Matthew Lang

via FGGT

Not everyone is cut out for it. It takes not only a passion for the work but plenty of sacrifice. It means there will be no paid vacations or retirement fund matching or group healthcare plan. It means years of saving and planning and struggling and scrapping. But you will know, in those tough years, if it is for you. Because those struggles will not deter you — they will fuel you. Because, that is all part of the work too.

— A Passion for Work by Patrick Rhone

It’s a sad fact of life, but there’s many workers out there simply dotting the i’s and the crossing the t’s when it comes to their jobs. They start at nine, do what’s required of them, and then make a bee-line for the door at the end of the day. I'll be the first to say that even I have been guilty if this behaviour. Yes, you are doing your job, but surely there’s more to your job than doing the minimum necessary?

It’s not always the worker’s fault though, many jobs out there just don’t ask or want people to be creative. They look for the basic skills needed for the job and nothing else. Many employers just want the job done and nothing more. Is that enough?

NHS meals idea

James Martin, a British chef and TV personality had a show that recently ran on TV, where he was trying to improve the kitchen and meals service of a number of NHS hospitals in England and Wales. In one show, he improved the costs of one kitchen by reducing the amount of waste food generated. Rather than just making enough meals so that everyone had a choice, James suggested that the kitchen staff take orders for each ward and make enough food to fulfil the orders.

From one day’s service, the kitchen had reduced it’s waste and also it’s costs. That cost projected over a year ran into a saving of tens of thousands of pounds. As anyone who knows about the current state of the NHS and it’s financial problems, ideas like this are exactly what’s needed to improve the NHS to allow to run effectively and also pay for itself.

When the kitchen and meals manager was shown the savings, she did nothing more than just smile. Why does it take a celebrity chef to come in and implement such a simple idea that saves thousands of pounds for the hospital? Where’s the innovation from inside the NHS? Do employee’s even have the time to be creative during their jobs?

Be innovative on company time

In a previous job, I wanted to compile a newsletter for customers notifying them of news and events in the world of ERP software. I pitched the idea to my boss at the time, who wanted the same thing done. I suggested putting together a first draft of the newsletter together and sending it to him before sending it to customers. I was asked by my boss if I could do the newsletter in my own time. So I have an idea, but I must do in my time?

I don’t know if my employer at the time was aware of this fact but I have my own things to do in my time. Working on ideas that benefit my employer in my time is not own. And here in lies another problem. Employers need to allow their employees to be innovative and creative on company time.

I’m not suggesting that every company should follow Google’s example of allowing their employees to be creative. What I am suggesting is that employers allow their stuff to set aside some time to develop ideas and be more creative.

Being a game changer at work means doing more than simply doing the absolute minimum necessary to get through the day. Being a game changer means thinking about the work you and continually reviewing your work to look for more effective of ways of doing things. Not only does that require that as a worker you be more productive, but as an employer you need to allow your employees to be creative and develop idea during company time.

So what are you waiting for, how can you change your game today?

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The ultimate play bike.

via BikeRadar

So Google Reader is finally being killed off. The RSS reader that spurred many clones and provided a way for you to follow any number of your favourite blogs easily is to close down this summer.

With very few updates to the service in the last couple of years it is hardly surprising. It might be a bad day for Google Reader fans but there's an opportunity here for someone to earn themselves a nice fortune.

The space left my Google Reader now means that there's a place for a well designed cross platform RSS Reader.
And I'm willing to pay for it.

Over the next few days I'm going to be looking for an alternative to Google Reader. It's sad to see the service go but nothing is forever. The one good thing from this is that Google Reader already provides a way for you to export your feeds. Shouldn't be too difficult to get up and running on something else soon.

It’s become clear to me that there’s far too much stuff on my master list. It’s things that I want to do, but I’ve started reaching too far forward into the future and starting noting stuff down that I want to do but I won’t be able to do for at least six months.

Speculating on what I should be doing in months is no good. I need to see a short term list of things that I can be working on now rather than later. My master list is also slightly unbalanced.

One thing I can do about the issue of the number of items in my master list is to adopt an idea from
Kanban boards. In a previous role in an agile team, we kept a backlog of development cards that represented application changes that were next in line to be worked on.

In order to keep my master list lean but still keep a note of stuff for the future, I'm going to keep a separate backlog file that contains actions for projects that I want to do in the future but perhaps don't have the time in the near future. Doing this and reviewing it once a month will also mean that I can just forget about my backlog until I have cleared everything from my master list.

This morning I was curious about the amout of money I was spending every month on subscriptions for products and services on the internet. It turns out that I don’t spend huge amounts of money on products and services. Here’s where my money is going on a monthly basis:

• Instapaper
• App.net
• Dropbox
• Ruby Tapas
• The Changelog
• Github
• Pinboard

All in they come to just under £30 per month. The amount I am paying out each month is less than I thought, which means I have a few slots left for additional products and services. I’m already looking at taking out subscriptions to Treehouse to improve my iOS development skils, Instacast to sync my podcasts between devices and a Railscasts pro subscription.

What apps, services and products are you subscribed to on a monthly basis, and is there anything you are considering taking a subscription out on in the future?

I would love to sit down and teach my sons how to code, but I think it's more important to teach them about applying thinking to problem solving.

Scott Hanselman rounds it up nicely:

We need to teach kids to think and to be excited about thinking.

— Programming's Not For You by Scott Hanselman

... with Nicholas Bate.

Cultural Offering takes it a step further with his advice about connecting:

Go to them. When you are not happy with a business experience, don't tweet your disdain, go to them and explain the problem. Then ask for a resolution. Not happy with your grade on that paper? Skip the snarky Facebook status and go to them.

— Go to them by Cultural Offering

Another thought from episode 95 of the Ruby Rogues podcast had me thinking about just exactly what I do as a programmer. Yes, most of my time is probably spent writing code, but there’s one big aspect of being a programmer that is often over looked. Problem solving.

Most programmers write code that will end up solving a problem. Whether it’s a small web product or a large ERP platform, the code that we write as programmers usually has a single aim. To solve a problem. Solving problems doesn’t start with code though.

First you must understand the problem you are facing. You must be familiar with the domain language of the problem and understand why the problem is occuring. I like to visualise the problem I am facing. Sketching out the problem in a mind map or even as a flow chart for is always a first step to understanding the problem. With a visual aid of the problem you might recognise solutions that you have previously implemented or even gaps in the problem that require further knowledge.

With the problem now understood, you then set about providing possible solutions to the problem. One solution isn’t enough though. It’s highly unlikely that the first solution you think of will always be the best fit for the problem. I always like to try and come up with at least three solutions to a problem if I can. If I am stuck for solutions then it I like to implement the easiest solution to the problem that will work. Okay it might not be the best solution, but it is a solution. In time, a better solution will present itself, but I think it’s best to at least start with some kind of solution.

Problem solving is just one part of a programmer’s day, but it is an important one.

via Pedal Consumption

Episode 95 of the Ruby Rogues podcast got me thinking about my previous roles as a developer and how I interacted with my team.

It’s interesting that of all the roles I have had in the last 10 years, I can only count one of them as being a true eye opener in terms of team interaction. My role in an recent team, although short, was the most positive experience I have had.

At the start of each day the team would gather for a daily stand-up where we would go over yesterday’s progress and do a quick overview of what’s in store for today. There was some chat at the start about the latest designs on Qwertree and football results from the previous night. Just enough of an ice breaker for everyone to get comfortable and then commence the stand-up meeting.

At the end of it, everyone knew what they were doing for the day and what everyone else in the team was doing. There was no negative comments on anyone’s part, and if anyone one member of the team had a problem, the rest of the team tried to provide quick suggestions as solutions.

Positive team interaction didn’t stop there.

During the day, we would frequently pair up with another developer to work on a task until it was complete. During this time a high amount of interaction took place between the different pairs on the team for that day. Sharing ideas for problems, learning from one another's coding styles and of course the odd jibe at your preferred text editor.

Team interaction was always high during this time. It was great to see developers sit down together, regardless of level of experience, and move the development team’s project forward by quickly completely the task they were assigned at the start of the day.

I only worked with this team for a short period of time, but it was the most positive example I have seen of a team enforcing positive team interaction. Those readers who are aware of agile practices will immediately see that the team I am praising is in fact a team that uses agile practices.

The amazing thing is that they aren’t doing anything that isn’t achievable by many other teams who have poor interaction and communication amongst their members. All it takes is a change of attitude.

I'm in the market for a new iPhone case. There are hundreds to choose from. I mean hundreds. There's too many to decide from. Competition is nice in business but as a consumer, sometimes I want less of a choice. Less choice means I can make a decision faster.

Software developers love their text editors. Those developers that invest a significant amount of time in one particular text editor are able to wield it with the proficiency a level 20 warrior. They’ll slice and dice the code with the mininal number of gestures needed. They have all the commands they need memorised right down to the last keystroke combination. Text editors are the primary weapon of software developers and so they need to know how to this tool with great effect if they want to make their day a productive one.

I chose Sublime Text 2 as my main text editor a couple of years ago. I just find it easy to work with. I know the commands that I need, I spent a fair amount of time getting the right plugins and setting them up so that they work well for me and of course I’ve tried hundreds of themes before getting the one that just feels right. So if I’m so happy with my chosen text editor, why the hell do I keep wanting to try another tool?The other tool I am referring to is Vim. It’s a text editor that is used by thousands of people and is over 20 years old. Every year, I ask myself, “Did I give Vim enough of a chance?”

I’ve tried Vim a few times as a replacement for Sublime but every time I try it, I find something that I don’t like and go back to Sublime. Fast forward a few months and I do the same thing again. For the last three years, I think I’ve tried Vim about five times. I’m not talking about a couple of days, I’m talking about a full on month of use. However, at the end of each month I simply switch back to Sublime. Is it a comfort thing? It might be.

Vim is a great text editor but I just don’t feel that comfortable using it.​

I’ve been blogging on and off for the last few years, but more recently I’ve been publishing something just about every day. Whether it’s a little bit of writing or a nicely built fixie, I’m publishing something every day. When I started blogging, I was fanatical about categories. I categorised everything. Everything had it’ place. Now though, not so much.

My tumblelog has a number of categories in it, but these are because the posts I make here are themed. On certain days of the week, I’ll post something in a particular context, Fixie Fridays for example. Categories work for this example because it’s part of an ongoing series of posts.

Since the start of the year I have published a little bit of writing every week day. All of these posts have been filed under the same category, Personal. As the writing varies from day to day I find it hard to file it under a specific category. From tomorrow I am just going to stop categorising my writing. Why pigeon hole something when it won’t fit? It’s one of those small decisions that I can do without.

... once again. Proud and honoured to be featured in Kurt Harden's annual 25 blogs guaranteed to make you smarter again.

Automation. The programmer’s best friend. Programmers automate as much as they can. Setting up a new computer, building servers and testing software are just some of the areas where we like to automate things. We hate typing in four commands where one will do. Automation saves so much time.

Not everyone is a programmer though. So how can you automate your interactions with your computer so that you’re not doing as many manual tasks?

Check your application settings

Lots of applications and services now integrate with other applications and settings. Instapaper for example allows me to save the articles that I like to my Pinboard account. After I set this up in the Instapaper settings page, I can then like an article and it will be saved to Pinboard for me. This is just a small example of the automation you can achieve. Baked in settings to applications is great but what if you want more automation?

Checkout IFTTT

IFTTT is a service that allows you to create recipes for the different services that you use. It will then run these recipes when they are triggered. Each recipe contains a trigger and an action. When the trigger is fired the respective action is carried out.

An example of this in action is the
monthly redux blog post that I put out at the start of each month. It is a list of the previous month’s blog posts on my blog. Rather than writing this by hand though, I can let IFTTT do the work for me.

When my recipe detects a new item on my blog’s RSS feed, it then writes the title of the blog post and a link to it to a text file in my Dropbox account.

At the end of the month I cut the contents of this file and paste it into my blog’s content editor and use it as the content for my new monthly redux blog post.

In order for IFTTT to work effectively, it needs to have access to the services that you use. You may not be comfortable doing this, but I find that it’s a great way to automate tasks that I would normally do by hand in the past.

Being able to defer manual tasks to services that automate them for you saves you time. Not only that, it lets you get on with more important tasks. This week watch out for manual tasks that you could be automating. Even if you can save a few minutes off your day, it’s going to add up over the year. And that’s time not wasted.

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One of the greatest challenges I’ve had in my career as a software developer is that of expectations. Twenty years ago when the waterfall methodology ruled, you developed in isolation for months on end, passed it to a test team and then onto the client. After months of work, it was common to get the final product passed back to you. The reason was that the client’s expectations were not the same as yours. Months of work wasted.Now though, we have agile methodologies that allow us to work closely with the client and work in much smaller chunks, delivering code weekly or even daily for the client. At this fast pace it’s easy to meet the client’s expectations as we are only working in smaller periods and only delivering smaller sections of the final product for the client.

I’ve been working this way for a couple of clients over January and February and it’s been really successful but the reason isn’t just the continual delivery of features and fixes for the client, the main reason is that I am always in communication with my client. I chat to my clients daily, often more than once a day when working with them.Foggy details are a sure fire way to miss the clients expectations, which leads to wasted time for both you and your client. You can’t assume to know what your client will want, but you can make an educated guess. However, what you should be doing is talking to your client and clarifying any details you are not sure about.

If I have a question or I’m not sure, I ask the client to clarify their expectations on what I am hoping to deliver for them. I hate to be wrong and I hate to be wasting my clients time by not meeting their expectations.​

Love the chainring on this Leader build.

via Pedal Consumption

Let me get this clear to start with. I only use my RSS reader to scan feeds from blogs that I am subscribed to. This post is just tips for getting through your RSS feeds without taking the time to read anything.

Group your feeds

Grouping your feeds is a great way to batch feeds for scanning. I group my feeds into a number of groups based on the general topics of each feed. I have groups for web development, tech businesses, bikes, picture blogs and online products and services I use.

Grouping feeds in this way means that when you scan the feeds, you're scanning a particular topic rather than scanning a list of feeds of completely different topics.

Scan the headlines

Don't read everything. Unless you're following between 10 and 20 blogs, you'll never be able to read everything in a short period of time. Instead scan the headlines of your feeds for interesting posts.

I used to read everything in my feeds in case I missed something, but reading everything takes a long time. Yes, scanning the headlines of your feeds might means you miss an interesting post, but you'll get through your feeds a lot faster.

Use a read it later service like Instapaper

RSS readers are great for categorising and scanning your feeds, but I like to use a separate service for reading. Many RSS readers let you favourite individual articles and send them to another service like
Instapaper so that you can read them at a later date.

Read it later services also let you collect articles for reading at a later date when it suits you. I tend to get through my feeds first thing in the morning. I favourite posts I want to read later. When I favourite my posts, they are sent to my Instapaper account so that I can read them later on. Many RSS readers have this feature built in and read it later services like Instapaper also have settings that let you import favourite posts from your RSS reader.

Keep a list of blogs to scan daily

I have a group of feeds that I want to scan on a daily basis. I scan this group every day first thing. It's a collection of blogs of varying topics, but they're blogs that I find highly valuable and therefore they're the blogs I scan every day.

Trim dead or rarely posted feeds

I don't subscribe to a feed that posts once a month or less frequently. I like content on at least a weekly basis from a feed. Every 2 or 3 months I check the feeds I am subscribed to determine if they're still delivering a steady stream of content.
Google Reader is great for this as it tracks the stats of each the feeds you have subscribed to. Staying on top of your feeds this way means that you can delete stale feeds and therefore have less headlines to scan.

RSS feeds and readers have fallen out of fashion with many on the Internet, but as long as people are still blogging, there will always be a place for RSS readers to consume these blogs.

This crankset is superbly finished.

via Pedal Consumption

In an effort to be more productive, healthy and fit I’ve decided to keep a daily checklist for work days so that I can start tracking progress on my day. Here’s the list I’ve decided to center on for weekdays:

• Do one major important task - Ideally this will be completing some work for a complete or working on a feature for one of my own products.
• Do one minor important task - This is really a secondary bit of work for a client or for myself. If my major task is for a client, then I will always try and complete a task on one of my own products for that day.
• Eat a healthy portion of fruit and vegetables - I’m not fanatical about my weight, but I do like to eat sensibly. Making sure I have a good portion of fruit and vegetables at least once a day is a good starting point to eating better.
• Workout or go for a walk - To coincide with changes to the diet, I’m also looking to get some exercise in during the day. Starting from next week, I’ll be walking my son to school every morning and I’m also going to fit in a couple of runs a week. Sitting at a desk all day as your job can be brutal on your body, so it’s a good idea to stretch your legs when you can.
• Journal - Lastly, the journal entry. A time for reflection on the day and to log idea, progress, notes and other stuff. I do this a few times a day but I try to write a summary at the end of the day.

I haven't bothered setting a list for the weekend, as it’s not really important to have a checklist on days like this. The weekend should be a work-free zone anyway and as long as I get some time to spend with the family and relax then I'm happy.

I’m doing this for the month of March to see if I can get some kind of order in my work day. One thing I’ve found about freelancing is that the day can quickly run away from you and before you know it, you haven’t completed any of the things you set out to do at the start of the day. Embedding these five habits should ensure that I keep my clients happy, I make progress on my own projects and I keep myself healthy.

I’m using Habit List to track my daily habits but there’s a lots of other habit tracking apps or methdos you can use instead.

Being a software developer means that I spend a lot of time debugging code for problems. Sometimes it's obvious where the problem is but not all bugs are that easy to find. It would be nice if we could quickly identify the problem, but the real world isn't like that. Most days debugging code requires at least a couple of hours of tracking down the problem but sometimes you find yourself spending the bulk of the day finding the problem. These days can end up being very long when you're debugging for hours on end.

Problem solving takes time and patience. Fortunately for me my client understands this and left me to my devices today. I spent the majority of today debugging some code and then once the problem had been found, the code to fix it took about a hour to put in place.For days like this, it pays to be persistent.

So Journalong has been tried and tested as a fully paid product, but I’m just not getting people using Journalong, so I’m moving the product towards a freemium product. The paid side of the service is still going to be $10 a year with all the trimmings, but the free service will be restricted in the settings that you can adjust. The free account will allow you to journal multiple times a day.

This isn’t the only change I’ll be making for Journalong in the next few weeks. It’s become apparent that writing with Journalong is somewhat restrictive due to the constraints of the textbox that you write in. It’s not focused and it’s only takes up so much of the page. What I really want is a full screen, no distractions, text entry. Just me and my journal entry.

The freemium changes will come in the next couple of weeks with the new journal entry screen to follow. It will be interesting to see if these changes can generate more interest in Journalong.​