Matthew Lang

Some of you might already know this from my tweets in the past but for those that don't here's the thing. My son has been playing golf since he was 1 year old. Yes you're reading that right. 1 year old.

In the last 5 years we've slowly encouraged the sport with him by taking him to the driving range, local golf courses and he's had some coaching from a couple of professionals in the past. He loves the game. He watches all the majors when they are on and cheers for his favourite golfers.

In order to develop this little talent further we decided to take our son to coaching a couple of years ago. The coaching was one to one with a professional. I would drop my son off and then observe from a distance while he hit some balls, played some games and then after half an hour I would collect him.

After a year it seemed like he wasn't making any more progress, but I decided to let it go on the basis that he is only a kid after all. The most worrying part though was that he wasn't really enjoying it anymore.Then one Saturday, during one of our frequent trips to the driving range, we just happened to see that the driving range were doing group lessons for kids. We asked our son if he wanted to go and he jumped at the chance.

He now gets coaching alongside other kids and since moving him to the group coaching, he has come on leaps and bounds. His progress in the last six months has been great. The best part of it is that he enjoys his golf again and wants to do better.

In hindsight the one to one coaching was the wrong choice for our son, but as a parent you want the best for your kids and to give them all the opportunities you can.

Rather than wanting the best for your kids, you should also remember to let them enjoy being a kid. I'm glad now that our son is enjoying his golf again but more importantly, he's enjoying it with other kids his age.

via FGGT

... with Patrick Rhone.

My friend Curtis has been busy penning a new book.

Congrats on the launch Curtis!

I read an article today where the author outlined her opinion on using the right tool for the job. Actually it was more like an advertisement for the authors book, but that isn't the problem.

The problem with the article is that the author immediately made assumptions about the person she was meeting with. Just because the person showed up with a pen and notebook, the author made an assumption that this person was using the wrong tool for the meeting.

Here's the thing. Everyone has their own choice that works for them.

Whether it's the latest tablet on the market, a netbook or your own choice of pen and paper, the tools that work for you the best are the ones that you have tried after eliminating countless others.

Let's look at text editors. A text editor is what programmers use on a daily basis. Working with code means that programmers need shortcuts to frequently used code templates, viewing files side by side and other key features.

I've chopped and changed over the last couple of years but I have always went back to the one that I work with best. Yet I know other programmers that have opted to use other text editors. Do I criticise these programmers for their choice?

No. It's what works for them.

I know better than tell someone that they're using the wrong tool for the job.

Can't wait to show my oldest son this!

via Distracted By Star Wars

It's been a busy couple of weeks freelancing. However there is one thing that I didn't factor into working this way and that was making time for building my own products.

Working on your own is demanding. You're aiming to deliver the best work you can within a set allotted time for your client as well as keeping an eye out for more opportunities in the future. I've only just seen the tip of the iceberg with freelancing. I'm sure there's a lot more things I need to be doing.

By the time I've put in a days work I'm mentally exhausted. The prospect of sitting at the computer for another hour at night now doesn't seem so appealing.

Now that I'm more flexible though in the hours that I can do, I need to start thinking about etching out some time during the week to build and market my own products. Cutting back to four days a week would allow me that chance. As well as working on products it would give me a chance to do some writing as well.

I like the flexibility that freelancing offers but I need to make sure that I am giving myself enough time to work on projects if my own.

The other problem is that I'm still stuck in the typical work week mode. I still feel like I have a job. Granted I'm way more happier working this way, but I should be working out how many days I should be doing a month to earn enough for living and putting some aside for when there are droughts in the work load.

This doesn't necessarily mean doing five days a week, but the balance should be in the favour of paid work until my products can earn enough to swing the balance in their favour.

In the meantime it's back to work.

Estimating. It's a word that can strike fear into people who are new to the realms of programming, project management, freelancing and other careers. The daunting prospect of estimating the length of time at which you will be able to complete a set piece of work.

I have over ten years experience in the realm of software development and sometimes I still get it wrong. I've seen developers get their estimates wrong by a couple of weeks and project managers miss their target deadline by months. So why are estimates so hard then?

The first reason is that the estimate is based on a bigger block of work, rather than multiple smaller ones. Estimating a project from just an outline of the project is a rookie mistake. When you estimate on a large single block of work, you are basically playing a guessing game. In fact your estimate is always going to be wrong when you do this.

Instead, break your big block of work down into smaller blocks of work. The more granular you get, the easier the estimate is going to be. It won't always be correct, but your estimate will be more accurate.The second reason is information. We are limited by our little brains in how much information we can retain when estimating on a project.

When it came to estimating on projects for ERP software customers, I had to remember that different customers had different workflows in their systems. No two systems were the same. I had to factor in that a customer will have specific workflows in their system that I need to either work around or work with. This job was made a lot easier by the fact that I used notes that I kept on each customer's system so that I was ready to make better estimates in the future.

Now I know this might not be easy to do for a new project where you have little information, but carrying any information that is relevant from one project to the next is going to make estimating on blocks of work a lot easier.

Estimating isn't a black art, it's simply something that requires you take the time to break blocks of work down into smaller chunks and if you can, have the right information at hand to make better estimates on those blocks of work.

A single device that can be used on the go as well as having the same functionality as a desktop computer when you dock it!

The Ubuntu phone marks a significant milestone that nobody else in the mobile business has managed to nail yet. It runs the same codebase as the rest of the Ubuntu family, meaning it can be docked and used as a real computer or synchronized with a slab and turned into a tablet.

— Convergence is key by Owened

The only answers that matter are dollars spent. People answer when they pay for something. That’s the only answer that really matters.

So put a price on it and put it up for sale. If people buy that’s a yes. Change the price. If people buy, that’s a yes. If people stop buying,
that’s a no. Crude? Maybe. But it’s real.

— How to price something by 37 Signals