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It is now 10:30pm Phuket time (2:30am Melbourne time). We have had another fantastic day and felt that I needed to blog about it to make sure I never forget. Bree is in bed trying to sleep. I am pretty annoying in the sense that I like to wake her and talk to her. Anyway, she can rest, while I write.
To be honest, we were a little worried this morning. We woke up to rainy weather. It had been such fantastic weather the last couple of days and to see it rainy and gloomy was a bit of a shock. At 7:30am we went to the buffet breakfast. Yesterday we were a little shy and went pretty easy on the food. But today my plan was simple. Eat as much breakfast as I could and delay lunch to as late as possible. I had waffles, eggs, bacon and danishes. It was pretty awesome, even though I am not normally a breakfast person. Read more
Breana and I left for Thailand at 11pm Melbourne time. Flying with Thai Airways, we arrived at Bangkok at 4am Bangkok time. The flight was good, there was a fair bit of turbulence at times, but there was always plenty of warning by the captain. I planned on spending the nine hour flight listening to a long audiobook. Unfortunately, I fell asleep shortly after turning it on. My legs struggled to fit under the seat, so every time the flight attendant would go past with a trolley, they would hit my leg, waking me up. It was okay though, as I preferred being awake. On the plane, they fed us well. We had Thai Green Chicken Curry, as well as a stir fry.
When we touched down at Bangkok, I couldn’t believe how smooth the landing was. I barely felt it. We then had a 5 hour wait for our connecting flight to Phuket. While waiting we met some fellow Melbournians, a mother and son, also going to Phuket. There wasn’t much to do while waiting for the plane, so we spent the time sharing stories and working out which gate we were meant to be at. Read more
What would you do for five dollars? Well, from what I can see, a lot of people will do a bit for the cost of a coffee and donut. A couple of days ago, I was listening to the Small Business Big Marketing Podcast. Host Tim Reid spoke about his recent addiction to Fiverr.com. A service where people can submit tasks that they are willing to do for five dollars. It got me thinking about outsourcing, particularly the things I had read in 4 Hour Work Week by Timothy Ferriss.
There are a lot of thought provoking ideas in 4HWW, but my main problem with the book was implementation. I tried using Elance, which he had recommended, but I found that it wasn’t suited to me. It was a little too time consuming dealing with proposals and a bit counter intuitive. I was spending more time finding someone to do a job, than just me doing it myself. This might be my own fault, although I have found a couple of fantastic services I have used in my business throughout the years which i’ll get to later.
After hearing Tim Reid speak about Fiverr, I decided it was time to check it out. I spent an hour or so on the website. There were so many people willing to do stuff! From video testimonials to dropping 30 business cards in a random city in the US. A lot of the ‘service providers’ on fiverr were well spoken and I found it surprising that they were doing things for $5! It even made me feel a little sad when I thought that these people had families and kids to feed. Then I thought about it a little more ‘hey, they aren’t doing too badly! They have a house, a computer, a HD Mino and an Internet connection! They’ll be fine.’ Read more
Whenever the Apple iPad is brought up in conversation, it doesn’t take long before people begin to compare the device with ebook readers, namely the Kindle 3.
As an iPad owner, these comparisons have never bothered me for one big reason. I have always bought books on the iPad using the Kindle App. It makes a lot of sense to buy books within the Kindle App, rather than the iBooks app for these two reasons alone:
Multiple device reading – It doesn’t matter what device i’m using at the time. Whether I am on my Laptop, Desktop, iPad, iPhone or Kindle, I can continue to read a book.
You can not currently buy books in the iBooks store in Australia! – I am glad apple was slow in doing this, as it forced me to kindle book buying. It makes a lot more sense when using multiple devices.
I have had my new Kindle 3 for about a week now and have to say, it really does beat the iPad for reading! One of the big shocks with the Kindle 3, was integration with audiobook service Audible. Actually, it makes sense, due to the fact that Audible is now an Amazon product. Using the Kindle to listen to audiobooks, when my eyes are tired, is amazing. In fact, listening to an Audible book on a Kindle beats my experiences I have had on every other device (iPad, iPhone, iPod, Laptop, Desktop).
Yes, that right, as an iPad and Kindle owner, I can safely say that reading books on the Kindle wins, in my books (pun not intended). There are a number of reasons for this. The Kindle does two things really well. It plays audiobook and it lets you read books with ease.
The biggest issue I had with the iPad was the fact that there were so many other applications in the background, waiting to take my attention. It was way too easy to become distracted by playing Angry Bird, check Twitter, or play Words With Friends.
When I am reading a book on the Kindle, I am immersed in the book. It is the closest experience to reading a book you are going to get, before you have to…. pick up a real book!
Its biggest positive is also its biggest negative. No backlit screen! It so nice to be able to take your eyes away from looking at an illuminated screen, though it is annoying when you are in a dark room!
Its really easy to say, “Screw you iPad, you cost ten times more than the Kindle AND your reading experience isn’t even as good!”. But the fact is the iPad and Kindle cannot be fairly compared. Its like comparing apple and oranges. Oranges aren’t good for making apple pies, because they aren’t apples, although, you can make some pretty awesome meals with oranges. The iPad can be put in the ebook category, but I think its not its best use. The iPad is a swiss army knife. The device I use to quickly check my Twitter, read some RSS feeds and play some games.
The Kindle is great for reading books and in an age where we are all coming down with a case of ADD, focussing on one thing, isn’t so bad.
Jake Janssen, lead vocalist/guitarist for Melbourne based band Feed Your Munkie, performs ‘Waste My Dayz’ – A track from their second EP.
Feed Your Munkie will be launching their first album early in 2011, with MediaFlex being commissioned to produce their music video, coming December 2010.
Like Feed Your Munkie on Facebook! http://feedyourmunkie.com/
Just recorded a quick bit of audio of my brother Jake playing guitar and singing. He has a nasty cold, so he wasn’t massively happy with his performance. I can’t believe how good the quality of the h4n internal microphones are!
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There are a few Youtube videos with really catchy music. The videos that I will sometimes even open in a tab and play purely for the music (if only this wouldn’t cause Safari to crash!). Here are four of my personal favourite music related videos.
FACEBOOK.COM SONG
I remember seeing this video a few years ago. Before I even had facebook.
I was think the other day, why do I love the Internet so much? After a lot of thought, I have come up with the answer. It feeds my obsessive personality. Whether I am going through a phase of obsessing about package design, photography or screenwriting, the Internet never lets me down. When I am obsessing about design, here are the four blogs I love to visit. Here they are, described by them.
Established in early 2007, The Dieline is dedicated to the progress of the package design industry and its practitioners, students and enthusiasts. Its purpose is to define and promote the world’s best packaging design, and provide a place where the package design community can review, critique and stay informed of the latest industry trends and design projects being created in the field.
The Dieline has quickly grown into the most visited website on package design in the world, and has become the voice of the industry. The Dieline’s first book on Package Design, “Box, Bottle, Bag” was released by HOW Books in early 2010, and has quickly become the top selling package design book on Amazon. The Dieline has also recently launched The Dieline Awards, a worldwide package design competition devoted exclusively to the art of brand packaging, further promoting the field. Winners were announced at the FUSE Conference at Trump Tower in Chicago on April 14th. http://www.thedieline.com/
I have recently read a number of books around the subject of business, corporate culture, customer service and entrepreneurship. Books like Rework by Jason Fried and The Four
Hour Work Week by Timothy Ferriss. These books, in particular, challenge the way
Delivering Happiness by Tony Hsieh
in which we work and the amount of time we spend doing it. Although I have found them useful, they do make some outrageous claims. Jason thinks learning from mistakes is rubbish, because apparently we shouldn’t be making mistakes and Timothy thinks its viable for us to all outsource our life and check our email once a week.
Unfortunately, we are not all so experienced that we don’t make mistakes and we don’t all have the finances to pay other people to do the work we could be doing.
