After a decade and over 2100 projects I am pleased to announce that I have seen the light and gosh darn it’s going to burn bright. Here is a tale at the root of the story that is about to unfold.

Here is a home made video remake of a classic David vs Goliath.

Taking pictures has been something I have done since a I got my first Brownie in the early 70’s. My next big jump in gear was in high school when I bought my sister’s Minolta X-700, which I still have and can imagine one day showing my daughters what shooting on film is like. Since putting the Minolta to rest I have bounced from one low end digital camera to another, mostly Kodaks. They have been great and served me well capturing family moments and come in handy for quick and cheerful photographs for social media/websites.

Last week I took the plunge and put my toe back in the world of real cameras and bought a Nikon D90. It must have been fate for me to get back into the picture talking limelight because on Tuesday March 23rd while I was in Byron Bay for a meeting the skies opened up and the rain she came down. Around noon as I walked back to my truck in knee deep water I remembered I had brought the new camera along and was able to capture  a few shots which I sent into the Northern Star. To my surprise not 5 minutes after sending them in I got the word they wanted to used them and give me a credit. It might be the start of a whole new career–you gotta love getting new gear.

Article and photo from page 2 Northern Star

Below are a series of snaps I took that show the journey of the bright red Aqua Bike.

Collecting A/R is not just the job of grumpy old bookkeepers and assistants. Bad debt is a burden that impacts us all. Recently I got to do some work for the Commonwealth Bank through a digital agency I do some business with. The job was to turn a death by powerpoint presentation for an important conference into something that would grab peoples attention. During the course of understanding exactly what the CRO was after (in case you don’t know that stands for Chief Risk Officer) the designer I have been working with for the last decade, Nighean O’Brien, and I got to learn lots about how banks and credit risk work.

As simple as it sounds the best way to manage bad debt is not to put yourself at risk. Risk and money generally go hand in hand but if you do your due diligence you can figure out who is and who is not likely to pay you. The key is to work with those who pay and to make those who are not likely to pay go away. If by chance you find yourself with a customer that will not pay you it’s not as easy for a small business to collect as it is for a big bank. It’s not like you can yank a house from under someone like the banks can.

What you can do in today’s world of online reputation is let the world know if someone owes you money and won’t pay it. Social media would seem to have the potential to bring cheap skates out of the wood work and make them pay what they owe. Look at what twitter has done to get the attention of big multinationals who would otherwise never notice or pay attention to the injustices that they do on a regular basis. I have spent most of my day working on collecting a couple of thousand dollars that one of my businesses is owed. Using every social media tool in my quiver and launched an awareness campaign to get the attention of a client who had not payed.

Update. The customer in question whose name has been removed from this blog has made contact with us and we are now working with them to resolve the debt.

What exactly is a house cow? The obvious answer is a cow that lives in a house; however, that is not the exact definition of a house cow. Close but not quite. A house cow is generally a milking cow that provides milk for the house. 100 years ago most farms, big and small, would have a cow that they milked a twice a day for the milk and its high bred counter part–cream.

Today the house cow is experiencing a resurgence as people look for ways to be more self sufficient and to be more in touch with what they eat. If you have ever milked a cow you know it certainly does put you in touch with something quite special when you fill up a bucket of beautiful white milk, especially if you manage to get its contents into the kitchen without the bucket getting kicked over.

Finding a good house cow is not easy. You can’t drive into the pet shop and pull away. In order for a cow to be able to provide you with a good supply of milk it needs to have either a calf at its side or it has been very recently weaned. For more information on how to find the right house cow for you visit fourgirldexterstud.com and contact Alison and Greg (that would be me). If you want a more in depth read on the house cow experience here is a great article from Taranaki Farm’s Blog.

Dexters like Condamine make great house cows