Matthew Lang

via PEDAL Consumption

Tilt shifting is the effect used in photography to simulate a miniature scene, but I've never seen it done on such a scale with these tilt shifted photographs of galaxies and nebulae.

via Behance

Evolution of the Bicycle from Visual Artwork on Vimeo.

A wonderful video showing the different designs of the bicycle over a period of 300 years.

via Kottke

I've been a fan of email subscriptions for a long time. The direct delivery to your inbox might not be everyone's idea of digital heaven but for the content that matters the most, it's the best way of receiving it. I used to use RSS for everything but even RSS has its limits. I've got a large number of feeds in my list which makes it hard to filter out the great content you want to read every day from the good content that you will get to at a later time.

And while email subscriptions are nice (when managed with rules in your inbox), there comes a point where you just end up getting too much email. That my friends was today.

I flicked through my newsletters folder in my email client and was astonished to find a number of high quality subscriptions still lying there unread. Were they simply not worth reading? No, I subscribed to these for a reason. Some I even pay for, but when you don't get round to reading them then what's the point?

Everything in moderation. That's the famous quote right? While I don't stick with it for a lot of things (you can never spend too much time on a bike!), it does make sense when it comes to managing your digital inboxes and my newsletter inbox was running over.

So if you're reading this and I've unsubscribed from your list today, don't be offended. The quality of the email subscriptions I removed myself from today are high but when these gems of content end up just lying unread in my inbox then I'm afraid there is little point in still continuing to subscribe to them. In the unsubscribe comments I did leave as nice a reason as possible indicating my reason for unsubscribing though. That has to count for something.

Brett's latest bookmarklet is great for programmer. Turns code blocks into plain text and make them ready for copying. Nice!

This blog has been gradually winding down in activity for the last few weeks. You've probably noticed. It's been hard to watch as I used to be a frequent poster. Daily blog posts, links and other trivial things that might interest you the reader.

Truth of the matter is that client work has all but consumed my week. I've got two projects on at the moment and I'm splitting my time between them in fortnightly periods. The work is good and it looks like it will carry through to the new year which I've no complaints over.

The problem has been dividing my time so that I'm not always hunkered over my desk. My desk is where you'll find me through the day, usually wrestling with some code, but sitting there outside of my client hours makes it difficult to 'switch off'. Lately though, once the client work is finished you'll usually find me playing with the kids until bedtime and then its television for an hour or two before the exhaustion kicks in.

A couple of years ago I had a good routine going. Writing in the morning, 3 periods of client work throughout the day, as well as time to work on new languages and frameworks and working on side-projects. I was getting things done. Not just that, but I was also getting out on the bike and keeping the weight off. Last time I was out on the bike was a few weeks ago with Ethan. I haven't been out on the bike since.

Last night I took a look at the heat map on my Timepage app for December. Aside from the usual calendar functions, it shows your calendar as a heat map where you're busy and not so busy. Almost nothing showed up. There's a day where Ethan has golf coaching and a day for the Star Wars showing. Apart from that there was nothing. It seems I have lost sight of one of the fundamentals of any productivity system. Schedule it.

Client work has become such a big part of my day that I no longer plan for anything else getting done. Without the planning of the day most stuff falls through the cracks. It's usually the little things like writing and side-projects. They've suffered the most.

Out of sight, out of mind. If you don't see something often enough you tend to forget about it. Like my calendar. I didn't plan for anything and therefore didn't see the need to look at my calendar. Everyday was turning into the same work getting done so why bother scheduling anything?

I've just proven to myself that there's nothing gained from an empty calendar. Time to change that.

Not the first time I've linked to this bike for Fixie Friday and with good reason. It's a classic track bike.

via Cycle EXIF

... I'm breaking down the technical debt concept for product stakeholders.

The Cap movies are my favourites in the MCU and the series looks to get even better with Civil War out next year.

Lovely build!

via FGGT, photo by Arregui Velázquez

Kickstarter campaigns are like buses. Nothing for ages then two come along at the same time. This time it's the YNOT Magnetic Keychain.

Black Friday does not mean shopping; it means we watch the first Christmas movies of the year - Die Hard, followed immediately by Die Hard II - and start with the sounds of the Christmas season. This schedule will provide four solid weeks of Christmas music - plenty of time to become tired of the stuff.

— Exactly when... by Cultural Offering

What a fantastic Christmas tradition! Starting the Christmas holiday season with a real Christmas movie.