Was thinking this morning about how a lot of the world’s problems are about the irregular distribution of resources. I’m not talking about how wealth is distributed, I’m a capitalist at heart; but rather how the world’s resources are cause of war, famine and all sorts of other ills. It sort of hit me while watching TV and saw an advert trying to raise funds for a charity that helps starving children, while here I am trying to stick to…
photo credit: kagey_b If you’ve ever had to travel for business, you know all about the risk of luggage going missing on your trip. But you don’t know the real dismay and the sinking feeling in your stomach that comes from realising your bag hasn’t made it. Most of the time, your bag gets found, but sometimes it doesn’t and you can kiss all your belongings goodbye. You may get something back from the insurance, but the sentimental value of…
On the subject of paying attention to detail, there’s another thing you must always watch out for, and that’s thresholds. There are a number of systems out there that use graduated costs and knowing where the thresholds lie can help you save a packet. Let’s take house prices in the UK for example. There’s a tax on house purchases called “stamp duty” which is a graduated scale based on the price of the property. Here’s what the scale looks like:…
I went to a great talk yesterday organised by the BCS here in the Isle of Man focusing on soft skills. It was an interesting couple of sessions, first about understanding personality traits and then a second session about dealing with conflict collaboratively. There are slides from both sessions here: Handouts from event Understanding and applying your relationship tendencies Managing conflicts collaboratively I find it’s always good to go to sessions like this as they help you consolidate what you…
One thing that is starting to annoy me recently is the new policy that some UK retailers are adopted whereby they charge for plastic bags. It’s not that I have a problem paying for the minimal charge for the plastic bag, but the fact that they are using an environmental concern to boost their profits. The money they charge for the bags might really go towards an environmental cause; but the reality is that they’re passing on one of their…
I was thinking about technology on my way back from work this evening (it’s short enough to walk, but long enough to get a few minutes to myself). I was thinking about the first PC I ever got which was an 8086 (with a Turbo button to boost the speed from 4.77 MHz all the way to 10 MHz), CGA graphics and 2 x 5 1/4 disk drives. Oh, and it also had 640k. Now that’s a far cry from…