So it goes

I stumbled upon glassesdirect.co.uk yesterday. It was good. Glasses Direct is like Zappos for spectacles. In the 24 hours since I found the site, Glasses Direct has already become a serious contender for the most personable, professional, service-oriented company I know. continue reading »

I had several reasons for not rushing out to read Malcolm Gladwell’s book Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking.

1. The book was immensely popular. Occasionally, this is indicative of quality, as in the case of Freakonomics. More frequently, widespread popularity is indicative of terrible writing. Case in point: The Da Vinci Code; Harry Potter. continue reading »

Edinburgh entrepreneurship blog Startup Cafe just published my article about Scottish gaming magazine (and University of Edinburgh start-up company) SquareGo.

Some facts that didn’t make the final cut:

1. SquareGo’s Managing Editor Josh Wilson was recently arrested in Cuba for crimes unknown. He has since been released and has not been charged with anything. The police have explained that it was a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and Josh has gained one heck of a story for his grandchildren. continue reading »

Last year, I had my final exam and my birthday on the same day. To celebrate both occasions, I decided to buy myself a bicycle. The next day, while test-riding a brand new mountain bike, I fell and broke my arm.

I was zipped to the emergency room by some good Samaritans, expedited through the surgery schedule, and back at my flat recovering in a matter of days. You couldn’t ask for better service.

It’s now a year later, I have two titanium screws in my elbow (am I the bionic woman?), and am disappointed, or perhaps confused, by how much this broken arm is still, well, broken. continue reading »

So far, so good. At the end of week one, we’re still on task for the quadrathlon. I’m feeling fitter already.

There are a couple of hurdles to overcome. I need to learn how to swim. That’s probably the largest one. Beyond that, we have to become less afraid of the weather. Earlier this week we were caught out on our bicycles during a 15-minute torrential downpour, complete with thunder, lightning and hailstones. I had standing water in my shoes as we cycled home. It’s all part of the conditioning.

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We tried to open a new account today. It would have been our first joint account, mostly for paying bills. We just wanted something simple, free and with both our names on it. Simple, right?

Not really. First you have to go to Princes Street because you both work full time and only a few of the banks are open on Saturdays. Then you have to make an appointment with an adviser. You leave for half an hour to window-shop and maybe find a coffee. When you come back, the adviser is ready for you. More than ready, he’s prepared a 15-minute pitch for a paid bank account with more amenities than you could shake a stick at. continue reading »

This weekend, I volunteered at a quadrathlon at Loch Tay. I signed up more than a month ago because volunteering sounded like a cool thing to do. It also looked like an easy way to get out of town for the weekend.

The volunteer work ranged from hugely exciting to draining drudgery. It included baking in the sun for eight hours and frantically pitching tents in dark under ominous rain clouds. We arrived at Loch Tay on Friday night and had a series of briefings—the latest at 11:30—before pitching our tent on the north side of the Loch, miles from any port-o-loos. continue reading »

We’re revamping our website at work. It’s a big job. The developers are furiously coding. We’re drafting lists of keywords to spread liberally through the new web copy. I’m organising a photoshoot to provide new stock photos for the page.

So far, everything seems to be going smoothly. The developers have given us some mock-ups and the new site looks great. They’ve even managed to incorporate some of the features from a paper and glue collage I made to represent the new home page. It’s a good thing too. I spent hours cutting little buttons and menu bars out of my National Geographics. continue reading »

Having lost almost everything from my laptop has some upsides. Since the machine’s reincarnation, I’ve been digging through closets and boxes for old CDs, trying to piece together a sort of hodgepodge backup for everything that was lost.

So far, I’ve unearthed my teenage music collection, including They Might Be Giants, Savage Garden and Matchbox 20. I found a disc from my trip to eastern Germany, with pictures of me in Berlin, Dresden and Leipzig. Most exciting was the re-discovery of my graduation PowerPoint, including a brief photo history of the first 18 years of my life, complete with a Five For Fighting soundtrack. continue reading »

My hard drive failed two weeks ago. I’ve since revived my computer with a new drive, but I’m still trying to make up for all the data and programs I lost. In my desperation, I have been driven to revisit Open Office.

My Microsoft Office package disappeared with the old hard drive. A note here: I’m still trying to get it replaced, but I need something to tide me over. The University uses Open Office on all its main computer labs, and I’ve spent the last three years trying to avoid it. Nothing handles huge slugs of data like Excel. And nothing is more infuriating than attempting to use Excel shortcuts and functions in Open Office, where they are either different or non-existent. continue reading »