Matthew Lang avatar

Matthew Lang

Family guy and web developer

Plain and Simple Bookmarking

I seem to have a love/hate relationship with bookmark managers. I like using them yet I find faults in each one and end up disliking them. Can I find plain and simple bookmarking service that let's me just search?

Bookmarking services. I've used a fair number of those in my time. Remember Delicious? Those were good days. I do and since then I've tried a number of different services including Google Bookmarks, Pinboard, and I even tried to roll my own bookmarking service a couple of times. Each time I tried something new though it felt like it was just over the top.

I never wanted to manage a collection of separate bookmarks, I just wanted a somewhere I could store them and find them. How they got there wasn't the problem, it was how I found them that mattered. Lots of bookmarking services tagging as a way of grouping your bookmarks, but do we need to tag our bookmarks if they can already be found with a good search facility?

You might have noticed a new addition to the blog in the last few weeks. At the top of the page beside the main navigation links there is a search box that you can use to search my blog. This isn't a feature of the blogging software I use, this is an external service called Searchpath. It indexes the content of your static site and gives you a plugin for your site that let's you search on your site's content. I've been using this for a couple of months now and the results of the searches have been good. Anytime I've needed to find something, I can using the simple JavaScript widget that sits at the too of my site.

After a couple of weeks of using this I wondered if it could also index other pages. Pages of bookmarks perhaps?

So last week I finally got my collection of bookmarks out of a database and converted them to markdown files grouped by the month they were created in. From here I then set up a page on my site that listed each months worth if bookmarks. You can find this new archive here.

How I add to this collection is simple. In my toolbar I have a couple of bookmarklets. One coverts the URL to the page to a markdown link and the other converts the entire page to markdown. I use the link bookmarklet to get the link for the page I want to bookmark and copy it to the clipboard.

I keep the this months file open on my desktop using the wonderful Marked application. If I need to add a bookmark, I simply press the edit shortcut key in Marked and my markdown file appears in my editor. Once I have my bookmark file open I simply append the new bookmark to the bottom, add any notes and save it.

The last part is the indexing of these bookmarks. Searchpath looks for links in site and follows them through to find pages to index. I'm interested to see how this change to my bookmarking routine works out. It's taken me to now to realise that I don't need things like tags, favourite bookmarks or even grouping bookmarks by a collection. I just need a place that allows me to search through them when I want to.

Back on the Course

Yesterday was such a glorious day in terms of weather. An ideal day to get Ethan back out on the golf course. Unfortunately the course is still a bit damp from the last couple of weeks of rain but hopefully it will dry out soon.

Teeing off at Lexwell

Logitech K811: A Review

It's been a month now since I started using the Logitech K811 keyboard. The reason I made the switch was that my old Apple keyboard was getting rather old. Five years is a long time for a keyboard, in fact it's probably the longest time I've ever owned a keyboard. As a result the keys on the keyboard were sticking and one of the keys needed a fair amount of beating before it would register the key press. I needed a new keyboard.

Two things the new keyboard had to do. Be OS X compatible and wireless. Anything else after that is a bonus. After looking at a number of different keyboards I filtered this down to a number of keyboards from Logitech. In the past I had a Logitech keyboard when I worked as an ERP developer. This was a great keyboard, so I started to look at the rest of Logitech's range. The K811 stood out for a number of reasons.

My Logitech K811

The keyboard itself is light and while it doesn't exactly match the build quality of my Apple keyboard, it has been sturdy enough for every day use. The top of the keyboard has a plastic backing while the rest of the keyboard has a nice aluminium finish. It's a shame the aluminium finish doesn't extend to the whole of the keyboard. There is also a greater degree of flex in the K811, but then that it would take a great amount of pressure to snap the keyboard this way.consists of an has a small profile. The K811 is thin and doesn't have as steep an angle as the Apple keyboard. Looks wise it's definitely up there with my old keyboard.

The keyboard can be charged using a USB cable. This is good but in the last month I've had to charge the keyboard three times. This maybe partly because I've left the keyboard on when I leave my desk. If I turned it off when I wasn't using it then it would probably extend the life of the battery between charges. I'm not going to worry too much over this though as it does mean that I don't need to replace the batteries for it.

Another nice feature of the K811 is that you switch between multiple devices at the touch of a button. With my iPad almost unusable (long story), I haven't used this feature although when it comes to getting a new iPad, it's good to know that I'll be able to switch between my iPad and my MacBook if I need to.

The last thing that I like about the keyboard is the backlit keys. My hours of work can vary from day to day and during these dark winter nights it's been good to know that my keyboard is easier to see when I'm working late with just my desk light on.

The only real gripe I have with the K811 is that the connection to my MacBook cuts out about once a day. I've searched the support forums on Logictech for a resolution to this but I've yet to find one. The connection does come back after a few seconds, so I'm not going mark this as a big drawback to the keyboard.

Other than that the K811 has been a great keyboard to use so far and is definitely a worthy replacement to my old Apple keyboard. It's more expensive than an Apple keyboard and maybe not worthy of the price difference but I was happy to fork out the money to get something that would work for me on a daily basis and offer a little bit more than other keyboards do.

On a day to day basis I'm providing a service to my clients based on the programming languages I use. In time though these programming languages will fall out of favour with clients and I'll no longer be attractive as a freelance service. What can I do to change this?

My one year old son Drew is trouble. I thought my oldest son who is now seven was trouble, but he's nothing compared to the mayhem that is his younger brother. Drew loves exploring round the house, hiding in corners and inevitably getting himself into trouble. If there's something he wants within his reach, he'll try and get it. Now I could move everything that he shouldn't be touching out of his reach but that just isn't possible in our house. We still have to live. So for the moment, we'll put up with Drew's antics until he is older to recognise right and wrong.

Watching him running around the house and raiding cupboards, drawers, my desk and anywhere else he can reach is nothing more than him exploring his environment. It's healthy for him to do this. He's a growing toddler. I wouldn't expect anything less from him.

As I watch though I realise he's doing something. In each case he'll try and grab something he wants. When we tell him no, he runs off and tries to find something else. When we say he can have what he is trying to grab, his faces lights up as he's found some new artefact that he hasn't seen before. It's exploring on a micro scale. It's his way of testing the boundaries. He doesn't know what is right and wrong and so he tries in his own way to see what he can and can't get. It's a hit and miss method for him.

As a freelancer I have a small number of services that I offer based on the trend of safe technology that is available in software development. I work with Ruby for a number of reasons. It's become a popular language with many markets and their's plenty of work out there for those looking for it. In a career where the technology landscape changes on a yearly basis , should I be banking on this safe language for the future?

Ruby was the last language that I invested anytime in. Back when I first read about it during my .NET days I was in fact reading about this new framework called Ruby on Rails. I think I first read about Rails in 2005 but it would be another three years before I decided to start learning about the Rails framework and in turn the Ruby language. Since then I've rarely invested any time in learning a new programming language other than the fringe languages and frameworks that are part of the Ruby and Rails communities.

The reason I haven't done this since then is that I don't want to waste time investing in a programming language that doesn't start to become mainstream. Why be afraid of investing some time in a new programming language though? The technology world changes on such a fast pace that it's impossible to predict when that next killer language will appear.

Just like my son though I need to start testing my own boundaries and explore the programming language world around me. It will be a hit and miss experiment for sure. Over time though, I should have invested enough time to familiarise my self with a number of different languages. It's at this point I can then decide if any of these languages are right for me to consider as an extra service that I can offer to clients.

It's been far too long a time not exploring another programming languages. It's definitely time to test my boundaries and see what is happening out there. Sticking to a safe programming language is easy to do, but there will come a point in time where I will need to pick up a new programming language out of necessity rather than choice. It's at this point where I would like to have the experience of already picking up new programming languages and reducing the friction in learning it.