Matthew Lang avatar

Matthew Lang

Family guy and web developer

I've been without my iPhone for a week now. It's amazing how many things you miss when a single device can do so much.

It's been seven days now since I turned off my rather erratic iPhone 5. Due to a hardware fault with the screen, it phones people in my contacts, looks for voice commands I've not given and in general was just becoming a nuisance. The phone is out of contract and warranty. With a new iPhone 6 coming in the next couple of weeks, it was false economy to fork out the money for a replacement device. The last week without an iPhone has been an eye-opener.

I always hear people ask what did we do before the smartphone arrived. To be honest, we probably did a lot of the same things we do today, however the arrival of the smartphone has allowed many people to do different things with just the one device. Aside from the interruptive nature of smartphones and many people's persistence in being glued to their device, they are in fact amazing little devices. Regardless of your choice of operating systems from the big three of Apple, Google and Microsoft, it can't be said that smartphones aren't useful. In the last week I've had a real chance to see what aspects of my life are influenced by it.

I start the day with my alarm clock going, or in fact the alarm on my iPhone. I've been using the alarm on my phone for a few years now. Without it to wake me up, I've resorted to using my wife's phone to wake me in the morning. Before taking our oldest son to school I also usually flick through my RSS subscriptions with Unread. I do this just about every morning. Just a quick scan to see what's new.

One thing I have missed is the phone and messaging capabilities of my iPhone. Arranging for clients to get in contact with me is now a list of places where I might be available at certain times of the day. They can get me on iMessage, HipChat, Skype and email on my MacBook and we have a landline number that they can reach me on during normal working hours during the day. I now try and work from home rather than working from a cafe as it's easier for clients to get in contact with me.

These are the essentials parts of my phone that I truly miss having. Each has a fall-back plan to keep me going, but the loss of the convenience of the smartphone is something that's been hard to adjust to. These are the essentials, but what else is there that I miss doing?

I love taking pictures with my phone. Having the facility to snap a nice picture during a bike ride, the kids mucking about or even the latest attempt at cooking in the kitchen. Preserving these moments with images is great to do.

It's not a massive priority but participating in the social network of your choice is something just about everyone does. Staying in contact with family, friends and followers on different networks lets you connect to others in a way we couldn't before. I don't mind the hit on things social networks like App.net but it I do use Path a lot for staying in touch with family.

Logging. No, not the timber kind, the geeky, self-improvement kind. Logging tasks, actions, goals, journal entries, images, bookmarks, ideas and all that other stuff. I do this a lot with my phone. It is perhaps the one action that I do the most on my phone.

Lastly there's reading. I do a lot of reading on my Kindle, but there are times during the day where I might sit for five minutes and read a couple of things on Instapaper. The convenience of having a reading list on hand is great when you've got a few minutes to kill.

These are the non-essentials things I like to do on my phone. While my world won't stop if I don't do these things, they do make a degree of contribution to different aspects of my life. Of all these I think I miss having a camera on hand the most.

It is only for a couple of weeks more though, but what the past week has taught me is that there's only so many things that you can do on a phone and that there are apps I had installed in the past that I didn't use and therefore won't need them on my new phone. Also there's parts of the day where I enjoy not having a phone. I definitely need to tuck away my phone in the morning and in the evening. The only time should be on my phone is doing any of the actions I mentioned above and when I'm not in the company of others. Hopefully this will be easier to follow through with a little break from the magic little glass box.

I Voted No to Independence

Today is a big day. Not just for us Scots but for the rest of the UK as well. From that last sentence you're probably assuming that I will be voting no in today's independence referendum and you would be right. In fact I've already gone and cast my vote this morning after dropping my oldest off at school.

I haven't been convinced by the yes campaign's argument that Scotland will be richer on its own. No one can foretell what will happen if Scotland becomes independent. The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry. What I do know however is that I've lived in a country that's been part of a union for my whole life and for over 250 years before that.

Ever since I was old enough to know about politics and the prime minister, I've seen the effects that the government's decision can have on the countries they serve. Growing up in Scotland during Margaret Thatcher's time as prime minister brings back lots of bad memories from headlines in newspapers and the televised news. The backlash against the Conservative government at the time was evident everywhere. Newspapers and conversations were the main source of information and criticism. For a while it seemed that no one in Scotland liked the Conservative government that was in power at the time.

It was during this time that many Scots started to hold a contempt for politicians, especially Conservative politicians. That contempt for Conservative politicians is still around today. A lasting scar from the days of Margaret Thatcher. It's something that many people today are clinging too as their main reason for voting. They want to secure a future for Scotland that won't have Conservative government again. That's not a reason to vote. A reason to vote yes is that you firmly believe that Scotland can make it as an independent nation. You believe that a yes vote for Scotland is the best way forward. The yes campaign for me has become a campaign against the current government rather than a campaign about what an independent Scotland could achieve. And that's not the message that I would want to hear if I was considering voting yes.

So why am I voting no then?

Today I count myself very lucky. I have a flourishing career as a freelance web developer, my family have a home to live in that we can call our own and my kids have untold opportunities ahead of them. We're doing good. I've had my fair share of bumps in the road of life including three job redundancies but each time I've managed to find a new job. Some might call it luck, others determination. Whatever you want to call it I think we're doing well under the current government and the previous governments that we have had before.

Maybe I'm being cautious about the independence vote by voting no and I know that in my heart I would love to see Scotland flourish on it's own. That's when my head clicks in with a reminder that there are so many unanswered questions about being independent. I don't have all the answers and neither do the politicians. What I do know is what I know now, what I've always known. And it's working for me and my family.

I'm proud to be Scottish, but I'm also proud to be British. And that's why I voted no.

I really need to learn to say no.

I've been freelancing for over 18 months now. It has brought a new sense of freedom to my career but at the same time I've had to become more disciplined. Every morning I have to get up, check in with clients, work, find clients, work, invoice clients and yes, work. It has been this same cycle for 18 months now and while it provides a good income for me and my family to live on, I am beginning to question how much longer I can carry on this cycle.

The last six months in particular have seen me working flat out. I have days now where I simply close the lid on my laptop and leave the desk, glad that I don't need to see another line of code for at least 15 hours. At the end of those days I am exhausted. Mentally drained from the amount of work I've had to do in a limited amount of time. It's what a hard days work should be, but it's becoming repetitive.

At this rate, I'll be grudgingly opening my laptop in the morning. It's not how I envisioned this to be. I knew there was going to be hard work involved at the start, but I didn't think I would be working this hard for this amount of time. It feels like I've lost a sense of freedom with my freelance career.

Fed up with the five day week, I decided at the start of the year to stop accepting freelance work on a Friday and give myself time to work on my own things. It has not gone according to plan. Some Fridays I have a meeting, some Fridays I work to catch up on and other Fridays I have meetings and work.

The four day week clearly isn't working, but that's partly because I end up making myself available on Fridays.

Another plan for the future is to perhaps schedule one week off every eight weeks. I'm not sure at the moment that this will be any better than working just a four week but it is an option.

With a bit more control on work commitments I should be able to get my Friday back and start working on my own projects again. It's definitely long over due and would afford me a bigger gap between each working week.

Decision Making with Spikes

Big decisions are often fraught with risk. Sometimes though the only way to make the right decision though is to test the options first.

For the last few months I've been working on a CMS application for a client that has been steadily growing in size. We both agree that there will come a time where we will need to make some decisions about the design of the application so that it remains easy enough to maintain and develop but also scales up with the client's expected growth for the next few years.

It's something we've both been putting off for some time now, but with more projects and clients appearing in the client's pipeline, we've decided that now is the right time to start making these decisions.

The problem has always been though that if we make the wrong decision we end up too far down a path that we don't want to be. Backtracking might not be an option and working towards a different solution is something that we don't want to end up doing either.

The answer to this dilemma has been surprising simple. For each technical decision we have to make, we have a number of options that we can consider. Rather than analysing and committing to the most attractive option (in theory anyway), we have decided to take a day and implement that option in a single day to see where we get to. If by the end of the day, we're still happy that we've made the right decision, then we continue on with this option. If we're starting to have doubts, we abandon the option and try something else.

Software developers will recognise this concept as a spike. This is the idea that you carry out enough work to recognise the risks and knowledge that are associated with change in design or functionality. The spike gives the developer the chance to find out the risk and complexity involved in such a change. With the information, developers can provide better estimates for these changes or completely rule out a change.

The spike is a great way to ensure that you limit risk from a decision without committing to that decision. It will involve some time to determine if the option you are spiking is worth pursuing, there's no getting around it. However it is better to invest some time in pursuing the right decision rather than blindly committing to the wrong decision is it not?

Death of the Watch?

Apple's addition of a smart watch to their product line is a sign that smart watches are definitely here for a while but is it too early to be calling time on watches?

A few people have mentioned that smart watches will kill the watch. I think it's a little too early to be making that statement.

The smart watch is still new in terms of technology. We've had attempts at smart watches in the past, some good, some bad, and there will be a few more iterations on what makes a good smart watch. That is until companies all meet at that point where they all agree sub-consciously agree on the design template for a smart watch. There will be a few more years yet before we get to that stage where we know that the smart watch will just work for us.

Then there's the technology aspect of the smart watch. It does so much more than a regular watch does, but do you want it to do that? Despite the fact I've had smart phones for over five years now and they've all been able to tell me the time, I still wear a watch. I like wearing a watch. It means I can keep my phone in my pocket when I need to know what time it is. If I didn't wear a watch I would probably have my head buried in phone everywhere I went. As soon I would check the time on it, I would leave it out and read it until I got bored. Thankfully I don't do this thanks to single purpose of the watch. It just tells the time.

I also don't want another device in my house that requires charging on a daily basis. I wouldn't say my house is brimming with technology but we have our fair share of gadgets in the house. A couple of smart phones, a tablet, a laptop, a Kindle, a games console and a couple of televisions. Maybe slightly less than most people but it's something I've tried to keep a cap on. The Kindle is great as it only requires charging every two or three months and only needs an hour to be fully charged. Adding a smart watch to this mix is not something that appeals to my environmental side. I'd rather have a watch that required a single small battery every couple of years than having to charge my smart watch on a frequent basis.

We've seen these statements before about technology phasing out tried and tested ways of doing things in the past.

Remember when Amazon launched the Kindle? Lots of people made predictions that books would be phased out in favour the new digital books. As convenient as a Kindle is though, sometimes a book is definitely better. It requires no power to read the book, it's just as portable and there's that great feeling of scribbling notes in the sidelines. Thankfully today there are still a healthy number of book stores around and they're filled with books. The death of the book? Not yet, which makes me wonder if making statements about the death of the watch is just technology fans getting ahead of themselves.

The smart watch does herald a change in the way we can carry technology about with us. We have another small window to look at when we're out and about seeing the world, meeting people and making experiences. That can still be done with or without a smart watch. For me, I'll be casting my eye towards the traditional mechanical watches for my next timepiece purchase. They're less intrusive, more reliable and cheaper to run over time and besides, I can do everything I need with my smart phone, right?