Matthew Lang avatar

Matthew Lang

Family guy and web developer

My favourite four of 2010

You know those end of year award ceremonies where organisations award people with prestigious titles? Well I thought it would be fun to list my favourites from 2010. They might not be prestigious titles, but they do make an impact on both my home life and my work life. I thought I would select one from each of the four different mediums that I consumed on a daily basis last year.

Best blog

I first subscribed to Nicholas Bate's blog a few years ago and since then it's been a consistent part of daily reading ritual. His posts focus on productivity and business, with most following a list format or a simple link to an important article. His Brill@BasicsOfBiz series was a highlight for me last year and there were many more great posts throughout the year. For this year, Nicholas has already kicked off the New Year with the start of a new series of posts on 2011 as the year of transformation.Nicholas also has a great list of mini-books for sale that cover topics from his blog such as personal success, sales techniques and performance.

If you're interested in one blog to keep you right on the topics of business and productivity then I highly recommend you make Nicholas Bate's blog part of your daily reading list.

Best tweeter

When I follow people on Twitter I tend to prefer to follow people that not only tweet about a topic I'm interested in, but also tweet about personal topics and people important to them. If someone simply tweets about the topic they're interested in, then I quickly lose interest in what they're saying.For 2010,
Patrick Rhone had to be my favourite tweeter of the year. Not only did he use Twitter to link up to great content on his Minimal Mac blog, his own
website and his tumblelog and other places, but he also posted a steady stream of individual tweets that got me thinking about how I work.

Along with tweets on the subject of working, writing and creativity, Patrick also tweets about his day to day to life, family, side projects, hobbies and other things. His timeline is a great mix of subjects and ideas and one that I'm going to continue to follow in 2011.

Best podcast/screencast

Last year I spent most of my spare time building a Rails application for a local business. It's was never a project that could allow me to make a move to freelancing full-time so I worked on it when I could afford the time. Usually during a couple of quiet nights during the week and sometimes at weekends. Investing time in a project this way meant that I had to use my time wisely to explore new features and options in Rails.

This is where Railscasts came in.Railscasts is a weekly screencast by Ryan Bates that features tip and tricks on working with Ruby on Rails. Quite often I wanted to use a specific feature of Rails, but rather than reading the Rails documentation first and then figuring out what I needed I used the Railscasts archive of screencasts to find the relevant information to get me started. Quite often the relevant Railscast provided me with all the information I needed to get started, and there has only been a few times where I have needed to explore the Rails documentation further to get exactly what I wanted when implementing a feature or refactoring an application.

I'm really looking forward to seeing what Ryan Bates has planned for Railscasts this year and I'm looking forward to eventually porting my Rails application to the lastest version of Rails with the help of Ryan's Railscasts!

Best book

As an ERP developer working to a single programming language, my career isn't exactly varied. Probably the most varied part of my job is the different customers that we have and having to adapt to each different business domain. Therefore trying to stay on top of my career can be a tad difficult. There isn't much scope for introducing other languages into my day to day job and therefore I've found it difficult to keep up with the programming languages that I am really interested in.

Then came along Chad Fowler's book, The Passionate Programmer. This book re-invigurated my career as a software developer. Now rather than focusing on the little tips and techniques that programmers are talking about on a day to day basis, I've my eye on the longer term goal than I'm willing to invest in rather than simply using job hopping as a solution. I'm still working through a plan I put together as a result of reading this book a couple of times and I'm looking forward to seeing what kind of results I get in the year ahead.

That's my 4, what's yours?

So there you have it, my favourite blog, tweeter, podcast and book from 2010. Now that you've heard mine, do you have a favourite 4 from 2010?

Two reasons why you should blog

I’m pretty chuffed with my blogging habits lately. I’ve covered different topics recently and I’m getting the odd comment here and there. I’m not too bothered about getting masses of people to subscribe to my blog, because that’s not what this about.

There’s 2 main reasons why I’m blogging.

1. It’s good practice for writing

I’m a massive book reader. I’ve been reading fantasy and sci-fi books since I was a kid. When I was in school I spent a fair bit of writing short stories. Then computers became mainstream and I got sucked into programming for the next 20 years.

A couple of years ago I decided I wanted to re-ignite my writing habits and so to give myself some practice, I started blogging about mind mapping. When I exhausted my knowledge of mind mapping, I turned to general blogging about anything and everything.

The whole point of this is that when you’re blogging, you’re writing. When you blog a lot, you write a lot and eventually, well hopefully, you’ll get better at it. I’m hoping that with all this blogging, I’ll become a better writer.

2. It’s out there for everyone to see

Writing for yourself is a great way to get ideas down on paper, but if you want the instant reviews and critique from people then where better than on a blog. Now your writing is out there for all the world to see and criticise.

Don’t be put down by negative feedback though, yes there will be people who criticise the small things, but in that feedback you’ll be able to filter for the negative positive criticisms. Negative, because someone may comment on your writing in a way that you don’t like but agree on, and positive if you can take the criticism and make your writing better.

What next then?

Get a blog and get writing. Simple as that. Dedicate 30 minutes a day to writing about something and publish it. Write about something you specialise in or you’re passionate about. That’s all it takes. Writing is such an over-looked skill these days, yet it plays an important part in many people’s day to day jobs. Everytime you write an email, you’re writing. Creating reports, specifications and documentation is all part of what I do as a developer. If I want to do my job well then it makes sense that I should spend some time writing.

Part of excelling in any career involves how you communicate using any form of medium, whether it’s written or verbal. If you’re a good writer then you can convey information in a clearer way that people can understand and people will notice this. Especially those people in the hiring and promotion positions.

So go on, get writing!

Why commuting with a fixie is better than you you think

Over 4 years ago I decided to eschew the typical geared bikes of the time and bought myself a Specialized Langster. Initially this bike was to be used for short 2 hour rides, but in time it came to be my preferred bike of choice for commuting and short rides.

While my bike was setup as singlespeed when I bought it, I always had a niggling thought at the back of my mind to flip the backwheel so that I could try it as a fixed wheel bike. One day my neighbour talked me into flipping the back wheel. It’s been nearly a year now since I done this and I haven’t looked back since.

One gear

With no gears to worry about you avoid the nightmare of trying to maintain a smooth set of gears on your bike. This is easy to do in the summer, but for the rest of the year, the elements can take their toll on your bike.

Last winter in the UK, we seen a massive increase in the use of grit on the roads to help clear the snow. While it was great to clear the snow, the grit remained lying at the side of the road. Combine this grit and salt with rain and your going to be spending a lot more time cleaning your gears just to ensure they keep working smoothly. No such problem with a fixed wheel, a simple rub down to remove excess water from your chain and a quick spray of lube and a wipe to remove the excess lube and your bike is set for the next commute.

Minimal braking

After moving to a fixed wheel bike, the next thing I did was remove my back brake. With a fixed wheel, I can use my legs to push back, slowing myself down without touching the rear brake lever. I use the front brake in conjuction with my legs to trim my speed at the moment, but I haven’t quite mastered the ability to completely lock the back wheel yet. Hopefully it should come with a little bit of practice.

Economical

The economy hasn’t been great recently and people are looking for more ways of cutting back on expenses. A fixed wheel bike is not only cheap to buy but also cheap to maintain.

Ever seen a cyclist just zip through the traffic leaving stuck in the grid lock of the morning rush hour? Yeah, that guys going to make it into his work long time before you get there and he probably won’t have spent as much on fuel as you did for your car!

Commuting on this bike has been and will continue to be great thanks to its low maintenance. This bike will last for years to come. Let’s hope I stay fit enough to keep commuting!