Life Lessons While Running

I jogged today through Hampstead Heath and in the course of getting my exercise added a few gems to my likely-to-never be published book of life hints:

  1. They say the shortest distance between two points is a straight line … but they forgot to mention hills!
  2. Just because you ran during a break in the rain doesn’t mean the ground won’t be soaking wet and that strangers won’t find it funny when you lose your balance.
  3. Getting lost when you have a GPS on your phone has no noticeable downside besides the constant feeling of “vuja de” (aka, the experience of never having been somewhere before).

Now onto more mundane topics … while not a long run it still topped off a good month for me. 15 runs during the month totalling 77.2 miles. My longest distance for a month so far (although not by much).

 

Voila Capture214

Death of the Personal Blog?

Don’t worry I haven’t given up on my blog but I must say my friends seem to have. Sure Facebook (and I guess Google+) are social hang-outs these days but isn’t there some room for your own personal expression? My blog gets less entries but I still find some time for it. Maybe I’m just slow on realising I’m being quaint or antiquated but for now I’m taking the stance that I’m holding up important values that others have lost. If anyone asks that’s my story. What’s your’s Mr/Mrs. Blog Killer?

Start-up life

I’m now in month 4 of being a full time Entreprenuer and I thought I’d reflect quickly on how it’s going.

 

What’s good:

  • I have tremendous freedom and flexibility on how I run my day. This is probably going to decrease soon as investors and employees come in to ruin my perfect world. :^)
  • I am learning every day and I’m learning things I’m interested in
  • I’m not dependant on a vast army of people doing their job or complex set of dependencies. It’s all down to me.

What’s not so good:

  • I’m not getting paid yet. Hopefully that will change but for any immediate time horizon I am suddenly in a lower economic bracket than I’m used to.
  • I have to do everything myself. Yeah I know I made it out as a plus but it’s both and it depends on what side of the bed you wake up on (or how much coffee you’ve had so far).
  • I don’t have a “partner in crime” (figurative expression only) to bounce ideas off of. This really hurts me as I am an extrovert and want to think externally. There is only so much you can bounce off family and friends effectively.
  • There is a lot of stress and self-doubt that inevitably creeps into building a product. This is particularly pronounced when competitors are springing up every time you read the paper and you don’t have any customers yet. Trust me … it ain’t easy; it requires a combination of professional skills, confidence, compartmentalisation, coping skills, and assumed ignorance. All I can say is thank god for exercise and my innate ability to foster unrealistically grandiose self-beliefs.

Well that’s all for now. I probably have more to say but no time to say it right now … I’ve got a product to build.

 

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Specialisation Is For Insects

Saw this today and thought I’d pass it along … don’t be an insect!

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.

-Robert A. Heinlein

The News

The News

On a entrepreneurial discussion group I’m a member of there a random conversation erupted about the inaneness of news these days. One of the guys came up with this workflow that I thought was brilliant so I made it a bit more visual. As part of the same discussion someone also posted this hilarious YouTube video of Jonathan Booker (BBC journalist) lampooning himself and his industry: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=aHun58mz3vI.

A New Apple TV?

I’m really excited to jump from the iPad 1 to the iPad 3 but I’m also getting more and more excited to find out what the next gen Apple TV has up its sleeve. As you may already know … I’m a HUGE fan of AppleTV and am shocked that more people don’t use it. Everyone I know who has one is very happy with it and it costs very little to own. We have two of the first gen models but if this 3rd gen ATV does the right things I think we’ll have a third one for the house (one more than the number of televisions we have). Continue reading

Canon EOS 5D MK III officially announced

The EOS 5D Mark III has now been officially released and it is clearly an improvement on the 5D Mark II. Personally I don’t care about the 60fps option for video but GPS is a nice add and the focus system sounds great. That said, the fact that even now the Mark II is still a great camera says a lot about how awesome it was when it was released back in 2008. In fact the original 5D was also a simply brilliant camera when it came out and basically created a new category of digital camera (aka, professional full frame sensor in a compact body). I wonder, will the Mark III be talked about years from now as a great camera or just an incremental improvement over a well loved but ageing masterpiece? Ok, now off to read the full preview article on d-preview (always the most in depth reviews out there). Continue reading

Magnesium Reverses Neurodegeneration?

If you’re a Magnesium lover than the news just keeps on getting better. This article from Life Extension Magazine writes about work being done at MIT which suggests a particular form of Magnesium — Magnesium-L-threonate — may help the brain with memory loss (aka, help the brain stop memory loss). Now I must admit I don’t know the folks over at Life Extension so I don’t know if their natural bias (aka, they sell supplements including Magnesium) plays out in their reporting so please read with normal caution.For instance, I do hope that their referencing of MIT is fair and accurate representation and not just an attempt to just borrow credibility. Well that’s my paranoia at work. Would love to hear from others if they have a view on the credibility of this article.

Read on for more information.

Novel Magnesium Compound Reverses Neurodegeneration – Life Extension:

(Via www.lef.org)