Perhaps I went a little crazy...
Monday, October 25, 2004
In a move that surprised even myself, I returned home today with a receipt for a 1971 Triumph Spitfire in tow. As impulse purchases go, I guess this is the worst I've made to date... particularly as it has the potential to eat up obscene amounts of my time and money!
For the time being, its a bit of a restoration project, but at least I can run it in the mean time. The interior and engine bay seem to have been rather bodged together, but the bodywork and chassis generally seems sound, which is what I was after - whilst I haven't really got the facilities or expertise to take on much in the way of bodywork, I can certainly give the rest of it a go.
Going with a classic insurance specialist will certainly save me a bit of money, but I can't really justify running the eurobox at the same time, so I'll have to sell that on and hope this will be nice and reliable - only time will tell.
Posted at 17:00 | Comments (0)
Another foolproof business plan?
Monday, October 11, 2004
Ok, I'll be honest, it's far from foolproof... but its something I'd absolutely love to do. I just lack the funding to do it. You may be thinking small business loan or something similar, but I'd need a bit more than that. Let me explain...
I find slow motion video of things quite interesting, bullets shooting through apples, explosions, that sort of thing, yet you don't see much of this about. For £90,000 you can pick up a Weinberger Cine SpeedCAM. Admittedly, that means as little to me as it probably does to you, but there's not much that would happen too quickly to be picked up on a camera that can manage 4000 frames per second. It doesn't include lenses, and there'd be other equipment on the shopping list, video capture cards and the like. I'd probably be looking at about £150,000 all in.
Now that's not a business plan on its own, that's just a lot of money spent. However, I can think of a lot of uses for the videos once they're recorded. Look where you are, this ones a bit of a given, a website providing compressed versions of the videos for people to watch online. Although free to view, the site can then provide various merchandise with the stills from the videos. I'm sure some people would pay good money for framed prints of certain things. A bullet travelling through fruit of some description instantly springs to mind, but there's a very large scope for what can be done. The site could even take requests from visitors for new subject matter.
To bring in the big bucks though, I would keep an archive of everything filmed. Television companies can pay me for a video for use in something they're doing. Alternatively they would be able to commission filming of a particular project, or rent the camera for use by their own cameramen in a project. The site would be assigned equal rights of the filmed material so it can be used in the archive to make more money and for being listed on the website.
Perhaps I'm overlooking something vital here, but it seems like a half decent idea, the only problem being finding £150,000. I suppose I could always sell my house and then live in the box the camera came in...
The another in the title refers to this idea in August.
Posted at 07:29 | Comments (0)
Various newsbits
Saturday, October 2, 2004
I'm not really one for impulse purchases, nor am I a particular fan of TFT displays, yet when ordering a new keyboard and power supply, for some reason I ordered myself a TFT. My existing monitor is quite an old CRT, so its hard to buy something worse than that, but I'd generally argue for CRTs over TFTs for the picture quality and colour reproduction that are important to me amongst a whole host of other issues. It's certainly a case of style over substance, but I'll have to wait and see how I get on with it for now.
I also shelled out for my car insurance, which leaves me rather out of pocket, particularly with the tax and a service coming up at the end of the month. I also updated the fishbot website, although that probably doesn't mean much to the majority of you.
Posted at 17:09 | Comments (0)
