Is Exercise A Pointless Exercise?

I spend a lot of my time looking at claims made for various cosmetic products.  People selling products are easily convinced of the benefits of those products, and are eager to share those benefits with potential purchasers.  But it’s very often the case that the claims they make are based on the flimsiest of evidence.  That is how the world works.  The more you spend time looking at cosmetic claims, the more cynical you get about all claims across the board.  So when someone tells me that exercise is good for you my first reaction is to be suspicious, even though this claim is often made, seems reasonable and doesn’t seem to be especially controversial.  And it is one that I think most people assume is backed up by solid science. Continue reading →

If you can win a medal, can you create a great cosmetic?

My apologies to all non-British readers, but like many of my fellow countrymen the big news at the moment is that the UK came second in the tally of medals scored at the Rio Olympics. And given that nobody expects Britain to outshine America in this particular contest, this is in effect winning the Olympics. (Particular apologies to American readers there – but when you win something every year it is inevitable that people start taking it for granted.) Continue reading →

When I started my consulting business three years ago, even though I had been planning it for some time, it was still quite scary. For the first time in my life I had no monthly cheque to look forward to at the end of the month. Would I get enough work in to cover my expenses? Luckily I managed to pull in a big job quite quickly. It was a project on the borderline between pharmaceuticals and cosmetics, which was just the kind of thing that I could offer and which not too many other people could.  Without this bit of luck I might have had to get a job instead.  And with all due humility – it was quite handy for the client that they found me.  They are a start up too and getting some help early on must have been beneficial. Continue reading →

I only popped out for some milk

It started when I noticed that I hadn’t backed up my blog for over a month. I don’t think you should trust to automatic backups on blogs. You should back them up whenever you post something that you really don’t want to lose. I used to back up every few days. I have had some bad experiences with unbacked up stuff, and heard even worse ones from other people. So why had I stopped. I applied the 5 whys technique and discovered that I just wasn’t happy with the way my blog looked.

So I set aside a morning to work on getting my blog back into shape. I wanted to give it a cleaner look. I wanted to make it a better user experience. I had decided that I was only interested in people who actually read it, so I wanted to put all the ‘call to action’ stuff at the bottom of the page so that anyone reading would have a clear run. And I wanted to get rid of the boring typeface. I am also really bored with the images from an old clipart CD I have been using since around 1998. I don’t know if many people today have even seen a CD of clipart.

The other thing I wanted to do was to sort out my social media so I can post straight to them without having to do a lot of clicking.

So all reasonable stuff and I set aside a morning to dive in and get it all sorted. Well the morning flew by. So I allocated an afternoon as well. Then I carried on into the evening. And in fact, I was still at it at about half past eleven. Continue reading →

The basic problem with my blog from my point of view is that over the years I have made quite a few small mistakes. I have blogged about things that aren’t interesting either to me or to my audience. I have left up spelling errors and grammatical faux pas. I have written stuff that doesn’t fully reflect what I think, either because my thinking has changed or because I didn’t express myself clearly enough. Continue reading →