$52k Later
A week in Austin, $52k burnt, and we're nearly ready to rock and roll.
We sorted out a company car, office space, furniture, computers, promotional goodies, and various other things including bank accounts etc. Pics and videos below.
Brian with a third of the Dell order:
Downtown office space, which will be repainted white:
200 mini tins of jelly beans, a few beans having been eaten in the photo:
Company car:
90 polo shirts:
$200k Investment, The New Business
I've been faffing about for far too long now. I sold PF back in Feb 2007, and then tried to make things work with the management team there for as long as possible but ended up canceling my consulting agreement with them in late 2007. I learnt a lot from that experience, they are a nice bunch of people, we just didn't align.
Since then I've been scouring the Internet for new ideas to either develop or invest in, but everything I've come across I have found to be flawed.
With most of the startups/ideas that people have pitched to me I've found myself thinking "Fail Whale." The number of people who are still, to this day, starting up new video and image hosting sites amazes me. News alert! That sector is done, youtube/flickr are king! No more million dollar cheques for a general traffic site purchases. When I started PF in 2003 online video was a revolutionary idea.
If you want to make millions then you need to develop something with a very niche/targeted audience like CafeMom.com, so that you actually have a chance of selling advertising at decent rates.
It has taken me a while to realize this but I'm well suited to being a WebDev consultant. Over the past 5 - 6 years I have been completing WebDev jobs for extra cash. I enjoy working with web technology, I enjoy learning new skills, and I really enjoy the satisfaction of a doing a great job. Now it is time to do this full time, and build a solid business out of it.
A month or so ago, I spammed my email list of wealthy people that I've bumped into and cheekily asked them to invest in my new technology consulting business. Sine then I've secured a $200k investment, I've retained lawyers for an E2 business visa, formed the LLC, and have found my first employee/business partner. I'm heading off to the States this week to arrange a lease on some office space right in the heart of Austin, Texas.
Oh don't worry, you'll be receiving an email detailing our services as soon as we're up and running! ;-0 If you would like to be added to that list then please leave a comment below.
LegalZoom LLC Turnaround Time
I recently formed a Texas based LLC, even though I'm living in the UK, via LegalZoom.com.
I went with the Express Gold package hoping that they would move quickly. The service details a 7-10 business day turnaround time and they did meet that, but I feel they could of done better. Here is why:
I submitted my order at 9am on Monday the 17th, I left details in the "notes" section clarifying my business address was to be in the UK and listed my phone number asking them to call me 24/7 if there were any problems.
The State approved the filing on Tuesday the 18th, and on the 19th the status updated to "Preparing your final documents for ******* LLC".
On the morning of the 21st I called to check the progress as all they needed to do was print out my documents and send them to me. I asked if the package would ship out today and they said either today or tomorrow (Friday).
On the 24th, Monday, the order said it was on HOLD so I called and they wanted to confirm the business address for the documents even though I had confirmed this in the notes section of my order. They had also apparently ignored my request to call me if there were any problems.
On the 25th the order still said it was on hold so I called again and the lady said the package "might" ship out tomorrow.
On the 26th the package shipped, I had upgraded to next day delivery so the package arrived on the 27th.
That is exactly 9 business days from order to arrival at my door, which is within the timeline they laid out. I just felt that they weren't really on the ball and the lady when I called on the 25th was not really interested.
I won't be using LegalZoom again because they didn't call me when there was a problem with my order, and they didn't seem too interested in speeding things up.
Below is a pic of the order status (the dates represent the last day that that specific stage is being worked on, not when they started on that stage).
Youtube High Quality Embeds, My Cichlid Tank
Whilst Youtube offers a "view this video in high quality" link below most videos on their site now, when you embed the videos they are still low quality. I have found a way to embed the high quality videos, detailed here: http://www.microscopics.co.uk/blog/2008/how-to-embed-high-quality-youtube-videos/
Although instead of using the fmt=18 as suggested in that article, I would suggest using fmt=6. Format 18 is a mp4 quality file at 512kbps, 128kbps stereo. And format 6 is a flv at 900kbps, 96kbps mono. As detailed here: http://blog.jimmyr.com/High_Quality_on_Youtube_11_2008.php
If you click play on both of the videos at the same time you should notice that the standard quality load progress bar loads more quickly than the high quality video bar. You will also be able to see the difference in quality by comparing the videos.
High quality:
Standard quality:
HDR-CX11E Unboxing
Below is a video of me unboxing the new HDR-CX11E, the European (PAL) version of the HDR-CX12. It is Sony's latest full HD record to memory stick camcorder. The unit is also capable of taking 10.2 megapixel photos.
The camera comes with standard component cables, HD component cables, a USB 2.0 connection and charging dock, battery, power brick, software, and remote. No HDMI cable is included, but the camera does have a mini HDMI output.
There is a £50 rebate available for UK purchases until the 28th of August: http://media.sony-europe.com/uk/leaflets/209513SonyHandycamA5_4ppleaflet.pdf
I've uploaded some photos taken with the camera here: http://www.putpic.com/gallery/2144/6883142
Putty Tunnel/Proxy, Enable AllowTcpForwarding
If you need to fake your geo-location on the web, and don't want to use a free/open/slow proxy that will probably steal your credit card info then you will need to have a server in the desired country.
Get Putty, set some basic tunnel settings within it, ensure that AllowTcpForwarding is set to yes in /etc/ssh/sshd_config on your server, and change your browser settings to use your new proxy/tunnel.
There are plenty of legitimate reasons for wanting to do this (encrypting your traffic across your ISP to your trusted server) aswell as plenty of questionable reasons, such as wanting to watch hulu.com content from outside of the USA.
160 Reasons To Not Use Etrade UK
I have been trading with Etrade UK quite actively and have about 160 transactions in my account. I was amazed to find out the other day that Etrade UK offers no way to export your account history data, so that you can easily calculate taxes owed etc.
Without an export feature I have had to manually copy and paste the details for each transaction into a spreadsheet in order to calculate my profit/loss and taxes due.
I contacted Etrade about this, and pointed out that their US site (and most other online brokers) offer an export feature but they didn't really seem to care.
Think 160 times before signing up with Etrade UK, or you will regret it come tax time!
Tue, Apr 15, 2008 at 8:27 PM
To: uksupport@etrade.com
Dear Sir or Madam,I am trying to find out how to download my account/trade history from my account (for import into excel, etc). I see that the US site has this option under "accounts" but the UK equities site does not appear to.
Cheers,
Gordon---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
UK Customer Support <uk-customersupport@etrade.com> Tue, Apr 22, 2008 at 9:10 AM
To: Gordon <***********@*.com>
Dear Mr,Thank you for your email, apologies for the delay in getting back to you. In response to your email with regards to importing account history onto excel, unfortunately we do not offer the facility on our website. However our website is currently undergoing development and we are finding new ways of improving the facilities we offer. Hopefully we can accommodate this feature in the near future.
Should you require any further assistance please contact our client services department on 0845 234 34 34 or <mailto:uksupport@etrade.com>
Kind regards,
Jaynesh Shah
Client Services RepresentativeE*TRADE Securities Limited
42nd Floor
One Canada Square
Canary Wharf
London E14 5AA
T: 0845 234 34 34---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Gordon [mailto:**********@*.com]
Sent: 15 April 2008 20:28
To: #UK Support
Subject: export account historyGordon <**********@*.com> Tue, Apr 22, 2008 at 11:35 AM
To: UK Customer Support <uk-customersupport@etrade.com>
Dear Jaynesh Shah,Thank you for your response. I can not stress enough how important this feature is to myself and many other traders. Without an export feature taxes, analysis, etc are all quite impossible (without manually copying the data for each trade) which is very undesirable for active traders. Your American site does offer the feature (detailed here: http://www.armencomp.com/tradelog/etrade.shtml ).
I hope that you implement this feature in the very near future, in the meantime I have applied for an Iweb share trading account and shall move my business across as soon as it is open. I hope that you will forward this email to management, now is not the time for Etrade's offerings (especially when a simple programming fix can solve the issue) to be lacking.
Thank you again for your time.
Kindest Regards,
Gordon---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Gordon<**********@*.com> Mon, Jul 7, 2008 at 6:29 PM
To: UK Customer Support <uk-customersupport@etrade.com>
Please be advised I have moved £***,*** out of this etrade account and will move the remaining funds away from etrade as soon as possible simply because you do not have an EXPORT account history option (your american site does). Without this feature creating tax and profit/loss reports takes hours of manual work.Hoping you add this feature in the next week.... another customer lost.
Regards,
Gordon
Day of Defeat Source, for 5 Dollars
This past weekend Steam offered users DOD:Source free to play for the weekend, and to purchase for $5 until Thursday.
If you spent a lot of time a few years ago playing Counter Strike and Counter Strike Source, then you might enjoy this game too. It certainly isn't the best game ever (Team Fortress 2 is) but for $5 it has provided great fragging relief whilst calculating my taxes.
Roomba 560 Robot Vacuum Cleaner
After seeing an Engadget article about a Roomba Pacman hack I was fascinated by the idea of a robot vacuum.Being skeptical; I searched for reviews and the Wikipedia page for the Roomba for more information about how well these things actually clean. I found lots of praising videos on youtube , which combined with the information on Wikipedia that the 560 is the fifth generation of Roomba convinced me to order one.
A few things to note about the Roomba 560:
- has IR sensors in the front bumper which allow it to slow down before bumping into any furniture.
- carefully navigates around the top of stairs without falling down them (not shown in the video).
- has an on-board scheduler and auto docking system so that it can clean and then recharge itself on a programmed basis without any interaction.
- will clean for about 60 minutes each cleaning cycle.
- using the included lighthouses you can block it from entering a certain room, or set it to clean one room fully before automatically going to clean the next room.
My Roomba arrived this morning. Below is a video of a quick run around my living room and entrance hall, at the end of the video I cut the cleaning cycle short to demonstrate the auto docking system.
You may also download a high quality .wmv version of the video here (147MB).
Red Alert 3 Game Play Video
The Red Alert side of the Command and Conquer series has previously provided a naval game play aspect that other games in the series haven't. RA3 promises to expand upon the naval aspect of the game as well as bring back favourite units including the Tesla troopers.
In the video we see that the traditional ore gathering method has been replaced with Ore nodes which harvesters simply dock with to gather ore and then return with it to the base. Many amphibious units and abilities have been added, including the Bullfrog amphibious troop transport and the ability to deploy the Soviet MCV either on land or in the water.
Red Alert 3 is due to be released later this year. Hopefully it will take advantage of multicore technology unlike Command and Conquer Tiberium Wars which would choke up during massive battles on a quad core machine with 4 gigs of ram and a 768mb gfx card.
Check out the video below or download the high resolution 400MB .mov version here (right click, save target as).