May 2013
1 post
"Making Money Now"
I understand people and the frustration of who want to “make money now” - who want to just put in work and make an immediate return. This concept / mantra seems to attract people who are looking for something more than that though.
What most need to realize is that anything that can be done to “make money now” doesn’t have much of a barrier to entry, so everyone will...
April 2013
4 posts
My Path
Over the years, since I was 11, I’ve been watching and learning people’s behaviours online - and adapting and developing for those in mind, including for what my own preferences are - design, use, and otherwise.
Since that young age what I’ve been working on has taken a natural evolution, and these plans have grown large, however they’re all connected to the same...
Theory of Disruption + Other Goodies
Brilliant. He gets it. Resonates with my approach. Reassurance is always nice too. Clayton Christensen does a nice warmup to his discussing his theory of disruption - along with a number of examples. Some other goodies in this talk.
Wellness
What is wellness? What is quality of life? The Community Foundation for Kingston & Area just asked via Twitter.
I think for most would define wellness and what quality of life is relative to their circumstances. If you try to define it outside of what resources and support you have access to you’re going to be fighting an uphill battle that is too strenuous, draining, exhausting,...
BitCoin
Fred Wilson is being interviewed and the topics will include immigration, regulation 2.0, bitcoin, and a few other things that will be common themes to the AVC community.
I look forward to the conversation on Bitcoin. I have a bit of a theory that it’s Silk Road that’s the primary driver for Bitcoin, along with the investor-minded folks who are playing the game.
Someone on HN the...
February 2013
1 post
Yoga Matt Adventures: Starting The Teaching... →
yogamattadventures:
Teaching my first private mini-class was overall great. It was very revealing. I’m thankful and fortunate that two friends showed up with relatively little notice - and feel lucky that one friend Meghan was very experienced, and the other friend James was fairly unexperienced. This provided a…
January 2013
4 posts
Vine
Vine is about forcing creativity and curation of the visual world around us. 6 seconds really limits the amount of content you include in order to tell a simple story. The 140 character limit on Twitter, whether purposeful or not initially, also forces this creativity and simplifying a message to give as much meaning possible in as little space possible.
The ease of content creation in Vine is...
Entrepreneurship, Delusion and Peace of Mind
I first watched the video below via Fred Wilson’s post on AVC -
I needed to hear that.
I want to help bring health to everyone in the world. Wellness is the differentiation my business projects are taking, along with the not-for-profit charity I am starting which relates to helping implement a preventative/proactive healthcare system in Canada.
The why is so the things that have...
Neomae
Neomae, a not-for-profit charity I am starting this month, with the help of QBLC, will help implement and test a preventative / proactive healthcare system, starting with subsidizing yoga for individuals - among other things. There’s a local grant foundation, and some potential private business donors too, very interested in what I am doing - so the outlook is good. I have different...
This Year Should Be A Great One
This year should be a great one - how great, I’m excited to find out. I’m more ready than ever to deal with whatever new challenges come my way.
These coming moments are the moments I have been working for and towards for nearly three years now, and it’s all really starting to come together - is shifting in a big way.
I have many people to be thankful for, for their support,...
December 2012
1 post
“Progress has less to do with speed, and more to do with direction.”
– Unknown
November 2012
3 posts
“Confidence comes with a plan. Trust comes through consistency. Keep continue is...”
– Matt A. Myers
“Never be waiting around for something to happen.. That’s what hustling is.”
– Matt A. Myers
“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”
– Aristotle
May 2012
8 posts
“Here’s to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round...”
– Steve Jobs
Routine
“I am not an organized person. But I am a disciplined person. My routine is the key to me getting things done.” - Fred Wilson
I like this realization. I become more organized through discipline. The more organized I become, the more productive, and the more I can fall into routine - which doesn’t end up feeling like routine, as it’s overall fairly fluid and feels like...
Creating Culture and Being Attractive
Fred Wilson’s AVC post today included a quote from another post of his, it goes as follow;
“Companies are not people. But they are comprised of people. And the people side of the business is harder and way more complicated than building a product is. You have to start with culture, values, and a committment to creating a fantastic workplace. You can’t fake these things. They...
Bootstrapping
Why Is Bootstrapping Important?
I think bootstrapping is a signal for passion, dedication, and perhaps more importantly - keeping lean. It also reflects, suggests, shows potential that ideas and plans have been more thoroughly thought-out and a path more distinctively carved out after X years of tinkering, learning, and evolving of plans.
If you go into an incubator or get seed or angel money...
MVP for Large Products - Oxymoron?
There’s a certain minimum number of features that some products will require before they can gain traction, before they are valuable and will start to show traction through network effects starting to cycle, and allowing interplay to occur.
If you’re an investor looking at it it perhaps will feel riskier if you don’t understand all of the metrics at play, and their multiplier,...
“I have a million places that weave together to make this whole city a festival...”
– Arnold Waldstein via AVC comment
April 2012
4 posts
Don't Shy Away From Opportunity To Teach
Re: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3825122
A few weeks ago I responded to a comment on Hacker News, where one of the authors of Meteor was thinking of removing the term REST from their website - in fear that it would be confusing to new developers.
This was my response, ”Don’t shy away from opportunity to teach. Just make sure you show it as a link, perhaps that means a simple...
Re: "How Twitter’s secret offer for Instagram made...
I read Revealed: How Twitter’s secret offer for Instagram made Facebook pay $1B over at VentureBeat the other day.
Apparently Instagram was a paranoid-based purchase by Mark Zuckerberg.
I wrote a comment which garnered “7 Likes 13 likes,”
“If the buy decision was based on paranoia, and Facebook was that worried that Twitter acquiring Instagram was enough to topple Facebook -...
18 Years In Tech; Today's my birthday
I turn 29 today, and I’ve been doing some form of web development since the age 11. Kind of shocking.
I know my perception of the world has been defined by it and will give me the tools, and knowhow, that I hope will allow me to help shape the future in a big way.
I told myself 3 years ago, on the same day, that if my projects weren’t moving along at a good pace then I would stop all...
Twitter's "Patent Hack"
Fred wrote a great overview on AVC today on Twitter’s “Patent Hack.”
Towards the end he wrote, “software and business method patents are an enemy of innovation in the tech sector.” Perhaps Fred is just focusing on a more narrow battle, one he is familiar with - though I felt the need to expand on it.
Patents are an enemy of all sectors. If we eliminated them then...
February 2012
1 post
Protecting Kingston's Downtown Culture
There’s recently been an urgent threat to the downtown of the city I live in.
I live downtown, where I prefer to be able to walk to wherever I need - to be within a short walking distance of everything I do on a daily basis - so protecting this relatively sensitive ecosystem is important to me.
A national movie theatre company, Empire Theatres is planning to move their Kingston theatre to a...
January 2012
1 post
A year and one day ago, a close friend of mine...
It was exactly one year from yesterday that a close friend of mine died. She ended her own life. She had gone on medication fairly recently and upon reflection her behaviour had started to radically change, including getting in a serious single-car collision and being very non-chalant about it. She didn’t go to any of her usual supports either.
She had recently been diagnosed with bipolar,...
October 2011
1 post
“Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your...”
– Henry Ford
September 2011
1 post
“Vision without action is a daydream. Action without vision is a nightmare”
– Japanese Proverb
August 2011
2 posts
“Don’t aim at success - the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you...”
– Viktor E. Frankl - author of “Man’s Search for Meaning” (via davidfeldt)
“The problem with quotes on the Internet is that you don’t know if they are...”
– Abraham Lincoln
April 2011
2 posts
“Nothing in the world can take the place of Persistence. Talent will not; nothing...”
– Calvin Coolidge
“If we are facing in the right direction, all we have to do is keep on walking.”
– Proverb
March 2011
4 posts
“You miss 100% of shots you don’t take”
“Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a...”
– Albert Einstein
Celebrate Women
This is my response to Joanne Wilson’s interview by Founder’s Toolbox and triggered by the relatively few other commentary that the thread drew today on Fred Wilson’s cross-post of the interview.
—
Women aren’t just needed to be louder and celebrated in business - they’re needed to be celebrated everywhere. They’re needed for a balance in policy making...
Yelp: Google Told Us “Our Way Or The Highway”
Yelp: Google Told Us “Our Way Or The Highway” is a post by Greg Sterling at Search Engine Land.
I’ll be honest. This article pissed me off a bit. I’ll admit too, I’m in an irritable mood - so hear me roar..
<rant>
The millions of users Yelp says they refer to businesses will be largely from Google keyword searches to begin (or at one point they were).
Yelp...
February 2011
1 post
“Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.”
– Confucius
January 2011
3 posts
Tristen Allen & Amanda Palmer - Janos and...
The Independent Web, How Can It Work?
Fred Wilson posted on AVC today about his thoughts on John Battelle’s vision of The Independent Web.
I had quite a lot to say. Fred suggested that I turn one of my comments into a blog post. For now it’s the same as my comment on AVC, with the exception of some editing for flow purposes. So here it is. Enjoy.
———
I’ve always had some issues with this. I...
When In The City
I love looking at the sidewalk,
It moves at the speed you want it to
December 2010
7 posts
Alexi Murdoch - Orange Sky
Every answer exists as long as you can remember it before something else distracts you.
I almost forgot this.
Florence And The Machine - You’ve Got The...
Don’t regret anything that once made you smile
- Unknown
Time To Organize Some Backlog...
What you’re looking at: 280+ text windows open.
Estimated time to organize into proper folders: 5 hours.
:D
My Man Crush
It all started one summer day in Miami, Florida. I was attending FOWA 2010 for the first time, and in fact my first web technology conference.
I used AirMiles to fly down and was planning to stay in a hostel, but found a nearby private room in a hotel for a tiny bit more so opted for it instead, and it turned out to have quite a lovely view.
It was the second day of the conference and I was...
Google and Groupon
Groupon apparently declined a buyout offer from Google of $6 billion.
Google will be able to create and acquire something better for cheaper, and they will still be getting into the game - along with probably everyone.
Groupon making $2 billion a year (if it’s true) and growing that I feel will be difficult. There will be a plateau level, and that plateau initially will be surpassed by...
November 2010
6 posts
We are but humble empire builders of the world - striving to create for the better good, while understanding the slight financial reward is meagre and inconsequential to the pride and joy of helping the world reach further peace, health, and happiness.
- Matthew A. Myers
