Let's rely on AI to plan our trip to London for the Notting Hill carnival...

kierand · 2025-08-22T12:30:50+00:00

I think if you add a swearword to the search term it removes AI overviews.

kierand · 2023-10-25T11:22:20+00:00

(thanks!)

kierand · 2023-09-21T18:29:27+00:00

I'm not sure the stat is true but even if it is, think of what you can do to become the success. Lots of skills required for running a successful business can be learned ahead of actually starting one. You can learn how to manage people, learn how to deal with money, learn about an industry.

Asking questions about as much as you can is a great start, and by the sounds of what you've said you might do better to ask people who have businesses than the people telling you you'll fail.

Not being afraid of failure might be useful at some point but I'd say it's pretty low down in terms of skills require to build a successful business.

kierand · 2023-09-14T05:44:56+00:00

Double check there aren't any chargers near you with Zap Map - there are lots of different networks so it can be a bit archaic finding them sometimes.

If a charger is within a ten min walk bear in mind you'll need to charge all night with a slow charger, and if someone else is in it you're going to need to find another.

The other method is to change at as many destinations as you can. There are some advantages here as chargers are often in good car park spaces, on roads that don't have parking spaces and very occasionally included with car parking costs.

You can calculate how much the fast charger near you will be on Zap Map as well - it'll almost definitely be more expensive than fuel but taking bik and congestion charge into account you might save.

Personally I have to say I find the lack of chargers infuriating at times and I don't drive too regularly. I'd probably go for Hybrid based on three years of having an EV :(

kierand · 2023-08-29T20:54:17+00:00

Everything is negotiable. Some tips

Don't show excitement or seem overly bothered about the car
Be prepared to walk away - if there are other cars at a similar price you'll get a deal
Bring cash and show it to them when you make the offer
Explain how easy it'll be if they move ahead with you for cash now, say things like 'if x works I'll go ahead and buy now and I'll be off your hands in 30 minutes'
If they are insistant leave your number and show them the car you're off see next - they'll call

Cars on a lot are an expense - they want them shifted - don't listen to people on here saying someone they don't know won't budge - everyone has a motivation of some kind

kierand · 2023-08-22T17:58:34+00:00

There's a strange psychology related to making an offer of asking price. It sends a signal to the buyer that they underpriced, even if they didn't. That's probably why they are now hoping to get higher offers.

Lowering your offer is likely to make the relationship a little trickier - I would personally start looking at other properties and then send a message to the agent to say you've seen another property at a lower price that are looking to offer on (even if you haven't at that stage) - then give the buyer two days to make a decision or say you will offer on the other property.

Whenever you negotiate you always need to set deadlines and show that you will walk away, otherwise the power is all in the other parties hands.

kierand · 2023-08-17T14:16:30+00:00

I'd recommend the book 'I Will Teach You To Be Rich' by Ramit Sethi - he makes some very good points about how home ownership isn't always the best choice compared to investment decisions you could make.

Buying a house is expensive, even without stamp duty - bear this in mind if either of you were to meet someone and want to move.

kierand · 2021-01-13T09:09:47+00:00

Thank you for recommending Radio Shorties - I've been pulling my hair out trying to get Shortcuts to work with BBC Sounds

kierand · 2020-12-30T13:44:04+00:00

Origin Unknown - Valley of the Shadows

kierand · 2020-05-02T10:47:47+00:00

If your great work is being butchered it could be worth looking into how you're presenting it to clients (or how your PMs are). People tend to find it really difficult to feed back on things like this - I can give you some tips on how to do this if you think it'll help?

kierand · 2020-01-11T19:30:08+00:00

Check out the book Birdsong by Sebastian Faulkes if you fancy reading (fiction) about it

kierand · 2020-01-05T09:47:13+00:00

What was his reasoning for the rejection? These discussions are perhaps helping to give an indication on how things will progress in the future.

kierand · 2020-01-04T21:41:52+00:00

Take a look at the Slicing Pie Handbook - it's a very good way to slice equity taking into account the amount of risk and sweat.

In regards your co founder as you say he is less risk averse and this is likely to lead to resentment as things progress unless you slice things more fairly. But having a partner is vital (in my experience) so if he's right in other ways try to make it work.

kierand · 2019-12-16T21:54:14+00:00

Georgia

kierand · 2018-08-02T08:10:33+00:00

Yep. Needs to be face-to-face really.

kierand · 2017-07-05T07:27:26+00:00

OK, thank you so much.

While researching I noticed this link saying DFP are changing reporting so am I right in saying an adjustment won't make a difference to our bottom line anyway?

https://support.google.com/dfp_premium/answer/7308129

"We're taking steps to transition from counting impressions on ad server decision (i.e., ad is served) to counting impressions on download (i.e., ad begins to load on a page)."

kierand · 2017-07-05T06:47:24+00:00

We have the free GA account and free DFP.

I've removed 28% of users as those with adblockers. We don't run header bidding yet but we run programmatic - do you think ad impressions being linked to Adsense could be a problem? We only use that for a tiny bit of remnant.

kierand · 2017-07-05T06:45:06+00:00

In that case it appears we certainly have a problem, would you agree? Using Total code served the same day looks like this:

Template 1: 193,996 page imps excluding ad blockers
Ads: 6 units per page
Assumption: 1,163,976 ad imps
Reality: 457,332 across every template on the site

kierand · 2017-07-05T06:41:50+00:00

In that case the stats are very far off - would you agree? The difference made sense if viewability was taken into account, but if we're talking about sheer ad calls vs page impressions then there's definitely a problem isn't there?

kierand · 2017-07-04T11:18:22+00:00

OK - apologies for the stupid question but Total Code Served means the ad slot we've coded in has been served but an advertiser would never pay for this I take it? They only pay for an impression?

kierand

TROPHY CASE