Matthew Lang avatar

Matthew Lang

Family guy and web developer

Just a Nudge

Meet my son Ethan.

Ethan at the range

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.

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.

A single bookmark on Pinboard

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.

3 Ways to Tell the World About Your Idea

An idea is nothing unless you can tell it to someone else. With the world on the web at your hands, your ideas can now be seen by millions of people in a matter of minutes. Here's a few ways I have tried out communicating various ideas in the past. Each had a degree of success, but I can't recommend one over the others. In the end, they all have their place in getting your ideas out there as they do suit different levels of knowledge, you just have to decide which one will suit you.

Write About It

Just write about it. Like I said yesterday. Your ideas are perhaps best spread by yourself in the way you describe it through your own words. Publish the idea in your blog and look at the number of views for the idea over time and see if it's maintaining a certain number of views. If your idea is maintaining a steady number of views maybe over a week then your idea could be worth developing further.

This is the simplest but least accurate way of validating an idea. Measuring the popularity of the idea in terms of page views is a simple measure, but what we lack here is the ability to see how many people are genuinely interested in our idea.

A Landing Page and Signup Form

Even before you build something around your idea, it's a good idea to get feedback on the popularity of the idea. Landing pages with a signup are a great way to gauge the initial interest in your idea. So even before you have started work on your idea, you can determine if it's worth pursuing.

A landing page gives the benefit of allowing you to get your first set of customers for your idea. Not all the people that signup will actually buy into your idea, but it's fair to say that a percentage of them will consider your idea if your idea will offer some form of value that is worth paying for.

Services like LaunchRock can have a landing page up and running for you in minutes, but it is better to spend the time in getting the landing page right. A little bit more time spent on getting the landing page right can mean a big difference in the number of sign ups you get.

A Prototype

A prototype of your idea is probably the best way to show it to the world, but it is also the most time consuming to put together. You might spend just an hour putting together a blog post, maybe a couple of hours getting a landing page up and running, but a prototype might take you at least a day to put together depending on how much of the idea you want to implement.

The first prototype for Journalong was a spectacularly simple affair. It was just a page with a textbox and a button. No fancy styling, validation or even tests. I was merely testing the idea of submitting my journal entries from a web site to my Dropbox. I showed the idea to a few developers in the team I was working in at the time and they liked the idea. It gave me the confidence to pursue the idea further.

A point to remember when building a prototype is that you should really focus on making it show off the primary value that your idea will give people. For Journalong the value was writing your journal to your Dropbox from anywhere. Web connectivity is almost available everywhere we go, and armed with a smart phone most people are no more than a few clicks away from writing to their journal.

So there you go. Three ways you can communicate your idea to the world. Most people shouldn't have any problem in writing a blog post or even using LaunchRock to put a landing page together. A prototype is a bit more technical and requires more time and effort if you are not familiar with web development.

Next time you have an idea, why not tell a few people? You might just be onto the next big thing.