No Nose Smiley :)

Curious if the Cake in a Cup from White Wings is all it's cracked up to be?  A while back I bought a pack of the Salted Caramel and Chocolate Chip version of the cake mix whilst it was on an introductory special from a local Woolworths.  Each box has 4 satchels. I thought I'd pop up a few photos and my review of the process and taste in case you want to know a bit before you go and buy your own. This is my 3rd satchel.  I've made it pretty much to spec/ Step 1: Empty pack into mug.  Use a decent size mug but it doesn't need to be huge.  Just bigger than a teacup. Step 2: Add 40mL of milk.  (Two tablespoons).  And stir. Step 3: pop it into the microwave Step 4: Put in microwave for 1 minute.  I put in a little bit more thinking I could use the convection part of the oven (grill in this case) to give it a bit more of an oven feel).  But found that I had to buzz it for another 30 seconds to make it work because I did that...

How many times have you tested two items to find out your preference?  I do it all the time.  From trying to find out which tea is better to evaluating two priorities.  As an exercise for my coding learning I want to create a web app or app that does the simple A/B test in real life. I've bought a domain for it - preferlab.com - and could even potentially monetise it in a number of ways. But first I want to build an MVP version.  Myself.  Somehow! Mainly for my own purposes to track things I test. Like for Cookies and Cream ice cream.  Blue Ribbon was a bit disappointing.  Woolworths Select is better.  So in the model for my simple site it would be: Cookies and Cream Ice Cream A. Blue Ribbon Cookies and Cream B. Woolworths Select B wins. But I'm sure Bulla is a bit better.  The Aldi one is pretty good too.  But I'll have to wait till I can do a direct comparison before I add it to my list! Will did a test the other day ...

I'm writing this post after an interesting problem which I'm sure many of us have.  Trying to connect people digitally when they don't understand digital. With the proliferation of devices and the 'consumerisation' of tech it's easy now to give someone an iPad or iPod touch or even an Android tablet as a gift.  But then there is the whole support of it.  And the set up of Wifi and explaining how much things cost and how it works.  And it made me think if there was a network for this or some sort of service.  Would people pay for such? Makes me think I should probably write this up better and post it on Medium rather than on my lonely old blog which is really just a dumping ground for my thinking.... ok later I'll do it later! But it doesn't matter so much as to the money but how to solve the problem. The backstory is that we gave my Chinese mother-in-law (MIL) an iPad as a gift last year.  It's been great.  Her daughter who lives in Melbourne...

I have an Evernote category called "Business Ideas" and often I will throw a few things in there or file things in there (although I really am not the best filer in the world.  Even my email now there is only 3 folders.  Inbox, "Archived" - thanks Gmail for that tip! and Trash/Spam.) But in the recent few days (this last week really), I've been deluged with ideas.  Good ideas.  Ideas that may be worth pursuing.  I wonder if it's because I've been to a few startup type events in the last week?  Probably. So what are the ideas? There are 3 of them.  One which will still be stealth mode as I'm not sure if I'll be eligible to do anything with it. The others... well let's just get on with it. 1. Stealth There is an innovation challenge at work (Transport for NSW) which is going to be open for submissions soon for the Learners Log book.  Something I was pooh poohing as lacking innovation but it occurred to me (as I often hear the ideas that ...

I just updated my "now" page... and rather than hiding the photos there as I'd wipe them in the next update I thought it was good enough for an actual blog post.  Because without a photo I'm not prompted to update... I'll do a couple of retro updates too for the previous months as I think it's pretty good to have a curated set of photos indicating what I've been up to! Non photo'd progress is that I'm being coached by a developer. Let's me flit from one topic to another from using Sourcetree and understanding git principles to learning to evaluate code.  All for working on BadgerMe .  It's going OK except the tech is letting me down.  And that's getting me down.  Argh.  I spend one day of the week working on my own stuff including BadgerMe and other bits and bobs.  I still have dreams about New Home Review but it may never come to fruition as it's just a lot of work. Ridiculousness at work has seriously broken me.  I discovere...

My first uber experience as a passenger I finally caved.  And used my 'free' uber ride from one end of Sydney city to the other.  And it was OK, but not revolutionary.  To be clear it was an uberX trip.  Which is the ride sharing version.  Where every day people can sign up and become an uber driver and effectively start up a business providing rides.  Think of it as a rickshaw service with GPS location and air conditioning. Oh and an app.  It's all about the app. I covered the uber app user experience for onboarding a little while back. I think it's great.  A great use of the squillions of dollars they have raised too to invest in user experience.  But the user experience extends to the experience in the car.  And more importantly the experience waiting for a car. When starting the app it automatically picks up your location (turn on location services on your phone peeps!  yes they are tracking us but the benefit is huge......

Just a series of photos with commentary of what I was doing and why during January 2016. I had a birthday again...  Family members (not us) went on a cruise...  Bought myself some fake flowers that look great!  Proving that fruit trees aren't great in the first year...  Inspired by this we'll be doing something similar for a library at home...  Rug Doctor is a lot better than the Britex machine.  Did our place, my mum's and mother in law's!  Home theatre gets some storage  Work can take you into some gorgeous buildings (44 Martin Place)  Progress in the yard...