Oh, I’m very late with my journal updates, but I’m sure you wouldn’t have noticed!
So I am writing this on Thursday 23 April, 2020 and now I have to remember what happened last Sunday!
Well, from what I can remember, ‘Pip the Dog’ and I had a quiet walk, not that many dog walkers out and about, I guess it’s because it was a Sunday!
As is normal on a Sunday and in fact every day, we have our super healthy fruit and soaked oats breakfast and then watch the Andrew Marr show. Andrew Marr is essentially a reporter who has is own show on BBC One every Sunday morning from 9am until 10.15am, it has got 15 minutes longer in recent months. He usually reviews the papers, speaks to a few other reporters and then in the main has politicians on his show. To be honest I have no idea why I watch it, because I think that most politicians are total morons, especially the Conservative Government in the UK, well in fact most of Conservatives have no clue about regular life.
Once we finish watching that, we’re still in the kitchen by the way, we watch something on Channel 4, called Sunday Brunch, one of these magazine shows with a couple of presenters, Simon (the chef) and Tim (nice but dim), who have a series of guest articles on. They talk and they cook and they cook and they talk. Pretty mind numbing to be fair. However due to current circumstances, they have to transmit from their homes and fill in the gaps with some clips from past shows. I do believe TV production teams are having to be very creative in so many different ways at the moment and I applaud them, the production teams that is, not the presenters they are still fairly useless!
Then later on Clair used up some Bananas that were going over to make a delicious home made Banana Loaf (Cake). Yum!
Watched some telly in the evening, walked ‘Pip the Dog’ in the evening and that was it!
I love all the promos (NOT) suggesting the business preparation and snake oil strategies for when we come out of this, as if it will be business as normal. But nobody is even remotely touching on the subject of, ‘what if we won’t get back to normal for the next 7 year cycle?’ What then?
The medical science suggests a further 6 months or longer of partial lockdown measures to prevent. potential seasonal re-emergence of #COVID19 🦠.
It’s not about business turnaround, it’s about the resilience of our minds during all this.
It may also be the end of capitalism as we know it, now this might not be such a bad thing. Public health may finally become THE biggest priority we’ve ever witnessed. Clapping and celebrating key workers is all fine and dandy but if we suppress the resources they need and reward them insufficiently for their heroic service we should be ashamed.
This is THE best summary of Donald Trump I have ever read. It is a superb summary of what we think in the U.K.
This was originally answered on Quora by Nat White but for some reason the response was deleted by Quora, nobody knows why. The response was also covered extensively by many publications all over the world. I have searched for Nat White everywhere, Twitter, LinkedIn and the web but have come up with nothing. If you know him or can find him, I’d love to interview him on my podcast, link below. 👇
Someone asked “Why do some British people not like Donald Trump?”
Nate White, an articulate and witty writer from England, wrote this magnificent response:
A few things spring to mind;
Trump lacks certain qualities which the British traditionally esteem.
For instance, he has no class, no charm, no coolness, no credibility, no compassion, no wit, no warmth, no wisdom, no subtlety, no sensitivity, no self-awareness, no humility, no honour and no grace – all qualities, funnily enough, with which his predecessor Mr. Obama was generously blessed.
So for us, the stark contrast does rather throw Trump’s limitations into embarrassingly sharp relief.
Plus, we like a laugh. And while Trump may be laughable, he has never once said anything wry, witty or even faintly amusing – not once, ever.
I don’t say that rhetorically, I mean it quite literally: not once, not ever. And that fact is particularly disturbing to the British sensibility – for us, to lack humour is almost inhuman.
But with Trump, it’s a fact. He doesn’t even seem to understand what a joke is – his idea of a joke is a crass comment, an illiterate insult, a casual act of cruelty.
Trump is a troll. And like all trolls, he is never funny and he never laughs; he only crows or jeers.
And scarily, he doesn’t just talk in crude, witless insults – he actually thinks in them. His mind is a simple bot-like algorithm of petty prejudices and knee-jerk nastiness.
There is never any under-layer of irony, complexity, nuance or depth. It’s all surface.
Some Americans might see this as refreshingly upfront.
Well, we don’t. We see it as having no inner world, no soul.
And in Britain we traditionally side with David, not Goliath. All our heroes are plucky underdogs: Robin Hood, Dick Whittington, Oliver Twist.
Trump is neither plucky, nor an underdog. He is the exact opposite of that.
He’s not even a spoiled rich-boy, or a greedy fat-cat.
He’s more a fat white slug. A Jabba the Hutt of privilege.
And worse, he is that most unforgivable of all things to the British: a bully.
That is, except when he is among bullies; then he suddenly transforms into a snivelling sidekick instead.
There are unspoken rules to this stuff – the Queensberry rules of basic decency – and he breaks them all. He punches downwards – which a gentleman should, would, could never do – and every blow he aims is below the belt. He particularly likes to kick the vulnerable or voiceless – and he kicks them when they are down.
So the fact that a significant minority – perhaps a third – of Americans look at what he does, listen to what he says, and then think ‘Yeah, he seems like my kind of guy’ is a matter of some confusion and no little distress to British people, given that:
Americans are supposed to be nicer than us, and mostly are.
You don’t need a particularly keen eye for detail to spot a few flaws in the man.
This last point is what especially confuses and dismays British people, and many other people too; his faults seem pretty bloody hard to miss.
After all, it’s impossible to read a single tweet, or hear him speak a sentence or two, without staring deep into the abyss. He turns being artless into an art form; he is a Picasso of pettiness; a Shakespeare of shit. His faults are fractal: even his flaws have flaws, and so on ad infinitum.
God knows there have always been stupid people in the world, and plenty of nasty people too. But rarely has stupidity been so nasty, or nastiness so stupid.
He makes Nixon look trustworthy and George W. look smart.
In fact, if Frankenstein decided to make a monster assembled entirely from human flaws – he would make a Trump.
And a remorseful Doctor Frankenstein would clutch out big clumpfuls of hair and scream in anguish:
‘My God… what… have… I… created?’
If being a twat was a TV show, Trump would be the boxed set.
Thank you Nate White, I hope you find this piece and share your handle, so I can tag you accordingly. Cheers!
For the first time in 27 days, I’ve had to walk ‘Pip the Dog’ in the rain, which is incredible really, especially here in the U.K. We might get 3 days of dry weather and then it rains. We really have to ask the question, has all this reduction in pollution reduced the amount rubbish in the air, which would normally contribute to bad weather? Not just here in the U.K. but also right across the world.
So we just had a very short walk as neither of us like walking in the rain and we did get soaked! We will make up for it tomorrow no doubt!
The rest of my day was very quiet as it’s Saturday it means Clair goes to her Mum’s to do some cleaning and she ended up doing some cooking for her as well.
So I spent some time practicing Taiko Drumming, which felt great and then afterwards I caught up with some Netflix series I have been watching. I watched the end of Pandemic and was really pleased that Jake Granville and Sarah Ives got the Gates Foundation funding for continuing with their vaccine development. I also watched a couple of episodes of Ozark, which has a great storyline, it’s taking a really strange turn at the moment. I also watched the COVID19 Horizon episode part 1, which was super informative to know how the virus started and how it works, plus how we can fight it. I highly recommend if you’re in the U.K. that you watch it. There’s so many opinions out there and it’s good to know the scientific truth.
Just to remind anyone who might be reading this in the future, this is not supposed to be a news report about what’s going on in the world, it is just a record of my days and a few notes for myself, so when I look back in the future, I get a sense of what might have gone on that day.
I do think it might be useful to record for myself some of the major news items that have made an impact on me during this time. Of course on of the biggest ones is Captain Tom who has been raising funds for NHS charities by walking laps around his house. In case you haven’t heard of him, he’s 99 years old! He has raised over 20 million pounds as of today and says he will continue to walk as long as people are still donating, which of course they will. I’m sure it will continue to rise even further.
The other news story that has made an impact is the shortages of PPE equipment in hospitals and care homes, which is very saddening and also very dangerous for front line staff who might catch the virus as a result. The only thing I would say is that some of the gowns, are able to be cleaned so instead of throwing them away, which is a total waste, cleaning them would be a much better idea as has already been recommended. It does mean though that you need a cleaning process as well, so maybe that’s an issue potentially? Anyway I’m no expert and you can’t always believe everything that’s being reported.
In the evening there was a Corona Live Aid concert raising money for the front line staff. It was mainly about the US and streamed in different places, I watched a small bit on YouTube. Very well produced and all the artists basically recorded their songs at home and they then mashed it together.
The last news item of the day, was about people in the USA out on the streets protesting about lock down and wanting to go back to work etc. No social distancing even with those protests and of course Donald trump promising that some US states will be opened very soon. Unbelievable! But in some respect it will be a good experiment to see what might happen as a result.
So further to my journal entry yesterday, ‘Pip the Dog’ and I walked through the small bit of wood this morning, which is what we’ve been doing for a few weeks now and firstly found a massive pheasant walking ahead of us, Pip wasn’t sure what it was and then we saw two adult men on their large mountain bikes standing around, whilst sitting on their saddles, not actually moving but looking very suspicious. They are obviously the culprits that have been further improving and building the additional mounds and jumps for their bikes. It made me think a lot, should I report them or let it go? Why am I feeling this way, it’s their risk and their family’s risk isn’t?
I had the same feeling yesterday when seeing another different car parked on the road outside our next door neighbours’. They have been receiving regular visitors outside of their own household, something they have been doing ever since the lockdown. Obviously I’m not reporting them but only because you have to give your own details, which I’m not prepared to do, just in case they get told it was me!
Every Friday, except for Good Friday I planned to have an open Google Hangouts Meet, titled ‘LinkedIn Lunch’, open to any business owner who wishes to attend to just chat about what’s going on with COVID-19 and how it’s affecting all our businesses and what strategies some of us may be adopting. Today I expected about 3 or 4 to attend but only one person did, which was fine. We’d been chatting via LinkedIn and email a while ago and we had a wonderful chat about all sorts. Her name is Denise Quinlan and she shared a number of interesting things with me.
Firstly the video below, which is a parody on the song Staying Alive by The Bee Gees. Of course I love this seeing as my company is called Staying Alive UK!
Secondly a webinar hosted by the Institute of Directors, the IOD, where Denise will be talking about how to attract great clients, useful for when we come out of lockdown. Although I do believe it will be a very different world when we come out of that.
One of the things Denise has set up as well is a Facebook group titled ‘SME Force for Good, where SME organisations are sharing free content that might be useful to other SME’s as we all get out of this dreadful situation. You can check it out and ask to join the private group.
I immediately shared a couple of links with Denise she might like to share with other SME’s where I’m giving content away for free. I am sharing those here too.
First one is a Storytelling Workshop Webinar, which I recorded pre-COVID19 and I, giving it away for free. Follow the link below.
Second one is my 14 hours LinkedIn Lectures course on Udemy. Please note the free coupon link below is only valid for 31 days, so if it has expired by the time you click on it, just let me know and I will create another set of free coupons.
Oh my, on our morning walk with ‘Pip the Dog’, the cows had moved to a different location in the fields, which meant we had to walk a different route around the fields to avoid them. This was absolutely fine and we didn’t come across any dog walkers, which was even better.
Following breakfast, this was going to be D-Day. Taiko West — Japanese Taiko Drumming — across the UK Midlands, would be going live in terms of letting students know that we’re going live. I spent over 6 hours with James our Taiko teacher to get the communication right for the email and the webpage, plus doing some further technical audio testing. Phew it was a marathon indeed.
I also mastered creating formulas inside Airtable, allowing us to embed a schedule of classes. We borrowed this from another Taiko Group in Germany and I was already familiar with Airtable and thanks to Clair already having created some formulas in there for me, I was able to copy and understand what she had already done.
Pivot is one of my favourite podcasts with Kara Swisher and Professor Scott Galloway. In one of the episodes this week they discussed Apple and Google teaming up to track COVID-19 around the world through our phones? It’s really worth listening to. I’m just so glad Facebook are not involved.
Is there any other news? Well today the UK Government announced a further 3 weeks in lock down. I had predicted right at the start that this would be a 3 month period and we’re maybe even looking beyond that now I believe. I will predict here that we won’t be out of this until at the earliest end of July and maybe going on into August. And even then life will no longer be anything like we have ever been used to for at least years to come. A sobering thought and sorry to have to say this and we have a saying at home;
Oh dear, I’m late with my journal entries. I have had a couple of busy days, so I’m two days behind!
My morning walk with ‘Pip the Dog’ was hassle free, although I have been wondering whether to report something to the Police or not. On our walk we walk through a small bit of wood to get to the fields that we then walk across. In the middle of this small wood, there has always been like a clay, shaped BMX bike track. It looks quite good, obviously someone over the years has developed it for kids or maybe adults. Recently I have noticed that there are new bits of mounds being created and saw the tools lying around the ground, a spade, a rake and an edger. Obviously someone is working on it and I am guessing is using it too. Are these kids, adults, what should I do? I left it!
Another day of work on the live online classes for Taiko West. We’re working our way through sending an email to all the weekly students, so they can join the classes from next week.
Things we had to do, draft the email, decided on class groupings, dependant on experience levels, explain the technology, create a landing page with instructions and a calendar of dates etc. It took many hours to complete and we haven’t yet done it. More work tomorrow, Thursday, but we want people to join us next Monday, won’t give them much time to get ready. Oh and some folks needed drum sticks too (Bachi), we had to get all that organised too with the Bachi maker.
I’m so looking forward to this going live and hopefully the students will enjoy the experience!
I was exhausted at the end of the day. In the evening we’d been watching the dramatised series called Quiz, this was about a couple and another person who allegedly managed to win £1 million on a game show called ‘Who wants to be a Millionaire’, but it was under very suspicious circumstances in where the contestant, the husband, really was very bad at it, but managed to get the questions correct after changing his mind and when his wife and another contestant coughed at exactly the right moment. It was a very bizarre series and not that well produced, but because it was a true story, it was half entertaining.
Pip the Dog and I had a peaceful walk this morning but with the temperature at zero degrees Celsius it was bitterly cold. Luckily the sun was just coming up, so gave of some relief when we finally arrived on the fields.
So I did the ‘Wim Hof Method’ this morning and felt great afterwards, not the cold shower as yet, I plan to get into that when the weather warms up. I just did the 30 rounds of breathing and managed to hold my breath for 1 minutes and 52 seconds.
Some of the day was spent helping my Taiko Teacher with the online classes again and we’re excited to be announcing a go live date of 20 April. A few more things to get into place though.
Tuesday is the weekly supermarket shop day. I go to Lidl to get our essential supplies. It was quite an emotional trip. I felt very agitated by the shoppers who were not adhering to any social distancing whatsoever. I also got very upset, although I didn’t show it, with a lady who parked her trolley in front of a fridge area and proceeded to check items of her shopping list, totally oblivious of me standing at least 2 metres away from her waiting for her to move.
When I got home afterwards, I was still so angry, it actually made me quite tearful. My darling wife, Clair, said it was good that I got upset, as with all this COVID19 going on, people need to embrace any emotion that might come up.
I was amazed, shocked and quite upset also to hear the stories of care homes not getting the PPE that they so desperately need, so heartbreaking. Clair also shared a good-feel story of a carehome whose workers decided to self isolate with the residents, how amazing is that!
I promised yesterday to share my story of a business partner who has without discussion changed the terms of our albeit verbal agreement.
In 2012 I had joined a small business organisation in the UK and as I live in a small town I decided to search the business database that as a member I had access to, to see if there were any small businesses in my local area. I found someone, whose name looked familiar to me and reached out. He told me that we hadn’t met before but was happy to meet up and have a coffee. This gentleman was an expert in teaching people how to Mind Map. He had been trained by Tony Buzan, the educational expert who is credited to have invented Mind Mapping. So I have always been a fan of Mind Mapping but never really knew how to do it properly.
At around the same time I was doing some work for an e-learning company in London, who were using videos instead of text based e-learning sites for staff education, this was quite early on in the video learning explosion. I had been head-hunted to do some freelance selling for them. I decided to introduce the concept of video learning to the Mind Mapping expert, let’s call him Jason - not his real name - and although he sounded interested he didn’t sound very sure. We kept in touch over the months and he was finally convinced in taking it seriously, as I had shown him how other large educational institutions were moving towards or creating these MOOCS, especially in the USA but also in the UK.
I recommended to record on video his Mind Mapping course, but he said he didn’t want to publicise his best content, at that time he was still running physical workshops on Mind Mapping. So we began with doing a few trials, where he recorded an audio clip about a different topic that he was very well versed on and I would create a video clip with images that would transition into the canvas based on his narrative. It worked really well and he was well pleased with this. I didn’t charge for any of this work, as it was developmental just to see what was possible.
I continued to show him how he could capture the Mind Mapping course. I had seen a video clip on the web, that showed how Harvard University was capturing content, in a light box with a camera positioned above them and they were writing on a canvas or whiteboard presenting the content. So he was convinced eventually and we started capturing his content, by doing a lot of test work. Because drawing Mind Maps is actually quite slow, I would have to speed up the video content and ensure that his voiceover was in line with what was being drawn. The method worked really well, but it took hours to create.
We then started the process of creating a complete course, which would takes us about 6 months to complete. We had agreed on a platform where it would be hosted, one that Jason had come across and looked okay, it was quite new, but they had the right approach and were quite proactive, so that was decided.
I also produced other Whiteboard Animation videos to be part of the project, which again took many hours to produce. Jason’s voiceover audio quality was quite poor in places and it took time to convince him to improve the quality. Anyway a decent course was indeed created around early 2013 and it was finally time to launch it.
We had absolutely no idea whether this would work, I was super nervous of course, I had convinced Jason that we should do this jointly, but we had never discussed how the revenue share would go. I finally asked him that we needed to decided on this and he agreed a 50/50 split, as it was only fair seeing as all the work I had put in. Done! But should be have a written agreement or not? At the time he said not, but as we were getting closer he then decided maybe we should. There was some sort of agreement drawn up, but in the end we never signed anything, this was just a big mistake by me!
To our total amazement the course took off but it took a few months, but only when we joined the platform’s marketing scheme, i.e. they promote the content and then take a bigger share of the revenue. We launched in June 2013 and I can’t remember the price we started with, but by August 2013 in just one month, due to their promotion we brought in $3,523 in sales. Wow, in just one month!!
In the early months, the payment wasn’t automatic to me, Jason would let me know what the sales were and then sent me a PayPal payment, it was all a bit manual. Then via the platform you could allocate a percentage of the revenue to a fellow tutor and this is what happened. Around the same time, I do not remember exactly when Jason told me that because he was sending personalised messages to each of the students, that this was taking him a lot of time to do. Therefore he felt that my share should reduce to 40% instead of 50%, there was no negotiation, no discussion and seeing as he was in control of the back office where those percentages were adjusted, he just did it.
I wasn’t happy but swallowed it. By now I am kicking myself about not having done that agreement. Damn!
I also supported him by introducing him to companies where he would go and speak, I would film him, produce the video and have that as content on the course as well. I did so much work that he had no idea about!
Wind forward many years. In the past year he asked me to check all the content on the course, which have no automatically have captions created and make all the necessary corrections to all the videos, which I did. There have been a few more updates to other bits of content over the years too.
In addition, because I showed him how to do all this, he has created a further 10 course himself and even has billed himself as a e-learning creator, where he has gone into JV’s with other folks, presumably on a revenue split too. He has many times told people, with me in earshot, that if it wasn’t for me he probably would never have started this and never reaped the rewards of all of this online content.
Then just as we’re all into lock down I received this message via email, without warning or discussion.
When the course was first published it had about 4 hours of video content that we put together through our joint venture. Initially with a 50/50 profit share but this quickly changed to 60/40, the extra difference being the allowance for the time involved in answering student questions etc after we learnt that the lead publisher in the course had this more on-going involvement in the day to day course activities.
Over the last 18 months, in the bonus section of the course, I have gradually increased the course video content from 4 hours up to 6 hours and over this year I’m looking to add another hour or more of content to keep the course continually updated and to seek to maintain the bestseller status which of course benefits us both.
So I’m proposing that the revenue share changes next month from the current 60/40 to 80/20 ( the change wouldn’t come through until the June payment) and this to reflect the additional content that I have added to the course.
I hope this meets your approval
I am astounded! I really had never expected this from Jason and my opinion of him has sunk very very low. I did respond and declared my disappointment, especially as he’s been asking me for well over a year now that he wanted to improve the content to ensure we maintain the relatively high sales. But there was always a reason why he was delaying it. He was doing his own content, he thought the sales were okay and the reviews were holding up, so maybe it’s not necessary. But we produced it in 2012 and things get old and stale, I know a lot more now, compared to what I knew in 2012.
So there you have it. I have been stung many times in connection with JV’s that have been done verbally, where I have ended up doing the majority of the work and ended up losing money. This is for sure the very last time. Just before COVID19 started someone else I know asked me to get involved in something that is not my business and I was teetering on the edge, but now I know for sure that I will not be going ahead with this.
I always say that when negative things happen in life they are often hidden gifts. This is one such events. I am seeing it as a gift and allowing for it to show up in new ways.
A very quiet day today with us. My usual walk with ‘Pip the Dog’, lots of people about though. Many joggers, walkers and people who are never up this early in the morning. I am worried about one man in particular and that’s John with his dog Biscuit. I meet John now and again on the street when we’re both out walking our dogs. Biscuit and Pip kinda tolerate each other, no sniffing though, we stay on opposite sides of the street. John is 89 and tells me every time that he has Alzheimer’s. I bet he’s on lock down for 12 weeks, but wondering who is walking Biscuit? His wife, he told me, has Alzheimer’s too. I hope they are both okay.
The main big news with us is re-discovering Wim Hof and the Wim Hof method. This is the Dutchman who likes taking cold showers and holding his breath. Clair saw a snippet of an interview by Russell Brand, so we decided to watch the whole thing. Below is the interview, it’s fascinating on so many levels.
[embed]https://youtu.be/YfAgSusi6t0[/embed]
We first heard about Wim Hof at Tony Robbins UPW. So I’m going to try it and see what happens. I won’t be starting the cold showers just yet, but will develop the breathing technique and also the push ups.
You can learn more about him via his website, link below.
[embed]https://wimhofmethod.com/science[/embed]
Then after watching a few episodes of Pandemic on Netflix, I connected with Jacob (Jake) Glanville on LinkedIn. Jake and Sarah Ives are working on a universal flu vaccine. But, they are not a big pharmaceutical, they are a small company using external companies in collaboration to help them with the work. They call their company Distributed Bio. Then I also saw a link to an update they both shared where they were updating their followers on the progress on developing a Covid medicine. The work they are doing is really fascinating. They are developing a medicine from antibodies, that they have developed based on the SARS virus from a few years ago. I’m not an expert and they explain this really well and has allowed me to get a better understanding about the difference between a medicine and a vaccine. The video is below, I highly recommend it, so we can all get better educated about what the potential solution is going forward. The video starts at about 3 minutes in, when the real start is.
Clair made a Pineapple, Carrot and Walnut cake, based on a recipe we saw on Sunday morning on Channel 4’s Sunday Brunch. Simon was cooking it in his kitchen. Seeing as we had a Pineapple that needed using up, Clair made this very lovely cake, very simple to make. I am sharing the recipe below.
Pineapple Loaf 🤩
Mix 150ml veg oil with 150g light brown sugar, once mixed now add in 3 eggs, mix well.
Now add in 30g of chopped walnuts, 1 small tin of pineapple (finely chopped), a handful of sultanas, 200g grated carrot, 250g of sifted plain flour, 2 tsp baking powder, 1 tsp bicarb of sofa and a tsp of salt.
Pour into a greased and lined 2lb loaf tin, then bake at 180C for 45mins.
Once cooked, turn out and let cool completely before icing.
For the icing, Mix together 125g soft butter with 250g icing sugar, 25ml pineapple juice and a tsp of vanilla paste or extract.
Now to build your cake. Slice the cake in half horizontally and ice in between the cake and on top. Dust with a little cinnamon and serve with a cup of tea. #SundayBrunch
So we had that for our pudding!
I think tomorrow the diet will start, too much Easter chocolate, biscuits, crisps and crap food, but I’m not beating myself up though, it’s just a phase I had to get through.
More Wim Hof method coming up and I will report my progress!
Tomorrow I will write about a long standing business agreement with a very ‘small’ business partner who has told me without any discussion that he’s reducing my share in a project we created a few years ago. An e-learning project.
I sincerely hope you’re staying well and being mindful of your actions.
Another calm and quiet morning whilst on my walk with ‘Pip the Dog’. A slightly different route this morning. To my delight I saw a tiny Easter Bunny! Was that just for me? Luckily Pip didn’t spot the small rabbit.
Clair and I spent most of the rest of the morning in our Kitchen with the TV on. First it was Andrew Marr and then Sunday Brunch. It’s quite unique to see people also in their kitchens and front rooms hosting their TV programme or being guests from their home. In some cases you can see how terrible the video and audio is and that’s likely via the internet via Skype or Zoom. In other cases the video and audio quality is excellent and in those cases you know that they have a proper camera in their home and a big lead to a can outside, which has a transmitter on the top of their roofs. I feel for the camera and sound people who are obviously super busy having to make all this external remote transmission work. Big hand clap for them! 👏👏👏
We did have some Easter chocolate and feeling fat as a result of it. Still wondering why I bought it!
Clair needed to do wash her hair and also colour it. Not being able to go to the hairdressers or go for a manicure, has meant that she has had to become self sufficient and she’s doing a great job at that. Whilst she was doing that I watched a few episodes of Pandemic on Netflix. Considering this documentary must have been made years ago it’s release obviously is very timely. I connected with Jake (Jacob) Glanville on LinkedIn and he accepted! A remarkable man with a vision to save billions of lives. Just a shame that his universal vaccine wasn’t ready as yet.
We also watched the film ‘Darkest Hour’ about Churchill and the Dunkirk rescue. At first we thought we had seen it previously but actually we hadn’t. There was a previous docu-movie about Churchill we’d seen not that long ago, in fact it was called ‘Churchill’ and just looking on IMDB, it says both movies actually came out in 2017. Very strange indeed.
We decided not to watch the daily news briefing today, as it would be repeated during every news bulletin anyway. It’s a depressing picture still and although it may look like the trend is flattening, it will likely continue for quite a while even if it is flat.
We then decided instead to watch some comedy on Netflix instead. Cuckoo with Greg Davies, which is quite ridiculous but hysterical. We have quite a few episodes to catch up with there.
ps. Clair reminded me the other day that my Dad who obviously was Dutch and was an only son, hid in an attic for the duration of German occupation during World War II. Just think, being isolated for 4–5 years, not knowing when it was going to end. No freedom to walk the streets, go cycling or shopping and no FaceTime either!
As I do every day, I start the day with a dog walk, with the famous ‘Pip the Dog’. We had a fairly peaceful walk to the new fields and no real dog interference there, but on the way back it was a different experience.
There is an alleyway that I have to go down that connects one estate with another, after coming off the fields and a cul de sac (dead-end) road that leads to the alleyway. First there was a chap with a sausage dog and he walked quite slowly, so I had to turn around and walk backwards with Pip and make her sit down and prevent her from growling to that dog and she did SO well. Then another woman with a larger dog came out of the same road. After they cleared I thought it was safe to carry on and then a jogger with his dog appeared and he was going directly towards us, so had to back track even more and then cross the road to get away from them. Pip during all this was ever so well behaved, normally she would have lost it to see a jogging dog.
Then we walked down the alleyway, which is quite narrow and then a woman on a bike came down it, so I had to stand to the side with Pip to let her through. It was obvious that she wasn’t a cyclist, she wasn’t wearing a helmet and seeing as no bikes are allowed down the alleyway, she was either aware or oblivious!
After all that it was peaceful to carry on home, which we did.
Saturday is Clair’s day for doing house cleaning at her Mum’s who is isolating for 3 months, because of underlying health conditions, she’s 78 years old. We had done most of our normal washing yesterday and today, seeing as it was going to be warm again, I washed both of Pip’s dog beds. They dried super quick as it was so hot. Probably the hottest days we’ve had actually.
I also washed floors, the kitchen, lounge and bathroom, their hard floors all had a thorough wash with the mop and bucket!
I chatted on FaceTime to a friend Petros, who is an engineer, originally from Cyprus living and working in the U.K. it was great to catch up with him and hear how he’s getting on with being in isolation. Actually he’s doing pretty good, well done Petros!
I also produced two Taiko drumming tutorial videos that James my Taiko teacher recorded on Thursday. Both have been uploaded to YouTube and embedded into the Taiko West website. Following that. I emailed 4 students using HubSpot to give them their login details, so they can access the online tutorials. Super happy how I can use Hubspot to insert snippets with key data from their data in Hubspot. Thanks Hubspot!
After all that hard work, I sat down and watched another episode of one of my favourite series on Netflix, Ozark. I’m on their 2nd series and it has taken a very unexpected turn, fascinating!
After all that time to cook some food for when Clair gets home and catching up with the latest U.K. COVID news briefing. The very sad news is that here in the U.K. we had the largest one-day death toll, compared to any other EU country, even bigger compared to Italy, who posted some very large figures. We’ve now had around 10,000 deaths in the U.K., which is so sad for all those families and very worrying in terms of the trend. The trend is upwards and it may likely continue for a number of weeks, we may not even be at its peak.
Stay safe folks and stay home as much as you can.
Oops, I nearly forgot, look below what Clair made, a crocheted rainbow to celebrate the NHS! Well done darling, it looks amazing!
Well today on the new dog walk in the morning. The area is the old golf club fields, which have been left to over grow. However recently the council, I think, fenced off part of it to let some cows graze. It meant that I had to approach the location from a different direction to what I had done previously. Because I was super early, I didn’t expect many dog walkers but I did spot two in the distance. Signs clearly state keeping dogs on leads, which I have to do with Pip anyway, but both these dog walkers their dogs and one of them had three, were completely off lead.
I didn’t expect the cows to be where I was entering the fields, but they had obviously moved them to a different area, which now. meant that I had to make sure to avoid them. In the end it worked out fine and ‘Pip the Dog’ did very well and enjoyed herself. After the disappointment of not being able to go to our regular location, where pretty much no dog walkers go at the time when we do, this will be a great alternative now.
The rest of the day was more relaxing, apart from some domestic duties, like washing clothes etc.
Also ‘Pip the Dog’ had a big bath, badly needed after these length walks we’ve had over fields etc. No idea what critters she may have collected on the way and mud or even cow poo in her paws.
In fact yesterday Pip was under the weather and that could have something to do with picking up stuff from the walks. She recovered by this morning though, which is great.
We watched a few episodes of Tiger King on Netflix, a documentary about the goings on around the enormous collections of wild cats in the USA. Who knew that there were so many wild cat collectors. A very strange story, but highly addictive indeed.
The U.K. had its biggest tally of deaths today, the highest compared to the whole of the rest of Europe during this time. This is seriously worrying and very obvious that we are far from the peak of this outbreak. My prediction is that in the U.K. we won’t be seeing a reduction until the end of June and a reduction in cases maybe in August.
Worrying times for us all. Stay determent people, stay at home!
Well, the walk with ‘Pip the Dog’ went all a bit wrong this morning. We used the other flex lead so that was totally fine. Whe. We got nearer to our usual farm track that leads to the water tower, we saw a dog walker with 2 dogs coming towards us on the same side of the road. Trouble is, it’s a main road and no way I can cross to get away from those dogs, Pip doesn’t really do well with other dogs, but I also need to get away from the human, reality these days! Luckily for us there is a road off the main road, so we could cross and wait in the side road until the dogs and human pass us. Phew that was lucky.
Now I have met that human and the dogs before down the farm track, when he told us that the track was blocked by some gates. We turned around that time only to discover on the next day that the gates were shut, but just held together with a flimsy rope. Exactly the same thing happened today, so I undid the rope and continued on our usual walk to the top of the hill and then a walk across some fields and back again.
However I noticed that the farmer had obviously been down the track the day before because there were loads of lumps of cow manure littered on the track and for some reason Pip loves smelling every single bit of it. In the past when we rescued her, she has rolled into cow poo before, so I was especially on my guard and had to keep saying, leave, leave, leave, no Pip leave. It was tiring. Anyway when we got to the fields, they were also littered with bits of cow poo. I had kind of expected this, because there were huge mounds of the cow poo deposited a few weeks ago when lock down first started. This must be the time when the farmer does what’s called cow muck spreading and leaves it to ripen on the fields and then will plough the fields. Yep that must me what’s going to happen.
I decided to carry on but the same thing happened Pip was smelling non stop and I was shouting LEAVE! No, this isn’t going to work, so we turned around not even halfway across the fields and went home and both of us were clearly dejected by having to curtail our walk. Basically we can’t go back this way anymore, so will have to explore a totally different route tomorrow. You can see Pip below, not looking that happy!
When we got back, Pip was looking very strange and didn’t want to eat her breakfast and basically looked poorly all day and never ate a thing until the evening, poor dog, she must have picked something up from sniffing all that cow poo!
Guess what I did the rest of the day. Yep you guessed right, more testing of Jitsi, audio, video, sounds, other guests, external webcams, software downloads, anti-virus, instructional PDF, you name it, we did it.
So where are we now?
Well it’s definitely Jitsi for the online multiple drummers! Audio via an external professional Microphone and it works brilliantly! We’ve obviously sorted the Internet speed already. Job done on all fronts!
[embed]https://jitsi.org[/embed]
Thankfully it’s Easter weekend, so I’ve got 4 days off from testing. We also heard today that lock down will continue, but we have no idea for how long as yet. I can’t say I’m surprised in the slightest, I believe lock down will continue for 3 months and possibly until the end of the summer.
After another great walk with ‘Pip the Dog’ and after failing to have fixed her flex lead, we walked with a bodged up lead, but it went on without incident. And only after we came back, having completed another great walk with Pip, I realised that actually we do have another flex lead in our house, although the length of the lead is definitely shorter, but we will manage. At least I don’t need to go out to a store to get a new lead until this pandemic has passed and pass it will.
Most of the rest of the day was spent on the same project, establishing an online Taiko Drumming solution for my Taiko teacher James.
I did a quick test with my wife Clair who was sitting downstairs in the kithcen and I was upstairs and we used Jitsi. I am so delighted to say that this system worked perfectly. What worked even better is playing a YouTube video inside of the app without any issues of lag, absolutely wonderful indeed!
Then I tested it with James my Taiko drumming teacher and the video of him was very bad. We then proceeded to go down a deep rabbit hole to discover that after all, his broadband speed was fine, but his access to broadband via WiFi was pants. We know what needs to happen, he needs to purchase a device that connects to his router remotely but then connect to his laptop via a hard cable, the same set up he has for his streaming of TV services. We finally after several weeks have found the solution for a much better quality of live classes in the very near future. Phew a big sigh of relief. Now we’re going to test the new system with a few other students tomorrow morning again. This will be the umpteenth test of live two-way video streaming that we will be doing. Fingers crossed this will work and it will be the correct solution going forward.
My wife Clair was on duty for her Mum, doing her weekly shop and provisions for the next week. Whilst she was out she was also contacted by her youngest son, Luke, who also needed some supplies. She came home first, to go back out again. Whilst she was back, I was upstairs and had just made a cup of peppermint tea, so I wanted to go down to greet her, but didn’t want to leave my tea upstairs, so proceeded with cup in hand to start walking down the stairs and I slipped at the very top of the stairs and proceeded to slide down the whole length of the stairs, tea cup flying into the air, tea flying all over the walls and all over the carpet on the stairs. I didn’t luckily break anything, just a few bruises, I hope but as I’m sitting on the couch right now, my backside and hip are very sore indeed. I bet I might have a few coloured bruises tomorrow!
Today I heard on the news that we had a further very large amount of deaths in the U.K. due to COVID19, 938 in one day, soon we will reach over 1000 deaths in a day and the overall total is in excess of 7000. Its tough to comprehend how many people that is. I know from attending Tony Robbins UPW at London Excel in the past that 10,000 people is a huge figure and I’m sure we will be up to that figure quite soon. Just a massive RIP to all those folks, who have died prematurely.
A peaceful relax this evening I think and another day tomorrow of online Taiko teaching experimentation.
More writing tomorrow. By the way this may be a boring journal, but because it is my journal and yes it is public, I don’t actually need people to like it or enjoy it, it’s more a record for me, but decided to do it publicly on Medium, which means I’m slightly more driven to do it every day!
Well, the new walk with ‘Pip the Dog’ went well. We basically walked towards the 2nd half of the normal walk and were then able to walk on over some other fields, turn around and then walk back again. The only issue walking back was that the flex lead that we use broke. It meant the lead itself wasn’t retracting into the plastic device. A real pain. It looks like you can take it apart, so will try and fix it when I get back home, ready for tomorrow.
Pip was also eating what looks like very vert large clover plants. That definitely backfired on her and about half way back to home, she had to throw up what looked like some stomach acid, YUK!
In terms of work back to experimenting the Taiko drumming training via the web. Today we were inviting others to join us live via Skype. After having tested it in the morning, I noticed that my teacher James’ video connection was very bad, pixelated and slow, but we still went ahead.
Sure enough when we then went live in the afternoon, his video was not great, but we could do nothing to fix it. Other people who were joining us struggled with their video/audio, were not clear on how to operate the software and in a nutshell, the whole thing was a total ‘car crash’.
So we’re not sure what to do, go back to Zoom, which wasn’t even ideal either or abandon. James was quite down after this event. The lesson was a real struggle for him, with screen sharing, people using iPads and laptops and all having different experiences. So back to the drawing board.
On Monday I shared with a different group, who used Zoom that the security might be an issue. They felt that with the new Zoom password and waiting room option would be sufficient with the security alarms that are flooding the internet. He also shared with me that there was another app that people were using with better security called Jitsi. So I spent the rest of the day researching that and testing it out. What I experienced looked great, but more to do tomorrow.
Then in the evening, I did our weekly shop at Lidl at around 7pm. It was quiet and peaceful and apart from a few things, I was able to get most of our essentials. When leaving the store I noticed a group of 6 lads on bikes and walking make a huge racket and looking defiant, as if to say, dare you say something and we’re not scared because we are SO tough. I was loading my car with the shopping at the time and looked over to them. I really found myself getting quite angry and upset. I never said anything but I was definitely tempted. These young guys are putting all our lives at risk. Grrrrrr!
PS. We received in the post the letter from the UK Prime Minister, who is still in intensive care with the Corona Virus and a Corona Virus leaflet. See below
UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson — Letter to all UK households
Well, I can’t remember being this busy for months, it was a packed day and there’s me thinking it would be nice and relaxing during COVID19 times.
Firstly on my walk through the fields with Pip the Dog, we discovered that the bulls and the cows are back in the fields. Luckily when we walked through the field they were on the other side, quite a long way away from us. In fact they looked like young bulls! This means that route is now off limits and we will have to go a different route tomorrow. That’s no problem, as I think Pip seems to be getting bored with the same route anyway.
The rest of the day pretty much was spent on the current project, which is getting my Taiko drumming teacher being able to teach Taiko drumming successfully via the Internet.
Because of the scares around Zoom security issues, we tried out Skype conference meetings. The great thing about this is that you generate a link, which you can share with people and that way they don’t even need to download the Skype application, although of course it may be a better experience. So we tested it inside out and sure it worked, but I have to say the experience wasn’t great at all, especially the internet connection and lag time.
So we will be testing it with real people tomorrow Tuesday to see how it works and worth going forward with.
Later in the day, early evening I had a call with a prospective client in the USA, discussing a Whiteboard Animation project. It sounded positive but he does have another offer in the USA, which allegedly was cheaper. He very kindly shared the quote he had received from them, which actually when it turns out is not that much cheaper compared to mine. A follow-up call is planned for Wednesday, fingers crossed.
Stay at home folks, the figures are not really improving as yet!
An uneventful walk this morning with ‘Pip the Dog’ and bizarrely she was quite disruptive as well, not wanting to move on and doing an unusual amount of sniffing, far more than is normal. She’s brilliant otherwise and walking back home she walks right by me, all the way. We’ve had her for 5 years and she’s 10 years old and when we first got her, we sincerely believe that she never had any training and her ability to walk on a lead was pretty much non-existent. But now she’s as good as gold, but it has taken a while that’s for sure.
Pretty much a quiet Sunday, I did do some little bits of work, preparing for the week ahead in getting Taiko Drumming lessons online, using Zoom and further video tutorials. This work I’m doing on behalf of my Taiko drumming teacher, James.
As the weather was warm today, we waited to do our weekly washing load, so we could hang it outside for drying for their first time this year, yippee long may it last!
Clair baked some flapjacks and Chocolate Chip cookies, now they were delicious indeed!
We heard how the Scottish Medical Officer flaunted the rules of staying at home and visited her holiday home twice for the last 2 weekends. I’m not sure that she will actually stay in her job, despite what the Scottish first minister actually says. This news will go viral worldwide and she will have no choice but to resign. A sad situation but you have to lead by example, how does the saying go?
“Do as I say and not as I do?” more like, “Do as I say and I will do something else!”
Of course there are plenty of people who will push the boundaries to disobey the public health advice and stay home. It is so foreign to all of us, to have our freedom taken away in this way. I sincerely feel for the medical professions throughout the world. They definitely didn’t sign up to this, no way did they expect this kind of a breakout throughout the world. And yet my question would be why not? Why aren’t we better prepared to deal with this, why are we scrambling around to get PPE equipment, ventilators, medication etc., some serious questions will have to be asked, when this passes through. Some leaders, like Donald Trump, even dismissed it and told the American people they had it in control. Now the US are leading the no of cases and soon will lead the death tally too.
A past Chief Executive that I had the unfortunate pleasure to work for had a great statement, which I have never forgotten until this day.
The Trend is your Friend
Ignore the trend at your peril I say!
The sun may be shining
But people are dyeing
Ignore the advice and the rules
You will witness the consequences and look the fools
It could be family member or one of your friends
Just think of the message that it sends
Stay at home and shows us you can lead
That way it will be sooner when we will all be freed
It’s the weekend and the weather is about to get warmer, at long last. It’s been a long winter, loads of rain, flooding and heartache for millions in the U.K.
But, every since we’ve been on ‘Social Distancing’ duty the weather has been bizarrely dry, not a drop of rain whilst I have been journaling my journey through this global pandemic.
The concern for Sunday is that thousands if not millions of folk will got out, at the same time, to enjoy the warmer weather, well that’s normally what happens. So the police is on high alert. Crazy to think that people will actually put their fellow human beings at risk in this way. Anyway we’ll see what happens, potentially a few will spoil it for the many and that would be grossly unfair to all of us.
Today, Clair (my wife) is looking after her Mum. It’s weekly cleaning day for her. To remind you her Mum has to be isolated for 12 weeks as she’s very vulnerable with other health conditions. She went away this morning with her cleaning materials and cloths, to continue the process of a deep clean. She’s doing a really great job for her Mum.
I spent most of the morning working on Taiko West’s website, to continue the process of having a private page for Taiko students to login to with their email and own password. It’s all set up now and working as it should. My only small niggle is the embedded YouTube player, which has the YouTube logo on it, which would allow viewers to go and view it on YouTube and potentially share the video link with others. There doesn’t seem to be a work around for this, that I have found.
Also the other annoying thing is that when you pause or finish playing the video, it shows up a load of other videos to watch, I had a code for this a few weeks ago, to stop this but unfortunately YouTube have managed to work around this bit of code. The bit of code is “?rel=0” and is inserted after the video ID and it is supposed to prevent any related videos showing up. In some blogs it says it will only show videos from that channel, which indeed it to begin with, but when I checked today, whilst trying out different solutions, it now shows other ridiculous videos too. Aaarggghhh!!
Apart from that I went into the garden and cut the grass, pumped up the tyres on my road bike, ready for use in the warmer weather and then had some lunch. After that started on writing this journal entry, but never finished it, as Clair came home, so spending some quality time with her and then cooking some ‘all-day’ breakfast for our tea/dinner.
Working from home, need to have a chat with like-minded individuals.
Working on your own and worried about your cash flow?
Interested in ideas and solutions how others are overcoming this crisis in their businesses?
Not suggesting that we will have any solutions, but crowd sourcing ideas is better than worrying it about your own.
You can join the hangouts meet via mobile or desktop but you will need a Google account. I will invite you to a calendar appointment once you have registered via this LinkedIn Event.
You can learn more about Google Hangouts Meet via:
Google ‘Hangouts Meet’ is a free app you can download from the Google Play Store or Apple App Store, alternatively you can join it via a Google Chrome browser on your laptop/desktop computer.
I did one on 20 March and another one today 2 April. On each occasion only one person attended, which is fine. I’m happy to have a chat with small business owners, even if it is just to compare notes on the state of our businesses, qualification for business support or not (in my case) and some moral support. There will be no speakers or so called business experts, who have wise ideas on how to get out of this downturn in business fortunes and no marketing or selling, just a normal chat.
The next one will be on 17 April, as of course it’s Good Friday on 10 April.
The rest of my day today was mainly spent looking at my Taiko Teacher’s website and getting it ready with tutorial videos for students to practice to at home. It all worked great but I needed to either find a way that they can only access the tutorial pages with a password, quite risky I think, or a dedicated login. After going down the rabbit hole for several hours I did eventually discover some awesome advice, but not until Saturday morning, i.e. the day after. I am including the video, which is an old one but still is 100% correct and it worked! I am really over the moon about having found this. It is an invaluable tutorial on how to create a membership site, without spending a fortune on membership plugins, there are many around that do indeed charge a small fortune.
[embed]https://youtu.be/M4TZKQIklaA[/embed]
And even better as after I asked Terry, who made the video, how I could redirect folks back to the login screen after they logged out, I found the solution inside the plugin, Peters Login Redirect and it works perfectly. Really I’m so happy about this.
So I woke up today with a Facebook messenger message from someone I haven’t heard of for years. It included a video. Normally I won’t even look, because in the past couple of weeks, people have been sending blanket fake news messages to their whole network. Aaarghhh!
But, this one I opened and I’m so happy I did. I have included it below.
My wife started sewing recently and bought herself a new sewing machine. I am hoping she will start making a few masks for me! Not that I go out and am around people, I only walk Pip the Dog and never really see any humans that I come close to. But I do go to the supermarket once per week and will definitely need a mask for that trip!
So this is the big learning for me today, masks do work, so why aren’t we being told to make our own? Well fortunately there are plenty of videos around of how to make your own mask. Good luck!
When I got back from walking ‘Pip the Dog’, my wife greeted me with the story of my stepson, her eldest. He had just been on the phone and was having a massive meltdown because British Gas (UK energy supplier) had taken £1,500 (UK pounds) from his bank account. He had recently changed supplier, so we’re not sure what had happened. So my wife had to urgently assist him and spoke to his bank, who confirmed that he would be covered by the Direct Debit guarantee and all he needed to do was call them and cancel the DD, which would immediately return the money to him, which indeed it did. Phew panic over! But we still need to get to the bottom, why he received such a huge bill, seeing as he just lives in a one bedroom apartment and his monthly bill should be no more than perhaps £80 or probably less.
So what are the energy companies doing, for sure they will get a lot of bad debt over the coming 6 months, when nobody has the money to pay for energy, is this a way of making sure they are covered? Who knows!
