Matthew Lang avatar

Matthew Lang

Family guy and web developer

Start something small

Which is why I love working on Journalong. The small problem I had with keeping notes and thoughts in plain text that I could pick up on any of the devices I use was the problem. Next thing I know I'm running a small product on my little corner of the web.

Today, why not start something small?

Reading list for November

  • Post Captain by Patrick O'Brian - I'm continuing the series with the second book after thoroughly enjoying the first book, Master and Commander. Also I'm becoming well versed in 19th century naval terms. What more reason do you need to start reading these books!
  • Heroku Hackers Guide by Randall Degges - First of two technical books this month. At only 60 pages, I've already digested this in a single sitting, but each week I'm going to review how I use Heroku for my web applications and learn how to make better use of the platform. This week it's logging.
  • Sublime Productivity by Josh Earl - Second of the technical books this month. Again this book is light enough to be read in a single sitting, but I'm going to try and learn a new shortcut key every day to make it easier to work with Sublime Text 2.

The Myth of Success ...

... with Caesura Letters.

Let us expose the conspiracy: success is an illusion. To be sure, the human experience is full of tantalizing tokens, symbols and rituals to represent this highly-sought status. But every diploma, certification, award, medal, pay-grade promotion and recognition is simply another construct of this brilliant mythology: ‘success’ is nothing but a humanly crafted religion that teaches us how to revere one another.

The Myth of Success by Caesura Letters

Caesura Letters is the one bit of email I look forward to reading every day. Make it yours also.

Wishlist Wednesday - A portfolio career

While I would love to work with some programming languages full-time I know that it will unlikely be the case. However, being able to split my job into smaller jobs seems like a more feasible idea. My bread and butter is Dynamics NAV, but I also like working with Ruby, Go, Dart and Coffeescript.

This is where having a portfolio career would be nice.

Working a couple of days a week doing Dynamics NAV work, then a couple of days a week working with Ruby and then hopefully leaving myself the Friday to work on my own products would be a great way to balance the week out. It also means of course that I keep a broader range of skills updated rather than focusing on just the one.