The weather has been good in Helsinki for a few days. Sun is shining and it’s not too cold. Spring is coming, and I’m excited.
(via kristapalmu)
Hey! I'm Karri Lahti and this is my daily log for thoughts and findings. I am a guitarist and songwriter living in Helsinki, Finland.
Rambling about ordering stuff online
I’m a complete jackass.
Since REWORK, a book by the 37signals came out this week, I wanted to get my hands on it. I think business books suck in general and/or are boring, so people writing a business in an alternative and different way seems interesting.
I can’t get the book from Finland. At least for now. So I’ll have to order it online. I could buy from US Amazon, but then there’s VAT + customs expenses, blah blah blah. But, if I’ll order it from Amazon Germany, I’ll see the expenses right away. So I decided to do that.
One problem. I don’t speak German. Nor can I read it. So ordering from Amazon.de was a struggle. So I translated single words, one at time, to stay at least somewhat on track what was going on with the ordering process.
I was at the point struggling with my book order that I thought I’d send a message to fellow German Tumblrs; Vivia, Mareen or Stefan. Actually, that would have been hilarous: “Hi. My name is Karri.” “I know from Tumblr. Yeah, that good.” “Now, I need your help. Please help me order a book from German Amazon. Kthxbai.”
So I got through the process, and my order was sent. I got the book actually a bit cheaper from a another seller, selling books at Amazon.de. Then I looked the username: “bookdepository_uk”. The book would be sent from UK seller, faster than from Germany. “Ok, good”, I thought. But I decided to Google the place still, just for checking.
WTF!? Turns out that they have their own site where you can order THE SAME BOOK, and they’ll usually send it in 48 hours. Oh, and one other thing: the website is, surprise, surprise: all in english.
Lesson learned. I could have ordered the book straight from England, use a service that I can understand and get the actual book faster to my mailbox.
Sometimes you’ll just need to do things the hard way. And then you learn something. Or at least you should.
There's no room for The Idea Guy
You know the type. It’s the “this thing is going to be Facebook meets Flickr, but for dogs!
If we can just get 1% of the online dog market, we’ll be rich!” spiel. All idea, usually no money, and hardly any functional skills that’ll help build or launch the damn thing.
The truth is that most everyone has plenty of ideas that could work out to be great businesses. The kicker is most often the right execution, that they’d be responsible for anyway, at the right time, which is almost impossible to predict. The value of The Perfect Idea is very small indeed.
That doesn’t mean it’s useless to have big ideas and plenty of enthusiasm. If you’re that guy, you’ve got a great start. Now pick up a functional skill and help build it your damn self.
(via signalvsnoise)
Lyric + Picture = Lyricture
My take, similar to Lukes Beard’s A Lyric a day, a tumblog taking one lyric from a song every day and creating art or taking a photo inspired from that lyric.
