Colin Charles Agenda

I think it’s really important to write ideas everyday. In fact, it’s a new year – if you don’t already have a notebook and pen, get one. I personally rely on Evernote, a notebook (lately, I’m starting to think I might like the Evernote Moleskine notebooks – I’ve started with the Moleskine Evernote Business Notebook for meetings) and a pen. 

When you are set, don’t forget to read James Altucher: FAQ on how to become an Idea Machine. I particularly like the following:

I have an Idea. How do I get money for it?
You don’t. You have to implement it. You have to have other people who like it. You have to get money from customers who like it. You have to build up so that it can support yourself.

For my first business, I started it, got customers, got employees, had an office, and then, 18 months into it, I quit my fulltime job, and went to my startup fulltime.

That’s how business works in the real world.
We live in an entitled world now where people think ideas are enough now to get funding and make billions.

Go old school. Deliver proven value to others, charge money for it, get testimonials about how good your product is, and then you’ve widened the horizon of your decisions. That’s the path to success.

Back in 2012, we spent Christmas in London and when it came time to listen to some Christmas songs, we ended up using none other than the phone streaming music from Rdio. There was no external speaker or anything. It was just the four of us huddled together in a room. This experience was far from ideal.

Fast forward to 2015 and its worth noting things have changed. Today, hotels come with devices like the JBL Flip Portable Wireless Bluetooth Speaker by default. This is an improvement to the standard iPod docks that I’ve seen at most hotels because Bluetooth works with pretty much any phone/tablet.

At Christmas this year, we had a smaller party, and for the first time we used an iPad streaming music from Rdio to a Jawbone Mini Jambox. Audiophiles said it had good bass, but was missing a bit of treble. Keep in mind that the normal equipment is a Marantz CD Player, a Quad amplifier, and Harbeth speakers. At another property, the setup is similar, with a Tempest amplifier; and again we were impressed by the Jambox.

I don’t consider myself an audiophile by any stretch, but I do like to listen to music and am all the happier when I can hear it everywhere I am. Do I miss the quality of CDs? Nope. And I’m beginning to think more will listen to music the way I do so now.

This year, New Year’s Eve was celebrated much closer to home – Phuket. We did miss London, but had an awesome time as always.

Travel for 2014: 28 trips (27 last year), visiting 22 countries (17 last year), and 49 cities (35 last year). I spent 264 days on the road (still on a trip technically into the new year so stats are always munged – versus 223 days last year). The distance travelled – 435,271 km. I’ve spent more time at places, rather than flying back and forth basically.

New Year’s photos this year taken with a Sony DSC-RX100M III — yes, probably the best pocket camera out there.

Catching up on reading, it’s worth reading Taylor Swift is the music industry. There’s good insight as to why she pulled her music from Spotify (an all or nothing deal; contrast with Rdio that still has her albums except the latest 1989).

Today I learned that a music CD in Malaysia costs RM62.90. When I used to buy CDs they cost around RM40 at most. Swift’s album is USD$13.99 + tax.

I’ve pretty much given up buying CDs. I purchased music from the iTunes music store & Amazon MP3s. When Rdio (& Spotify) came out that’s what I ended up using.

So I asked Sara how she was listening to Taylor Swift’s latest hit, Shake it Off, and she told me it was via a YouTube video. Simple reason is that I don’t believe her apartment has a CD player any longer (save for the externally attachable one that Apple sells you).

My friend Imran (popularly known as narmi) tells me that special CDs cost more money. Turns out some people really like the physical copies of artwork, and want to read the thank you notes. If you read the above article, that was one of Swift’s strategies – re-tweeting fan photos with the photos in her album. Smart.

Sales of the album have worked well for Swift. I am just unsure how many will pull this off successfully. Let’s hope that others don’t follow suit & streaming services become more useful (and pay the artistes a lot more).

When I was a desktop Linux user, I’d just sync /etc and /home to a freshly installed Linux box. When I became a desktop Mac user, I would just rely on Migration Assistant.

With iOS, the trick is to have iTunes make an encrypted backup of your device so that passwords are saved upon backup & restored perfectly with your new device.

However, it’s always rosier than it looks. During my switch I noticed passwords missing from Rdio, audiobooks lost their last played time, and Kindle was completely wiped, thus requiring re-entering a password. These weren’t the only offenders – SoundCloud needed a re-login, Facebook too (and Spotify that depended on it).

You’d think that Apple itself would have figured this out for their apps. On some devices iMessage and FaceTime would get disabled for the phone numbers (so disabling & re-enabling would make things better again).

As I have to update a “fleet” of iOS devices, I wish there was more predictable central management of such devices.

This is another reason I’m very cautious about updating to the latest releases of software, especially iOS or OSX. I depend on these devices and can’t afford downtime. Lately Apple software has been quite bug ridden.

The ecosystem & devices are a charm. But upgrades are expensive as there are switching costs. Imagine switching to a completely new ecosystem?

I caught Mamma Mia on Sunday. This wasn’t my first time seeing it; the cast was new. It was a lot racier compared to the previous one about 5 years ago in KL.

Then, I sat within spitting distance of PM Najib & Rosmah, using the intermission fully to crack jokes about explosives. This time it was on the second row from the stage. I enjoyed both thoroughly.

I wondered why the hardline minority Islamists didn’t comment about Mamma Mia. They seem to take offense with plenty. Figured it’s probably because they’d have to pay for a ticket and that’s beyond them (lovers of freebies). They always have to remember the relation between tolerance and prosperity.

An arts scene is important for KL to become a world class livable city. This is something that is strong in New York or London, and I wish KL had more foresight. From what I see, Singapore is leading the way in South East Asia.

I don’t expect these things to develop overnight. It comes with work from both developing the local scene & inspiring the experienced to come for shows. It’s like the gallery/photography scene – again nothing to be developed overnight but I’m starting to see more interest and there are clearly auction houses at work. I find here that people try to leapfrog the basic collectors (which is a big mistake – that RM100 piece I buy today will help me buy the RM1,000 piece later on in life, and so on).

I reckon we will be building a base in the next decade. Yes it will shoot past 2020, but we have to contend with other issues (politically, etc) before Malaysia enjoys such first world livability. Then it will be another decade before things just work.

So people bearing kids today – don’t leave the nation. Make it better, for our future generation. Don’t be complacent, always question the status quo. It’s our nation, and we’ve got to lay claim & take it back.