Content, No regrets.

If the world ended today I'd be happy with how I spent my time on it. But I hope it doesn't... I'm excited for what the future may bring.

16) Cut my own hair [COVID-19 edition]

At the moment the world is pretty crazy. We are coming up to the third week of isolation because of covid-19, the global pandemic. And to be honest... I'm loving it.

I am getting to stay in all day with the family, play games, get work done around the house, and not only do I guitlessly not go out, I'm doing my bit to save the world by staying in. I'm saving a load of money (which is great, since I'm not earning any), and keep building up the new business ready for the impending launch.

And best of all... it provided a perfect excuse to cut my own hair, and cross off number 16 on my list.

Covid-19

This has been bubbling since January. I spent part of January and most of Feburary biting my tongue, and occasionally keyboard-warrioring at people who posted things like "I don't see why people care, it's just a flu", dispite all the worlds experts saying it isn't a flu. Another one that annoyed me was "people only care about this because it's affecting rich white people". Nope. It's (at the time "going to be") a global pandemic, and if anything it's the poor people that are going to suffer the worst.

And then it hits. Life changed very quickly. Each evening the prime minister went on TV to update on where we are, but it was pretty clear the path we were going. China had been putting people in forced isolation for a while. Back when it started it felt like "China can do that, because it's China, but this could never happen in UK". But it would happen, and surprisingly fast, and with wide support. Finally, two weeks ago, on Monday evening it was announced that there would be isolation through the country. For two weeks before I had said school would close on the Friday before, with isolation happening at the same time, but I was a couple of days out. But seeing it coming meant I could go over to visit mom and dad for the last time in a while on the Monday afternoon.

Currently pretty much everything is closed still. Logan has finished school for good, 4 months early, and without doing GCSEs. I think I'd have bloody loved that. Many people in my new industry are massively struggling, but I think ultimately it will not harm (perhaps even help) the new venture. The only place you can really go is the supermarket.

Life feels different too. During the first few days there were a lot of shortages, which get you thinking about how you use your resources, food, etc. It makes you thankful that we have been able to get food that we want whenever we could before. It makes you want to meal plan and not waste.

The kids have taken it really well. They've enjoyed our one-walk-per-day, and we've gone back to discovering good things around the area. They miss their friends, but they all get on so well together that they get to play with their "sibling-friends" every day.

Nobody really knows what will happen from now... but my prediction is that by August things will be quickly returning back to normal, and the economy will bounce back really fast. I've said for years that it feels like the world needs a crisis to bring people back together again, and to make people realise what matters. Perhaps this is the coma the world needed to be put in to to allow it to be reborn?

Anyway... where was I?

The Isolation-Cut

To be honest, I don't even really know why this is on my list. I guess I just wanted to do it. I remember doing it once when I was young (four, but then I say everything was when I was four... arguably the most active year I've ever had). I used some blue scissors with a person on them. For some reason I thought it was a good idea to cut some of my hair... I remember doing it, but not why. Maybe my annoyance from my mom has made me feel like I needed another shot, and to do it right.

Fast forward 28 years. I needed my hair cut anyway, so when lockdown started and it would be at least 3 weeks before the hairdressers can run (I think it's probably going to be 8 weeks) I new something would have to happen. First of all I shaved the sides of my head to make it look a little neater (I'm as good as bald on top, so it's the sides that matter). But then I ran my hands through hair with wax and it stuck up and I looked like a flower.. so I needed to go nuclear.

So on Thursday 26th March 2020, I got the scissors and the razer, and got to work.

I gave a few snips (which was surprisingly hard to use scissors in the mirror). Then I let each of the kids have a snip with the scissors and a go with the razor. I wanted to do that because one of the few memories I have about my grandad (Simmonds) was being three or four, and him letting me and my sisters draw hair on his bald spot. Whilst I'm bitter that I've inherited this bald spot, that memory stuck with me for now 28 years. I wanted to try to give the kids a memory like that.

Cato went absolutely HAM on my hair with the scissors

I haven't had short hair like this since I was very young, maybe 8 or under. I was hoping it could look okay. But I wasn't very pleased. I think it needed to be shorter, but I was worried it would never come back. I also still somehow looked bald.

It's been a week now and I'm used to it. I dry faster coming out of the shower. When all this blows over I'm hoping to book a flight to Turkey and get new hair. 

86) Make jam

When I added "make jam" to the list a long, long time ago it was at a time when stuff like that seemed out of reach for me. In my mind it would have taken going strawberry picking and spending a load of money, then wasting fresh fruit and inevitably messing up. Meeting and marrying Brandi changed a lot of those assumptions, for one I started picking wild-growing fruit. It seems stupid now to think I ever didn't. Though I still often have people ask whether it's okay to eat (one man was in shock that the cherries on a tree were okay to eat).

One afternoon my neighbours stopped by with a jar of jam they had made themselves... from blackberries! I was amazed that they did it. I haven't known many people to make jam. I hadn't even really considered it doing it myself yet. And I love blackberries. So on Sunday 22nd September 2019, as the blackberries were getting ready to fall, I decided to make jam.

With my wife and army of kids we went around the paths near us with a few baskets and bowls and collected berries, but I was too "in the zone" to take any pictures.

I don't like following recipes to the word. I never have. What I instead like to do is find a few recipes and figure out the main steps and do something along those lines. I couldn't find many recipes that specifically talked about blackberry jam, which turned out to be a problem because of something called pectin which occurs naturally in fruit. Depending on the fruit it's in different quantities - and it is pectin that makes it "jammy". Recipes for specific fruit would know about how much pectin there was naturally.

I (or a twinny) mashed the fruit, and then we boiled it and added sugar. It had to be boiled at a specific temperature for only a few minutes or risks losing the flavour. At that point you take a spoon of jam, put it on a plate and put it in the fridge. If after a few minutes it seems jelly-like it is done.

The first one didn't... boo. It either meant I didn't have enough pectin or I didn't boil it hot enough and for long enough. I tried the boiling again, but it still wasn't great.

I looked for alternatives to pectin, assuming that was the problem, and found that you can add lemon juice. So I added a load of that, and it seemed to work fine. After a celebration dance that the jam hardened up a little, I put the jam in glass jars I had collected over the months. It went much more jam-like in the jars over night too.

The following weekend I decided to have another go, but this time buy pectin. Funnily enough, the first batch was actually better.

Now, many months on, we still have some left (and that's after giving a few jars away). I've decided that I'll be doing this every year, partly to be frugal and save on jam, and partly because it tastes way nicer than store-bought jam.

23) Run a popular website

The last 7 years has been dominated by family and business, after making the jump to being self-employed. It's no coincidence that my ability to post blogs took a nose-dive around that time too.

Back when I made my 100 Things To Do List I had the aim that I wanted to make a cool website. But in reality it was quite out of reach. Firstly, I didn't have the ability to build anything cool, or helpful enough to warrant people bothering to go to. The desire to do so is what first got me trying to come up with ideas.

An ideas man... only

The first thing I wanted to build was an indie game database, similar to IMDB (I had originally callled it IGDB). I built part of it for my University disseration, but stopped when I realised that the scope was too big. It would require having a huge following as the data would need to be crowd-souced.

My second idea was something to help make hitch-hiking safer. I really like the idea of hitch-hiking, it's a nice "help a stranger" thing, the kind of mentality I wish the world embraced more. I stopped on this for many reasons that I won't bore you with.

Something I learned quite early is that I prefer working with other people. On a trip to Croatia I convinced Liam, Craig, and Mike to work on a fun side project together, the outcome was Battleshots... and the early formations of a "team" which we called Team Pterodactyl, after the... nevermind.

The birth of BKK Events

The first real attempt at building something really good came when somebody I met in my first contract moved to Thailand. He struggled to find things to do in Bangkok, but knew there were loads of stuff. The internet there (at least at the time) was much less "evolved" with fewer sites providing information like that. We set out to build an events/activites discovery platform, BKK Events.

Working with Adam on BKK Events was great. He was a really talented designer, and I had started to learn the skills to build a half-decent app. Obviously, it was a lot of hard work, but we worked together really well and encouraged each other along.

 

I had a vision that we could "white label" the events site, to make it easy to set them up in other areas. Early on this had a lot of success, with us launching BCN Events in Barcelona, one in Chiang Mai, Taiwan, India, and a few other places. I think our most successful was setting up sites to cover festivals, giving people an easy-to-use timetable.

With so many unlinked sites, I thought it would be best if we try to build a "brand" that would persist across them. This would allow us to create the foundations of a proper business going forward. We came up with the name One Place Events, rebranding the sites to "bangkok.oneplace.events", and so on.

Enter Tipster

Note. For this whole thing I'm calling it "tipster", so it doesn't come up in search. It's pretty obvious what I'm talking about. I've just done a find/replace.

Whilst developing One Place, the found out we were expecting Amelie, and started going to NCT classes. It was at the second class I met Damien.

Damien was a sports tipster (somebody who tells you who do bet on to try to make money). He had a shitty Wordpress site, and wanted something better. After a few conversations with him, it was recognised that no individual tipster warrants the development cost of their own website... but there is definintely a gap in the market for somebody who can offer a white-labelled site. And I was all into white-labelling at that time (see above).

We set to work developing his new Terry Tipster site, but with the whole thing being white labelled under the brand Tipster Engine (after recognising later in the process with BKK Events that it needed an overall brand). Bringing together my Team Pterodactyl we built the first version.

 

This was actually a huge techincal feat, and one that we were all very proud of. Using a data feed, and a load of automation, we built what we recognise as the first real tipster verification platform. We quickly signed up some tipsters who brought across their members to the new platform. The business model was that we won't charge for the site, but we'll take a 50% cut of membership sales (an industry best at the time).

But there was something we hadn't counted on, two big problems. Firstly, good tipsters are good at sports, not running websites, bad tipsters are good at marketing. By verifying we're exposing bad tipsters, appealing only to the people who cannot market themselves. Secondly, these tipsters considered the website "theirs", and even though they weren't paying they expected to be able to have it changed however they want. Knowing that constent a "yes" is the death of innovation, we tried to think of something new to make the business viable.

With help from a friend, Simon, we redevloped the brand to be "Tipster" and pulled all of the individual websites into a single home, tipster.com. It was clearly the right move, as traffic upon launching skyrocketed and we opened up the ability for anybody to quickly start their own profile.

Back in Bangkok

Using all I was learning on Tipster, from a business perspective, I started looking back at One Place and if/how it could become a viable business. It was only ever intended as a fun learning project. I recognised three possible options. 

1) We could sell the system white label, as we had with the festival

This wouldn't work, Adam was great at the commnuity aspect but wasn't a salesman.

2) We could sell promoted event spots

This probably wouldn't work for the same reason as the first. And we didn't really have enough traffic to warrant it (we floated around 11,000 a month)

3) We could sell tickets

This seemed the right approach. We set about developing ticket-selling capabilities.

It was around this time Adam met Eliot, and we naively gave away half of the business with the belief that he could grow it big. Asia hadn't yet had companies like TicketMaster, EventBrite, etc grab huge chunks of the industry - so the hope was to grow fast enough that they may want to aquire One Place in future. Although I'd probably say the move was a mistake, it's hard to know how things would have turned out without. Plus we learn more from our mistakes than our successes...

Somebody believes in us!

In 2016 we met the greatest investor who believed in our vision and wanted to be part of Tipster. Whilst I, being somewhere around "realist" but drifting into either camp, thought there was no chance of it going ahead, Damien somehow pulled it off. Beginning 2017 we were able to focus 100% on Tipster, without me having to keep dipping into contracting to fund the business.

With the investment I put together a plan for a really awesome new version 2 of the platform. I wireframed it all, and worked with an amazing designer (who I still work with now) who could create statics of them. We developed the whole app from scratch, and were really, really pleased with the results. After an incredibly challenging year, we launched just weeks before 2018. Very few people know about my experience of launching, for the first two weeks getting a maximum of 2 hours sleep a night.

Unfortunately that's about where the stories of each have to take a long break, because of the following chapters...

Tick off the list? Run a popular website

The full version of that line is that it needs over 1,000 visitors per day, for at least a week. That is 7,000 a week (put that calculator away)... or around 28,000 per month.

Here's a screenshot of our analytics very early in the Tipster life, maybe around 9 months after we first brought the sites into a single place, and shortly after beginning to rebuild the site from scratch.

Boom! Smashed it.

 

Afterward: Leaving Bangkok

In 2018 we were approached by Masii, one of Thailands top 10 fintech companies (and recently called one of the top 100 fintech startups worldwide). They wanted to aquire One Place. I have wrote many things and then deleted, being careful of what I should and shouldn't say. So we'll pretty much leave it there, with the official announcements.

 As a project I consider One Place a success. I went in develop my skills in building apps and understanding business, and I absolutely did that. I'm very proud of what was built, and it gave me my first public "exit".

Afterward: Exiting Tipster

For everything I can't say about One Place, there's probaly 100 things I can't about Tipster. At the start of 2019 Liam and I had expressed our wishes to move on to new things. We were in talks with a few companies who had expressed interest both recently and over the years. It was decided the best fit was NI (Natural Int... damn Google's high indexing of Blogger). As part of the agreement it meant Liam and I could move on almost immediately with only some requirements, and Damien could stay on to keep going with our vision.

Liam and I were in the planning stages for our new business, and the sale meant we could fairly comfortably build it without requiring early investment.

Here are some screenies of the Tipster sale.

I put that one there because I got a little quote shout-out. Even though what I actually said was way better, it's fine being paraphrased into something I didn't say.

Whew

Well that was long, right? You read it for a few minutes. That was like 7 years for me. But, most importantly, I've crossed number 23 off my list, "run a popular website".

Hair today, gone... pretty much today

I am now 31, and only five days away from being 32. I now have four children, two businesses, and a wife. It is quite a world away from when I was 21 (no children, no businesses, and no wife, for a start).

Back then I had a lot of hair. Quite a lot of it. So much so that I apparently looked like every other person with curly hair. It kind of became "my thing" (at least before the headband).

When I was 19 I unexpectedly and unplanned(edly?) did a photoshoot for a workplace magazine. Back then I had long emo hair.

  

During the photoshoot they suggested they make my hair curly, which I thought was going to be pretty lame, but was happy to go with it. I actually quite liked the outcome...

 

So from then I was a guy with curly hair. The photographer suggested I get an agent, and put me in touch with one, and that is how I got into doing some modelling. If they needed someone kind of studenty-looking, I had the hair for it. I wasn't particularly good at it, it was all down to the hair.

And I had that hair for many years. Arguably for too long. When I was 28, with a manbun, I was starting to realise I'm in risk of becoming the 50 year old that's holding onto their youth by having a ponytail... it really hits home when you're able to take a picture like this...

 

You know it's no longer cool when you're also a fat c**t. It was time for a change. I started going gradually shorter (my hair, not my stature).

But I wasn't ready to give up doing stuff with my hair. I had always wanted to try different colours, and at this point I was pushing 30, and every year I left it would make me look even more like a dick if I were to do it. So I went for it. 

I tried blonde...

 

Silver/purple...

Blue...

White...

And even pink/red... (actually, this is the last time I saw my nan before she died, introducing Cato to her)

 

And once I'd finally gotten it out of my system, I went back to normal.

It was a fun few months, but I was mostly worried about damaging my hair by keep bleaching it. Especially considering you're not supposed to have it on your scalp, but it was too much effort not to, so I went for it (and yes, it burns). If it wasn't so much effort I'd alternate between brown and silver.

But then one day something happened. I was blissfully minding my own business, when I see a picture Brandi had taken, and I had a very obvious bald spot. I thought it was a trick of the camera. I couldn't be going bald. My mom and dad both have good hair, and hair was my thing. It was only one day later that my sister said I seemed like I was "thinning on top".

When I got home I decided to take a look. Until that point I hadn't. I hadn't even considered going bald. I thought only bald people went bald, and I wasn't a bald person. I held the camera up to the mirror, and saw this.

... What the fook is that, right? It looks like I intentionally had a combover. I had never knew, because it was kind of hiding behind me. Maybe other bald people didn't realise? Maybe they too would be gutted when they find out?

My mom was sympathetic. She had noticed. She bought me some soap that is supposed to help. Brandi had already searched for how much hair transplants cost (before I had even realised, because she knew I'd be upset).

So now things have changed. What once was part of me has an expiry date, which I didn't know. It was kind of like finding out my best friend, hair, had cancer.

I didn't, don't, know who or what to blame. I went back through pictures to figure out when this happened, and how I didn't notice. I looked at pictures from 2016, and I could see it a little lighter on top. It felt like that scene in The Truman Show when he realises his wife didn't love him, and crossed her fingers at the wedding. Maybe it's the kids fault? But no, they're awesome. Maybe it's work? But I don't really get stressed... It could be to do with bleaching a shit load of times, but surely not. Though I guess it doesn't really matter what caused it, that is the case, and my hair, much like the hare, which seemed so promising, will eventually lose the race... of time... to the tortoise (my scalp).

The above picture was a year ago. The bald spot actually seems to be a little better (thanks mom's soap!) and the hair loss had seemed to have slowed. Maybe I was out of the woods, and could live with being a bit "thin on top". 

That is until recently. I got my hair cut about a month ago, and today it's pretty much the same length. If I go in water the remaining bits group together and looks like I've only got a few strands.

But I can't be upset about it forever. For now I'll keep using my hair soap, and research how to look good bald. And keep working on the business, to hopefully get enough money to do what Elon Musk did...

14) Skydive

In 2010, or some time around then, my good friend Dan and I decided we would skydive. I'm not a particularly fearful or nervous person, but I was nervous from the very second we agreed to it. We decided what day we would go, I got the time off work, and I had confirmed the date with the skydiving place (pending deposit). It was all going to plan...

... Until it wasn't. I told Dan that the day was free, to his confusion - as it wasn't the day we agreed. It was a week after. How did I make that mistake? I'm not a mistake-maker! I went to the work holiday board to see if I could change it - but my holiday wasn't marked down on the week I thought it was... it was booked for a week after. I had no idea how all of this had happened... agreeing one week, booking the week before off, an arranging it for the week after. Was I self-sabotaging? Was it some divine intervention, because the parachute wasn't going to open and I would die a squashy death?

The plans all fell apart, and that was the end of that.

7 years pass and it is coming up to my 30th birthday (30... I know... wtf. How did this happen... I guess it deserves it's whole own post, how years happen and all that). I still haven't skydived (skydived? Sky dove? A sky dove sounds more like a bird. Is "dove" even a word in that context? Have I made a mistake my whole life? "He dove into the water". It doesn't even sound right now. This is "versed" all over again)... but now was the time.

The first person I called was Dan. He was my man. 7 years in the making. But, alas, with a child he is now a more sensible man. I was at 1 child, I guess. I now have 4. Sense has long since left. I needed a new squad to be blasted into space - well, sky, which is part of the way. I needed my own Armageddon, in the film sense, not the catastrophe sense.

The calls went out... I picked my A-team, and everyone responded.

Joe: Friend since we were 10. Once said he would jump out of a plane for me, probably.

Mike: Friend since pretty much every lesson in college and Uni was together. Good at buying hot dogs.

Craig: Friend since Uni, when he told me his name was MC Nicholas and I thought he was a wigger-rapper.

Mom: Friend since aged 3-4. She says before, but I'd be taking her word for it.

Wildcard - Joemondo Fro, aka Joe: Friend since Uni, where he wore a different pair of trainers every day.

And the backup... Amelie. She really, really wanted to go, and cried when she couldn't.

For some reason I was no longer nervous. Maybe I had matured over the years, and gotten a new "fearless" side. Admittedly, very little makes me nervous or scared now, at least in the way of things like this. I was more excited. I even did my hair to match the Armageddon jumpsuits (I actually only just realised that was similar now. I was going through a thing, getting close to 30 and changing my hair a lot because I can so eff everyone).

The day had came, Sunday 23rd July. We arrived at midday, hoping for a quick take off, and a quicker descent... but it wasn't to be, instead we had to wait 4 hours for everybody else. I think this must have been to test my nerves.

The time eventually came, when we were paired off with men who came to pick us, like young women in a 50's disco. They decided to put me with the biggest bloke, who wore me like I wear the babies (for those who do not know, in one of those baby carriers you put on your front...). I looked ridiculous.

The plane went up, and up. We were jumping at 13,000 feet. The big man wore a watch (altimeter, or whatever) that was kind of like a doomsday clock. He showed me, between little tickles, and sniffs of my hair. And as the clock struck 13, the door was opened, and air blasted in.

I was dragged (tied to big man) to the entrance, there was a man dangling holding on, and then the next thing I knew we were falling.

It was amazing.

We did a kind of flip or something at the start, and it was hard to get my bearings. I remember a teacher I had in year 4 telling me that she had been skydiving, and I was in awe. She said she went through a cloud and got wet. I always thought I'd like to go through a cloud and get wet - and today I did.

As we fell I was looking down at the things around. The big man kept putting his fingers in my mouth (or under my chin, or whatever, either way it felt as emasculating). He said before that if you look down you'll struggle to breathe, but I was fine, apart from the hand covering my mouth.

Then suddenly there was a pull, and my back cracked like I was back in Thailand with some woman snaked around me thrusting. The parachute was up, and it seemed like I wasn't going to die.

I was looking for different people around me... then out of nowhere, mom pops over. For a moment I was pretty sure we were going to crash parachutes. It's strange having a little chat, thousands of feet in the air.

At one point, big man made me take control of the parachute. I didn't really trust myself not to let go of it. I know it's all attached and stuff, but I'm pretty sure if I let go it would have caused problems, and I didn't want that...

Then we landed... and I could see Amelie still kind of crying, and my dad pointing me out to her, and her smiling. It was a nice welcoming.

I had survived it, and it was awesome. And I got to cross off number 14, Skydive.

Recipe: Chilli-Cheese and Mustard Seed Scotch Eggs

At the weekend I made scotch eggs again. The first time went okay, but I didn't have a deep fat fryer so they tasted a little bit of the fat (a product of not frying at high enough temperature, due to using a pan).

It was more fun than last time, as Amelie helped me. I was a bit reluctant with what tasks I gave her, but then she did everything from peeling the boiled eggs, to wrapping the sausage around the eggs.

Here is the recipe for the chilli-cheese and mustard seed scotch eggs. I freestyled a bit, but I think I remember it.

- 12 eggs for boiling
- 4-ish eggs for coating
- A loaf of bread
- Half block of chilli cheese
- 16 sausages
- 200g of chilli cheese
- 2-3 tablespoons of wholegrain mustard
- Some flour
- Some salt.

1) Boil the 12 eggs for a while... until they're somewhere between runny and boiled. About 7 minutes or something. Then peel. Note... peeling directly in water is so much easier than out of water. You don't have to worry about the vinegar tricks and stuff.

2) Squeeze the sausage meat out of the sausages and into a bowl

3) Grate the chilli cheese, and put a few spoons of wholegrain mustard and mix. Maybe bit a bit of salt in.

4) Make breadcrumbs with a load of the bread. Just use a cheese grater, avoid any huge chunks but they'll likely fall off.

5) Split the sausage meat into 12 equal balls. Put a bit of flour on your hand. Take a ball and flatten it into a round disk. Take an egg and roll it in flour. Put the egg on top and push the meat around it equally. Roll it in your hand and stuff, until it's equally thinned out.

6) Crack 4 eggs into a bowl and mix.

7) Take an egg/sausage ball, hold it over the eggs and pour over a few teaspoons and rub it around so there's egg all over.

8) Roll the egg in the breadcrumbs. Quite a few should stick.

9) Holding over the runny egg again, put another couple of teaspoons over and spread.

10) Roll in the breadcrumbs a second time, then set aside to repeat for all eggs.

11) Deep fry at about 165 degrees for 4.5 mins (they'll look golden when they're done).