The motorcycle diary

If I was to stand upright on the foot brake of my mortorcycle to exert as much downward force from the pads to the rear drum as possible in order to avoid colliding with the back end of an 18 wheeler the only significant difference it would make would be the shape of the blood splatter. The CSI team would simply surmise I had stood up at the moment of impact. And they would be baffled by the apparent absence of any skid mark to demonstrate any kind of attempt at self preservation. The brake is pathetic.

Recently I've developed an aversion to yanking on the front anchors. The result is usually less than glamorous and involves another big dent on my helmet and/or my pride/dignity.

So I have decided the thing to do is to maintain speed. If I want to slow down - chop it down a couple of cogs and let different laws of physics play out. The bonus is it sounds better too and with higher revs more power is available to exit the problem zone.

If I was to apply this kind of thinking to business strategy I would say that a smooth, speedy forward progression is much more exhilirating and probably safer than a staccato stop-go approach. On a bike (or in car) for that matter I always have in the back of mind the question - where do I go if the vehicle in front suddenly stops and can I do it without loosing momentum? Braking introduces too many fresh risks, losing speed not only costs time but also requires more resources than maintaining momentum

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Ze Frank thinks so you don't have to

Ze Frank appeared on my radar when I saw his presentation among the excellent TED Talks videos . This morning I was reading Russell Davies planning blog in which he referred to a clip by Ze Frank - Where do ideas come from. Here's the transcript: "...Hungry Hippo licks Aunt JEmima [sic] writes, "Are you ever gonna break into song again? Are you running out of ideas?" Hungry Hippo licks Aunt JEmima, that's a good question. I run out of ideas every day! Each day I live in mortal fear that I've used up the last idea that'll ever come to me. If you don't wanna run out of ideas the best thing to do is not to execute them. You can tell yourself that you don't have the time or resources to do 'em right. Then they stay around in your head like brain crack. No matter how bad things get, at least you have those good ideas that you'll get to later. Some people get addicted to that brain crack. And the longer they wait, the more they convince themse...

Johnny Bunko competiton

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