The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers by Ben Horowitz The trouble with being a CEO is there’s no rule-book to follow. Horowitz outlines his experiences running companies during the dot com bubble burst, and provides lessons on what it looks like to run a well-structured tech start-up, …
Author Archives: cafedave
pod coffee and digital rights management
Beyond the ecological nightmare of pod coffee, and the reduced quality from fresh-ground: now there’s the notion of coffee digital rights management, of a sort, to stop people using unofficial pods in their machines.
currently drinking: griffiths coffee
I’m giving the aeropress a brief rest from the conga line of different single origins I’ve been drinking this year, thanks to the generous offer of Marc from Griffiths Coffee. To celebrate the world cup, they have made their “Mundial 14” – a blend of South American coffees (including Brazil) that comes ground in a vacuum-sealed …
where do your ideas come from?
Surely no-one is surprised at the latest revelation that Facebook conducted a psychological experiment on 689,003 of its users, without breaking the terms of use that you agreed to when you signed up for facebook. If you’re curious, they found that reading a bunch of negative, or positive posts is somewhat contagious, and will affect …
Switching off
Scrolling back, I was actually away from Instagram for a full 9 hours. Maybe there’s something to be said for trying to be present with people, at least on the weekend.
movie: edge of tomorrow
It took me all week to write this one up: Edge of Tomorrow is the latest Tom Cruise science fiction blockbuster, and – though it has not enjoyed great success at the box office, it’s one I really enjoyed. A mix of Starship Troopers and Groundhog Day with an refreshing (for Hollywood) take on gender roles …
Reflections on running
Lately I’ve been trying to go for a run in the mornings. It’s worked pretty well when I haven’t been sick. I get up at or before the sunrise, walk a little, then run for a few km’s in a loop, walk a little bit home. I take my phone with me. While I’m running, …
hot air about a balloon
Today and yesterday there was a lot of media coverage (e.g. Fitz, ABC news in the US, Herald Sun, SMH, Daily Mail) of the hot air balloon that an Australian gambling company sent flying over Melbourne. Based on the Christ the Redeemer statue that overlooks Rio de Janeiro It looked like this: Depending on who you …
book: things a little bird told me
Book: Things a Little Bird Told Me: Confessions of the Creative Mind A business book that covers the history of twitter, from co-founder Biz Stone’s perspective. Lots of anecdotes and a series of ideas around creativity: it’s an easy read, but is more about the history of twitter than a collection of insights into how …
movie: The Trip to Italy
Movie: The Trip to Italy Usually for a comedy, the best jokes are in the trailer. So it was a pleasant surprise that the majority of the jokes in the trailer were actually the first part of scenes of longer, funnier dialogue: there were lots of laugh-out-loud moments, the scenery was amazing, the food looked …