Matthew Lang

Next time you think about signing up to a free service, remember this:

via xkcd

Great to see one of Arthur Rackham's illustrations in my Google Reader this morning. This is from A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. I've been reading this book every Christmas for years and this year I decided to start reading it to my six year old son. He's loving that the story has ghosts and spirits.

via Madame Scherzo

via Pedal Consumption

The last few weeks have seen me attending a number of different interviews and each time it seems my nerves get the better of me. More confidence is definitely needed for any interviews I attend in January.

TechCube is a world class space for technology startups in Edinburgh. It provides affordable office space, services and community support for companies trying to tackle big problems. Situated two minutes’ walk from the University of Edinburgh and directly adjacent to the Meadows, TechCube is at the heart of Edinburgh’s rapidly developing startup scene.

— Scotland Opens First Privately Financed Incubator by The Wall Street Journal

It's great to see Scotland on the technology map once more. I'm really looking forward to see what TechCube produces in the next couple of years.

via Snook

... with Nicholas Bate.

Great advice for people like myself that edit their work wrongly! I don't how many times I have re-read back to myself my writing from the screen and failed to see all my mistakes.

Print Out Your Work

Always do this. Always. It's a pain, but when you're talking performance reviews, that 20-yard hassle of a walk to the printer could mean the difference between a 4% or a 5% raise.

Here's why: As any writer or editor will tell you, critiquing someone else's work is much easier than deconstructing your own, because outside eyes bring a fresh perspective. To approach your own work critically, you need to simulate this "outsider" perspective by viewing it in a form other than the one you wrote it in.

— How To Edit Your Own Writing by Lifehacker

... with Curtis McHale. I should do this as well if freelancing becomes my preferred alternative to a full-time job for next year.

via Pedal Consumption

I know and I'm sure you know that networking is important, but I didn't realise how important it was until a couple of weeks ago.

At the start of the year I made a choice to move away from what I perceived to be an in-secure job in an agile development back to my previous job in an ERP consultancy working with Dynamics NAV. Having resided myself to a career of working with Dynamics NAV, I deleted my LinkedIn account and stopped looking for work in the Ruby community.Fast forward six months and I have been paid off from the ERP consultancy due to budget constraints within the company and I have exhausted all leads in the west of Scotland for Dynamics NAV work. What to do now?

I had very few people in my network that I could turn to to ask about possible leads for freelance and permanent work.I fell back to Twitter for a couple of days to see if any of my followers were looking for a developer. It lead to one interview. The interview wasn't successful, but it was still a potential job and that's what having a good network is all about. Making sure that you are well connected to people that can help find you leads and opportunities. Even though I hadn't posted on Twitter for a while, people were still reaching out with suggestions.

I decided to create another LinkedIn account again to see if I cold improve on my search for a job. The last time I had a LinkedIn account I didn't use it to look for jobs or keep my profile updated with what I was working on. This time it will be different.Having spent the last couple of weeks looking for work I've started to see the benefits of using your professional network more regularly. In he last week alone I've had a number of messages from people I have previously worked with who have leads for potential jobs.

Don't neglect your professional network, it's important. Keep people updated with changes in your employment status and projects you are working on. You never know, it could lead to a great opportunity for you when you need it the most.