Matthew Lang

I had that 'new bike itch' again, but despite the advances in lighter materials and better suspension, I'm still a hardtail die hard at heart.

I went out on my first mountain bike ride in a few months this week. It was great fun, I'm hoping to get out a lot more often now that I have more time and family life has settled down again. Our youngest is finally sleeping a lot better thanks to his new inhalers, my freelance career is steady and my bike came out the shop with a few much needed upgrades a few months ago. My bike is an On-One Inbred steel hardtail with mid-travel suspenion at the front. Steel has been a favourite of mine since I got my first mountain bike as a kid, a Kona Fire Mountain. I love the feel you get on the trail as you're riding. I have tried a couple of aluminium frames in the past but you can feel the harshness of these frames as you're riding. Every bump on the trails is transferred through the frame to you. When it gets bumpy you can feel it.

I've also tried a couple of 'hardcore hardtails' for more aggressive riding in the last few years. These bikes are great for downhilling, jumps, and bigger drops than your typical mountain bike could handle. Those days are long past me though. Hefting such weight about on the trail can take it's toll. I'm reaching my late thirties now and I don't have the stamina I had when I was younger, so when I want to get out and ride, I just want to ride. Which is why I eventually settled on the bike I did, a plain hardtail trail bike.

After talking to a friend about his new full-suspension bike, I got that 'new bike itch' again. So last night at 2am while our youngest was demolishing a bottle of milk, I started browsing for full-suspension bikes on my iPhone.

Having never owned a full-suspension bike, I've nothing to compare a hardtail to in terms of riding, but for the purist like me I think that they're more suited to more extreme trails. They have their advantages when setup correctly, even with the extra weight they carry (which is becoming less and less of an issue), they allow for faster lines absorbing all those bumps and roots in the trails that other bikes may opt to avoid. I'm not going to get into a debate with the rest of the mountain biking community over hardtails versus full-suspension, for me I do prefer a well built hardtail.

After 30 minutes of browsing the many online bike stores, one thing was clear to me. Full-suspension bikes are more expensive than their hardtail counterparts, but even aiming at the £1000 point there are few full-suspension bikes that would win me over. I'll admit it would be hard to get a decent full-suspension bike at this price point, going higher would definitely open up more options, but I couldn't realistically pay anymore than £2000 for a mountain bike. If I had a budget of £1500 I would definitely buy a hardtail every time. The simplicity of the setup is what sells it for me. A bike that you can simply ride anywhere. Yes it might not handle the more extreme trails in the Alps, or even the black routes at the trails centres across Scotland, but it will handle the 90% of my riding needs. Also at this point you can push the boat out to getting yourself a better than average bike in terms of components.

The new bike itch is still there largely in part to the changing sizes in wheels that bikes are available in. I think the 650B size will eventually become the more popular wheel size in general with a minority number of bikes coming in the 29" size.

I'm not ready to buy anything just yet, but when the time comes, I will definitely be looking towards the hardtail market again for a new bike. It's a proven design that has lasted for decades and hopefully will last for many more to come.

Communication is important when establishing a relationship with a potential client. It can be won or lost in just a couple of minutes.

We have an area in our front garden that is shaded for most of the day and the soil is terrible for growing anything in. For the last five years we've covered the ground with tarpaulin and gravel just to make it more presentable. It still looks bare though so I called a couple of landscape gardeners to come out and give me quotes to put a rock garden in to make the front of the house a lot nicer to look at.

The first landscape gardener that came out had a professional looking website with examples of his team's work. I started to explain the situation and what I had in mind. He agreed with everything I suggested and I mean everything. There were no suggestions or ideas from him not even a question about plants, colour of stone or anything else for that matter. The price he gave us was cheap but then he didn't give me the impression that there would be anything eye-catching about what he would produce. His lack of discussion didn't boost my confidence either.

The second landscape gardener arrived a few days later. I actually got his number from a neighbour and he's done a number of gardens in and around the area so it's easy to see his work. I told him my idea for the front and what suggestions he had. After taking a couple of minutes to look at the ground he said that he could do what I asked but he made a number of suggestions that would make the rock garden more natural looking as well as ensuring that the plants would grow with the right amount of drainage under them. The conversation went on for about 15 minutes until we both agreed what I was looking after. He couldn't give a price there and then as he said he would need to do some price checking to get the best deal. A week later and he called with a quote that was more than the first quote we got but still within our budget.

The second was different though. Conversation, engagement, sharing ideas and collaborating. He explained the options that I had, possible problems with solutions and even made a number of suggestions to improve the rock garden. This is why I will be going with the second landscape gardener. It was clear from our conversation that he had the knowledge and he explained exactly what he had in mind.

It was all in the communication. It was two way and simple. It's worth remembering that when talking to potential clients about project work to be honest and helpful in that first conversation. When other factors don't come into it, it might just hinge on that first conversation.

Tolerance is something that many of us were able to exercise before the Internet, now though it seems that tolerance has been cast aside and replaced with knee jerk reactions.

It's amazing how much lower our tolerance levels are as citizens of the Internet. As soon as something is wrong, the stage is set for an outpouring of protest. It could be thousands, hundreds or even one person reacting to an incident that otherwise would be considered harmless. With the option to broadcast our opinions though, we have become a generation of Internet users who are quick to scorn those who we consider to have done us wrong. I've already read a couple of these type of posts this morning and it's just gone past 11am.

Take for example the post I read this morning. A person complaining they are getting spammed from the service that they pay for. There's lots of ways to interpret this. Is it spam? Did they sign up to their 'marketing' list?

The person's response was to stop using the service and encourage others to follow. Have we become so intolerant that we're happy to jump from one service to another just because we got a marketing email from a company whose product we use? Okay, I agree the email may in fact be classed as spam and unwanted, but is it so bad that we should stop using the service altogether?

I've faced a number of situations in the last few months where I questioned the actions of a service provider I use.

The first case was Github's initial handling of a delicate situation involving one of their CEO's and a now ex-employee (they eventually followed up with a better response). Rather than going into the whole story, I just thought Github initially handled the situation wrongly. I wasn't happy with the way it was going. I wanted to take some action. Did I stop using Github? No. I did however downgrade my account and it continues to run on their free account.

Could I stop using Github altogether? No I can't and the reason why is that a number of my clients use Github so I still need to be able collaborate with them on Github and that means keeping my account. From an incident that I wasn't happy with, I was able to take some action without causing disruption to my workflow and clients. Since then I've found a nice alternative to Github called BitBucket. Sure BitBucket might do something bad in the future but I haven't completely discounted Github.

The second case was the appointment of Condoleezza Rice as a new member of the board for Dropbox. Now I've been a happy customer of Dropbox for a number of years now and yes I questioned the appointment but I just simply couldn't afford the time to spend looking for alternative cloud storage service that done everything I need it to. Also I like using Dropbox. I like using it alot. Am I really going give myself disruption by moving to another cloud storage provider?

Tolerating the decision in the long term with an eye to reviewing it in the future was the best solution I had. Compared to the first case, this isn't such a bad incident. Sure the new board member has a background in American politics that many might question, but it's not like Dropbox are just handing the keys over to someone else.

In both cases I questioned the actions of the service. Yes, the first reaction of many in each case is to stop using the service entirely, but then what happens when a similar action happens down the line with another service provider? Do I stop using them and move onto the next available service I can get? Hardly ideal given that I would eventually run out of adequate service providers to use and I would eventually end up with a tools and apps that at best meet half my needs. That's not what I want.

It’s amazing what prompts people to stop using a service or app. Even the smallest amount of inconvenience now seems to make people want to switch to something else. In the Internet world this is an initially easy thing to do, but in the real world it's not so simple.

There's a supermarket chain in the UK that has become something of a superpower in the amount of land it owns. This supermarket chain bought land in the centre of our town with plans to put a store there, however it has since put the plans on hold and now there's an eyesore of derelict land sitting unused in the centre of town. Hardly a benefit to the town. I choose to largely not shop at this chain now, but it's not always ideal. If I need something urgent then I wouldn't be against using the chain to purchase the goods that I need. Most of the time though I choose to shop elsewhere.

Back to the digital landscape that is the Internet though, and while you could move from one app to another there comes a point where you look back and think that the service you got from a provider wasn't so bad. When it comes to supermarkets, I choose to shop elsewhere when I can but it's not always ideal. Could you honestly say that you will stop using a specific service forever? I don't think I could.

If your level of tolerance is so low that you're prepared to switch from one service to another then eventually you're going to run out of options and have to consider one of those services that you couldn't tolerate in the past. Rather than letting knee jerk reactions guide your decisions why not be more tolerable of the mistakes that services make. They're run by humans therefore they're prone to the same mistakes that everyone makes. You just have to decide if that mistake has consequences that affect you or others. So what, they took a feature away or they had some downtime. Big deal, as long they are not harming yourself or others then where's the problem?

Nicholas Bate once again with advice on becoming wealthy

Hint: It's not about working your ass off.

The desire and willingness to create things that genuinely help people is the only business plan and personal brand you need. With this, you can get started today. No fancy website or business cards needed.

— My Personal Brand by Patrick Rhone

No mention of domain names, icons, or even social networks. It just takes the need to create and help others.

I'm glad I came back to using Instapaper when I did. They've just introduced a new UI and now you can also highlight sections from what you're reading.