Away But Not Forgotten
NB is off the grid for the moment, but Kurt Harden has a great place to start if you want to start reading some of NB's many great books.
Almost Additions to the Reading List
Just a few more e-books that I am considering purchasing or they're not released yet.
- Everyday Rails Testing with RSpec - I'm a big fan of MiniTest but I can't simply stick to one testing framework when clients come to me with a codebase using RSpec. The two testing frameworks are quite similar in syntax but they do have their differences so it would be good if I was more faimiliar with RSpec.
- Mastering Modern Payments Using Stripe with Rails - I've used PayPal in the past for taking payments, but it is footery to work with. I've heard nothing but good things about Stripe since they took off in US. Now that they're in the UK, now would be a good time to learn more about using Stripe with Rails.
- Learn to Run a Viable Business - Last but definitely not least is the book that I will be purchasing as soon as it comes out on the 27th. Curtis McHale, a blog hero of mine and a very knowledgable chap when it comes to freelancing, is putting together a book with advice to help make sure you are in fact running a viable business as a freelancer.
New Additions to the Reading List
Some additions to my current reading list involve a couple of new e-books that I have purchased recently.
- Brandiing by Adii Pienaar - Bought out of the curiosity of knowing if this book could help me on a couple of side projects but also if there's was a way of better branding myself.
- The Freelancer's Guide to Long-Term Contracts by Eric Davis - I'm still light on clients as a freelancer but I am busy. With the clients that I do have, I want to build more of long-term relationship with them rather than just walk on to the next client/project. I hope this book will help with this.
That's the problem with e-books. They're so damn easy to buy!
DuckDuckGo: A Retrospective
Since I went Google free, I’ve been using DuckDuckGo as my primary search engine. It wasn’t really the accumulation of your search history that made me move to DuckDuckGo. I just wanted to try something different.
That said, one of the key things that makes DuckDuckGo different from Google is that your search isn’t tracked. When you search on DuckDuckGo, you remain anonymous. I’m not too concerned about Google archiving my search history; I just wanted to reduce my Google search footprint and see less advertising on my search results.
I have noticed that the search results differ vastly from Google’s regarding the number of results. Google simply offers more results than DuckDuckGo. It is simple numbers. Google has been around longer and has had time to build the most popular search engine. However, I can find what I am looking for on DuckDuckGo most of the time. Where the results haven’t been successful on DuckDuckGo, I can append the !g operator on my search to tell it that I want to search Google. I don’t use this often now, but having it is nice.
A benefit of DuckDuckGo is that the search results can be ad-free. None at all. I love this. Search results that are just search results and nothing more.
You need to change this in the settings, but seeing a search engine give you this choice is refreshing. For a while, it seemed that Google was hell-bent on pushing as many ads down your throat as possible on a single page.
DuckDuckGo does offer a few extras to help with other tasks besides searching. Aside from the typical math calculations you can enter, you can also do the following:
- Expand shortened URLs with the expand command followed by the URL you wish to expand, e.g.
expand [bit.ly/a](http://bit.ly/a), which will show you the expanded URL on a search results page. - Search other sites for things, e.g.
on railswill search the Hacker News website for stories and comments containing ‘rails’. - Generate a password for an account. For example, ` password 15 strong` will generate a strong password of 15 characters.
DuckDuckGo also provides operators that you can use in your searches. It simply means that you can search through other sites right from DuckDuckGo. I use it often for searches on Amazon using !a and Wikipedia using !w. Couple these with searching DuckDuckGo from Alfred, and I have a fast and easy way of searching DuckDuckGo and other sites.
Since I started using DuckDuckGo, I’ve been impressed with its results and capabilities as a search engine. Every day, I learn new shortcuts and ways of searching. That means less mouse clicks for me and less time spent tracking down the search box on other websites. It’s flexible and fast and well worth checking out if you’re looking for an alternative to not just Google but also Yahoo and Bing.
Just a Nudge
Meet my son Ethan.
He loves playing golf. He's also quite good at it. He might not be the next big thing in golf, but he's better than most kids his age. He attends golf lessons for one hour a week and this year we even got him in as a junior member at a golf club in the area where most of his family play. A chance for him to meet other kids his age and also to get out onto a proper golf course for a change.
Now as parents we all want the best for our kids. It's natural. The best criteria though is interpreted different by different parents though. My interpretation is that I want my kids to be happy and do what they enjoy the most.
Me and Jen don't do the pushy parent thing. He plays golf when he wants to play golf. We don't make him practice for hours on end at home, nor do we make it his exclusive hobby. Just for variety he goes swimmming, plays tennis and wants to up upgrade his bike to a mountain bike for Christmas so that he can go mountain biking with me.
He also does all the usual things kids do, watches television, plays video games, plays outside with his friends and a whole heap of other things that kids are supposed to do (and sometimes not supposed to do!). Quite a good mix for any kid if you ask me.
I'm hoping that this no pressure approach to his golf gives him enough breathing space to be himself and not be put under pressure. He's still a kid and needs to experience his childhood. Sure we still give him a gentle nudge now and again, but that's all it is, a nudge.
Blog Heroes #4 - Curtis McHale
When I first started considering the idea of freelancing a couple of years ago, I started to subscribe to a number of blogs of already established freelancers. It was during this time that I discovered Curtis McHale and his excellent blog.
Currently based in British Columbia, Canada, Curtis writes openly about the trials and tribulations of freelancing, writing and products he's working on as well as family life and of course cycling. Just the right mix of categories I would say that almost mirror my interests.
His blog has become a valuable tool in my freelancing career. When I struggled at the start, Curtis provided some great advice for me during that first month and continues to do so today through his blog. I've even signed up for his new book on running a viable freelance business.
It's great to have someone like Curtis there, writing about his freelance career. He's proof that while freelancing is hard work, it's also very rewarding work if done correctly. And that's why I'll continue to read his blog on a daily basis.
I'm in my mid-thirties now. 36 years living on this blue marble in space.
In that time I've had bits of knowledge passed to me by my wife, my kids, my grandparents, my parents, my extended family, my friends, the schools and universities I have attended, the newspapers, magazines and books I have read, the films, television shows and screencasts I have watched, the countless blog posts I have read on the web, my carefully curated daily reading list, the podcasts I have listened to and even the places I have visited around the world.
I have and continue to learn new things almost every day. And that's a good thing, because where would the fun be in life if everyday wasn't a school day.
Fixie Friday - Neon Leader Kagero
My Ideal Bookmarking Application
I've been using Pinboard for sometime now for managing my bookmarks. I can't complain about the service. As bookmarking services go, it's the best out there. However, the other day I seen a screenshot of a private bookmarking service that someone else was using. This person will remain anonymous as they're trying to keep their own bookmarking application low key.
What I loved about the screenshot of their application though was the wealth of information available to you when you viewed a single bookmark from the collection. It contained list of bookmarks with similar tags as well as text from the link itself.
It got me thinking about Pinboard and what contextual information is offered when you are viewing a single bookmark.
Not a lot really. This isn't a complaint against Pinboard, it's a great service and one that I recommend, but it got me wondering about the type of information I would like to see relating to a particular bookmark on the same page.
Here's some things I managed to think of:
- What did I bookmark before and after this?
- What bookmarks do I have that are from this site?
- What bookmarks do I have that have one or more matching tags?
I wondered if I should be rolling my own bookmarking application. I'm a developer, and it sure wouldn't be a wasted project to do. I'm always on the look out for something to keep me practicing towards being a skilled developer.
I then wondered if there was anything else I would like my bookmarking application to do. Besides offering more information on a single bookmark, I would like to save notes, but I would like these notes to be written in Markdown and then rendered in nice HTML markup. I have a ton of notes written in Markdown that I have on my MacBook, but I would like them to be viewable on the web by only me.
I suppose my ideal is bookmarking application is more than just for bookmarking. It would be for notes, clips, images and notes. Evernote I hear some of you cry! Yes, I could do all this in Evernote, but that's not the point of this. It's about my ideal bookmarking application, and it doesn't exist ... yet.
On my recent trip to Toronto to visit my in-laws, I noticed something on the flight as we flew over the Atlantic Ocean and into Eastern Canada. Almost no-one was looking out the window. As I got up from my seat to stretch my legs for a walk down the aisle, I looked about the rows of passengers on the flight. Each row contained at least two people with tablets or laptops in their hands with the majority of people left tuned into the on-board movie.
I know that not everyone is blessed with window seats, but the majority of people within the vicinity of a window were not even looking out of the window. During a couple of trips to the back of the aircraft over the course of the flight I noticed that very few people took the opportunity to look out the window. A missed opportunity in my book.
There are some parts of flying that I don't enjoy like queues, security checks and of course the waiting to board, but the one part that I do enjoy is the views from the aircraft. It's a rare opportunity to see the world from the highest point most of us can get to. Only a select number of people around the world manage to make it to higher altitudes like some military pilots, astronauts and of course Felix Baumgartner.
I remember flying to Las Vegas from Toronto a number of years ago and seeing the changing landscape of the American Midwest below us. Having only really flown trans-atlantic flights before, the new landscape was amazing to see. It was startling to see the change from urban sprawl to grassy pastures and then onto mountains and desert.
Flying is also one of the few remaining places where many of us can disconnect from the digital world. I know that some airlines are offering wifi on their flights, but given the choice I would rather fly without wifi. Free from email, social networks and other distractions online, flying is a great opportunity to reflect, catch up on some reading or simply appreciate the view.
For a lot of people air travel doesn't have the same wow factor that it had in the past. Perhaps they've flown so many times, they've simply become acustom to not looking out the window as they have seen it all before. Maybe they're simply not interested in the world below.
With the increased availability of technology on flights perhaps it's time to consider a windowless airplane. Very few people look out of the window these days anyway. I hope it never comes to that, as I do enjoy the view looking down from the skies.