I am going to retire on 1 July 2009. In a little over 2 months, less than 2 months after my 27th birthday, I will retire.
retire v.intr.
To withdraw, as for rest or seclusion.
To go to bed.
To withdraw from one’s occupation, business, or office; stop working.
To fall back or retreat, as from [...]
I read Seth Godin’s blog. Seth wrote this about Chris Guillebeau’s newest manifesto called 279 Days to Overnight Success (pdf).
I have just finished reading the manifesto. I’m inspired. I agree with probably 30% to 50% of the content, but that’s not the point. The very existence of the manifesto is what inspires me. It’s time [...]
I’ve just finished reading Built to Last by Jim Collins and Jerry I. Porras. I picked up a copy of Fortune magazine on my Frontier Airways flight from San Jose, Costa Rica to Los Angeles. One of the articles that caught my eye was about Jim Collins and the book he’s working on. They referenced [...]
I went to the New York OpenCoffee meeting this morning. I’ve been to a few OpenCoffee’s around the world and I like the events. They normally give me a quick flavour of the tech scene in a place. The meetings in Cape Town are really buzzing for example.
This morning’s meeting opened with a series of [...]
Satellite broadband runs about $5-$7 USD per Mb. It seems expensive. I thought I’d compare that to global roaming charges. Vodafone NZ charge $10 – $30 per Mb depending on the region!
At these kind of prices, it looks like I’ll be staying in major metropolitan areas with wifi for the next few months. I was [...]
… to apply for the alternative MBA. Applications due tomorrow (Sunday). I’ve just sent Seth my application. It’s done. It’s in. I can probably still make changes, I guess Seth won’t see it until Monday morning. But I won’t, it’s done. Now time will tell.
If I’m accepted, awesome, 6 months in New York working with [...]
Wow. I just woke up and read this. Awesome. I’m physically excited. My first thought is, apply, do it right now, immediately, without hesitation. Ok, reality check:
I have 6 months of expenses saved, I can afford it.
I could still spend 3 hours / day working on my own stuff.
How would I get a visa to [...]
I think Seth Godin’s is my favourite blog. His posts are short, concise and usually thought provoking. Seth avoids the mistake of writing too much, too often, and writing crap just to keep the content flowing.
Today Seth talks about thinking bigger. It’s got me thinking about StraightPress.
I host a handful of WordPress sites for family, [...]
After much deliberating and some procrastination, I have a new business name, StraightPress. I’m working with Alan on the finishing touches for our tagline(s). They should be ready by the end of the week. In the meantime, I’ve whipped up a standard WordPress install at straightpress.com.
I’m starting a business. It’s a purely online business. We’re going to manage WordPress sites. Customers will be global. A grandma in Detroit, a professional blogger in Sydney, or a teenager in Bangkok. As the principal owner of the business, I will be nomadic for a few more years. I’m trying to decide where to [...]
Seth posts this. Inspirational. It’s inspiring to see somebody at the point in their life/career where they can be true to their principles. I think it’s harder to remain true to one’s ideals at the earlier stages of a career. When you’re earning less, have less exposure, less influence, and so on. However, ironically, I [...]
Changes are afoot in UK banking. I just received an email from Smile telling me about faster payments.
Dear Callum
At smile we’re always looking at ways we can improve the service we offer you. This is why we’re pleased to tell you about Faster Payments. The Faster Payments Service will speed up the way you make [...]
Lonely planet publish books. They’re a book publisher. Books, in their traditional paper form, are dying. I attended a talk by Frances Linzee Gordon on Wednesday night at Gleebooks. Frances is a travel writer for Lonely Planet. She’s a great traveller. She’s a good photographer. She has some fantastic stories. It’s a pity her employer [...]
I met Jason Calacanis at the blogger breakfast this morning. Duncan Riley was there, although I didn’t meet him. Somebody said he (Duncan) was a big wig, so I was checking him out online after the meeting. I came across Duncan talking about Jason. Jason originally posted, 37 signals responded (my favourite post of the [...]
I was at the Cape Town Vespa store a few days ago. All the sales people we met were talking trash about the much cheaper Vuka bikes. One chap said to us “The brakes fail after 500km.” When pressed, what he meant was, the brakes need tightened regularly on the Vuka bikes.
True, it does need [...]
I’ve never been a fan of resumes. It always sounded like such a boring job, cataloguing all the things I’ve done, listing all my various endeavours. Seth Godin has an excellent post on why great people don’t have resumes.
People often ask me how I found my current job, how I manage to work and travel, [...]
George and my crew at SmartHippo organised a R1′000 dinner at Savoy Cabbage (their web site is being updated I’m told). I worked miracles a few weeks ago in producing some truly mind blowing javascript (at least it blew my mind). The dinner was a thank you for working an outrageous number of hours to [...]
I was at the Cape Town Facebook Developers Garage last night. I have the badge to prove it!
It was an interesting evening. Pizza was generously provided by Butler’s Pizza. If I’m not mistaken their delivery staff arrive wearing a tuxedo shirt (whatever it’s called) and a bow tie! Fantastic. Drinks were supplied by Joyent (I [...]
I went to the February Cape Town OpenCoffeeClub meet yesterday. I had lunch with Nur (Nomade One) beforehand. We had a really interesting conversation around religion, values, ethics and business. I look forward to meeting Nur again.
Internet at the event was generously provided by Henk from Skyrove. Skyrove have an interesting business model. They manage [...]
Apparently Seth Godin’s blog is read by “more people than 95% of all the magazines published in the US”. Impressive numbers. A reader asked why he doesn’t monetize his blog. To which he responded:
I tried to sum it up like this: Not only can’t I imagine charging for my blog, I’m practically in debt to [...]
There has been an interesting shift in Intellectual Property over the last few years. Particularly, the rise in popularity of open-source software. Companies like MySQL, Zend, RedHat, and others are pioneering a new way of doing business. Their core “product”, the software, is freely available. Not only is the product free to use, but you’re [...]
As I suspected, my application for Y Combinator was not successful this time. In some ways, I’m relieved, I’m not sure if I was ready for the commitment of a full-on startup. So now I have time to focus on my work with SmartHippo and see what else I want to develop.
Any ideas for web [...]
Amazon EC2 has added two new instance types. Their standard instance has 1 virtual CPU and 1.7Gb of RAM for 10c (USD) per hour. The newly launched Large Instance has 4 virtual CPU cores (2 cores x 2 CPUs) and 7.5Gb of RAM for 40c per hour. The massive Extra Large Instance has a whopping [...]
What if, instead of giving financial bonuses, a company offered holiday bonuses? If the company increases performance, staff leave 10 minutes earlier each day, or take one half day a month, or get an extra 3 days holiday each year.
I was considering the motivation of offering people more money if they work harder. I think [...]
