch.

Since removing these from my list of intakes I'm seeing more of a move towards reading online, books and RSS feeds. They can be more easily consumed on the go and using smaller blocks of time. This in turn has allowed me to spend a bit more time learning those things that I only listened to in podcasts or watched in screencasts.

Learning isn't simply about consuming as much information about the topic that you're interested in, you need time to apply what you have consumed and seeing if you can in fact you use it correctly. I hope to be doing that a lot more this year and re-address the balance of learning.

Minor setback this week as a couple of viruses knocked me and Jen out of contention for a couple of days. Last day and half has been me trying to get back on track with work.

Almost there.

I'm always reading about other topics in software development. Over the last few years I've read about web design, JavaScript, Ruby, agile methodologies and practices, Go and even Objective-C. Reading books on these topics has provided some insight into their respective topics but with the exception of Ruby and agile methodologies I haven't been able to take what I've read and use it in a practical exercise.

A couple of years ago I read about the Go language from Google. So I started reading a couple of books about it. Since then I haven't written more than one hundred lines of code in Go. Was that time spent reading about Go a waste? I think so.

More recently the Rust language has peaked my interest but I haven't started reading about it yet. I've been asking myself if there's something I can work towards using Rust that will let me learn the language. Using Rust in a practical use hasn't been something I've been able to come up with until a couple of days ago. There I was reading Hacker News over the weekend when I seen an article about writing a shell in C. Well, why not write it in Rust?

Building a shell in Rust should give me the chance to explore and learn the language but also give me the chance to try out something other than web development. I've been working with Ruby on Rails for over four years now and while I enjoy the work, I have been looking at a systems programming language to learn. We'll see how it goes.

I've noticed a lull in my posting frequency here. Towards the end of last year, my posting frequency shrank to just one or two posts a week.

Despite attempts to re-ignite the spark, I haven't been able to return back to that time when I was posting more frequently.

It's only in the last couple of weeks that I have noticed the source of the problem. It lies in the fact that I define each post I am writing as a single task.

Writing Isn't a Task

I've learned this the hard way. Since collecting all my writing ideas in Todoist, I've struggled with writing on a regular basis.

In Todoist I collected ideas as tasks and worked on them when I could. The writing process isn't simple case of hitting a word count and being done. It is for the first draft of anything you write but self-publication involves a continual loop of writing, reading and reviewing. It only ends when we feel that what we have written is ready to be published.

Instead of using Todoist, I'm going back to using Trello to mange my content funnel for the blog. From a list of ideas, I'm hoping to be able to gradually move cards across my board until they're ready for the blog. Writing is a process, not a task.

Writing Takes Time

Another hard lesson learned. In the past I would outline posts and write them on the day of publication. That might be okay if you have a couple of hours a day to review what you have written, but I don't have that time. I'm lucky to get an hour a day set side for this. So I need to use this time in a better way.

Rather than writing one post a day, I'm going to start writing parts of different posts each day. I might work on one or two posts, review another post and ready another post for publishing, but in no way should I be writing, reviewing and publishing in the one day. If I want to get the most from my writing then I need to give ideas and drafts more time to incubate.

Whether you're writing, reading, reviewing, editing or publishing, it's all starts with a simple habit of getting those words down on the page.

I'm hoping that by the end of the month, I'll be back to at least four posts a week. Let's see what happens.

via FGGT

Marco Arment provides a detailed breakdown of his sales figures for 2014 for his app Overcast. More interesting though is the benefits he mentions to being self-employed.

I can work in my nice home office, drink my fussy coffee, take a nap after lunch if I want to, and be present for my family as my kid grows up. That’s my definition of success.
— Overcast’s 2014 sales numbers by Marco Arment

Couldn't agree more.

In the past year I've read a number of different accounts of police using these harmful devices for raids. It boggles the mind that something so dangerous is availble to US police forces as well as being frequently mis-used.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit wrote in 2000 that “police cannot automatically throw bombs into drug dealers’ houses, even if the bomb goes by the euphemism ‘flash-bang device.’” In practice, however, there are few checks on officers who want to use them. Once a police department registers its inventory with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, it is accountable only to itself for how it uses the stockpile. ProPublica’s review of flashbang injuries found no criminal convictions against police officers who injured citizens with the devices.

Perhaps the most horrifying case of harm by these explosive devices though was the case of Bou Bou Phonesavanh.

Bou Bou was sleeping in a portable playpen at the foot of his parents’ bed when the Habersham County Special Response Team broke down the door to the room and threw a flashbang. The grenade landed on a pillow next to Bou Bou’s face. The blast blew a hole in his chest, severed his nose, and tore apart his lips and mouth.

— Hotter Than Lava by ProPublica

Perhaps the biggest problem though is the attitude that a militarized police force is necessary and keeps people safe. I don't see a problem with police officers carrying firearms in the US, they have done for years, but there is a problem with how much equipment is at their disposal and the lack of constraints in which they are allowed to use it.

Weapons like this belong in the hands of specialist armed forces only, not law enforcers.