Matthew Lang

Another glorious day for the junior section at Elderslie Golf Club.

At last!

Looks like JJ kept the lens flare to a minimum.

And that's not a bad thing in Michael Wade's eyes.

Finally. A parent with the sense to not hold their children's hand in everything they do. If the kid forgets their homework, tough. They'll learn soon enough.

Letting your kids fail is real parenting.

I read David Allen's GTD book a few years ago. It seemed a lot to take in and while I did try it, it just didn't stick for me. Fast forward to today and I've read Erlend Hamberg's pragmatic take on GTD. Everything you need in one single post. Tempted to implement this in Todoist.

via FGGT

I'll save the criticism for when I've seen the movie, but I suspect that I will love this movie.

from Nicholas Bate.

The digital interrupt is relentless, often trivial, sometimes insufferable, cunningly finding new channels, often repetitive, poorly constructed and lacks sufficient courtesy to recognise that you are busy.

— Jagged Thoughts for Jagged Times by Nicholas Bate

This will be my first week without any social network interaction. It will be interesting to see what the lack of digital interruptions will do for me.

I'm stepping away from App.net. It was a hard decision but I think I made the right move.

When I first read about App.net I was already in the Twitter doldrums. I was annoyed with the lack of post length, the lack of a business model and the growing number of spam accounts that automatically followed you. I was disliking Twitter more and more by the day.

The 22nd of August 2012. That was the day I signed up for App.net. It was heralded as the social network for those that want more control over their data, a service that isn't afraid to charge it's customers for the privilage of using their service. At first it was seen as a great move. A sustainable social network. It sounded so great. I promptly signed up.

It started out so promising. There was already a micro-blogging client, an API and the promise of more to come. More did come. With a better API, developers shipped clients for all the major mobile platforms. There was a number of nice services that were born off the back of the App.net API. After the initial launch hype, subscriptions tailed off and the App.net community carried on. For the first year things looked so great. It was all going so well.

Over the course of the second year there were a number of new features including a notifications system for everyone as well as a crowdfunding platform for people to validate their product ideas. In the community there was a lot of discussion about the future of App.net. So many people were interested and cared for the future of it.

Ever since the App.net State of the Union post from the App.net blog though, the future of the social network has looked uncertain. Prominent subscribers to App.net have stopped posting or in some cases just completely deleted their accounts. For the last few months my timeline has appeared to be less and less active. While most days you might get a conversation on a particular topic, some days it feels like you're just talking to yourself. The buzz around App.net has died and what's been left behind is the remnants of a what could have been a great service.

For the last couple of weeks I've been weighing up whether I should continue to dedicate my time to using App.net. "You get what you put in" is a popular opinion of why you should continue to use any social network and it does hold true, but sometimes you just have to quit regardless of how much you want to participate. For me it was just a lack of interaction that made me decide to leave. People did participate in conversations but it just wasn't as frequent as it previously had been on App.net.

Over the last two years, App.net has been home from home. A stream of people I've connected with on a daily basis. Posts, links, images, polls and stories all shared in a little corner of the Internet. I don't regret the time that I have spent there. It's been a great experience and I've connected with some great people but it's time to move on.

Glad to see I'm not the only one who packs a mean lunch for their kids.

The researchers have clearly not experienced the spread I provide my kids. Only the highest quality peanut butters. Exotic jellies. The finest meats and cheeses in all the land. A surprise ingredient in every submarine sandwich. Figs, dates, grapes, cornichons, chips of potatoes, cakes made by none other than Little Debbie.

— Precursor to Nanny State action? by Cultural Offering

Odell Beckham Jr shows the world how it's done.

And in case you think there's a stroke of luck here, you're wrong.

Nicholas Bate's Wrong Question series continues with How do I get more time?

Read on and subscribe for answers to this and more of life's mysteries.

We need these bike paths everywhere.

Love the look of this new notebook on Kickstarter. Looks like it has a place for everything.

via Well-Appointed Desk

I've not used Evernote for a while now but Seth Clifford's setup in Dropbox still was intriguing to read about.

via FGGT

Amsterdam seen through the sketchnotes of Mike Rohde.

When it comes to working with clients, there's a shared responsibility to ensure that both parties are using the right tools to work together.

For the last few weeks I've become increasingly uncomfortable in how I work with a client. In the past we've used a particular collaboration tool to manage projects and communicate through, but in the last few weeks this tool has been abandoned in favour for development requests through a chat room. At first it was minor requests like tweaks to the UI and changes to the messages that were displayed to the user when a form was incorrect. Steadily though it's increased to bigger changes and feature requests. Instant Messaging Driven Development if you wanted to put a label on it.

After explaining an issue in the code with the client I took the chance to talk to them about the increasing use of the chat room for requests rather than the collaboration tool that we originally used. I explained my worries about the trend towards this and the drawbacks that the client will inherit as a result of the continued use of the chat room for sending requests for software changes.

The issue was heard loud and clear from the client and for the next hour of the call we discussed plans to move back to the collaboration tool as well as guidelines for using the tool and what we can do to reinforce its place as the go to point for projects. It was a successful discussion.

When you and your client agree on a particular tool to use for collaborating on projects, then it is important that you stick to this. These tools are initially picked for a reason and that's because both you and the client are happy to use the tool and it will serve both your needs. When either side of this arrangement doesn't use the tool then that's where things can go wrong.

Collaboration tools such as Trello, Basecamp and other tools are there to ease the burden of remote parties working together. Parties can share information, assign tasks, check overall progress and much more. Other tools for communicating like IM, phone, text and email are best at communicating but they're a bad choice as collaboration tools.

Who's to blame? Well, in this case both myself and the client. On one hand the client should be adhereing to the agreement of using the collaboration tool. On the other hand, I could have mentioned this to the client sooner rather than let it continue for the few weeks that it did. I admit I was hesistant about bringing this issue to the client, but they were understanding about my concerns and promised to start using the collaboration tool again.

The next time a client deviates from the collaboration tool we've chosen, I'll politely remind them of our preferred place for such things. And yes, I would expect them to do the same to me.

via PEDAL Consumption

This one is definitely going on the playlist.

That list of things is a wish list, a someday-maybe list, but it is not a task list until you commit a time for those things getting done. Those are things you hope to do — not things you are going to do. Know how I know you are not “going” to do them? Going is an action verb. It means you are in the act of committing a forward movement. Anything staying motionless on a list is not forward movement. Putting a time on something to be done in the future, then moving towards that time, means going to do something. And you are not going to do any of those things unless you do.

— A Time for Things by Patrick Rhone

from our man in Arizona.

I'm going to give Twitter another go but this time just as a broadcasting tool.

In the past I've been against using Twitter. For me it became too much noise and watching my stream day in and out was becoming difficult to manage. I could have scaled back the number of people I followed but after choosing to stop using Twitter, it was clear I wasn't missing out on much.

The people who I like to follow already keep their own sites and blogs updated on a regular schedule. I already follow these people using RSS feeds from their sites and blogs. It doesn't make much sense to 'subscribe' again to these people through a different medium.

And yet, I do think there is a use for Twitter. Ever since I read a post about the use of Twitter as a broadcast medium (sorry, can't find the link!), I've wondered if that's how I should be using Twitter?

So far a month, I'm going to activate my Twitter account again and point my site's RSS feed to Twitter. I've set myself a number of limits though.

• My Twitter account will be a broadcast only account. No tweets, favourites or reposts will come from me personally. The only tweets I will be making will be fed from my RSS feed.
• I won't be interacting with others on Twitter. If a tweet receives a reply in the form of constructive criticism then I'll endeavour to contact that person through email.
• My account will remain private. Strange I know, but I want to get a handle on the number of people that follow me. In the past I've had to continually block unwanted followers on Twitter. I've no idea what their engineers have done, if anything, to clamp down on spam accounts. The best way I see to get control is to accept each follow request as they come in. With my account only posting links from my blog, I don't expect to see many follow requests and the bulk of them that request to follow me should be genuine enough.

We'll see how it goes.

via Cycle EXIF

Despite my efforts to simplify my tools, there are some that I just need to keep using. They're just too important.

Yesterday I wrote about simplifying the tools I use in an effort to minimize the amount of data that I push around. I was all of sudden concious of having data spread across different services and the number of tools I was using to do this. Some things though require specialist software, like your accounting and invoicing aspect of your business. You can't simplify book-keeping and accounting without it having an impact on your business and career. Which is why the business critical software is the exception to simplifying the data and tools I use.

For a number of years I worked as an ERP developer for a company that provided development and consultancy services on a Microsoft ERP solution for small to medium size businesses. This one solution could meet most of the software requirements for your business. It has modules for accounting, inventory, customers, invoicing, purchasing and much more. That all encompassing ability run multiple aspects of a single business came at a cost though. It is a fairly complicated solution to run and maintain correctly. When used correctly though it becomes a critical part of the business.

My needs aren't so great that I need a solution like this, but I still need software to help me run my business. I require help with invoicing, accounting, time-tracking and expenses. Tracking all of these on my own just wouldn't make any sense. I have customers to invoice, projects to track, taxes to pay and more. I could do this on my own with a number of spreadsheets, an address book and some software cobbled together by myself, but that would require time to implement and it's not a valuable use of my time.

I use FreeAgent for all the requirements I just mentioned. It works, it's affordable and it doesn't require a steep learning curve to use. It does require some time to find out how to use effectively as a business tool, but that's why it's so great. I can use the parts of FreeAgent that I need to begin with and then gradually start looking into other features it offers to help me run my business. It then becomes a business critical tool. I need it to run my business. It's not complicated to use, but then it's not also so simple that I can switch over to something else if I wanted too.

Business critical tools are the exception to the rule when it came to cutting back on the tools I use. The trade off between using something simpler would have a negative impact on my time. I would end up spending more time managing my business data than I would delivering value to clients. It's not wise to cut corners when it comes to business critical tools.

In the pursuit of workflow zen, I've been simplifying things a bit. It's been a positive change so far.

Data is everywhere. We create and consume vast quantities of data everyday without giving a second thought to how much. Emails, tweets, posts, pictures, videos, messages and audio are just a few examples of the data that we interact with on a daily basis. And there's no shortage of software to manage your data either. For each type or format of data you have, there could be hundreds of different options available to you to manage that data. Apps, web applications, scripts, services, products.

Not only are there tools that mostly persist and manipulate your data, there's a new type of service available that pushes your data to other services based on triggers. Services like Zapier and IFTTT have the means to collect and distribute your data to other places depending on the triggers and services you specify. It can become mind boggling and complicated.

It was last year when I realised that I was pushing more data around different services than I needed. I started making some changes:

• I stopped using a dedicated bookmarking service and instead opted to routinely drop a list of formatted markdown links into my blog.
• I stopped using Evernote and instead starting using text files to manage lists and collections. Evernote is a great tool for keeping all your data together but I found it difficult to keep my data organised. The idea of notebooks and groups is good but I just couldn't make it work. This isn't a complaint against Evernote, it's a great tool, it's just not for me.
• I started using plain text files for a lot of things. Check-lists, ideas, outlines and anything else that I needed to keep a note of.

After doing this I noticed a change. The number of places I need to check to find something was greatly reduced. I had a collection of files in my Dropbox that I used on a daily basis. Then there was my task manager, my reading list and a few boards on Trello. I didn't have to search anywhere else beyond that. Then the number of tools I needed started to fall as well. I started uninstalling apps from my MacBook and cancelling some subscriptions.

It's been a refreshing change. Gone are all the connected services and triggers I used and instead I have a low maintenance set of tools that I can use easily. I can find the data I need for easily and most importantly I do less moving about of data.