Matthew Lang

So, far its been good; most apps I use are web apps. I spend 70% of my time in a terminal, and 30% of my time in a web browser. Honestly its the perfect computer for me right now. So, I’m waving goodbye to the ecosystem Mr. Jobs built, and moving to the world of linux full time.

— Thanks Mr Jobs, but it seems I can use my Linux laptop now by Hyper Geometric

It's hard not to argue that Apple products are great. I particularly like my iPad and tomorrow I'll pick up my new iPhone. As for my main development machine at home though, I've started looking at using Ubuntu on an old PC. So far, I've only installed the minimum development tools I'll need. I'll be able to give a more fuller review on using Linux. Stay tuned!

Absolutely fantastic animation. I would love to see this expanded further into a series.

via DBSW

Every year we miss the seasons moving from Summer to Fall in Canada and the changing colours in the trees.

On the wishlist today, to put back the summer vacation in exchange for a couple of weeks away in September/October next year.

How many times have you heard these or words to this effect?​

Keep both plates spinning​

It's really just another way of saying multi-tasking.When you do hear colleagues say this, remind them you're not a circus entertainer or even the love child of Andrew Van Buren. Plate spinning, multi-tasking​ or whatever you want to call it, is a productivity killer. Instead of focusing on one thing, you're given only a small amount of your attention to each task you are working on. What happens when you do this? Yeah, those plates will fall eventually. Trust me.

Instead, give each task your undivided attention and focus. Batch your work into related tasks and tackle them one at a time.​After all, multi-tasking is a myth and I'm not a circus entertainer.

Today's XKCD is amazing.

Enjoy.

Lifehacker has all the resources you'll need for using Markdown.

There's hundreds of apps out there that are prepared to lock in your data. But why sacrifice access to your data? Look at moving away from these apps that lock in your data and start using plain old text files for your to do lists, logging, writing and blogging.

Plain text and Markdown is much more flexible and you can use a wider range of tools to manage all your Markdown documents. Add a cloud storage service like Dropbox and you can have your files with you everywhere you go!

​I have a love hate relationship with email.I love having a medium that allows me to communicate effectively with others all over the world. Being able to send some thoughts to a family member in Canada, or thanking your mentor for that little motivational book they sent you in the post. Yip, it's hard to beat email as a form of communication.

Until of course you get to your desk at work at 9am on a Monday morning and the deluge of email in your inbox makes you regret that you didn't just phone in sick that day. Yes there are ways of dealing with your email on a daily basis that let you work smarter and more effectively by implementing filters and such, but that doesn't stop people sending email to you.You see, when you work in a team, department or in a small company, email is often that go to tool that let's one person tell everyone else about something. That's great, but when email becomes the standard form of communication for ideas, discussions and projects, that's when you're going to wish you never opened that your inbox again.

From my experience, I have found that email in the work place is an invasive form of communication that tries to grab your attention from the pressing, but productive work that you are doing. It aims to break your concentration. When you have processed that 'urgent' email, you then need to reset your focus and get back to what you were working before you were interrupted. Personally I can do without that kind of distraction.

So what's the solution? Well it's easy. Non-invasive forms of communication that let you see with others want you to see without distracting them from their work. Project and task management, customer relationship management, and intranets are all greats ways of communicating with others in your company without interrupting what they are working on. They let your team see the information they need to see and they can act upon that information in their own time.

And don't be under the impression that the digital world is the only place you can communicate.

The daily stand up is a great way of communicating with your team and shouldn't be thought as being for developers only. Anyone in a team, should consider the daily stand up where you want a status update from the previous day and to quickly plan what's going to happen today.

Kanban boards are another great trick I learned to use from my days working in an agile development team. An overview of the work in progress is a great way for everyone to see what's going on. It also increases verbal communication over work rather than team members continually pinging emails back and forward.

As a rule, email should be the last form of communication in any team, department or small company. There are so many other ways of communicating that are more productive and will also let your colleagues get their work done.

So next time you want to update the team on a project or want to discuss idea, find an alternative to the evil that is email.

I’m blogging today because computer nerds know how to make software, they tend to get exploited by people who don’t, and it is ruining America for everyone. Our economy is completely dependent on computers at this point, and I am astonished that so many of our “leaders” still haven’t figured out how to use Microsoft Outlook.

How many times have you come across managers who claim to be great at what they do, but lack even the most basic skills with a computer? Unfortunately I've come across this scenario more times than I would like. In today's world you need to learn work with more than people.

— The Programmer and the MBA by GusBook

I still want to go back here and watch the sun rise and set on the canyon. I only got to see the canyon during the middle of the day. Nevertheless, it is a breath taking place to see, no matter what time of day it is.

via Mme Scherzo

I just know my mate Mark would love this girl's style.

via FGGT