No Nose Smiley :)

Howes Valley is now for sale... Again. We decided to try a Sydney agent Cutcliffe and have informed Ray White in Singleton. We only realized the agreement had lapsed end of December!  But they had continued to list the property which was good. Anyway it's all now with Cutcliffe. I tried to increase awareness by building a blog which I've neglected but may try and spend a few hours fixing it and publishing over this long weekend. We'll be going up to the property to do some Weed and Feed. Last time we went up we saw there was some fruit including passion fruit!  And the usual figs which never seem to make it!

It's been a while since I've blogged here... Mainly as I have too many blogs to update these days!  99interns is the most regular as there is accountability, Oddswop is neglected as there is too much happening and my house blog is often updated as I'm so engaged!  I tried doing a blurt out blog on oddstart but that didn't last long. Too few hours per day. I do think maybe a social media platform will work better. Maybe I should be using g+ for that type of thing? Worth thinking about. Today is the start of new beginnings. Any day is or hour or minute. But with an earlier start due to daylight savings ending it feels good....

We're about to rip up our old brushwood fencing and really wanted to find a better end to it than burning it (up at Howes Valley in the appropriate season) or throwing it away. I wonder if there are any ideas people have on upcycling it. A quick google didn't yield anything but chances are I didn't search for the right term.  I'm sure it'd make a great decorating idea.  We even succumbed to the twigs in a vase at some stage but it never really looked right... Some options I can think of: - make a xmas wreath out of it (I think I missed the season though!) - weave a basket ?? - create a bin enclosure with brushwood - thatch a roof Hmm... they all seem quite ridiculous. Would love any ideas of what I can do with this stuff.

After doing a bit of Googling it does seem that there is a lot of information about the Aldi Expressi Coffee machine but not that much about the flavour pods. I thought I'd pop some of our initial comments here about what we have found after about a month's of usage. Firstly about the machine... it's great in producing very consistent coffee. Coffee snobs may laugh at it but it produces consistently good coffee often much better than some of the cafes around. We're very wussy in our coffee drinking habits and tend to like: Instant = Nescafe Gold Blend or Moccona Vanilla Ground Coffee = Illy Medium Roast or Gloria Jeans flavoured coffee (Vanilla or Hazelnut) We have our coffees with milk so YMMV.  When I'm out I tend to go for a Soy Mocha... So... the flavours we like the best are: Perugia (strength 5) - smooth with no bitter aftertaste Tauro (strength 5) - another smooth one Milano (strength 10) -- very smooth and not as strong as the number seems to ...

Social media and eDMs are all happening next week.  But I'm excited... as www.oddswop.com.au is alive! Andre, Dave and myself celebrated today over lunch after a Product brainstorming session around our communities model.  There's more at the Oddstart blog as well.

As a final assignment we're meant to write a paragraph about our experience with Founder Institute .  A paragraph... that'd be hard as there is so much to say.  I could have just put something on LinkedIn or commented on a blog ( hmmm I already did that !) or commented on a  Quora thread  but decided to put some of my reflections down before I forgot it all. This was my second go at FI.  Last semester I pulled out after suffering the really tough first week but realised that due to personal circumstances wouldn't be able to continue that semester.  I still had a burning desire to get Oddswop up and running with as much help and knowledge I could so I reapplied after doing a snap poll with James ( FoodOrbit ) and Neil ( Slidefish ) who both graduated from the Spring 2012 class. The first week I was smart and had some idea of what was to come so left quickly from the pub that first night so I could prepare.  It was amazing so many of us made it thro...

I graduated on Tuesday night with 7 other graduates from Founder Institute . A number of mentors were there at the  Blue Chilli  offices including our directors Ben and Tom and Peter Cooper Garry Visontay Daniel Ringrose (aka Simon Baker) Adam Benson Sebastien Eckersley-Maslin Ari Klinger We also had the great interns Richard and Luke there jotting down all our pledges. Yikes my memory isn't that good and now I can't remember who else was there that evening.  It was also nice to see some of the grads from the previous semester there (Neil and Jeremy and I think Jake was there too). But a huge congratulations to all my fellow graduates: Alex with Insydr Dave with SuperPick Javier with Acento Paul with Wine Badger Sarah with Powerd8 Tom with Agile Weather Vincent with CarProfilez Yvonne (me!) with Oddswop Ah a photo of the grads, directors, interns and mentors (phew I didn't forget anyone)