My son loves LEGO. He started with some Duplo (possibly the biggest “compatibility” hurdle faced) but soon grew out of that. I always viewed Duplo as a sort of gateway drug: fun enough to hook kids without the necessary dexterity to manipulate the smaller bricks, but also kinda rubbish. Nobody sticks with Duplo for long, I bet. The appeal of “real” LEGO is far too strong.

So he graduated through to LEGO. The look of glee and excitement on his face at the sound of those rattling bricks behind wrapping paper is matched by nothing else, except perhaps the look on my face. LEGO makes me feel like a kid again, and somehow, it seems to make my son feel like a kid again, despite being one still.

I think that’s a big part of the allure. LEGO lets you drop the mundane and rediscover wonder. I’m starting to sound like a marketing shill now, but seriously, I think that’s the nub of it. It’s a hobby that has no risk, whatsoever, of turning into a job. Most other hobbies that I have (web development, photography, design, writing) I could turn into a paid job if I wanted. There’s always that risk, and hence that desire to get “good enough” that you could go pro if you wanted to. I wonder how much of that is true about most hobbies.

Building LEGO models, though, is unlikely to form the basis of a freelance career. It’s utterly free of that, while still exercising all the bits of my brain and psyche that the other hobbies I mention do: it’s creative, constructive, productive, enjoyable, communicative and so on. And unlike say Airfix models, or Mecano, you typically need nothing but your fingers and your imagination to play with LEGO. Airfix requires paint, requires glue. Mecano requires tools. Both of these provide you with real world manual skills. LEGO doesn’t. The skills LEGO provides you with, as a kata, are mostly (if not exclusively) abstract. It exercises your imagination, your ability to create and mould within constraints, your understanding of engineering requirements (such as what stands up, what falls over, what needs support, load bearing, how many wheels can be used to create a stable platform).

You will go nowhere in life where your ability to click bricks together lands you a job, but you will encounter plenty of situations where your “LEGO mind” helps you overcome obstacles or crack problems like nobody else.

And of course, it’s amazingly fun. The sense of discovery as you follow the instructions, the simple teaching of techniques through showing. Nobody ever “taught” you that door hinges could be used to create smoothly curved surfaces when arranged just so, but some model you bought used that technique and guided you through it on your way to a different goal. You’re continually learning, and then adapting and re-applying that knowledge: learning by doing, with a clear motivation.

Seriously, the LEGO manuals are a thing of wonder. So compelling, with narrative structure some novels struggle to match. A good LEGO manual guides you through while still delighting you with moments of discovery and understanding. “What on earth is this bit for?” you wonder as you’re taken on a detour of component construction. When you turn the page, you find a reveal every bit as striking as the best detective novels. “Ah HAH!”, you think, and snap the pieces into place, with a sense of pride at having constructed something so clever.

It’s difficult to think of an experience quite as close to building LEGO, or one that demonstrates such an ability to exercise the abstract portions of your brain through the manipulation of physical objects. Take complex models, where you receive numbered bags, and build separate assemblages which then form compoentes in the finished whole. This modular approach to problem solving (and make no mistake, the finished model is a problem to be solved) is incredibly advanced, especially for toys aimed at four year olds, yet here it is, being shown, not told, to anyone willing to listen.

The ability to teach is something that fascinates me, has formed a key component of my life thus far. LEGO teaches in a way so radically different from what we usually call “teaching”, but in such a successful way, that I can’t help but think there’s so much to learn from it.

Challenege, play, demonstration, goal. These are the tenants of LEGO’s model. That I’m still excited by that rattle behind wrapping paper on my 32nd birthday is testament to its success.

More than any year since 2000, this has been a year of intense growth for me, both personally and professionally. Its end brings with it a shift in what I’m doing with my life, and 2010 brings with it two big steps that frankly scare the shit out of me, but in the best possible way.

And we’re still only in the first week of January.

So, big things. Those things have names.

Fresh Monkey

I’m a web construction worker. As Jough Dempsey said recently, “I make the Internet. Not all of it.” I’ve been doing that in various ways since 1998, and it’s still fun. I still can’t imagine doing anything else.

A lot of projects that I’m proud of made it out the door this year. Has 2009 been my most successful year? I don’t know how I’d measure that. Financially, the year ain’t over yet, and there’s still 4 or 5 projects that should ship within the month, so let’s reserve judgement on that for now.

For me, though, it’s the year I’m happiest with since my son was born, and that’s worth something.

A big contributing factor to that was managing to haul my lazy, self employed ass out of the dressing gown and into a proper office. Those of you who have visited us at cmdcentral may dispute the use of “proper”, but hey, it’s not a box room in my flat, which means I can leave work at work and “go home” at the end of the day.

Also helping along my mental health had been my move away from using a combination of Blinksale and Billings for invoicing. FreeAgent hasn’t saved my life yet (more on that in a moment), but it certainly meant I stopped waking up in a cold sweat wondering when the money was going to run out, and that’s a good thing when you’re self employed.

So what’s next for Fresh Monkey? Big things. We just went limited, and Anisa’s stepping in as project manager and co-director. Frankly, there’s too much work for just me any more, and I’d rather bring in more people than hand the work away to dreamweaver pilots, so watch this space. If you’re interested in knowing what I’ve got in mind, you should drop me a line.

So that’s big. What else?

FreeAgent

I’m not sure there are enough superlatives. Where else do you see support tickets like this one? Seriously, if you’re self employed, go and check it out. Even better, go and try it out using my kickback code and get yourself 10% off for life!

If you’re at all like me, you’re going to put off moving your accounts system over to them. You spent a long time setting up those spreadsheets, and they’re working just the way you like them. Why abandon that?

If rolling year-in-progress tax calculations, bank statement uploads and automatic invoice reconciliation, automated overdue reminders, recurring invoices, estimates and basic project management functionality doesn’t persuade you to at least try it out, how about this: I don’t know a single convert who has moved back.

Since day one, Ed, Roan and co have been obsessed with making an app that people like me want to use, and it shows.

Of course, there’s always room for improvement, and a quick glance at their Get Satisfaction community shows there’s no shortage of suggestions and requests from their rabidly enthusiastic users. So what’s a growing company to do?

Keep growing, seems to be their answer. They’ve got a new developer starting tomorrow, someone who I’m sure is going to be as fanatical about building a fantastic app as they are already, and will hopefully let them expand at an ever increasing rate.

I’ve been pestering them to let me help out for ages, as it’s been clear they needed and wanted more hands on the wheel, but they were adamant that they wanted to make a permanent hire, to have a senior developer on board 9-5, someone who would be in a position to really make a difference.

So when they said they wanted that developer to be me, I did what all gibbering fanboys do: I cried, and asked when they wanted me to start.

They said “How about the 6th of January?”.

Then they said “Oh, and if you want to keep your Fresh Monkey stuff running too, we don’t have a problem with that. Just try and get some sleep once in a while”.

Then I cried some more. Me, a respectable salaryman. Who’d have thought?

2010

So 2009 was awesome. Let’s look at the list for 2010:

• Working for a company I respect, on a product I love
• Growing a business I’m passionate about, working with more people I’m in awe of

And let’s not forget all the shiny new toys.

Welcome to 2010. It’s looking like a fun one.

2000: drank a lot of beer. A lot.

2001: graduated from Glasgow University.

2002: moved to Edinburgh.

2003: got engaged.

2004: got married.

2005: drank a lot of beer. A lot.

2006: became a dad.

2007: started to get the hang of this self employment thing.

2008: avoided moving house.

2009: took self employment out of the bedroom and into the office.

2010: to be continued…

The first one to yell loses

There’s a reason that yelling is often called “losing it”. Yelling shows you’ve lost control, it shows that you’ve lost sight of what it is you’re talking about. Yelling means that you’re trying to beat the other person, not win the argument or express your point.

If you start to feel yourself lose it, just:

1. Smile
2. Breathe
3. Go slowly

There’s something much more compelling about a whisper than a yell. This wallpaper might help you remember.

Languages, frameworks, design patterns, blogs, Photoshop, Fireworks, off-the-shelf products, roll-your-own solutions, operating systems, servers, desktop PCs, laptops, phones, shoes, socks, paradigms: they’re all just tools.

Craftsmen create. They use their tools and they get the job done.

The end result is the job. The tools are irrelevant to the craftsmen. Don’t debate others’ choices of tools – learn from them. That is the path of the artisan.

The more tools you have, the better. The more you use them all, the better.

Anything else is just spending your apprenticeship looking for the perfect hammer, then spending your career painting it.