Grapefruit and hayfever sounds like a pretty random combination, right? Well, I’ve noticed over the past 3 days that I get immediate relief from my watering eyes after drinking a couple of sips of pink grapefruit juice. Intrigued by this, I went searching Google and was rather surprised to find that grapefruit juice can kill you:
Two earlier second generation drugs, terfenadine (Seldane) and astemizole (Hismanal), in rare cases, caused dangerous heart rhythm abnormalities, particularly in high doses or in people who have liver disease or are taking certain other medications or ingesting grapefruit juice… Allegra, Zyrtec, and Claritin do not appear to pose any of the dangers associated with Seldane. Until more is known, anyone who takes a second-generation antihistamine [such as Zyrtec or Claritin], though, should probably avoid or use with caution combinations with grapefruit juice…
Not exactly the cure I was looking for.
There does seem to be anecdotal evidence that grapefruits can prevent hayfever but nothing I couldn’t find about how or why, so perhaps I’m a unique case. Anyway, if you’re a hayfever sufferer and your eyes are watering to the point of distraction, try drinking a bit of grapefruit juice. After all, whatever doesn’t kill you might cure you!
P.S. remember, I’m not a Doctor — not even a pretend one, so don’t blame me if it all goes tragically wrong.
I spent this Saturday at BizCamp Limerick — a thoroughly enjoyable, interesting and educational experience. Unfortunately, I couldn’t attend every presentation but here’s some brief notes from those I did attend.
Mary Carty gave a great introduction to email marketing: It’s free; Be personal; Start a conversation; Get permission, never buy a list; Make it regular and stick to it; Everyone has some information they could share; Create value for your users.
James Kennedy talked about bootstrapping a start-up. He’s very much focused on the building a salary-replacement, time-freeing business rather than empire building (which I can relate to). Talked about evaluating the business ideas based on: how easy it is to describe in a single sentence; Would 400people pay €25/month; Does it require < 10hours/month to run; Is there an existing need; is it a niche?
Joan Mulvihill of Starting Today talked about her experiences of being made redundant and coping with the recession. Engaging and funny: “No pity parties” should rank up there with “Fuck the Recession” as a new slogan!
Pat Hough talked about some basic sales strategies: You need to have 10 different sales avenues; For every 20 cold calls, 10 result in a meeting, 2 in sales — i.e., each sales has 9 rejects; need a 10sec short explanation of your business with clear client benefit; your enemy is your customer’s status quo (i.e., whatever is currently working for them).
Brian O’Kane gave 10 things you need to know before you start a business. Top tips were: The only thing that matters is sales and business planning != business plan.
I usually give panel discussions a miss as they are inevitably weak and insight-less, but not this one!
Everyone agreeing that lots of small businesses are the future, not big multinationals.
Everyone agreeing that Enterprise Ireland isn’t aimed at small start-ups. Their job is to bring in / create large companies with high revenue potential. EI might provide good advice and valuable contacts but their money isn’t worth the paperwork.
Someone from the audience was hammering on about Export (i.e., we must export to survive). Seemed strange to me as most web-businesses are export businesses by default but there’s still plenty of money to be made in local markets (just think of all the businesses in your local town). “Export” just sounds like such an old-world way of thinking. I think James Kennedy’s approach of proving the business in Ireland before moving outside makes a great deal of sense. I felt the questioner was confusing the need for a business to make a profit with the need for the country to recover. And, surely, if lots of small business are making money, that’s got to be good for the country.
Mentoring of small businesses was identified as a big deal. You don’t need to take a dragon’s deal to get great advice (free!) from your peers.
I was a little disappointed that we ran out of time and the Pitching Competition didn’t happen but I guess that just shows how involved the panel discussion was. Some of the highlights of the day happened over lunch or in the corridor, talking to other attendees. It was a great mix of people in fields as diverse as event management, engineering analysis, software, etc and super- super friendly. Having attended FOWA a few weeks back I was struck by how much more friendly, helpful and social the BizCamp crowd was.
Disclaimer: I’m not your doctor, I’m not a surgeon and I’m not a dietician. I’m just a guy with some gallstone experience.
I have gallstones, as did my wife, and there’s a 1 in 5 chance that you will suffer from them during your lifetime. Basically, these little deposits can be a small as a grain of sand (mine are quite small) and happily sit in your gallbladder without generating any symptoms. However, when they do cause problems it often feels like this iconic scene from Alien:
Ultimately, the only real cure for gallstones is to have your gallbladder removed. However, in the meantime, you’re going to need to control your diet to avoid these devastating attacks and prepare for surgery (I believe surgeons won’t operate if the gallbladder is inflamed). Here’s some ideas for a gallstone-attack-avoidance diet:
The aim
A low fat diet which minimises the occurrence of gallstone attacks. Typically, you need to restrict yourself to items with less than 5g fat per 100g serving (i.e., < 5% fat). Do not be confused by product labelling which gives the fat content of a smaller serving or the percentage of your daily fat allowance — both will get you into trouble. Always check the label!
Things to avoid
Any Butter
Oil – if you need a little oil for frying use spray-on oil which is very efficient and actually contains an oil/water mix
Chocolate
Fatty meats such as duck and lamb
Cream
Cheese
Some curry sauces (too creamy)
Cheesy pasta sauces / Italian dishes such as lasagne
Replace full-fat milk with semi-skimmed or skimmed (I seem to be fine on semi-skimmed milk)
Breakfast / Energy bars
Crisps
Nuts
Main Courses
Meat: Chicken, lean mined beef, white fish, pork rashers or ham with all the fat trimmed off
Pasta sauces: Most tomato-based sauces contain very little fat (the “light” sauces are actually light on sugar). Make your own creamy pasta sauce with light or extra light Philadephia and some semi-skimmed milk —just remember to add plenty of herbs to taste!
Stir fry: Most asian sauces are fine
Spicy foods: Chilli and some curry sauces are fine (but not those which are based on coconut milk)
Rice, potatoes and pasta will form the bulk of the meal
Add plenty of interesting veg too!
Dessert / Treats / Snacks
Yoghurt
Yoghurt drinks like Yop!
Low-fat flavoured milk
Weight-watchers desserts (mousse things with < 5% fat)
Jacobs Low-fat fig rolls
Jaffa Cakes
Toast and jam (no butter!)
Fruit: anything and everything except avocados
Fruit smoothies like Innocent drinks (just watch out for anything with cream or ice cream)
Jelly sweets
Mints
Low-fat “diet” bars like Alpen and Fitnesse bars (a great way to sneak a little chocolate in!)
Starbucks “skinny” muffins (and a no-fat banana & choc chip muffin recipe Hilary found) but beware because the regular muffins ruined a perfectly good Friday!
I’m going to swear now so turn away if you disapprove
“A sign of the times”
“In these difficult times”
“The world we live in”
“At least you still have a job”
I fucking hate these stupid platitudes which are currently being banded around in boardrooms up and down the country (including ours, this morning, when free tea & coffee was cancelled). It’s as if uttering one of these phrases makes everything ok, that we can’t argue with the choices, that we can’t dare to dream of something better. It’s that assumption that dreams must be abandoned that really irks me.
I’ve been moved from feature development, to backlog defect fixing, to customer development support, to QA on an entirely different product — all in the space of a year. I now work report to a manager in another country, work on a product which only 4 people in the building work on and I’ve been told, in no uncertain terms, not to look for development work within the QA role. I must simply accept my fate, play my part as the pawn to be moved about, and dance like a monkey performing the same repetitive manual test scripts. Oh, don’t even think about trying to automate that you naughty developer! This is screwing with my career and, whilst those decisions might make sense from a business perspective, this isn’t something I’m going to be happy with. I’m fucking pissed.
What will I do? Firstly, there are choices everywhere and anywhere, in every situation. So, I’m going to accept my lovely new QA role with open, if somewhat limp, arms. I’m going to do my job to a level which will neither get me fired nor garner me any awards or praise. I’ve abandoned any and all prospects of a long term career as an employee so I’m not trying to impress anyone here. I need to take my fate into my own hands and no longer be beholden to the decisions made in corporate boardrooms. I’m going to concentrate 100% of my life energy into starting a business and growing it to a level that will replace my full-time job. It’ll take time, possibly lots of time, but that’s even more reason to start. right. now.
I’ve also got a few new catchphrases for “these difficult times”:
I took two days holidays last week to attend the FOWA Dublin conference and thought I’d contribute to the wealthofblogposts on this event:
Ryan Carson gave a very practical, actionable talk about starting a small web business. A terrific start to the event and well worth listening too. If nothing else, it pointed me to Spreedly which should save me a ton of time and hassle
Eoghan and Des from Contrast gave a very ambitious (as is their nature) talk about conventions and when/how to break them. Hugely entertaining although if I’m giving an honest review I’d say that a fast-paced presentation perhaps doesn’t suit Des as non-Irish audience members had trouble understanding him. Personally, I found it very interesting and funny. Well done.
Robin Christopherson gave one of the most poignant presentations of the day on website accessibility. This was part presentation and part demonstration as Robin himself is blind. There is nothing more awe-inspiring to a techie than watching someone surf the web using a screen reader. It was a practical demonstration of how hard sections of our society find surfing the web, and what web designers can do to ease their burden.
To me, Blaine Cook and Emma Persky gave the weakest talks of the day. Blaine was talking about the future of social networks and how large all-encompassing networks aren’t the future. However, he didn’t lay-out and actionable things which the audience could take away. What should developers by using or building to bring about the future of micro-networks he was discussing? I admire him for talking about something which matters to him but it just didn’t have much impact for the audience. Similarly, Emma was discussing using Ruby without using Rails, essentially promoting the use of alternate frameworks, or even none at all. This presentation could have been so much more powerful, interesting and useful if she’d actually provided code examples or performance metrics comparing the implementations in Rails, Merb, Sinatra, Google App Engine etc. It just could have been so much more. Both of these presenters had so much practical experience to offer the audience and instead gave fluffy opinion pieces.
Morgan McKeagney of IQContent gave a good talk comparing the 1970’s punk scene with today’s Web 2.0 world. We’re “in the shit” and we need to avoid being one of the failed bands left behind by U2. Less like Virigin Prunes and more like U2 (at least in terms of success — Bono still annoys me). Are you just playing guitar in your bedroom or are you building something people care about, which is useful to them, which they’ll pay for?
Simon Willison gave a very entertaining, scary and educational talk about website security issues. I’d read about XSS, CSRF etc, and I knew what sort of measure you’d take in Rails to avoid them, but I never really understand the whats and hows of these attacks. Security documents are very boring but when someone gets up on stage and demonstrates how they work, suddenly in 30minutes you’ve understood more than any document could give you. Very worthwhile attending just for this.
The first 2 120-second startup pitches were pretty poor (in my opinion). They seemed ill-prepared, waffling and not as enthusiastic about their product as I thought they would be. This was my first time seeing startup pitches so my expectations might have been way out. Some points I gathered: Say what your site does (in the first 20seconds!); Show your site; Be passionate about it! Robin Blandford gave a really good pitch through, which easily demonstrated what the site did, who it was aimed at and his own qualifications for developing it. This pitch was much more like what I was expecting. On the other hand, it was a great learning experience for the other entrepreneurs to pitch in a ’safe’ environment where no money was at stake.
David Heinemeier Hansson was arguably the star attraction of the conference and he didn’t disappoint. Fuck the Real World. Build a startupBusiness. These were really good rallying cries for the troops which were all well received. Even if you’ve been following 37Signals there was a good section on why their ‘Getting Real’ philosophy still applies to you. They started small too.
The biggest disappointment with the event was the tiny social spaces available and complete lack of free refreshments. This meant that everyone disbanded during the breaks and unless you already knew people there were very very limited networking opportunities.
On the one hand, the influx of women into the Irish workforce was the main reason for our rapid economic growth. It was women — not EU-funding, not low corporation tax, not academia, but women — that grew this country’s GDP. That is pretty amazing. I wish I could find the Economist article from a few years back which examined these issues. It makes sense when you think about it: increase the workforce, increase the GDP. This was universally a good thing for Ireland.
On the other hand, many (most?) households were getting two incomes and we had almost 0% unemployment. This meant that there was a large amount of disposable income which, you could argue, is the primary reason behind the property boom and Dublin becoming one of the most expensive cities in the world. After all, when you had two professional salaries coming into the household, why wouldn’t you buy a €500,000 house? Or €750,000?
We got rich and our prices rose to match… but now we’re poor it doesn’t work so well. The problem is that now there are an increasing number of household with only one income, and it’s hard to live off one income when the economy is still structured towards two-income households.
What the hell is going on in Waterford? I mean, I can understand being upset at losing your job but staging a sit-in? What are they demanding? To be let back to work? I just don’t understand the mentality.
The company is losing money hand over fist so I can only assume that these workers are happy to work for free — because there sure as hell isn’t going to be any money to pay them. And, lets face it, it’s not like no one could see this coming. The primary markets of Waterford Crystal’s tacky vases, bowls and decanters are American tourists and golf tournaments. Frankly, anyone who believes that there’s a viable business in manufacturing these sorts of goods in Ireland is of below average intelligence.
There was some headline in the Independent today about people who joined the company straight out of school and now have no where to go. Well, I’m sorry but did you ever consider that the company may close the factory? Did you ever seek to advance yourself through education, changing companies/jobs or location? Or were you happy to stay where you were and have the unions fight on your behalf?
I’m am completely astounded with the apparent attitude that it is the workers and unions that decide how the business conducts itself. This is not the way it works. If you don’t like having your entire life depending on the decisions of some high-up accountant then you need to work for yourself — and yes, that means putting in the efforts to get yourself up to that level. We have no rights to a job, no rights to have companies continue trading indefinitely and no rights to keep those companies within Ireland.
Personally, I’m expecting to be laid-off this year and I’m working hard to prepare for such a catacysmic scenario… I just don’t understand why no one else seems to think like that.
A quick post of a graph I knocked up showing the distribution of price difference from dualpricing.ie:
Price Difference Distribution
It seems that 35% price difference (after VAT and currency are already accounted for) is the sweet spot for most retailers. I wonder if this is based on economic fact or just because Irish consumers are trained to accept a 30% increase in prices?
I was interviewed on the Neil Prenderville show on 96fm this morning, which is repeated at 0200-0500 tomorrow morning. I should be on around 0230 — not that anyone should stay up to listen to me!
My initial impressions of IGOPeople were not terribly good:
My initial impressions on Twitter of IGOPeople
From my impressions of their homepage and initial signup, I thought that this was just another social network. Unfortunately, what makes any social network great is the people on it — hence Facebook is a “good” social network because most of your friends are on it.
I think I was mistaken though. IGOPeople is difficult to understand because it’s not exactly like any other social network. Most obviously, it separates out Individuals, Groups and Organisations — which is actually a big deal. On Twitter and Facebook these are all mixed up, and Twitter doesn’t have the notion of groups at all (even though plenty of people want it). This focus on organisations also puts it in the same field as GetSatisfaction, whereby enlightened companies can provide a relaxed way to interact with their customers. It’s also less like Facebook and more like Twitter — short discussions seem to be the order of the day, but at least they can be threaded on IGOPeople.
IGOPeople is a well executed site and my only worry for the future of IGOPeople is the people part. Inevitably, it is not the technical infrastructure that makes a social networking site, it’s the people. Time will tell whether IGOPeople can attract enough users and, critically, enough activity among them. In particular, I worry that the Organisations part will quickly lose interest.
Firstly, I should mention that I wasn’t trying to push dualpricing.ie too hard. It’s just a side project and, frankly, thousands of visitors is probably going to cause me problems that I don’t want to spend money or time fixing. However, I was quietly hoping that the site would be useful and interesting to someone. In terms of a commercial website, I haven’t achieved any sort of decent visitor numbers but for a non-Mulley, I think I’ve done pretty well. At the time of writing (a little over a month since launch), I’ve had over 2000 unique visitors and the site ranks #1 for ‘dual pricing ireland’ in Google.
I did only two proactive marketing activities: I twittered and I blogged about it. And nothing happened. Of course, I did this on Christmas Eve (hint: not the best time to start your marketing “campaign”) and I literally got 12 visitors. Over the next week I picked up ~1 vistor a day. On 30th December, someone posted a link in a politics.ie discussion (thanks Danny!) and I got 23 visitors. Then it was back to 1-10 vistors a day until 12th January when I twittered about dualpricing.ie in relation to an Irish Times article. In the meantime, Diarmuid MacShane of ValueIreland.com had picked up on dualpricing.ie because I’d linked to his blog from the about page. He asked me to write a guest post about dualpricing.ie and this was published on 13th January. I received 9 visitors referred from that blog on the 13th, but 110 overall since then. At the same time, Conor Pope of the Irish Times wrote about dualpricing.ie on their PriceWatch blog — this has gathered me 263 visitors since 15th January. On the 16th January, there was a little Twitter activity as people started tweeting about the site and Damian Mulley picked up on it (thanks!).
Since then, I’ve been consistently getting 50-100 uniques per day, with occasional spikes in the 150 range (mostly I suspect coming from twitter or perhaps email — it’s a shame that web analytics don’t extend to Twitter clients.
One other interesting aspect has been my contact with journalists: I’ve been contacted by an Irish Independent journalist but the subsequent article hasn’t appeared (update below); a Roscommon radio station wanted to interview me but I’ve never heard from them again; 96fm in Cork still wants to interview me but I’ve now spent 3 mornings waiting for them to call me back. It’s frustrating but not half as bad as if I really cared about promoting this site. I can’t imagine how hard it is when you really want to push a product or issue and are met by this sort of apathy. And this interest by journalists is no doubt helped by the subject of the site which is of current nation interest — God help you if you’re trying to push something that is not already on their radar.
Update: It seems I spoke too soon, as John Cradden published a story about dual pricing in today’s Independent newspaper. Hmmm… let’s see what that does to the stats! I’ve also had another radio station contact me. Perhaps soon you’ll hear my boring voice broadcast over the air!
