I've been making my room more minimalist. 

The catalyst for this being a love for simplicity and the beauty within it. Coming back from holiday I want any future moving to be as easy as possible. Clutter causes stress and distractions on the brain on a conscious or subconscious level. I work better with less clutter, ergo I will be a better entrepreneur. 

On mentioning my crusade @AlexLeeDee told me about Cult of Less. Kelly setup the site on a quest to have less clutter in his life. He has listed all his possessions, and wether he is keeping or selling (or giving away). It's brilliant, we share the top 2 items from his list. Here is my snapshot list:

MacBook Pro 15" - keep

32" Samsung 1080p HD screen - keep

Toshiba 1TB external hard drive - keep (review to come)

The following lists extra steps taken by me, which may be verging on OCD. I've taken photos of every page in my notes / design / inspiration pads from over the years, transfered photos to computer, then recycled the pads. It gave me a chance to have a brief look over, and they are now much more accessible. All my essays from university are now on Google Docs -  thanks to having to submit all on a CD. I have ripped all from CD, uploaded to google Docs, and recycled the paper and discs.

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. - Marianne Williamson

Ok so going a bit deep with this post, but I think it's worth sharing.

Some realisation of this started with going to a rowing camp. Out at 5:30 am rowing 20k (2hrs) before breakfast, 3 training sessions a day, with full exertion race speed exercises throughout. Skin was literally falling off my hands from blisters by the end. I didn't think I could do it..I thought even if I wanted to.. my body would just give up or fail; but it didn't. You can do more than you think. It was the toughest week of my life, but immediately after that everything else in comparison seemed easier. I got back, walked into pizza hut and had a buffet on my own.

Taking this onto a coding / business sense, I've been coming across problems and 'I'll get someone else to do that' or 'I'll put that out for a freelancer' but often, as I have found, you can do it. There will be times when you need help, but with Google at our fingertips you can often find / learn a solution, or just trying it first will allow you to specify your problem more or have more details to tell someone else who can complete it. We create barriers, everyone creates barriers to say why we can't do something.. I try to realise when I do this now, and treat it as a challenge to overcome. Write down a list of things to do to smash through the barriers and do it.

I'll leave you with the full quote from Marianne: 

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others. (Marianne Williamson, 1992)

Ok i'm flying (driving) around europe from friday morning for 2 weeks. Taking laptop, hopefully supress desire to work on project - pintbet, relax and enjoy. Enjoy your time people.

Itinerary:

La Rochelle, Barcelona, Nice, Milan, Lake Garda, Frankfurt, Amsterdam

Things to come back with:

Me (in one piece). Some remaining money. A new outlook on life?

David Heinemeier Hansson does it again, more inspiration for doing your own startup. He's REAL.

Here are the links. I'm working on a website - and here are links that have helped me. I'll leave the raw urls so you can see what sites their linking to for now I will be updating, enjoy.

Entrepreneurship

The Art of Bootstrapping - He may not have done great with his Trumours venture but there are words of wisdom here.

The Lean Startup - I read good articles about internet startups for inspiration and to get me in the mood as much as I read them for there tips and lessons to take away.

Bootstrap to Retain Control - Ignoring the cheesy photo, the 8 points are actually good to take away from this page.

User Experience

Eyetrack 2004 - Findings from software tracking users eyes looking at websites.

Sign Up Form Design Patterns

Sign Up Form Design Patterns Part 2 - Ok these two mostly a survey of signup forms, what they contain, how they are displayed. To me the value here is showing me what can be done, and pointing out all the elements to consider in a signup form

CodeIgniter

CodeIgniter User Guide - It really is useful

Simple jQuery with CodeIgniter Part 1 - Great simple video tutorials from a fellow Brit 

Simple jQuery with CodeIgniter Part 2 Simple jQuery with CodeIgniter Part 3 Simple jQuery with CodeIgniter Part 4 CodeIgniter Login Tutorial - CodeIgniter from scratch, hour long, login / signup video tutorial working with session.

CodeIgniter, jQuery and JSON

Outsourcing

elance.com - A great site to use but can be expensive, also watch out for the freelancers requesting 4x what the job would cost.

rentacoder.com - Horrible, horrible site but I can find value here.

It's a year and half old now, but it's a great speaker taking us back to the basics on creating a profitable internet startup. I think I'm going to watch this every morning.

The speaker is David Heinemeier Hansson; grew up in Denmark, moved to USA in 2005; creator of the web framework Ruby on Rails, partner at 37signals - you can follow him at @dhh.

Big up everyone undertaking measurable New Year’s resolutions. Here's mine:

Completing degree - Dissertation, Major Project (wikidtutorials.com).

Entrepreneurship. Doing this properly now, just putting stuff out there, not waiting for it to be perfect / full of features, just something out there that I can work on and grow is the route now. I’ll be continually developing and working on it. I have ideas floating around all time, but I’m going to concentrate on one (for now).

@jon once posted the saying: "Entrepreneurship is living a few years of your life like most people won't, so that you can spend the rest of your life like most people can't." I think of that phrase a lot.

So from now on; more doing. I don’t wont this blog just to be about talking, researching, ideas, rhetoric. I've just escrowed money for the first bit of coding on a new site now. Godspeed people.

I love logos.

Here are some lovely sites to appreciate them.

Brand New Hosts ‘opinions on corporate and identity work’. Regularly updated posts containing before and after pictures of a brands logo, some background info on the company / brand and some great comments from the readership.

Identity Works Acting as a nice directory of big brand changes, keeping track of many iterations. Contains indepth background info and analysis of the branding.

Logo Design Love Again features logo changes, good in-depth analysis, occasional design tips and offers books of logos to buy (which actually look tasty)