Matt

  • The Problem With Open Source

    Open Source software has been on my mind a lot the last few weeks with regards to a problem that exists within the community. The world is built on the shoulders of Open Source software. If you look at any tech startup out there,  they are more public code than proprietary. We leverage open source…

  • Consider Your Loss Aversion Bias

    Loss aversion is the preference we have to avoid losing $5 compared to gaining $5.  It’s logically the same value in this example but yet some studies have shown that we are twice as likely to favor avoiding the loss.  This effect plays out multiple different ways in our lives.  We tend to hold on to…

  • Team Communication Overhead Costs

    I’m in the middle of undertaking a large software project – something that could take 200 hours to get to an MVP. I wanted to get things organised. My first thought was to use some of the tools I’m used to – Trello for a kanban style board, bug tracking, continuous integration services, Slack. But…

  • Finding a Coach

    Learning new things that affect the core of your being is a challenge not many people take upon themselves.  Yet it could be the personal pivot you need to make a genuine change. Many years ago I took a Dale Carnegie course, it showed me a side of myself that I couldn’t get from my…

  • Brainstorming Week

    After reading Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX and the Quest for a Fantastic Future I was pretty charged up and inspired to start working on something more long term and meaningful. Since the book was published Elon has also gone on to create several more businesses that weren’t mentioned – OpenAI, The Boring Company, and NeuraLink.…

  • Brilliance of Elon Musk

    Either you’re trying to make something spectacular with no compromises or you’re not. And if you’re not, Musk considers you a failure. Of all the entrepreneurs in the world, none have the same ambition that Elon has to make the future into the present. For that I have a ton of admiration. Science fiction has…

  • Focused Effort vs Shotgun Approach

    There are proponents of both cases for building a business.  Should you identify the vision and strategy for one amazing product and chip away at it until it becomes a success, or should you try 10 small experiments, see what sticks then focus on the winners? David Heinemeier Hansson of BaseCamp started his venture with…

  • Bot Trading Final Thoughts

    My software project for February was a stock trading bot that made trades based on twitter feeds. It was an interesting project that gave me a chance to learn a few new things. I had the chance to apply a couple of machine learning techniques.  In particular using natural language processing to perform sentiment analysis and…

  • Revisiting Adsense

    I have been writing for my blogs for over 15 years now.  A lot has changed with the internet in that time, and over the years I have investigated many ways to let my websites pay for themselves. When Adsense was first announced I jumped on it only to find that it paid almost nothing…

  • Programming for Impact

    One of my ambitious goals for the year is to take on 12 programming projects.  The projects I’ll undertake for this challenge have a couple of requirements: It should be something that I can complete in 1 month of calendar time it should take less than 40 hours of effort it should ideally challenge me…