Random Tidbits

It's far too late for me. Save yourself fellow geeks.

God's creativity in action. Beautiful stuff, click the link above for all 50+ images.

1. Myth: Entrepreneurs are risk-taking visionaries. Actually, as it turns out, we’re driven to something better, but we like to plan carefully, and take precautions.

2. Myth: The idea is more important than the details. My sentiments exactly. I’ve posted about this one a lot on this blog. For example, the idea and 2 dollars gets you a cup of coffee.  And so on.

3. Myth: Jealously guard your idea, lest someone might steal it. I’m not so sure. Forbes says:

Truth: You may be onto something, but you surely don’t have all the answers (if you even knew to ask all the right questions). “While you don’t want to put your entire business plan on the Internet, entrepreneurs who do their homework look to a relatively large but select number of people to talk through their ideas,” says Reid Hoffman, founder and chief executive of LinkedIn.com.

I say it’s not that simple. You can’t get paranoid about an idea; if you need investors, you have to talk about it. Real investors don’t steal ideas, they want teams to build companies, not ideas. On the other hand, most ideas are bouncing around for a while, and you’re in  competition with other people who have the same idea. Don’t make it simple. Share carefully, and only with people who can give you something back in return (like help, feedback, etc.)

4. Myth: Your business plan must be rock solid from the get-go. No, not really. That’s why I keep saying your business plan is wrong, but vital, because you build it as you go.

5. Myth: Passion will get you there. Of course the truth is that passion isn’t enough, you need to offer value, and implement, and so on. I like the way they say it:

Passion can ease the pain of 15-hour days. It can galvanize employees and win over customers. In some cases, it can even enthrall deep-pocketed investors. But it is no silver bullet.

6. Myth: You can set your own schedule. Yeah, right, I say; unless you have clients, or customers. Forbes quotes Mike Zaya, chief executive of Printrunner:

“You have to be the first man in and last man out on any given day.”

7. Myth: There’s glory in it. Well, sometimes … on the good days, maybe. Forbes says, though,”For all its rewards, entrepreneurship can also feel like a thankless job.”

Good read, even if it did come from Entrepreneur.com.

Undock and Launch: At 50,000 ft, SpaceShipTwo will be released from the mother ship and the space ship's rocket will ignite, treating the six fee-paying tourists to an exhilarating rollercoaster ride straight up to the Earth's thermosphere. The single rocket engine is designed to accelerate the craft to a top speed of 2,600 mph.

Image: Artist's impression of SpaceShipTwo dropping from the mother ship just before igniting its rocket (Virgin Galactic/Scaled Composites).

Awesome Apogee: After climbing beyond an altitude of 62.1 miles, SpaceShipTwo will have crossed the Kármán line, the official boundary between the upper atmosphere and space. Above this point, the passengers aboard SpaceShipTwo will become space tourists.

SpaceShipTwo will continue to power to a maximum altitude of 65 miles -- also known as "apogee" -- where the space tourists will experience several minutes of weightlessness.

Image: SpaceShipTwo at apogee. At this altitude, the wings are folded into a feathered position in preparation for re-entry. This method allows for stability as SpaceShipTwo descends through the atmosphere. Although the concept of feathering was conceived in the 1950's, it was Scaled Composites founder Burt Rutan who (in 2004) demonstrated its feasibility in the Ansari X PRIZE winning SpaceShipOne suborbital spacecraft (Virgin Galactic/Scaled Composites).

The Descent: Having reached maximum altitude and enjoyed floating around the cabin, the space tourists will buckle themselves back up in preparation for the return to Earth.

Still in the "feathering" position, SpaceShipTwo's wings will provide optimized air resistance, making the spacecraft fall through the atmosphere like a shuttlecock. As SpaceShipTwo falls to an altitude of approximately 13 miles, the wings will fold back out into "glider mode" so the pilot can glide to the landing strip.

Image: The rear of SpaceShipTwo with wings in the feathered position (Virgin Galactic/Scaled Composites).

Up and Down: Over the course of 2.5 hours, SpaceShipTwo's space tourists will have been treated to a round-trip into space and back.

Image credit: Virgin Galactic/Scaled Composites

A Comparison: Although SpaceShipTwo will be unveiled on Dec. 7, its predecessor had already explored suborbital space to claim the $10 million Ansari X PRIZE on Oct. 4, 2004. Scaled Composites' SpaceShipOne caught the eye of Virgin's Richard Branson and now the planned fleet of five SpaceShipTwo's will be manufactured by Burt Rutan's company for Virgin Galactic.

Image: SpaceShipTwo measures 60 ft long, over double the length of SpaceShipOne's 28 ft length (Virgin Galactic/Scaled Composites).

Rocket Testing: In May, the first phase of SpaceShipTwo rocket engine testing was completed in the Southern Californian desert by Scaled Composites and Sierra Nevada Corporation. According to Virgin Galactic, as the spaceship will be launched high in the atmosphere, far less fuel is required to blast tourists into space when compared with more conventional systems.

"This means much less fuel is required, and the fuel burn is more environmentally benign than the solid rockets used in most ground based systems," the company said in a press release.

Image credit: Virgin Galactic.

Under Construction: The most recent images of SpaceShipTwo included this photograph of the fuselage plus nose cone before it was spray-painted and wings were attached in the Scaled Composites warehouse.

Image credit: Scaled Composites.

A Spaceship With A View: During construction, the spacious interior of SpaceShipTwo was already apparent. Several porthole-like windows measuring up to 17 inches in diameter will provide a broad view of the suborbital journey. The cabin measures an ample 7.5 ft diameter by 12 ft length, more than enough room for the occupants to float around and enjoy the view when the craft reaches maximum altitude.

"Good news is that I truly out did myself this year with my Christmas  decorations. The bad news is that I had to take him down after 2 days. I had more people come screaming up to my house than ever.Great stories. But two things made me take it down.

First, the cops advised me that it would cause traffic accidents as they almost wrecked when they drove by.

Second, a 55 year old lady grabbed the 75 pound ladder almost killed herself putting it against my house and didn't realize it was fake until she climbed to the top (she was not happy). By the way, she was one of many people who attempted to do that. My yard couldn't take it either. I have more than a few tire tracks where people literally drove up my yard."

More Women Than Men in Social Media

I found these very interesting statistics on Huffington Post yesterday. The post was titled Women Dominate Most Social Networking Sites. This is according to a survey sponsored by Pingdom, a network uptime monitoring business. The chart here gives us the interesting, detailed breakdown, by site name.

I’m not sure what, if any, conclusion to draw, but I found this interesting because personal computing and web use started out more male than female. And although I’ve been expecting it to even out, this came as a bit of a surprise to me.

Not to get gender specific or anything, but this comment–

Um . . . perha­ps that’s because women dominate MOST social discourse.

–amused me, in a comedic sort of way.

And the statistics seemed interesting, in an entrepreneurial business plan sort of way. Good to know, even if not all that surprising.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009 at 6:54 am and is filed under startup advice. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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Interesting!

 

Below are promotional images for Anagram Bookshop in Prague, by Kaspen.

The following sculptures were created by Tom Bendtsen.  Check out his site for his complete collection.

 

Pretty cool stuff, wish I had that kind of time.

Have you ever noticed how when you leave a comment on a blog, it displays a boring, generic gray head next to your comment instead of the gorgeous, colorful picture of Webby McGee next to the comment he posted before yours? Well, it’s because Webby has a Gravatar, and you don’t. Be jealous. But don’t just let that jealousy burn within you; use it to fuel your retribution.

You need to get a Gravatar of your own.

Gravatars (or Globally Recognized Avatars) are exactly what their extremely vague name implies. They are avatars or profile pictures that work across multiple blogs; and they make them more beautiful. To put it simply, you create a Gravatar account, tie it your email address, and upload an image of yourself. From that point on, anytime you leave a comment on a Gravatar-enabled blog using that email address, your comment will have your beautiful image instead of the boring generic one. It’ll even roll back out to any comment you’ve posted in the past.

So in favor of everyone having a Gravatar