Entrepreneurship, travel and life
Business cards are boring and short of having a fantastic design created by an artist, are instantly forgettable. Recently I came across a selection that can’t fail to stick in you mind. These business cards are more than just little bits of card, they’re something relevant to the business and all share one thing in common; they’re very creative.
A headhunters card with instructions ‘read it then eat it'
I don’t consider myself to be a very good trombone player, so when an old music teacher from high school started up a beginner’s band I was more than qualified. This all happened before I went to Africa and when I got back it had turned into a more organised affair even with it’s own name (Callander Brass), logo and website. Having applied to a number of organisations for funding we have music to play and many “new” instruments to play it on. Which brings me to how I came to have a bass trombone in my bathtub this morning.
Before I explain why I had it in the bath I’ll explain why I have it. My trombone is a King 3B Tenor trombone but in the band I’m normally either 3rd or bass trombone so with my instrument I can’t reach some of the lower notes. To solve this problem they spent some of the band funds on a Boosey & Hawkes Imperial (from eBay), what was in its day a professional line of instruments made in England.
As of Monday and the Callander Amateur Operatic Society rehearsal (I need to say no more often!) I’ve had this new toy sitting on a stand in my room. They’re fundamentally the same instrument but with some changes. To get lower notes there’s an extra length of tubing at the top and a valve that controls whether or not the air goes through it or bypasses it and is then essentially a tenor trombone. This bit called the F attachment is the biggest thing I’ve got to get used to because when you pull the trigger strange things happen e.g. you can get c in first position and there are only 6 slide positions instead of the usual 7 (and their all in new places).
Oh I nearly forgot, I had it in the bath as that’s the best way to wash the gunk out of it.
If you forget the car industries earlier foray into electric cars the Tesla Roadster is the poster child of the future. Celebrities conscious to promote a sensitive persona have bought hybrids such as the Prius, but ultimately they’re still tied to the pump. Then came the Tesla Roadster and it’s massive order book of celebs all willing to wait a few years for their fully electric sports car. The thing is, whilst Tesla have been arguing amongst themselves and generally only making noise rather than cars, they’ve been overtaken by a British company with a much better product.
Introducing Lightning, the small start-up that wants to convince you not to by a Tesla or Aston Martin.
What makes it better than a Tesla? How about being able to fully charge the battery in less than 10 minutes compared to the 3.5 hours of the Roadster. Or the fact the GT looks beautiful. Ok, the GT might be £120,000 but if you fancy a car that could compete with an Aston Martin you should expect to spend about the same.
Personally it’s unlikely I’d ever buy a Tesla but I’ve always fancied an Aston Martin DB9 (you got to have something to aspire to right?) but the new Lightning GT is now getting serious consideration.
My outbound (SMTP) mailsever was always the university server. Upon graduation they disabled our accounts. This left me with the problem of not being able to reply or indeed send any emails. My web hosts Freehostia provide free accounts for hosting websites and allow you to have email addresses but charge for SMTP. You could use gmail but they change the email so everyone knows it came through them. There are a number of SMTP services avaliable but they all seemed to have their drawbacks.
Mac OS X comes with a number of open source programs buried away, emacs is one of the many that spring to mind. Since it is a unix operating system it was a fair bet that it would be possible to install Postfix but it’s installed already by default (The SMTP program for 10.0 to 10.2 was Sendmail).
It’s really easy to get a local SMTP server up and running. Simply follow these steps:
Thanks to David Reitter for the original article. Hosting your own mailserver isn’t without risk and the required modification of files may result in unexpected system behaviour. I don’t take any responsibility for your actions in following these instructions. Use at your own risk. Although it’s very unlikely there could be a problem.
Update: Some mail servers might treat your emails as spam if you use your own SMTP. You can check if your IP address will have that problem by searching SORBS or a similar service. Some home ISPs give their customers a dynamic IP address (one that will change). If this is the case you might be able to get round the problem by restarting your router and letting it pick up a new IP.
To people who don’t know (cave dwellers perhaps), an iPhone is a phone made by Apple (except when it’s made by Linksys) and on Monday, Apple brought out a new one. I’m now torn between 3 phones (I class blackberries as one phone). The blackberry (probably the Pearl 8100 because it comes on a £25 contract on o2), the Nokia N95 which a few of my friends have and the new 16gb iPhone. I’m happy to admit I’m an apple fanboy. I own an ipod (well it’s one of the three I won but the only one I haven’t sold), an old PowerBook G4 laptop and a brand new MacBook Pro (not to mention 2 old towers, 7200 and an 8200 but they’re going in a skip soon) and I even have a t-shirt with “Mac Daddy” written on it. I’m cool.
I’m currently using my old 7210 as my business mobile phone. I got a free Virgin Mobile sim online and it came with a free £5 balance and a decent number. So once the money’s gone I’ll move the number to o2. I much prefer o2, other than being an ex shareholder (before they were bought by Telefonica), I actually get a signal in the house.
The iPhone is tempting but it has a few missing features/problems in my view:
but damn it’s shiny.
The Nokia N95 is a very good phone and keeps with a similar interface that I’m used to (I’m a long time Nokia user). It seems to have all the features a smartphone could ever have but:
It’s a tough one but I’m impressed by it. Only problem is I don’t want to get the same phone as my friends!
The Blackberry Pearl 8100 is Rim’s attempt at making a business phone appeal to more than just business users. I’m not convinced they do it very well. Problems in my eyes include:
It’s a good phone for what it does, phoning people but I kinda want more. It’s more just a status symbol. “Yes, I have a Blackberry and when I go abroad on international business I still receive those emails advertising viagra”.
Right, well this sorted out nothing. Maybe I’ll get the blackberry for business and the iPhone for pleasure (and the N95 for dirty weekends in Blackpool).
I’ve been working on it off an on for a while but I’ve eventually got round to finishing the johnbain.org homepage. It’s obvious to me at least that I’m not very good at web design but it’s a work in progress and we all need to start somewhere. TBH I’ll probably be the only one who ever looks at it!
So here we go, my first ever post on a blog. Like it says on the about page I set this blog up as much for myself as anyone else. Hopefully some of what I write will be useful for other people starting up their own business. It certainly feels like a daunting journey!
So what’s the business? It’s a new way of selling personalised number plates online (for more visit about MyNewReg.com). More tomorrow.