The Online Home of Peter Claridge

November 27th, 2006

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Just read an article where the author fiendishly attacks the Lord of the Rings trilogy, Star Wars and various Steven Spielburg films.

You can read the article here

While the article is quite humourous, the part I like the most is this bit…

“What Jackson is essentially pandering to…is his audience’s adolescent reluctance to engage with the real world. A grand quest to save Middle-earth from the forces of evil is an ideal escape from the more prosaic realities of finding a job and paying the rent, while forming a cosy boy’s club with your hairy-toed mates can’t help but appeal compared to the thorny practicalities of flesh-and-blood relationships”

Man! I love LOTR and other escapist stuff like Star Wars, Back to the Future and the cool Discworld novels. There’s nothing like escaping the real world for a few hours and become immersed in a battle between good and evil.

I’m not sure how I’m going to pay the rent this month though…oh, and I don’t have a ‘proper’ job. Looks like the author hit the nail on the head

Posted in Personal | 1 Comment »

November 26th, 2006

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In what must surely be a prime candidate for a darwin award, a woman from Florida has been killed by her bookcase.

More on the story here.

The family searched high and low for the missing woman as the mother explains here…

“I’m sleeping in the same house as her for 11 days, looking for her. And she’s right in the bedroom”

The family “had noticed a strange smell from her room but had blamed it on rats.”

Only in America!

My first thought is who is going to be sued in this case? The bookcase maker for not putting a warning sign on the furniture saying “don’t reach behind the bookcase”?!

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

November 25th, 2006

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I know it’s everyone’s life mission to learn to speak Tamil, a language spoken in the south eastern part of India, Sri Lanka and parts of Singapore and Malaysia.

Since everyone I know is wanting to learn this language (particularly Aravind!), I’ve created a quick cheat sheet on some of the most common words and phrases that I’ve picked up and are useful.

vanakkam - welcome

nandri - thanks

ama - yes

po - go

sikiram vanga - come soon

ponga - go (formal version)

toppie - tummy

pasi - hunger

pasikidu- i am hungry

naan sapida pooren ayya - I am going to eat, sir

thanni - water

aravind yendhiri - Aravind, Get Up!!!

vanga - Come

siri - smile,laugh

sapadu - Meals

kaalai(morining) vanakkam

Thappu - wrong

edhu thappu - this is wrong

kollathe - don’t kill me!

naan alugirean - Iam crying!

The words in bold are my most used phrases as I have to tell the freshers what’s going wrong and wake Aravind up in the morning.

Hope this helps you on your way to becoming fluent in Tamil like me

If you want to know any other simple and useful words and phrases, post a comment or shoot me an email

peterclaridge ‘at’ gmail ‘dot’ com

Just replace the ‘at’ with @ and ‘dot’ with .

It’s really that simple!

Posted in India | 1 Comment »

November 20th, 2006

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I’m about to mention a major weakness that I have. But I acknowledge this weakness, and really wish I could prevent it.

The weakness is: Shiney Object Syndrome

It is the process of starting one project, seeing a new, shiney object (in my case, the shiney object is usually a new business idea or opportunity), leaving what you are doing and starting doing something else and never completing a project.

I will start many different projects, or websites and never actually get around to finish them because a shiney object has caught my attention and I’ve wondered off to go and investigate it. Hence I have dozens of unfinished websites and projects.

The problem stems from the fact that I can see something and think of a 101 ways to improve the business opportunity, software, service. I will then go ahead and do a half project before getting distracted again. The problem is also compounded by the length of time the project takes to complete. If it only took a week to complete, shiney object syndrome probably wouldn’t be a problem. But my ideas get too complex and intricate that after a few weeks I lose interest.

So…now the problem has been identified, how do I go about solving it.

First thing I’m doing is trying my hardest to reduce the project lead time. This means maybe not launching with a fantastic product which takes weeks, maybe months, but with a simple product that can be improved over time, but only takes a week or two to get out on the market.

Next thing I’m trying desperately hard to do is focus and not wonder off too look at the newest shiney object. This involves looking at my core skills and only focusing on projects that utilize these skills…this is much easier said than done!

Finally, I’ve stopped looking at all the internet marketing products out there and stopped buying the latest packages or products. Part of my problem was information overload, I didn’t know where to go or what to do next. This has now stopped and I’m not buying any more marketing products - sorry folks!

Hopefully these measures I’m putting into place will stop me getting distracted and allow me to focus on my core businesses and developing businesses that complement each other and use my strengths.

Will it be successful? I will let you know early January. Between now and then, I hope to have 3 or 4 new products released.

Posted in Personal | No Comments »

November 15th, 2006

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I hate posts about not much. But this is what this post is about…nothing much.

At the moment I’ve got my Freshers writing a new content management script which could lay the framework for a script that I’ve been wanting for a while now.

I was also looking at developing a ‘paid to read’ script but after doing some market research I found that the ‘PTR’ industry is a dying industry so that plan got shelved.

Instead, on the advice of my good friend, Aravind I’ve decided to develop a Yahoo Answers clone script. For those of you that don’t know, Yahoo Answers allows you to ask any question you want on virtually any subject you want and loads of people will attempt to provide the best answers for you.

Loads of people are looking for a script to put on their site - it’s particularly useful for building niche communities rather than aiming it at the mass market.

Since it’s a relatively simple script, I hope to have it developed within three weeks or so. Should be pretty good and I can add a new product to my catalogue.

Now if only I can start making one sale a day on abcHYIP…

Posted in India | 1 Comment »