My tagline has had a typo for the last four years! Why didn't anyone say anything?
Tomorrow a group of us are heading out to Cape town for Matt and Bronwen’s wedding.
While checking the likely forecast I came across this cool tool from the BBC that lets you embed the forecast in your own website.
One has drained fortunes from gullible victims, plundering their income and savings to create an illusion of prosperity. The other is going to jail.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/jeffrandall/4981299/Gordon-Brown-and-Bernard-Madoff-are-separated-by-a-single-detail—Bernies-pleading-guilty.html
I just got back from a stag weekend at Kolschfest, a beer festival in Cologne, Germany. This was the stag who shall remain nameless so the ‘evidence’ doesn’t come up if anyone Googles his name.
Earlier this month my girlfriend of nearly four years got back from three months in Africa and told me that our long term plans to move to Australia, get married and have babies had changed. More specifically she was still planning to do it but I am no longer invited. Dumped. Bugger.
Today my boss took me out and bought me a coffee. She told be that my contract would be ending in March. Fired. Bugger.
The point is that now I have lost my girl and my job my life is starting to resemble a country and western song. If I had a dog or a bible I would be watching them very closely. Instead I will be keeping a close eye on my laptop (trusty companion) and my copy of Bill Bryson’s, A Short History of Nearly Everything (probably the best book on science ever written).
London has been covered in more snow recently than any time in the last 18 years. A lot of people have been complaining but personally I loved the opportunity to get the camera out and take some once-in-a-London-time photographs. I also wanted to try out this excellent flickr slide show tool that I saw on my mate Erik’s blog.
I am redesigning my site. In an ideal world it would be finished tomorrow night but I am out for a few nights so I guess I will do the rest when I have time :)
Having made quite a few trips to the post office recently I have had many an hour in long queues to ponder ways that they post office could reduce the size of it’s queues.
Ignoring the obvious idea of employing more people at busy times … I though the best idea would be to have a machine that could handle regular postal duties.
The Hubbers Postmachine 3000tm is an all in one weighing, payment processing, stamping and package collecting machine that could be installed in post offices and other postal outlets all over the country.
The first part of the HP3000tm (might need to have a word with Hewlett-Packard about the name) is a weighing shelf to weigh the package. A touch screen would allow the customer to select destination, postage type etc. The machine would then take payment from a credit or debit card. Finally any stamps or stickers (airmail, customs declarations) that are needed could be printed. The customer would then place these stickers on their package and drop the package into a slot on the machine or a larger collection area elsewhere in the post office.
The machine could even be programmed to deal with other day-to-day post office tasks like collecting bill payments, selling foreign currency, selling insurance or issuing forms etc.
Every post office would have several of the HP3000tm that would operate alongside some regular chair moisteners post office workers who could specialise in larger packages or more complicated enquires.
I saw this in the Post Office on Saturday 4th of October . It’s bigger than I would have built it and it looks like it was designed by students in a woodwork class at high school but it’s basically the same idea. Also I bet it doesn’t let you do all the other things I thought of like bills and currency :)
My other good idea I have had recently is “mustard cheese”. I think this would be a really cracking flavour if done well. I have found one place that sells Mustard Cheddar on-line and when the Mutarde (Rachel) gets back from Africa I will ask her if she thinks it is any good.
I am currently reducing clutter around my flat by selling my old DVDs and books on Amazon’s marketplace. Today I sold ‘Die another Day’ for 13p. Normally this works out to be marginally profitable as Amazon give you more for postage that items cost to post. But on this particular item Amazon charged almost all of the sale price and the postage as commission. The breakdown is as follows:
Buyer’s Price: £0.13
Shipping: £1.21
Amazon Commission: £-1.04
Your Earnings: £0.30
Amazon states:
Individuals selling at Marketplace pay a GBP 0.86 per item completion fee, plus a closing fee of 17.25% of the sales price (11.5% for Electronics & Photo items) for each item sold.
Which seems steep and it makes it unprofitable to sell (or buy) really cheap DVDs or books on Amazon. This is a real shame because in the past I have bought a few 1p (plus postage) books from Amazon.
The postage for this DVD would cost 66p so I have cancelled the order and now the DVD is going to one of the charity shops on Finchley Road which is a much better idea. I guess in this way Amazon are doing a good thing. By making it unprofitable to sell the nickel and dime stuff they make it much more likely that old books etc end up in charity Shops.
Amazon have also built this excellent site for swapping books called ReadItSwapIt.
Today when I rode to work it was SNOWING!
A friend helped me get my blog post brought to the attention of the New Zealand Herald. They ran this story titled Fans put hard word on NZRU over agent’s ticket charges on the day of the final autumn international against England.
The thing that got me about the article is that when Ms Faisandier from STIL was asked where all the money went she couldn’t say.
Ms Faisandier said she could not say what percentage of the money went to the rugby union.
She told me on email that it was “about 50/50″. Strange she wasn’t prepared to make the same claim to a national newspaper.
The other thing that struck me was that when NZRU were asked they didn’t have a clue either! I wish we could all run our businesses in such a haphazard manner where letting millions of dollars of potential revenue slip through our fingers wasn’t such a big issue.
NZRU commercial manager Paul Dalton said he could not say what percentage of the money gained by STIL came back to the rugby union.
This quote astounded me because the Herald also had this story where they indicate that the NZRU financial situation isn’t that strong at the moment.
The NZRU is on track to post a small profit this year, a much improved situation from the one predicted six months ago.
You’d think that if they were that broke they’d be wondering if they could have had some of the millions of dollars that have been added to All Black tickets in the UK over the last few years.
Oh yeah and we crushed England 32 points to 6 so it was an excellent day to be a Kiwi.
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