Minimum wage is a complex issue for small businesses, says the Small Business Development Center in Binghamton.

The SBDC adds that, typically, small businesses have a close relationship with their employees and if they could pay them more originally, they would.

They add that they believe some business owners may have to pick up the slack in order to keep costs low.

The pandemic is accelerating existing trends.

Covid-19 has initiated some trends and altered the direction of others, but its most enduring impact will be as an accelerant. Take any trend--social, business, or personal--and fast-forward 10 years. Even if your company isn't living in the year 2030 yet, the pandemic has spurred changes in consumer behavior and markets. This is clear in the rapid increase in online shopping, in the shift toward remote delivery of health care, and in the spectacular increase in valuation among the biggest tech firms.

The more disruptive the crisis, the greater the opportunities--and the risks.

With the ongoing move of smart phones towards near-ubiquity, much of society has come to take these do-all devices for granted. In overcoming the novelty of smart phones, many of us have lost our one-time sense of awe at this technology, and have ceased marveling at the effect it has had on the world around us. However, it is undeniable that smart phones have exerted a huge and multi-faceted impact on society, and continue to do so to this day.

How Smart Phones Have Changed the World

For some of the smallest businesses that applied for forgivable loans through the Paycheck Protection Program, waiting just a few days or weeks would’ve gotten them thousands of dollars more.

But they had no way of knowing what was coming.

The Biden administration in late February announced a slew of changes to the loan program, which offered forgivable loans in return for keeping employees on a company’s payroll, after it reopened in January with $284 billion in funding. Those amendments included an adjusted loan formula that would mean larger amounts for sole proprietors as well as expanded eligibility for small business owners with certain criminal records, were delinquent on student loan debt or were non-citizens.

Title: How Is Substance-Induced Psychosis Treated?
Category: Diseases and Conditions
Created: 4/1/2022 12:00:00 AM
Last Editorial Review: 4/1/2022 12:00:00 AM

Title: See How Your Life Affects Your Skin
Category: Slideshows
Created: 5/30/2012 12:00:00 AM
Last Editorial Review: 7/13/2022 12:00:00 AM

(EMAILWIRE.COM, October 29, 2024 ) Shower Gel Market was valued at US$ 16.52 Bn. in 2023. Global Shower Gel Market size is estimated to grow at a CAGR of 6.8% during the forecast period. Shower Gel Market overview Shower gel, also known as body wash, is a liquid product created specifically...

Note to Curt:

Just because the state claims the authority to apprehend and punish rapists doesn’t mean that apprehending and punishing rapists is a form of state coercion. Nor is the notion that rape is bad an example of state coercion. Depending on your perspective, this is either a moral truth derived from God/reason/whatever or a widely-accepted social convention. Similarly, the notion that one can own property is (again, depending on your perspective) either morally necessary or a widely-accepted social convention that seems to work pretty well (here I’m dispensing with Communists and other fools who have nothing intelligent to say on the matter). Either way, the fact that the state claims ultimate authority to adjudicate property disputes does not make private property a form of state coercion. (Further reading)

Recommended

The Alice Howell Collection:

From where we are now, it's weird to think of these silent comedies as being filmed and released 25 to 35 years after the advent of motion pictures. I mean, with the first true examples of 'film' coming from the mid-1880s, you'd think that by 1914 a picture like Shot in the Excitement, featuring early film comedienne Alice Howell, would look more sophisticated. Aah, but those were the olden days, when horse-drawn carriages still regularly shared the road with motor cars.

This 2-disc collection of silent motion picture comedies, curated by Steve Massa and Ben Model, features Alice Howell, one of the earliest and well-renowned stars of slapstick comedies, who was active from 1914 to 1926 or so. The titles included here on disc one are the aforementioned Shot in the Excitement (1914, 14 minutes), Father was a Loafer (1915, 13 minutes), Unde...Read the entire review

Recommended

In Part 3 of our series of studies on 'The Holy Spirit', we investigate some biblical and practical steps to receiving the power of the Spirit, the power that you need to live the Christian life and serve Jesus effectively. We'll also consider some hindrances to the Spirit's power in our lives and churches as we learn 'How To Receive'. This message is available at https://www.preachtheword.com now in MP3 audio format and in HD video on our YouTube Channel (https://youtube.com/PreachTheWord)...

In Matthew 12:28-29, 43-45, Jesus gives us some dynamics of how the demonic realm gains influence over our lives. We need to understand this if we are to be protected. Of course, the Gospel gives us the means of freedom to get the devil out! We'll learn about that too. We see in this teaching that Jesus was talking about more than just a person's individual problems with sin and Satan, but also how whole nations and populations let the devil in. This message is available at https://www.preachtheword.com now in MP3 audio format...

Autor: Redakcija 031 Naslov: Centar za kulturu Čepin: Stand-up comedy show "Ja sam ti takav"
Postano: 13.11.2024. 8:14 (GMT 1) Tomislav Primorac, poznati stand-up komičar i predstavnik SplickeScene, sa showom „Ja sam ti takav“ stiže u Centar za kulturu Čepin. Nastupit će u petak, 15. studenog 2024. u 20 sati.

O komičaru Tomislavu Primorcu
Ovaj stand-up komičar prepoznatljiv je po svom britkom humoru i specifičnom stilu. Opisuje se kao „poludalmatinac“ i „poluhercegovac“ te kao mitološko biće kojeg se boje svi Purgeri. Iako je diplomirani fizičar, odlučio je krenuti putem komedije, što je izazvalo razočaranje njegovih roditelja. Njegov je životni san da bude zapamćen poput Nikole Tesle – ali ne iz altruističnih razloga, već da bi se Dalmatinci i Hercegovci svađali na temu čiji je.

Njegov humor balansira između svakodnevnih situacija i dubljih promišljanja o životu. Cilj mu je pronaći ga u onome što svi proživljavaju. Publiku svih uzrasta - od studenata do sredovječnih muškaraca i baka - uspijeva nasmijati svojom domišljatošću i logikom.

O showu „Ja sam ti takav“
Show „Ja sam ti takav“ dinamičan je i emotivno duboko uronjen u svakodnevni život. Primorac koristi humor kako bi razotkrio obiteljske odnose, kulturne razlike i jezične analize, pri čemu se obraća svima - bez obzira na dob ili društveni status. Ovaj show pruža priliku za smijeh i razmišljanje o životu kroz komične, ali istinite situacije.

„Ne propustite priliku za uživanje u ovom jedinstvenom stand-up iskustvu u Čepinu. Garantiramo večer prepunu smijeha i dobre energije“, poručili su Arlekin Comedyja, organizatora ovog događanja.

Kako do ulaznica?
Ulaznice se prodaju po cijeni od 10 eura. Mogu se kupiti online u sustavima Core event i Adriaticket. Fizička prodaja vrši se na lokacijama: caffe bar Onyx, TISAK+ (Gacka ulica 10), TISAK Media Portanova (uz dodatni trošak od 1 eura). Rezervacije su moguće pozivom na broj 098 977 25 41 (Arlekin Comedy), na kojem je moguće dobiti i dodatne informacije.

Just a quick marketing tip . . .

Test! Test! Test!

Marketing your business effectively is not about
finding one thing and doing it over and over and over
again, unless it's testing.

There is NO one way to do things right, let your
results be the marker of what works and what does not
and not what someone tells you to do.

So here's the tip, you see the headline for this email?

It came through testing, and compared to other
headlines tested this was the one that produced the
best results.

So you opened this email because my prior testing said
you would respond. Imagine honing that power in your
recruiting efforts . . .

Here's an easy way to find out what headlines produce
the best response in your business.

Brainstorm different headlines based on the ones you
see out there that get you to pay attention.

Write down about 10 in notepad.

Start a Google Adwords campaign and place all of your
headlines as ads. Give it about a week or 300 to 500
views per ad and then see which one wins.

Now you have an amazing response producing headline
that you can continue to use in your Adwords campaign,
you can use as a headline in emails to prospects, and
you can use as a headline on your lead capture or
landing pages.

You can even record it in audio and double the impact.

When you do this you'll be doing something that 95% of
marketers and 99% of network marketers never do, and
because of it you'll outperform them every time.



"Discover The SHOCKING Truth How An Unknown, Young
Network Marketer Embarrassed Industry Heavy Hitters By
Refusing To Call Even One Lead ... And Yet Recruit Over
3,967 Into His Downline In Just 14 Months!" For
Complete Details Go To:
==> http://www.opportunity-waits.com

. (11 Shares Gone In
Less Than 24 hours!)

Team,

First off . . .

It's been less than 24 hours and we have already had 11
shares reserved at my last count and it always makes me
happy to see that many of the shares reserved were reserved
by repeat co-op members.

This shows me that our co-op not only continues to improve
in value, but also we have many people on our team that use
our co-op as an integral part of their marketing strategy
month after month.

Let me get into the details and explain to you exactly how
our team co-op works . . .

Starting yesterday I opened the enrollment window for the
co-op.

I generally leave this window open for about one week or
until all shares are sold, whichever comes first.

Judging by the fast action of many members of our team, we
will most likely sell out of shares for this co-op in less
than a week.

Each member can reserve up to but no more than 3 shares in
the co-op.

The reason for this is I want to allow team members to use
the co-op as a tool in their marketing arsenal, but I very
much don't want people to use the co-op as their sole
traffic generation method.

It's highly effective, but the truth is your business will
take off to a new level when you master the skills of
creating targeted traffic on your own and using your
marketing skills to control the overall growth of your
business.

Becoming a proficient marketer whether it be online or off
takes time and I understand that, so while you are learning
the skills to be an independent internet network marketer
you have the co-op to lean on to help you generate some
highly qualified traffic to your lead capture page.

It's a huge leverage so if you need it I suggest you use it.

But . . .

Back to the explanation of how our team co-op works . . .

Once all shares are reserved or the co-op window closes I
will take all of our co-op members lead capture page URLs
and add them to a URL rotator so that when traffic is
generated it is divided equally between all members of the
co-op.

This process normally takes me about a day of set up.

After that it's off to the races . . .

I generate targeted traffic for our co-op members using
multiple tried and true traffic generation methods including
Google Adwords, Article Marketing, and Getresponse power
leads campaigns to name a few which I continually test and
track and I direct all traffic to our team co-op front end
lead capture page found at:

http://www.mlm-successsite.com

Once a lead opts in through this lead capture page they are
then immediately added to our team co-op auto responder
account as well as forwarded to our team URL rotator and co-
op lead capture pages.

For every opt in on the front end their will be one lead
capture page view.

In my history of doing our team co-op I have found this to
be the best way to generate extremely targeted lead capture
page views because the lead is double qualified in the
process.

That is . . .

Before they even get a chance to view on of our team's lead
capture pages they have to opt in to our team lead capture
page listed above.

Those people that do opt in on the back end to your lead
capture pages are highly qualified.

They had to double confirm their interest by opting in twice
to view your sales page.

This increases conversions on the front end.

So the question is raised?

How many people double opt in?

About 65% will opt in through your lead capture page on the
back end after opting into our front end lead capture page.

That's fine . . .

Because once they opt in on the front end my TRUE work
begins.

We send all of our leads to a front lead capture page and
collect them in a team auto responder for a very important
reason.

It allows us to send these leads personal follow up emails
on a daily basis.

In creating a "co-op list" we are actually creating a pool
of qualified prospects that we can develop a relationship
with and market to as much as we want over the course of
time.

So my biggest job as the administrator of our team co-op is
to consistently and continually develop a relationship to
these leads once they have opted in.

I do this by sending our leads list an email twice a day.

Once in the morning with a high value relationship building
email and once in the afternoon with a more sales pitch type
email and always giving our leads a good reason to come back
and check out Success University through our team URL rotator
link.

This will create a steady flow of high quality leads for you
to your lead capture page over the course of the month that
our co-op will be in effect after we begin marketing and
promotion.

Even better, the amount of traffic and leads will grow over
the course of the month as this list of prospects grows and
becomes more comfortable with our mailings.

This is HUGE leverage!

You may ask . . .

Why not just set up an auto responder series and send that
out to the list?

This is a good question and the truth is we could and it
would work effectively, but it is not the same powerful
dynamic of creating and having a ongoing dialogue with the
people on the list and this can only happen in a real time
day to day email conversation.

To ensure the best quality of leads and traffic for you as a
member of the team co-op I will devote the time and effort
to do this.

Why?

I take my responsibility to you very seriously.

Your success is my success, and so I will NOT do anything
second best if I know there is a better way to conduct
business.

I will tell you bluntly . . .

You will never find a person more dedicated to your overall
success than me, and the way we run our team co-op is a
reflection of that dedication.

I want as many people as possible to be sitting on the
beaches of the world with me financially free in the next
couple of years and the only way to do that is show you how
this stuff should be done -Do it myself and then teach to
those that are willing to learn.

If you can conceive financial freedom for yourself in this
business, I guarantee it's is possible.

It takes work and courage, but it's possible.

Let's do this thing together!

I'm here to the end as long as you don't give up on
yourself.

Reserve your share in our team's co-op before it's to late!

Use the links below to reserve your share!


http://mlm-successsite.com/training/Coop%20Program.html

[Team Exclusive] IMPORTANT!!!

I will leave our team co-op window for enrolment until all
available shares are sold or for one week at the most!

http://mlm-successsite.com/training/Coop%20Program.html


To Your Success!

John

"Sentimental Gentleman From Georgia" was used as backing for a TU student film on the Mazeppa show in 1971. I should know, I audiotaped that episode. Hear it on YouTube on the Mazeppa theme page. Also currently featured on the main page.

A kids' program filmed in the basement of the Tulsa library whose theme song was "Make Me Smile". Dave McFadden was part of the show. He tells us about it and has a great promo photo. In GroupBlog 324.

TV executive, producer and talk show host David Susskind will be the focus of the next edition of TV CONFIDENTIAL on Monday, Apr. 11, 8 pm CST. The show will also be available as a podcast. Links in GroupBlog 324.

Jack is looking for movie/video footage, old commercials, pics, anything from the 1970s for his "70s show". Watch a preview in GroupBlog 329.

Mike Miller posted a link to the Tulsa World obituary for longtime Tulsa newsman Bob Hower, who passed away at age 87 last Saturday.

RSU-TV's "Green Country Perspectives with Sam Jones" on the 25th anniversary of the movie "UHF". Circle Cinema showing tonight is sold out, but book signing with Weird Al at 4 pm. Broadcast channel 35.1, Cox 109 or 793.

Got back in touch recently with my old road rallying buddy, Garry Deaton. His dad built a biplane for himself. Bob Hower admired it so much, Garry's dad built one for him, too! Garry loaned me this Xmas card from Bob to his dad.

On TTM Flickr: my friend Garry Deaton tells us about his dad building Bob Hower's biplane at Harvey Young Airport in 1978.

Today's meditation: "Those who do not move, do not notice their chains." - Rosa Luxemburg For a long time, I've held the belief that I couldn't be an entrepreneur because I don't have the basic skills to make that kind...

Published at LXer: By creating a separate /home partition, Linux users can preserve personal files and settings during OS reinstallations, avoiding data loss and simplifying the migration process....

Published at LXer: With the Linux 6.12 merge window wrapping up this weekend and the bulk of the new feature merges now in the tree, I've begun running some Linux 6.12 benchmarks. Here is an...

Published at LXer: Learn how to install Docker Desktop on Linux Mint 22. Follow our step-by-step guide to set up and run containers effortlessly on your Mint system. Read More......

Published at LXer: Lychee is an open-source photo-management software based on PHP and MySQL. In this tutorial, you'll learn how to install Lychee Photo Management on Debian 12 server. Read...

Published at LXer: Find out the File Smuggling technique to secretly share the executable file from an email provider, such as Gmail, without getting blocked. Read More......

Published at LXer: Learn how to eliminate the hassle of typing your password for every sudo command in Linux, whether you want to run specific commands or even all of them, with this step-by-step...

Published at LXer: Arch Linux is a robust operating system often chosen by power users and IT professionals. While there is no doubt that it is an extremely powerful OS, the need to use other...

Hello, How to connect 3 x HDMI Monitors to Raspberry PI 5 (RPI5) ? The Machine ARM, Power Beast : PI 5: Raspberry Pi 5 B 8GB 4x2.4GHz, There are 3 monitors, that need a HDMI converter. ...

I try to pre-process pdf files so that they load faster, and so they won't crash kindles or tablets. In MacOS, I could use Automator to run a bash shell script. In Fedora w/ Cinnamon, I tried to...

Comme si il ne faisait pas assez la star en France…. voilà que notre très aimé président vient exposer ses bourrelets dans la presse chinoise . Hesiem, Pékin (Chine)

When you run the GNU Gatekeeper, you can block spam calls from the well known bots ("MERA RU", "SimpleOPAL" etc.) eg. using a small LUA script in your config.

But that alone doesn't stop the load on the server, because often these bots keep on making calls.

Fail2ban to the rescue!

With this filter definition in /etc/fail2ban/filter.d/gnugk.conf you can check fro rejected calls:

[Definition]
failregex = Dropping call CRV=[0-9]+ from <HOST>:[0-9]+ due to Setup authentication failure
ignoreregex =


And then you can add this jail definition to /etc/fail2ban/jail.local to block the IP:

[gnugk]
enabled  = true
logpath  = /var/log/gnugk.log
filter   = gnugk
bantime  = 6000
maxretry = 2
action   = iptables[name=GnuGk, port=1720, protocol=tcp]


Voila!

The moment Steve Jobs’ and Apple’s work first came into my life was back in 2002. That first brush, I hated it. 

In time, I came to see him for the genius and pioneer that he was, and the work that Apple did - and does - as amongst the most extraordinary in the World today.

First some context:

In 2002, I was at the European BSD conference and Jordan Hubbard, founder of FreeBSD and then newly-employed release engineer at Apple, had secured for the “terminal room” a sponsorship from Apple which meant the room was full of the 2002 iMacs. The 2002 iMac was a little “alien” in that each machine was a dome with a flexible protruding screen. Installed on them was OS X, an operating system I had beta tested before its first release on an ancient iBook, and I had very mixed feelings about.

It was pretty. But was it really a Unix? The other developers of BSD Unix in the room needed very little convincing. The command line was Unix, but the desktop and applications on there were beautiful. It was what they dreamed a Unix should be. Many of them left that conference committed to buying Apple equipment and moving to OS X within the year.

I resented this “attack” on the community, but could see where they were coming from. It was - and remains - a key part of Apple’s renaissance: build great tools for developers and alpha-geeks, and in turn the developers will build an ecosystem that users crave. Instill in the developers an aesthetic and teach them a way to do the things they struggle with (human interface guidelines, for example), and they will reward you with loyalty.

In short: empower your customers, and they’ll empower you.

No technology firm had done this as successfully before as Apple were doing between 2002 and 2004.

By 2004, I had just about had it with the drain away from the community Apple had “caused”. On one mailing list I wrote a very angry email in response to somebody else’s request for configuration advice on their latest Apple laptop:

http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-chat/2004-October/002684.html

“Yes, of course. My advice is that you sell your over-priced fashion-victim toy with it’s Fisher Price Unix installed, and use the money instead to buy yourself a top of the range Thinkpad. It will outperform it, run FreeBSD, not look out of fashion next season, has been built by a company that is truly committed to the open source movement and whose execs don’t patronise you by assuming you travel to work on a skateboard in cargo pants or worse, pander to your girlfriend’s idea of what a computer should be.”

Ashamed by my petulant anger, about six month later I decided to reconsider, step back and think about what they were doing in a wider scheme of the industry I was in. This was when I started to “get it”. It was when I could see what others lauded about Apple and its founders.

Within 14 months of writing that email I had acquired a 12” iBook. It was all I could afford at the time, and even then it was subsidised by the fact that I was working in a University faculty and so got a discount.

I immediately loved the fact I had a Unix machine with WiFi and Bluetooth that I didn’t need to spend a week configuring. I loved the software I could buy, and that all the open source tools I loved would work too. I loved the thought that had gone into developing that code underlying OS X. I loved the developer tools and Safari. I found myself thinking more and more about aesthetics and craftsmanship as part of what I do as a developer. Suddenly programming wasn’t just a dry science of mathematics and engineering: Steve’s ideas were getting to me through the product of his and Apple’s work.

Two things then happened like thunderbolts. 

First, I had found a copy of Steve’s commencement speech to Stanford in 2005.

Steve’s speech stuck with me. I had studied rhetoric, and was pleased by the simple construct he had used - a structure I would begin to notice he used in product announcements - but the content had hit me somewhere deep.

In it he talked about three things:

• Follow your intuition, because in hindsight the dots will join up. You can’t plan to be great, you just have to let the intuition guide you.
• Do what you love, and change things if you find yourself not enjoying life
• Death is inevitable. It’s coming. Deal with it as an agent of change, and don’t waste your life.

The second thing that happened around then, was that I discovered the Ruby programming language, a language that was designed to be beautiful and enjoyable for programmers to work with.

It astonished me.

I don’t think it would have done if by that point I had not started to “get” aestheticism in software, the Apple way. It’s no secret that the Ruby on Rails framework is developed almost entirely on Apple OS X machines. A Ruby conference is basically a hang-out of Apple fans. The two seem to go hand-in-hand together, just like how in 2002 it was Apple and the BSD guys.

Last night as I watched the speech again on YouTube (on my iPhone, natch), I realised I was connecting dots back, and in hindsight the impact this speech and this discovery had on me was immense.

Coupled with the discovery of Ruby, what happened next was perhaps inevitable, but still surprised me.

I went and started my own business.

I had always wanted to, but right there and then, something clicked, and I got rid of all the fear and doubt and realised that when I looked back on my life I wanted to be able to say that for a while at least I had been an “entrepreneur”.

I made the decision that I would not work on projects in that business I did not enjoy. I would only work on things that brought me joy: that is to say, I would only write code in Ruby. A brave choice in early 2006 when Rails had yet to reach v1.0 and Ruby was still considered a “toy” language by many.

I had no money, no client roster, and survived the first six months coding away on that tiny, slow little 12” iBook for friends who had piece work for me. I had never been happier.

I ate noodles and beans on toast, drank donated Guinness and chose to love my work. Working from home I would love waking late on a Monday morning, but I could never lie-in: I always wanted to just get started.

I spent the next few years helping other businesses, talking about development as a craft, not just a science.

I went into schools and told kids that learning how to write beautiful software was the most powerful skill you could cheaply acquire in this generation. Like me, they could come up with an idea and with a laptop and internet connection share it with the World in a weekend.

In the years since, I have helped dozens of start-ups, spoken to thousands of teenage children (and hopefully inspired a few to give programming with an artistic flair a go), and changed my life substantially.

I am not the same man I was in 2005. The depression and anxiety I had suffered prior to then have more or less gone. I have a brilliant relationship with an amazing girl who I consider to be my best friend, and I do work that makes me excited almost every day.

The decisions I made in those few months in 2005 and early 2006, looking back, are what made me who I am today.

I had to call time on my main business in 2010 partly because I was finding myself looking in the mirror and not looking forward to the day ahead any more - just like Steve had said, I decided I needed to change something. As sales had dried up I realised I was doing something I no longer enjoyed.

I then turned down one job offer for another on a quarter of the salary because it felt right, it felt like more interesting work and ultimately I knew it might lead to an exciting adventure I had dreamed about.

Today I work on an amazing product with brilliant people and finding myself learning new things every day.

Looking back I realise I have developed a new sense of intense curiosity. I will wander in my work, inquisitively poking whole areas I know little about. I read more, listen more and learn more. I teach where I can, I play, and I explore.

I realise that my time on this little rock is limited, and I try and make sure every day I do something that makes me smile.

In hindsight then, Steve’s words and work have had a substantial impact on who I am today professionally. Because that impact made my work more joyful, pleasant and fulfilling, in turn, his words and work have made my life better than it would have been without his impact.

“This was a very typical time. I was single. All you needed was a cup of tea, a light, and your stereo, you know, and that’s what I had.”

It’s all the more impressive because according to “the rules” society is meant to work by, he should have been another liberal arts wash-up. As I said on Facebook earlier:

“I don’t think the economically right-wing anywhere - US, UK, Eurozone, China, anywhere - would be able to deal with the idea that the largest company on the planet was founded by a Buddhist counter-culturalist of complex family origins who made decisions based on intuition, aestheticism, love and curiosity.

Yet, it makes perfect sense to me.”

I never met him, never got close to knowing him the way that his friends and family did, or even his colleagues, but in my own way I learned to love him. His impact will be with me for the rest of my life, and late last night as the news broke here in the UK, despite it being on the cards for a while, the news came as a shock and I had to hold back the tears.

His critics’ words (and there are many!), sound very much like my own before I “got it”. Right now - today - though, it is petulant, angry, juvenile scribbling, and unworthy of any mature grown-up, given it is less than 24 hours since his dying.

Some call him a fascist, others a megalomaniac. In essence all he was trying to do was produce the best - and most human-friendly - technological products humanity was capable of producing right now. He did so within the rules shareholders gave him along with their money, because after being fired once, he didn’t want to mess up and be fired again. As ever, he exceeded their expectations and produced a company larger than any other on earth in terms of market capitalisation.

When you have a vision, as long as nobody gets hurt along the way, there’s no harm in following it ruthlessly. That’s what he did.

Some point to the fact that he didn’t donate much to charity in his life time, but I’m quietly confident that is because he didn’t want the ego stroking whilst he was still alive, and in coming years and months his wealth will quietly reach parts of the World that need it. He felt that shareholders’ money was their, and he shouldn’t give it away. He felt the best way he could help the World was by empowering as many people as possible. There’s no real shame in that. And in that, he was immensely successful.

He was also a subversive, and this is a point that his critics miss - or point to - the most. Biologically he was a half-Syrian Muslim, which when acknowledged in the last decade caused the conservative right in the US a huge problem: was the leader of the hottest thing on Wall Street one of them? They needn’t have worried - he’d discovered Buddhism many years ago. Adoptively he grew up to be a counter-culture Bay Area “hippie” and counter-culture type that worried some in the establishment even more.

His critics point to the consumerist message of Apple, without realising its founding principle was to go against the grain and to help people push further than the establishment wanted them to. The fact that he was able to make a living - a good living - as reward for that vision should not be seen as a fault or flaw.

Those unfamiliar with this background with questions to ask might want to start here. It might change your mind about him.

He wasn’t perfect. Nobody is. But regardless, he was an inspiration to millions who right now are working at building the next generation of technology. He showed us what we were capable of when we tried, and his death some 20-30 years “before his time” shows what a great leveller pancreatic cancer can be. So, if you are a critic: please shut the hell up and let us deal with paying tribute to him in our own way. You’ll reap the benefits as we march forward, inspired by his vision, into giving you the technology you deserve to make the World a better place.

I genuinely believe those who hate him haven’t given him - specifically what lay beneath his vision - a chance, in the same way I hadn’t.

The moment I did though and started to use the tools he and his company produced the way they were designed, my life got better and my attitude to what I wanted to do with my life improved.

I can’t think of another businessman I could say that about. I can’t think of another businessman anybody will be able to say that about when they die.

As I watched that commencement speech another time, the words were as fresh and as poignant as ever. His final few words seem particularly appropriate to me today, and so I will leave you with them. You may love him, you may hate him, but you can’t disagree that his vision was sharp, and worth sharing.

My thoughts and condolences today are of course with his family, his friends and colleagues, and all who were impacted by Steve from a distance the way I was. Steve was an amazing man, who inspired so many and has changed the World for the better, forever.

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

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.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960’s, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.

Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.” It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Thank you all very much.

This is not an exciting story, despite the title. But it’s true. And it happens to dozens of people every day, and is the reason why getting to work in London can sometimes take so long.

First, let me explain that this is not a story of me causing a fire alarm to go off, for anti-terrorist police to close a station for half an hour, or some dramatic incident that has left TfL seeking an ASBO against me.

This is a story that starts with a strap of a backpack. This strap, in fact:

This morning I caught a tube from Baron’s Court on the District Line heading East. Normally I change at South Kensington for a Circle Line to Moorgate, or hop off at Mansion House and walk up to the office through the City. This morning I had decided to stay on the District line until Blackfriars, and change there for a Circle line. It’s a man’s perogative, etc.

The tube this morning was very busy. During the Olympics it has on the whole been very quiet, but this morning it was the normal 8:15-8:45am peak time crush. I was stood right next to the door at the very front of the train, crushed in by about 20 other souls attempting to share the exact same square foot I was stood on.

At Victoria, as is often the way for the District Line, a lot of hustling and bustling went on as people fought their way out to the platform, and others tried to struggle onto the train. After around a minute, the doors closed.

Except for the one next to me. Looking down, it was jammed on my bag strap.

Swearing, I attempted to free it. It was jammed solid because the hydraulic pressure of the door was pushing against it, but not with sufficient force for the door to close. The guy next to me tried to help. The guy on the platform waiting for the next train also tried to help. Neither of us could free it. Moving it simply led to the door moving along a bit, keeping the strap jammed.

Then the sound of hydraulics releasing was heard, all the doors on the train went to open, and the driver climbed out of the cab. The release of pressure had allowed me to unjam the strap, and recover it into the train. The driver confirmed we were all fine, climbed back into the cab, closed the doors, and off we went.

I apologised to those around me for delaying their journey, even though the total delay was perhaps 60-90 seconds.

Then realised everybody else on the train was delayed, too.

Then a thought about queuing theory and a little knowledge about how loaded that line is with train traffic at that time of the morning hit me: I had delayed tens of thousands of people.

Let me explain how I worked this out.

The District Line is composed of rather large gauge trains. I estimate that conservatively, each train is capable of shifting 2,000 people during peak times. There were certainly at least 2,000 people on my train this morning. Yes, they are only 6 carriages each, but each is certainly capable of holding nearly 350 people, and frequently does. I’m prepared to revise my numbers down if shown evidence.

In addition, the District Line platforms are not just used by the District Line. They’re also used by the Circle line between Gloucester Road and Tower Hill.

A glance at any “passenger information display” on a platform along this part of the network during rush hour will tell you the mean time between trains is 1 minute. There are close to 60 trains an hour going along that piece of track during rush hour.

Because my train was delayed for over a minute, this must have caused the train behind it to be given a red signal. This in turn would have caused the train behind that to be given a red signal, and so on. This buffer effect would be dampened beyond Gloucester Road going West, because the Circle and District lines diverge, giving more time for the red signals to switch to green, meaning scheduled trains would not have to stop in an unscheduled manner.

However, there would have been at least - I think - 5 trains affected by this delay in addition to my own. So we’re now up to 12,000 people in total delayed by my bag strap jamming a door.

It gets worse.

I changed at Blackfriars to a Circle line train. I got off the train I had delayed, waited 60 seconds on the platform and got on the Circle line train immediately following it, obviously now delayed. Cautiously making sure my bag was far from any doors, I boarded aware this train was now at least 2 minutes late against schedule.

Satisfied at the figure I had come up with of around 12,000 delayed passengers, I had assumed I had done no more damage, until we got to Aldgate.

The tube system has a tendency to expect passengers always want to be moving all of the time. Any delay of more than a minute or two at a station is always explained via an announcement. As we sat at Aldgate, the driver announced we were being “regulated” by a red signal. Looking out of the window, I could see an East-bound Metropolitan line train crossing our tracks to head across to East London.

That’s when it hit me. We were “out of position”. The train was a couple of minutes late, and so the guys running the switching had decided to give priority to the Metropolitan Line train, and we were held for approximately 4-5 minutes.

Whilst this part of the Circle line between Aldgate and Tower Hill was not as busy as the District/Circle line Tower Hill back West, a 4 minute delay was enough to ensure that the train behind us was going to be red signalled waiting for us to clear the platform.

That would be enough for the train behind that to be stopped.

And that would be enough for the train behind that to be stopped, which would probably be on the shared part of the network. That would be enough to cascade across the whole part of that line back to Gloucester Road, causing delays to perhaps 12 trains in total.

By now the numbers per carriage were down a little as we were close to the end of peak, but there was probably at least 1,000 people per train out there. Rounding up for the few more probably still around the Victoria area, and we’re up to 25,000 people.

There’s obviously some fudging here - people boarding trains at the “correct time” for them, did not realise the train they were getting was in fact the one after the one they had expected, and they did not suffer any delay. But I also suspect that this effect wasn’t dampened until after the peak ended at around 9:30am, and there were people who boarded their trains at 8:30am or before still out there (it can take 60 minutes easily to get from the “end” of a line into central London), whose journey had taken at least a few minutes longer than normal.

I doubt many noticed. I doubt anybody cares.

But it did make me think about how queueing theory applies to real world problems, and how when TfL moan about people keeping coats, bags and belongings clear of the doors, or jamming the doors to squeeze on rather than wait 6 more minutes for the next train, that they might have a point.

If you cause a train to be delayed, you are not simply inconveniencing the dozen or so people glaring at you in your vicinity. Or the people on the rest of the train who would glare at you if they could. But in fact, you have a cascade effect down the rest of the network. Tens of thousands of people delayed, because you didn’t want to wait 5 minutes. Or because you didn’t keep an eye on your belongings near the door.

I’ll certainly be more careful in future.

The next time I’m sat waiting for a signal to clear or am told that we are “being regulated”, I’ll wonder about whose bag or foot was to blame, and how the numbers of people flowing through London make butterflies flapping their wings on the network capable of huge cascading effects on transport infrastructure.

I love knowing what my friends and family are up to. I love finding out about the latest thoughts going on within my peer groups. I enjoy reading many blogs, newsletter and emails. I used to regularly get over 400 emails a day including group/mailing list traffic, followed over a thousand people on Twitter and was friends with more than 250 people on Facebook. I subscribed to over 200 blogs. I read all of it, all the time.

Mix in LinkedIn, reddit, Hacker News and a few other corners of the web, and we’re suddenly talking about a lot of data flowing into my head.

I’m led to believe that some even value the contributions I make myself from time to time.

However, I’m about to start dialling all that down. I’ve made a start in some places, but over time I’m going to stop reading anywhere near as much short-form (twitter, Facebook, etc.), a little less medium-long form (blogs), and use the time to start reading longer form work again (books) and creating more.

The reason is not because of burn-out, cynicism or some other excuse: I’m not arguing that it’s all pointless, and I’m not being a Luddite. I just want to create more, and there are only so many hours in the day.

This was prompted by going back over my resolutions posted here in December, and realising I’ve made little progress:

• I need to get my weight down. I’m finally prepared to do something about it.

• I want to create more, so will aim to not go more than two or three consecutive days without working on something creative in 2012. It could be writing (here, for example), it could be code for a personal project, or it could be something I’ve never really tried before (music? art? Don’t know yet). I basically want to spend less time reading/consuming and more time doing stuff. David Tate provides excellent inspirationif you want to consider doing the same. I’ll try to document as much of that as possible here.

• I’m going to try and shift from always being behind/late for almost everything going on in my life, to being early. I don’t know how I’m going to do this, but I suspect if I can pull it off, I’ll be calmer and happier as a result.

This, I am happy to report, seems to have actually happened for the most part. Public transport not withstanding - including my own self-sabotage - I tend to be where I need to be on-time (or early), far more than I was last year.

Back to the main point: by reading what’s going on out there, by trying out new apps, by listening to all these voices, I am feeling engaged and plugged in, but only as a consumer. The purpose of the Internet is not to simply consume but to create, amend, edit, destroy, vandalise and promote. Ideas, content, products, whatever.

Also, am I the only one who has noticed how exhausting this hosepipe of information can be on a daily - even hourly - basis? I’m tired of consuming. It’s worse than television - at least with television an editor or commissioner has attempted to do some curation.

So I’m not departing, I’m not shutting down accounts, I’m just going to read a great deal less online, to the point the relevant apps might disappear off my phone. In return, I should be able to produce a few new things to share. Watch this space!

A list of ways that you can make money from your website.

Historically in Texas, homes have appreciated at 4.5% annually (according to Texas A&M Real Estate Center). This is the expected appreciation we use when making real estate investment assumptions as well. For example, a $200,000 home would increase in value to $209,000 if appreciation was 4.5% for that year. If you wanted to save for 1 year a 5% downpayment for a $200,000 home in Austin, you would save 5% of the future value of the home, not the current value. You would save for a $209K purchase, $10,450, not $10,000, if saving just for 1 year. Starting in about 2012, homes in Austin have appreciated at a much greater rate, closer to 8% annually. This makes it harder to save for a down payment, like chasing a vanishing horizon. Also, there are no more $200,000 homes. The median value of a home in Austin is now about $400,000 if ... Read more

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