Author Archives: Simon
On making and using a solar wax extractor
In 2004 I built a solar wax extractor. The design was based on what I could find on the internet at the time, for example the ‘encyclopaedia Cushmanica‘ and good advice from beekeeping friends, both in Dublin and on the … Continue reading
Tom Fishburne – the cartoonist for marketers
Mr. Tom Fishburne is a cartoonist with an eye for the unspoken truths and the absurdities in business, especially in marketing. If you find yourself rolling your eyes in marketing meetings, shaking your head at money being wasted on marketing … Continue reading
The Digital Marketing Institute
The Digital Marketing Institute is a new type of marketing training company – born out of a frustration felt by marketing agencies in Ireland because they could not recruit staff in Dublin with good knowledge of digital marketing. Therefore, they … Continue reading
Changing times
A hundred years ago the military got better equipment than businesses did, now that has changed. Twenty years ago, businesses had more powerful kit (computers, cars…) than consumers did – not any more. Five years ago adults had more powerful … Continue reading
Management style as a weapon of war
Back in World War 2, the US government created an intelligence and dirty tricks agency called OSS, or the Office of Strategic Studies. One of its wartime actions was to produce a Field Sabotage Manual. This document has recently been … Continue reading
Make an emergency hive roof from an election poster
Beekeepers – ever had that situation where one swarm or one split too many leaves you short a hive roof? Well, I’ve just made a couple of serviceable emergency roofs from Irish election posters. Here’s how. What you need: A … Continue reading
The honey harvest – a guest post by my Godson Tom
We started at 7.45 on a soon to be very tiring Friday. Our first job for the day was to get the honey jars and lids out of the roof, this was to be the scariest part of the day. … Continue reading
What they say… and what they mean
I travel a lot with my work. It goes with the territory. And I visit a lot of hotels. I don’t know whether it’s memetics or the result of hotel industry conferences, but lots of hotels seem to have similar … Continue reading
The power and the simplicity of internet movies
I was recently privileged to listen to Krishna De speak on (inter alia) the use of short movies to convey information on blogs and company websites. She demonstrated how easy it was to produce an interesting internet video content that … Continue reading
A spoonful of honey…
The life of how many honeybees is taken up with making a teaspon of honey? Perhaps five. Continue reading