Business

I like this ad for it’s shameless cheesiness. I’ve been playing with the product too, and it’s pretty good. Though I think its voice to text transcribers struggle a little with my lack of an accent… But there’s one thing in the ad that I really, really don’t like. Can you tell what it is? I’ll...
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I met my business partner for a quick lunch today in Jarrow - a place with an interesting history: In 1936, mass unemployment and extreme poverty in the north-east of England drove 200 men to march in protest from Jarrow to London. Their MP, Ellen Wilkinson was with them as they came south to petition...
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So for my Important Presentation this morning, I had to go in looking like I meant business - suit, tie, shiny shoes. You know the drill. It was also kinda important to ride there, as I knew this was the sort of thing that would go down well with the audience. This wasn’t a...
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I had to nip into Whitley Bay at lunchtime today to get a new strap for my watch. The old one had come unglued (for the second time), and the watch had fallen off my wrist and into the road a few days ago. Miraculously, it was undamaged! Anyway, while I was in the jewellers,...
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I started riding again because I realised that doing the same thing, but expecting different results is a pretty workable definition of insanity. It suddenly struck me about four years ago that sitting inside a tin box going no-where fast, and expecting everyone else to get out of my way wasn’t working. And that expecting...
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This probably isn’t something you do if you live somewhere where everyone rides a bike. But for the rest of us - for me anyway - it’s a bit of a novelty seeing someone else riding. Not as rare as seeing two-headed horses, but rare enough that I feel the need to acknowledge them with...
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Today was a ride up the coast to visit a prospective new client in Ashington. About 15 miles each way, and in the past I’d have driven this, to arrive looking smart & business-like. But now that I’ve got Siegfried - an Eminently Sensible Sturdy Commuting Bike (ESSCB), I can ride that kind of...
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I killed Wilf. Through neglect, lack of understanding, and over-use. But mainly through not knowing how to use a steel ruler to measure the chain. OK, I’m exaggerating a little. But the cost of the components to restore Wilf to health would have been about 75% of the cost of buying an identical brand new...
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There was an interesting question raised on the Commute By bike blog yesterday, as to why the world at large seems to view cyclists as “Kooks, Freaks and Weirdos”. Basically in societies where the car has usurped the bicycle as the mode of transport of choice about town, people riding bikes are very much...
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I’m sure this question’s been asked and answered before, but I got put on the spot in a meeting today: What sort of bike should people have for riding to work? Just to be clear about this - we’re talking about the 75% of people at the organisation I was visiting, who live within 5 miles...
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