Personal

Personal

Why I Can't Afford Cheap

I remember reading a story once about an octogenarian discussing her most prized possessions with a researcher. She shows the researcher an iron that's been going for over 40 years and explains how she had to scrimp and save to buy the product and how it ended up out living even her husband. Quizzed on why she spent so much money on the iron she said "I'm too poor to buy cheap!" Too poor to buy cheap. That simple phase really resonated with me and has stuck with me ever since. Cheap is quick. Cheap is dirty. Cheap is disposable. Cheap breaks. Cheap costs money. It costs money to fix, it costs money to replace. Cheap seems like a good idea at the time but cheap fails when you most need it. Cheap is flimsy and unsatisfying. Cheap is inefficient. Cheap gets in your way. Cheap costs you time and it costs you customers. Cheap always cost you more in the end. That's why I can't afford to buy cheap. Can you?

Personal

There and Back Again

My antipodean adventure is coming to a close so I thought i'd reflect on my time away. The trip started with a two day lay-over in Hong Kong to break the journey. I've been to this amazingly vibrant city before and it's one of my favorite places in Asia. It's a bit of a cliche but Hong Kong really is a city where east and west collide. A city where hundred year old temples sit next to trendy bars and street hawkers compete with international food chains. Like many Asian cities, gadgets rule supreme in this town and none more so than the ever ubiquitous mobile phone. The streets are a blur of activity both day and night, and as dusk falls the city is lit by a forest of neon. Like stepping into a scene from Blade Runner, you expect Decker to come round the corner any minute.

Personal

Disconnected in Auckland

Hey sports racers. I'm in Auckland at the moment, on the second leg of my world tour and feeling decidedly disconnected. I'm not sure if it's just bad luck but I've been having WiFi nightmares down under.

Personal

Shark!

A few weeks ago we organised a public speaking workshop for the whole of Clearleft. A lovely chap called "Alex Marshall":http://www.alexmarshall.com/ hosted the workshop, and asked us all to give a 5 minute presentation to the rest of the team. Each session was video recorded and then played back to help us see what we're doing well and what we're doing badly. I've been a dive instructor for several years, and have worked as a safety diver on shark feeds in the Great Barrier Reef. I've dived with all sorts of sharks in my time, from little white tip reef sharks in Thailand to schools of over 50 hammerheads in the South China seas. There is nothing like jumping in the water with a top level predator to get the heart racing. However my first ever experience of a shark underwater was dead, laying on the bottom of the ocean with it's fin cut off. Shark meat isn't worth much, so it's quite common to slice the fins off a living shark and then throw it back in the water to slowly drown. As such, I chose to do my talk on the terrible shark finning trade around the world.

Personal

The Defining Culture of the Naughties?

So another year has gone and we've only got a couple left till the end of the "naughties" and the start of a new decade. Ever since the second world war, each decade has been typified by it's own unique culture, usually a combination of the music and fashion of the day. These cultural movements start small and localised, but the popular ones thrive and get transported round the world via movies, radio, magazines and TV. Prior to the war, cultural movements did exist. They just were more localised and look longer to propagate due to the lack of mass media.

Personal

On Experts and Expertise

We currently live in a world dominated by experts. You only have to open a newspaper or switch on the television to see experts giving pronouncements on everything from parenting to the economy. In a world of multifarious complexities, the need for such experts is clear. We need experts to filter the huge flow of information and simplify it into something more digestible.