Monthly Archives: January 2007

New Day’s Resolutions

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Posted by Lloyd Morgan on January 16, 2007 – 4:20 pm
Filed under Money, Work and Business

New Year’s resolutions and plans are always a talking point throughout January and this year is no exception. Come June (and sometimes even February) however, and these resolutions are a long forgotten idealistic inspiration. 2007 will be different!

After my post detailing some of my goals, Carl commented, writing that one of his goals for 2007 is “to give the same renewing energy to each month, week, or day rather than just once a year.”

In reply to this I was wondering how to go about this - to keep this ‘New Year’ dynamism you must first instigate change or create a system to keep these changes at the forefront of your mind, right? What’s the best method? A reward system?

Carl directed me to the following video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1R-jKKp3NA - Steve Jobs’ Commencement Speech at Stanford, 2005

Then today I read Steve Pavlina’s most recent blog entry: 10 Business Lessons from a Snarky Entrepreneur. At first they seemed totally unrelated but in fact they are not. To quote the 10th business lesson:

Do what you love, but be damned sure it’s profitable.
If you do work you love, but it doesn’t generate income, your business will fail. If you do work you hate, but it generates income, your health will fail… and your business along with it. If you can’t do what you love and make it profitable, you’ve either got a hobby or a headache, not a sustainable business. Don’t settle for anything less than passion and profit.

This, paraphrased and put bluntly, was one of Steve Jobs’ three points in his speech: find what you love and make it a career; passion breeds success and success takes time; don’t settle.

My opinion is slightly different to Steve Pavlina’s though - if you do work you love, but it doesn’t generate income, your business will fail unless you work harder and find a more successful business model. If it truly is work you love, work at it and you will eventually find a way to make it profitable. Don’t settle for an ineffective business model.Have I found my passion? Am I doing work I love? Is my answer to one of the most important questions ‘Yes’: Would you continue your work on a daily basis for free? No I haven’t, and my answer is ‘no’. But I’m young and have plenty of time to find out what this passion is and work towards it.

Wealth, happiness and health may come in time, but if you’ve found your passion you won’t care. Have you found yours?

The City of Lights ‘07

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Posted by Lloyd Morgan on January 15, 2007 – 2:06 pm
Filed under Photography

The dizzying heights of the 292 steps to the top of the Arc de Triomphe; the brightly coloured - and fast moving - mopeds littering the city; the impressive and amazingly lit ‘Tour Eiffel’.  Paris, the ‘City of Lights’, is a photographers dream… and nightmare!

My recent trip there was an educational experience for me - a person who has never really photographed at night. It was definitely the time to experiment.

Photographing directly into the light to achieve silhouettes, post-processing into sepia with a ‘film grain’ style, increasing the saturation to make colours jump and blurring objects - all techniques I tried in order to see what results I could get.

Some worked. Some didn’t. All are here for you to see.

What happens when you try to photograph a reflection of the Eiffel Tower in a person’s eye but forget to take off the flash; resulting in a very quick movement of the camera (and loud shouts of protest)?  Here’s an example: 

Blinding Lights in Paris - Sorry!

Losing the Will to Cancel

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Posted by Lloyd Morgan on January 12, 2007 – 2:09 pm
Filed under Media (Films & Music), Money, Sci/Tech

Leaving an online service. Easy right? Well, that’s what you would imagine from a company based wholly on the Internet and that’s how it should be. In fact, I think leaving any service should be a painless experience as surely that’s what will bring back past customers. Online or not.

With a tip of my cap to Carl’s great article and after reading PC World’s critique in the same vein I feel compelled to write a small piece on cancelling services. Oh how I weep.

Saving £40 a month on car insurance is a nice prospect, and that’s what I found out I could do after getting a new quote a few days ago. Calling up my future insurer and passing on all my details in order to start the process I was told (in the verbal small-print) that if I cancel before 12 months is up I will be charged a cancellation fee of one month’s service.

I paused thinking about whether or not my current provider would do this and asked them to hold. After finding the offending piece of paper I realised that this fine would be imposed but after a quick calculation I continued. I would still save money even with the fee.

Cancelling my old insurance and paying the fine was all that was left for me to do. If only it was that easy. After calling the insurer and speaking to a representative I was forwarded to the ‘Cancellations Department’. 21 questions and 10 minutes later I was free of the old insurance - but not after getting very frustrated with the service.

This wasn’t online though, so have another example.

LoveFilm - an online DVD rental service - have a just as complicated cancellation service. After going through a number of cancellation pages and ‘Continue’ button presses I am informed to call a representative. Doing so results in a similar experience which I decide to forgo. I am determined to find an easier way.

Still a member of LoveFilm, I discover that you can cancel online - but only between the hours of 10pm and 8am when their cancellation webpage changes. Why do companies do this? Backwards logic is the simple answer. Read the above references for some good spiel on the practice. Using these companies again is something I won’t be doing, that’s for sure. Admittedly I wasn’t going to go back to my old insurer but my online DVD rental service - I was planning on coming back for another year once I’ve bought myself a new DVD player after my current one broke.

The bottom line: make it easy and we’ll be back. Make it difficult or expensive to leave and we won’t be back.

Your loss. My £13.99 a month. Hasta la vista, amigo.