One end and another new beginning..

How the devil are you?

I realised I’ve not posted anything here for a while – and thought I’d briefly go into the reason (just incase it was a little ambiguous that maybe I’d made £1m and decided to retire). Although I wish it was, it’s definitely not the case – I just thought that finding myself writing more about my ideas and more philosophical ramblings that it’s nice to remain slightly anonymous, with a blog linked to so many things online it’s difficult to look people in the eyes in serious business meetings with the idea they’ve read about the loss of my favourite fish “fishy”.

The 2010 millionaire will return, I promise.. under a slightly different name, (maybe the 2011 billionaire??) and yes I will make my million and retire – but this time I’ll be living in a small village in Bungley Forest, a retired eagle trainer called Derek, who hates fish, loves cats and classical music. There’s so much I want to write about, the last couple of months have been like a small journey of self finding – sparked by turning 30 I think, which in turn has made me start questioning everything in life.

I’ll leave you with an apt video of the fish eating their favourite dinner, alage pellets – they go nuts for them, and say thanks so much to you for reading.

Charting highs and lows …

It’s a week and a bit into my time off between jobs, and I’ve been loving the break, the first few days found myself sleeping in until about 9:30, playing XBOX over breakfast and then setting some objectives for the day.

I guess I should explain the unusual departure from an over saturated photo above – a graph of ICAP vs the “Support Service” sector. In the last day and a bit I’ve built a little sandbox for testing trading algorithms in Perl.

I have to say I love Perl – for those who don’t know, think of it as the programming language equivalent of a crazy old Scottish uncle who has purple hair, a ginger beard, a kilt – and probably nothing on underneath it.

Despite being a bit weird but powerful, sometimes it leaves you in the midst of a communications breakdown asking “what a hee haggis jimmy ock a’ whoo?” and you’re at loggerheads trying to describe something quite simple in a set of seemingly random symbols that look like you’ve bashed both fists on the keyboard, while at the same time making a gesture with your hands that looks like two upside down spiders.

Despite getting into a few 2 hour discussions about haggis, I’ve pulled in the history of the FTSE 100, all the related sector information and the history of the FTSE All Share index and coded up a simple algorithm to look through history for temporary dips in UK stocks to backtest the following idea:

• Look for a UK stock, where the stock, it’s related sector & the market (FTSE) as a whole are increasing
• Wait for the stock to hit a temporary dip as long as the above is still satisfied
• Wait for the stock to recover, then enter trade

..and graph anything found with the suggested entry (buy) point of the trade. The graph illustrates one of many resulting “opportunities” flagged and output into a fairly minimal looking graph. This is also the first real experience I’ve had using MySQL, coming from Sybase – and I have to say what a great little database it is. Considering it’s running on a VMWare image the query/result caching is so good it chomps through all 100 stocks in a matter of seconds.

So basically, if you’d piled some monies into ICAP back in Dec ’04 you’d have made more money than you could get at a night out at Walthamstow dog track, I can’t say that all the other graphs look as favourable …. yet, but that’s half the point, I’m going to carry on tweaking until I get something that fits, and some would argue even when you have something that fits (a back-tested model that picks more wins Vs losses) it’s not to say it will continue to do so in future.

Previous performance isn’t indicative of future returns, you may not get back the money you invested, always bet on the dog with the longest tail ..etc (which is all good advice).

What Lionel can teach you about Object Oriented Programming..

St Patrick's Parade - NYC 2009

Bejesus, top of the morning to you!

The beginning of another week in the 2010 Millionaire office and I realise that things have been fairly quiet on this front just from the number of people who’ve been banging on the door asking “what the devil has been going on?” “where are the updates?”.

When I say “banging” I mean, “calling” and unfortunately “the door” being my office phone.

Unfortunately it’s been ridiculously busy at work, and have spent the remainder of my time sat infront of the PC retouching wedding images. That’s not to say “unfortunately” about retouching, because I find it really relaxing and therapeutic, but just that I haven’t had much time to do anything else.

Also after more than 7 long years working at the same company I resigned a couple of weeks ago, which must have been one of the most difficult decisions I’ve had to make, maybe just because of the amount of weight I’d poured on it – but also as a testament to how much I think of the people I’ve had the opportunity of working with for so long.

I’ve got 4 weeks off from this Friday, the sun is coming out over central London and it’s difficult not to feel positive about life in general. Wedding enquiries have been going through the roof (7 in the last week) and have had 2 international bookings for this summer.

Since this week is my last week of work after so long I’ve found myself thinking “this is one of the last cups of tea I will make”, or “this is the last time I’ll walk thru the building atrium” and it dawned on me that there is only a fixed, finite number of times you’ll do anything in life. Obviously the same doesn’t apply to watching sunrise/sunsets and making cups of tea, but it’s made me think I’m going to try and stop taking these tiny events for granted, and in the same way you try and take in everything the last time you know you’ll see someone I’m finding myself thinking the same about my favourite office mug.

Have spent a fair bit of time coding, getting really interested in backtesting spread betting strategies from Malcolm Pryor’s book for spotting medium/long term UK stocks. What had been holding me back was just being able to find all the data that I wanted online, but glad to say it’s out there in the public domain – and I think am a couple of days away from having a nice automated perl script pumping out little graphs with entry & exit points, stop losses and returns.

Most of this week is going to be spent tying up loose ends, taking home 7 years worth of accumulated stuff from under my desk and maybe contributing a few C# interview questions to our list. The best interview questions I can think of though are:

Lionel Richie’s “3 Times a Lady” – the ultimate make up, or break up song .. discuss? (10 points)

Lionel Richie’s “Hello” – do you think that Lionel is describing a singleton pattern in C#? Or the song is more about loose coupling of objects? (10 points)

Lionel Richie’s “Say you, Say me” – describe what you think Lionel is telling us about C#’s model for event-handling and delegates? (10 points)

Photo today is from last year’s St Patrick’s day parade through New York.

Tools for making difficult decisions..

Mr Pooky - fish enthusiast

Carrying on from yesterday’s post, I’ve been thinking about the 2nd part to my attempt to impart some life coaching in myself, that’s hopefully not along the lines of something you’d hear from Anthony Robbins. Not meaning to knock the guy – as I think he’s an incredible speaker with untold natural charisma (a bit like Lionel Richie) and has made a fortune from life coaching, but having listened to some of his self help CDs that ended up on one of the servers at work, I realised they’re a bit like an episode of the Two Ronnies where Ronnie Corbett tells an incredibly long winded story for 10 minutes and you realise that it’s contained absolutely zero substance.

“OK! so today we’re going to go through a life affirming tool that we can use to stop procrastination, wake up energised, guarantee 1000% success, this WILL change your life… but first I want to tell you some incredibly long winded and pointless story about some guy I met playing golf and when I went around to his house I met his pet dog – a golden retriever, anyway he had been having all sorts of problems with this dog that had been affecting his golfing handicap and he said to me “Tony I am having all sorts of problems with this dog that’s affecting my golfing handicap, can you help?” and so I said “Yes Doug I can, I totally can help you with that, I’m so glad that you asked me” so we sat down for dinner, and Doug’s wife is a great cook, and we had a 3 course meal, usually I wouldn’t eat that much but on this day I did,

OK well that rounds up today’s session guys, lets reflect on what we’ve learned and I’ll see you on the next CD “how to make your business 1000% more profitable”

Pooky and the fish

My thoughts are this – throughout life you have to make tough choices, not necessarily whether to have chicken or turkey for dinner, but the kind of stuff where you can imagine the universe literally splitting in two and playing out 2 distinct outcomes, a real sliding doors moment. Which uni to go to, leaving your job, breaking up a relationship.. being indecisive at the best of times I think these moments are incredibly difficult, partly for trying to play out both possibilities of the decision and then wondering if it’s ever possible to backtrack. “Have I irreparably changed my life and am now unable to go back?”

Ok – and now for the substance. I think very few decisions in life are 100% final, even the most extreme example I can think of – (sex changes) can be, and are reversed. Need to get back together with the girl of your dreams? Employ the talents of Lionel and his greatest hits CD, or dress up as the man, arrive on the doorstep and sing the most beautiful song your vocal range will allow for. I’m sure in 99% of cases this would work *

Joking aside, I think when it comes to making tough choices it’s easy to see them as being a snap decision at one point in time, with a black and white outcome. What I’ve realised is that really they’re 1000 little events that led up to an eventual outcome, over a much longer period. Little insignificant things that eventually led you down a path to a conclusion – which has to be turned into some kind of yes/no in the form of making a decision, like looking back at the path and thinking “oh look where I’ve ended up”. When it comes to making that decision it’s tricky, you’re trying to squash a balloon into a box, remove it’s rounded edges and define it as something else, put a label on it. But for me I think – you wouldn’t have taken this path if it wasn’t for 1000 little left/right turns along the way.

I guess to summarise

• Very few big decisions can’t be reversed
• Big decisions are really just 1000s of tiny little decisions clumped together
• Change isn’t always a bad thing
• You can only try and make the best decision given the limited information (in hindsight) you have available to you at the time

I’m not 100% sure after re-reading that though whether to actually post this or not.

A few random images of my Business Development Manager (Mr Pooky) and the fish today. Note the fish in the centre having a bit of a freak out in the 2nd image! In reality they really don’t mind… Loving this Matrix & Futurebound – Womb

* the author makes no guarantees of relationship advice, nor whether this will actually work in theory. “3 times a lady” is a great song though

Life coaching from the most unlikely life coach..

An 'orrible ....

“A righteous infliction of positive suggestions manifested by an appropriate agent. Personified in this case by a pretty normal fella… me”

I was thinking as I was just driving through town, have you ever wished that you could go back through time (to say when you were even more young and foolish) and give yourself a pep talk?

Sort of sit yourself down with the benefit of hindsight and say “look son, you’re gonna do some crazy stuff, and do this .. and it’ll pay off, don’t bother with this, do more of this, steer clear of …. he/she’s a wrong ‘un” type stuff. Well I was trying to think, if I were to go back to the beginning of the year what I would advise in order to bring a sense of inner harmony and general peace and calm to daily life. All together now …. Ohhhhhm.

Here’s my top 7, a perfect harmonious number between 10 and 5 – also because I couldn’t think of another 3.

1. Eat a pomegranate every day – Surely this is the fruit of the Gods. I never discovered these things until I was 30, which probably goes some way to explaining why I think they’re such good fruit, but essentially they tick all the boxes – they’re fruity, crunchy and kind of explode in your mouth with a taste sensation of sweetness. Apparently they’re also extremely good for you, and will proper “sort you aaaaaht” (as Bricktop would say). (At the peak of my pomegranate addiction I’ve consumed 2 a day, which isn’t a massive number but they are £1.50 each and can be eaten in under 1 min).
2. Recycle your Christmas Tree – When I say recycle, I don’t mean leave it outside for the council like a discarded sticky tissue. Do something with it, after Xmas, the one in the living room looked like it was about to cark it, but I think through some gentle TLC, love, care and consideration it’s decided it’s agreed it won’t die on us and in return we’ll redecorate it with varying themes throughout the year. An Easter Tree, Summer Tree, Daylight Saving Tree.. etc.
3. Buy a pet fish – I always say to people that I work with, you won’t realise how much of a difference owning a fish will make to your life until you get one. It’s little things, like realising that they’ll follow you around the living room, or be waiting at one end of the tank when you get up to be fed, or come and sit at the other side to see what’s going on when you’re watching telly. Or realising how different they all are in terms of personality, not to mention feeding them…they will repay you 1000 times over with their playful splashing as the puppies of the water.
4. Take time out from each day to make someone else’s – Admittedly not all days lend themselves to this kind of activity, but if you can – take a few minutes out to put a smile on someone’s face through something unexpected, your legacy isn’t always physical.
5. Snatch back time from your downtime – I’ve taken to replying to text messages and emails on the tube, it’s not always easy to type on an iPhone and people do have a habit of reading over your shoulder, but if it’s a choice of that or reading about a dog that can do backflips while eating wotsits through hoops of fire in the Metro then I’d rather try and keep in touch with people, something I’m notoriously bad at.
6. Rediscover something you used to love doing -Thanks to Chris for the loan of his 1210s, I’ m now rinsing a whole host of quality vinyl from back in the day. I guess this is a bit like Kellogs Cornflakes in terms of “have you forgotten how good they taste”, and damn they taste good.
7. Discover a new tune/band/producer regularly -Hit Spotify, Youtube, Juno Downloads and find stuff by producers you like. For me there’s few things more satisfying than finding 3 or 4 good new tunes that I’ll want to listen to on repeat until I can’t stand them any more (ok that’s not strictly true).

Diverted Traffic

Aside from my musings the 2010 Millionaire project is about to go into overdrive in the next few days. I can’t reveal too much at the moment but I’m extremely excited.

I realise that in terms of hardcore moneymaking substance I’m also now at the end of another month so need to do my monthly accounting, which looks mysteriously like last month’s accounting, except slightly more negative.

Monthly Accounting

End of Month Accounting

• Expenses ~ £80
• Income ~ £0
• Money left to make in 2010 – £1,000,080 ( ~£100k a month)

Today’s image is totally unrelated to today’s post – just a test shot from in & around Soho from way back in 2008. Was the first time had headed out with the 5d mk2.

Loving this – Shot Caller (Matrix & Futurebound Remix)

“Who is your daddy and what does he do?”

Homeless guy in NYC

It’s an extremely sunny afternoon here in London, in the heart of what we English call “a sunny day”.

Headed over to a mate’s place last night to check out some of his musical productions and was absolutely amazed, I think it’s great that you can get to a place where you’re very nonchalant about how good something is that you’ve done. It may be a little puzzling to anyone else but I think it’s a healthy trait when you put anything out into the public domain, from art, music, photography, computer software ..etc to never be happy with your own creations.

I sat there and had loads and loads of ideas for some promo images I wanted to shoot for him. Have never headed out to shoot a set of band or musician type promo shots but as I sat there listening to the soothing sounds of African bongoes and the chant of little village children effortly mixed with industrial car horns I could see some great images in my mind, now it’s just transcribing that to the back of the camera.

We’ve had a creative breakthrough in the 2010 Millionaire office, thanks loads to the genius that is a suggestion for a domain to register to start selling little art prints. Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! I’m looking forward to getting something up online, although I realise that I’m now a month behind my original aims to have sold an art print by the end of Jan.

I had a thought this week about the level of British Government debt and, more generally about people who seem to take forever to do their thing with cash machines. How is it that some people seem to be able to spend hours infront of them like they were some old StreetWarrior III arcade machine, you half expect them to turn around and ask for a spare 20p so they can have another go at Master Fu on the last level.

NYC & the "Golden" Arches

My idea is this – combine the nation’s love of gambling with taking money out of the bank. You go to withdraw £10 and the face of Chris Tarrant appears (in green monochrome) “We don’t want to give you that £10.. how about you answer a who wants to be a millionaire question in order to win £20″. Or just a plain “Double or Quits” type roulette, where you end up with £20 or nothing. The Government scrapes off a good percentage for tax, and it might encourage less drinking within city centres, of course when people loose an onscreen suggestion to call the gambling advice line might help soften the blow.

A couple of images above from those in NYC last year, once I can get a little storefront and some deals with suppliers for frames up & running will be looking to head all over London and capture some late nights and early mornings. When I’m driving through town late at night I never stop to marvel or think how lucky I am to have grown up in a city steeped in such history with so much to take in.

The quote today I think is one of Arnie’s best from Kindergarten Cop, not quite up there with “Get to the

"So.. when can you start? ...TO KILL"

choppeeeerr” or just “Aigighghghghg” but it makes me laugh every time I see that advert about California, where Arnie asks “So .. when can you start?”. I can’t help but imagining him saying “..TO KILL” shortly after, still in the mind of the T1000, Terminator Cyberdyne Systems 101. My mind is a neural net processor, Quaid! I’m going to kill you, Aiiiiiighghghg.

Accounting

• Expenses ~ £30 (today)
• Income ~ £0
• Money left to make in 2010 – £1,000,080 ( ~£96k a month)

Not another bloody golf sale….

Serious Software

This made me laugh this week (left) and seems apt, given the amount of reading I’ve been doing around agile methods, extreme programming, pair programming, programming on the back of a horse naked, etc. Was looking for a tool to flatten XML files so I could import into Excel (pre 2003) at work, and found this handy little tool – which never made it past the install.

Business software doesn’t have to be serious right? Buck the trend! Nothing says “serious officeware” and fills you with confidence that this software will fulfill it’s function more than a pink gothic style font as part of the installer!

I’ve had various people call in at the 2010 Millionaire office and ask “how the whole million pounds thing is going”, it’s going – but due to a lot of other commitments outside work at the moment it’s proving difficult to get the time to work on the clothing label, and with the online gallery I’m constantly trying to think of a name without luck. Or to think of something only to find someone’s already registered the domain and it’s now a parked page hosting a whole load of Google ads.

So, so, so annoying. I guess it’s like coming home with a beautiful woman who you’d like to “romance” on the back seat of your motor vehicle, only to find someone standing in your resident’s parking space with a giant “Golf Sale” sign.

Have had 2 ideas this week, both I thought were suitably out of the box, but bam – already taken, and it’d be easier to accept someone had come up with the idea before you and launched a successful site, but to see them empty or “coming soon” really annoys me.

On the design of the T-Shirt logo have still been trying to get Adobe Illustrator installed. I had a brainwave and decided to try on a VMWare XP image, but the only one I could find was in German, having not done German since I was 16, I’m not really sure as to what on earth it’s saying.

Have been trying to fill in a past wedding a night on the Falling Confetti Blog but there’s still more stuff to put up. It’s nice to see we’re getting some organic search traffic though, but I find myself wondering whether adding technical info about Photoshop actions and the like dilutes something that’s meant to be exclusively about the interaction with wedding couples.

Bucking the Drum & Bass trend to listen to some old classic Tilt tracks. These guys along with Hybrid must have been the most ahead of their time as producers in the 90s went.

You say “South” I say “Bank”

working for the council

Part of the reason for the infrequent and sporadic nature of the moneymaking posts is that I’m currently in a “speculating to accumulate” phase of the business plan. We can summarise this, as you’d probably find within an e-book with an accompanying diagram of some overlapping circles and an acronym like:

“In order to make money, you must think CASH, which stands for:”

• C = consider
• A = a
• S = short
• H = holiday

so in following these words of made up nonsense advice took a few hours out yesterday to head to the South Bank with an old mate to take some modelly type shots. The idea was to set up a few off-camera flash setups but due a bit of a technical hitch (and also from having left the kit at home due to the early 7.30 am start) had to make do with some natural lighting.

I’m quite chuffed, having headed home from work and attempted to move the WordPress install on www.fallingconfettiblog.co.uk after watching some video about exporting the WordPress database, physically moving the install and then editing the SQL to set it’s new location. I stupidly decided this was a great idea, without backing up anything, only to try it and end up with a completely blank page and experience a nasty rollercoaster (sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach). I’ve a much simpler alternative which seems to work – and that’s just to create symlinks to all of the wordpress php files in the root directory of your webserver.

Anyway – www.fallingconfettiblog.co.uk now works, and have posted some more of the images from yesterday – the rest of them are on flickr here.

Had forgotten how much I enjoyed heading out to shoot something, and thought that I definitely need to spend more time behind the camera, all the websites, posts, advertising ..etc is a means to an end to achieve this end goal. Also got to try out the Coco Ringflash – a couple of images below show the effect shot against a dark blue wall with no other lighting.

My spider sense is tingling..

New Shoes?

I’m a little torn today, there’s plenty I want to write about in today’s post but all of the entries I feel would dilute the pure money making, bank rolling, cash turnover antics that is the 2010 millionaire blog.

Something sticks in my mind that was said at Christmas dinner with my family, in that anyone can feasibly make a million pounds in a year, but it’s what you have to sacrifice in order to do so, and if you’re willing to sacrifice those things. Living like a hermit for a year and appearing sometime around Christmas looking like a disheveled moneymaking Santa to find all your mates are now married with kids on the way might not be a good look.

I’ve found this to be more and more true, to the point I’m just craving a few months out from work in order to really crack on, fill up the Falling Confetti blog with stuff, and knock all of the items off my list. It seems to be something that people throughout history have also had problems with, was really interested to hear about Polyphasic Sleeping this week and wondered if it could be feasible to disappear for regular 20 minute naps at work in order to achieve more time awake each day. Would anyone notice?

Added a couple of books to the “to read” list “The Financial Spread Betting Handbook” and “Agile Principles, Patterns, and Practices in C#” both quite heavy going on the tube, and as far as my measure for what’s in the bestsellers list from other people’s reading, I’ve yet to see anyone else reading them. I’m trying to capitalise on really getting into learning as much as I possibly can at the moment. It’s refreshing to be in the mood to just read, absorb and start to feel not so bad about your own abilities.

Am absolutely loving this track. Perfect mix between trancey synths with an infectious Drum & Bass drumline.

The image today is a little abstract I guess, from a shoot we did for Boden for their Spring/Summer 2010 collection. I like it tho, I like the idea that what you don’t show can say as much as what you do show. Sorry to the ladies in the US, no pics of Johnnie Boden this time.

The Coco Ringflash adapter arrived today, will give it a good go and unboxing over the weekend with lots of images up on the Falling Confetti blog from a shoot we’ve got planned in and around the South Bank on Sunday. Actually, if any of the readers of this blog know anyone who’d fancy modelling in future – please drop me a line.

“What a fine looking fish..

Captain Birdseye

“said Captain Birdseye, “Covered in my special blend of crispy golden crumb!”. Captain Birdseye, for those readers not within the UK is the famous English patron saint of fish fingers. What this man doesn’t know about fish fingers and golden crumb probably isn’t worth saying, although I get the feeling that he wouldn’t be the first person I’d ask to babysit my kids.

Today’s post is slightly unmillionaire related, unfortunately I’ve not had as much time to work on the making a million project in the last couple of weeks due to some pondering about my larger situation as a whole. I’ve another day off work tomorrow, and for the last couple of days have been reading up on hardcore C# multithreading and “Options, Futures and Derivatives” by John C Hull, who must be the equivalent of the Captain Birdseye of Derivatives.

Yesterday wrote a really simple multithreaded volatilities pricing model in C#, essentially a massive monte carlo using a ThreadPool.

I’ve been trying without success to get Adobe Illustrator installed on my PC at home and work, as I can visualise how I’d like the logo for “clothing brand X” to look but am without the tools to draw it out.

Dr No's Dubstep Production Studio

Have been asked by a mate to come down and shoot some images of his studio as he’s recently “invested” in 2 CDJ-2000s in addition to enough stuff with flashing lights and dials to be a good James Bond bad guy secret lair. Had been thinking for a while about buying a ring flash – just because of the interesting lighting effect that it produces and really falling in love with the look during a lighting course a couple of months back. I’d like to shoot some good promo shots for him and had been thinking of dropping some cash on a RayFlash but had been majorly put off by the price of what is essentially a lump of plastic with some prisms and reflectors. Decided to be a cheap mofo and instead go for one of these – the Coco Ringflash for a not too bad £60. I’ll report back once it’s arrived and have had a chance to try it out but the consensus on flickr seems to be that it’s a decent piece of kit. I hope it’ll do for some interesting shots against a patterned wall as well as maybe something shot low to high, backlit by off camera flash outdoors.

Unfortunately things on the fish front haven’t been going that well, have had a few belly-ups in the last week or 2. Came back last night to find one little fella who’d had a swim bladder infection (but was otherwise happy and very buoyant) looking pretty gone, having holed himself up inside the submarine within the fishtank. Considering it’s an effort for any fish that has a swim bladder infection to swim down to the bottom of the tank, he must have known he was on his way out and just decided to cover himself in crispy crumb in private. One of the other little fellas who looks a little like Hitler, has also been resting at the bottom most of today, I’m worried but don’t really know what’s going on with them.

I wanted to share a few pics of my favourite fish “fishy”, who is the brother of the ill fated Kentucky, I often have trouble explaining how a fish can have a face like a puppy – but if there is one fish that does it’s this little fella. Big and timid he is the ultimate lovable fish.

Unfortunately as well as sporting what’s left of  a black eye I’m also hobbling slightly after a home-atttempted operation to remove dead skin from my foot with a pair of scissors unfortunately resulted in cutting off an “essential” part of my toe and making a bloody mess of the living room floor.

End of Month Accounting

• Expenses ~ £50
• Income ~ £0
• Money left to make in 2010 – £1,000,050 ( ~£90k a month)