Doing what you love

On February 19, 2011, in Outlook, Uncategorized, by Simon Coles

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.

Don’t be trapped by dogma, which is living with the results of other people’s thinking.

Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice.

And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become.

Everything else is secondary”

Steve Jobs in his 2005 Stanford Commencement Address.

 

Fun with Remote Control Tricopters

On February 1, 2011, in Geeky, Toys, by Simon Coles

I’ve been having fun flying the helicopters around the office when it is quiet, learning a lot about keeping them stable and avoiding air currents etc. Fun although probably not worth taking videos of!

Then via this post, I see there’s more fun to be had with the right tools…

 

Almost all our customers at Amphora are outside the UK, so we do a lot of currency exchange. Over time we’ve come to understand there are lots of ways of moving money between countries, and at the quantities we move the service we use makes a real difference. Most of the services we’ve used are pretty boring – boring enough that I don’t really hear about them, it is just part of the accounts process (which I avoid as much as I can!).

But the newly-launched TransferWise service appears to be different:

  • They are disruptive – they apparently give better rates by matching pairs of transfers rather than going out into the Markets.
  • Their web site is really clean and explains it all well (in contrast to most services which are either phone-only or horribly complex sites).
  • They are transparent in what they are trying to do and charge. So much of financial services seems to be designed to baffle you into being swindled.

Oh, and I like their Blog and Story (as well as where their name came from). Disruption with a sense of humour.

I don’t know if we’ll use them – nothing to do with me really – but I do like their approach.

 

Amazing view of a Train Platform

On January 5, 2011, in Geeky, by Simon Coles

Wow – someone took a high-speed camera and pointed at the platform of a Railway Station as the train passed by (found from here but this is the original blog post). Love it.

 

A Water Drop

On January 5, 2011, in Geeky, by Simon Coles