Matthew Lang

Defense is prepared. It is what we do with what the world throws back at us.

via Cultural Offering

After seeing this posted on various blogs I'm subscribed to, I decided to list my five favourite books of all time.

• A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens - I've been reading this book every Christmas for the last 25 years. A classic piece of writing that restores my faith in humanity every time.
• Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson - The first adventure book I ever read and is responsible for my love of fantasy and adventure books.
• Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien - Fantasy is my preferred genre for reading most of the time, and this trumps everything I have ever read in the genre so far. The amount of detail and work that went into the book is just astounding.
• Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors by Piers Paul Read - I never heard about the story of the crashed Uruguayan plane in the Andes until I was about 12. The story itself is a harrowing account of how far humans can be pushed to survive.
• A Song of Ice and Fire by George R. R. Martin - Forget the HBO TV series that made this mainstream. The books in this series, still unfinished, are such a refreshing change from the usual books in the fantasy genre.So there you have it. I've nothing as deep as War and Peace here.

I tend to stick to the fantasy genre for most of my books, but I have been branching out into some more historical areas in recent years. Conn Igguldenn's Conqueror and Emperor series are both highly recommended and at the moment I have started reading through the Aubrey-Marturin series by Patrick O'Brien as recommended by Michael Wade.Instead of nominating 5 others to participate, I'm just going to leave an open invitation to you all to join in. Come on, get those 5 favourite books of yours listed.

Pretty sure that @andygumley will probably have his eye on this to compliment his road bike. Wouldn't mind it myself, especially since it's a titanium frame.

This would make a mighty fine addition to my Langster.

I use Markdown everyday, so it's great to see TextDown, an Markdown editor extension for Chrome, that I can now use across different platforms.

Like most people I've spent my fair share of money on apps for the iPad, but recently I've found that I'm just not using them that often. The problem is that while I like the apps themselves and chose them for their functionality and their ease of use, the freqeuncy with which I use them just isn't right. When was the last time I wrote anything with iA Writer? I can't remember.With web apps though, I'm finding that they are more accessible to me during the day at work and at night when I am at home.

I looked at a number of apps for keeping a journal before I ended up writing Journalong, and the same goes for writing. I managed to write a whole book with 750words.com. The only reason I didn't use it every day after NaNoWriMo was the fact that the pressure to write 750 words became a bit too much. My journal is for every day thoughts, but typerighter is for taking those thoughts and fleshing out something more fuller and richer.

Web apps like Typerighter and Journalong also work well on my mobile devices. I don't want separate apps for each device I have.Don't get me wrong, native apps have their places where they don't require a web interface. However if a service has a web interface with no need for a native app then I will use that service as it's web interface is easily accessible from the number of different of platforms and devices I use on a daily basis.UPDATE: Since publishing this, I've deleted my Typerighter account in favour of writing using Sublime Text 2. Typerighter is a great product if you need a minimal writing interface, but I've started using ST2 for writing as it's easier to pick up my drafts which are kept in Dropbox.​ Maybe I'll go back to Typerighter when they let you connect to your Dropbox.

Building habits and routines is a great way make sure you're staying on top of life but for all the structure that you have built, sometimes you just need to let it all slide. And that's exactly what I did last week. Took a holiday from the humdrum habit cycle.The last couple of weeks have seen some major upheaval (the good kind) in the Lang household.

Little baby Drew is a great little boy, but like all babies he needs constant feeding, changing and sleeping. Rather than fight a losing battle trying to work on Journalong, do some blogging and get stuff around the house. I let it all slide.It was just time to take a holiday from all my usual day to day habits. RSS reading, spot of writing, journaling and everything else. The great thing is my habits have become so ingrained in my daily task lists that I immediately returned to my usual schedule today. There was no procrastination in getting started or reminder needed to get back on track. I simply decided to start my habits again.If your habits are ground in to what you do then it's okay to take a break from them every now and again.​

Jason was my reason for taking up mountain biking and remains an inspiration for hundreds of mountain bikers in the UK. A talented rider taken too early from us.

Ride free Jason.