I may, or may not, be in a position to write blog posts for an insurance organization in the near future so wanted to start builing a list of topics:

• How is the insurance rate generated?
• Risk management measure to take in XYZ industry (arena's, mining, forestry, etc)
• Risk management checklist for ABC (sports games, going on vacation, etc.)
• Why is the independent broker model important in Canada?
• Is price really important in insurance?
• Changes in the insurance industry
• Why was my claim denied?
• Feature Client: RST had a claim and here's how we handled it
• Featured Client: DEF reduced their premiums by $ with our help

Read more.

Let me start by saying I love DropBox they have an amazing, cost-effective solution and they've brought cloud backup to the masses like no other company has been able to. Unfortunately, I hit a huge snag this evening. I looked down and everything in my DropBox folder was gone!

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I've said a number of times in a number of different posts that my ultimate goal is to provide leadership to a large organization. Over the recent holiday season I've spent my time formalizing a career plan and outlining the steps necessary to be CEO of a large organization. Because of these aspirations I often find myself saying "when I'm a CEO I'll...". Much like my To Do list this will be an ever growing list of things I'll do to be a good leader.

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It came to my attention that one aspect to getting more done in a day is learning more effectively and making the most of my time studying for MBA courses. If I were to have to repeat a course its a waste of time, if I can spend 1 hour studying rather than 2 I can spend the second hour on other projects.

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The Two Cultures and A Second Look (C.P. Snow, 1959) is yet another one I stole off my fathers shelf. This book is so obscure I couldn't find a link on Google Books.

Proper citation:

Snow, C.P. (1959). The Two Cultures and A Second Look.

Read more.

Someone just told me I'm a life saver, I make headaches go away, I'm helpful, etc. It's great to hear that because it's one of my primary purposes in life; to be helpful and to have a positive impact on those around me.

Read more.

This is really just a couple personal complaints rolled into a blog post. In fact, it's probably unprofessional to post this here.

Read more.

Imagine, an insurance broker walks into a business and says:

• "I'd like an opportunity to quote on your business insurance."
  OR
• "Has your insurance broker gone over the special limits of insurance applicable to your business, the policy endorsements & exclusions, and offered risk management advice?"

Read more.

]]> 2011.12.28 By: Simon Le Pine

I stole this book by James Dale Davidson and Lord William Rees-Mogg from my fathers bookshelf years ago. I'm really glad I did because, as expected, it has just as much relevance today.

Proper citation:

Dale Davidson, James. (1994). The Plague of the Black Debt: How To Survive the Coming Depression

I'll provide my post-read review here to save you skipping to the end - This is a fascinating, thought provoking book that shows just how similar the market crash of '87 and economic crisis of early 90's is very similar to today's issues. I highly recommend the book but I do warn it ultimately is a sales vehicle for the authors monthly investment newsletter.

Read more.

]]> 2011.12.27 By: Simon Le Pine

A lot of people are saying big data is the next big thing. We've also heard that from Facebook, specifically on Wednesday Facebook said sharing is growing exponentially. So if you share 1 item a day on Facebook now next year you'll likely share 2 items a day.

Read more.

]]> 2011.12.27 By: Simon Le Pine

I had saved an article from Harvard Business Review ages ago. The title is "To Grow, Leave What You Know Behind", which initially turned me off but it's got some very thought-provoking stuff on the future of leadership.

Here's my thoughts:

Read more.

]]> 2011.12.24 By: Simon Le Pine

I subscribe to the Harvard Business Review blog, which recently posted an article titled How Will You Measure Your Life?. It caught my eye because 1.) I'm evaluating what I want & need in life, and 2.) I want to learn from my father and spend time on friends/family rather than sacrifice those for business. What follows are my notes and, hopefully, how I want my life to be measured.

Out of interest, before I've read the full article I'll state that "I want my life to be measured by the positive impact I have on others". It'll be interesting to see how/if that changes having read the article.

Read more.

]]> 2011.12.16 By: Simon Le Pine

I read this an article with a great idea that Business Owners Should Takes Snacks of Information. I think it's a great idea for any business or job to get a 'daily' update of business critical information. For my own reference, I want to record here the information I feel is critical to my operations:

Read more.

]]> 2011.12.16 By: Simon Le Pine

@Gravity7 linked to an hour long video on global economics, which immediately piqued my interest.Initially I was pretty sceptical because the video starts with "I saw the financial crisis coming" and "I told you so", hindsight is 20:20. I also can't stand people who use "..." in professional writing. I did my best to approach it with an open mind and utimately took 9 pages of notes, which can be seen below.

For anyone reading this, you likely know that I'm no expert when it comes to finance or economic policy. I'm an insurance & risk management nerd and thus am interested in this stuff but I don't proclaim to know anything of value. Take the notes below with a grain of salt.

Read more.

]]> 2011.12.12 By: Simon Le Pine

I figured I'd share what I'm working on; 1.) in case anyone has an feedback, 2.) in case anyone finds it useful, 3.) in case anyone is already working on this, and 4.) the content of this will form the landing page for the Graphr project.

Read more.

]]> 2011.12.04 By: Simon Le Pine

A friend of mine recently gave me Who Moved My Cheese? because she can see some of my frustration. I read the entire book in a single day and I can't thank her enough, she read my situation well and gave me a great tool.

Read more.

]]> 2011.12.01 By: Simon Le Pine

I count myself as an expert in marketing, or at least semi-knowledgeable in the matter. A friend of mine recently asked for some help in marketing his business/product. As such, for his benefit and my own I wanted to formalize the standard elements of any good marketing plan. Over time, it's my hope & plan to elaborate on each of these points at which time I'll link to the additional resources.

Read more.

]]> 2011.11.23 By: Simon Le Pine

Why is the close button always in the top right?



Read more.

]]> 2011.11.21 By: Simon Le Pine

I'm very honored to be presenting a lighting talk at CloudCamp Vancouver. I made a comment on Twitter, in passing, about securing the cloud being "more than just cyber security", which lead to an invite. What follows are my notes for the presentation. I'll add links to additional content over time as I elaborate on each point.

If you're here, you might find value in the series of post on Risk Management in Technology, which I add to on a regular basis.

Overview

Who am I:

• Simon Le Pine
• Insurance underwriter and risk manager
• Founder of a stealth startup.

I'm here to tell you 3 things:

• We need to take a more holistic, all-encompassing approach to risk management in technology.
• Cloud providers should be providing some basic risk management details.
• Insurance brokers and risk managers are a valuable ,untapped resource.

Read more.

]]> 2011.11.14 By: Simon Le Pine

This is yet another post in an ongoing series. I`m happy make it publicly known that I`m starting a technology company (amorphous_projects) and would like to be CTO, CIO, or CEO of a large organization. As such, I`m working hard to expand my formal, quantifiable knowledge of technology, information, and leadership. This post contains my notes on 10 Predictions About Cloud Computing.

Read more.

]]> 2011.11.03 By: Simon Le Pine

I just had an idea for a browser plugin to assist organizations in IT risk management. One of the biggest exposures is web passwords and the best risk management techniques are written password requirements and regular changes. It would be great to write a browser plugin that monitors web passwords, if a web password does not meet the organizations requirements (too short, doesn't contain numbers, doesn't contain special chars, etc.) the plugin would not allow the user to continue until the correct the issue. The plugin would also remind users to change web passwords every # days (30, 60, or 90 days).

Read more.

]]> 2011.11.03 By: Simon Le Pine

I was just doing a quick Google search, looking for a spam service with an API, which I can't find. This post serves two purposes, first to ask if anyone has seen anything like what I'm looking for, and two to suggest there's an opportunity.

I'm looking for a product... If only I could...
The beginnings of any good business.

Read more.

]]> 2011.10.26 By: Simon Le Pine

I've turned off all noise!

Read more.

]]> 2011.10.25 By: Simon Le Pine

I figured it'd be fun to start a public ToDo list and watch it slowly grow and get checked off.

UPDATE 24-Oct-2011

I'm suprised it only occured to me now, that to-do's should be organized by relevance/importance. I've decided to organize this list based on #1 - Product/Customers/Revenue, #2 - Marketing/Branding/Growth, #3 - Business, and #4 - Scaling/Expansion/Hiring. This is sort of the Maslows Hierarchy of Needs for business and I think something every small business struggles with. Put another way, you can have the greatest business plan or team but the organization is worthless if you can't ship a product. I concede, some businesses need a great team before they can ship but for the most part it goes product->customers->marketing->growth->expansion->hiring->etc. What follows is the updated to-do list.

Read more.

]]> 2011.10.24 By: Simon Le Pine

I'm writing this quick post for two reasons, first so I don't keep forgetting, and second in case anyone else is having the same problem. I always have trouble with file up-loaders no matter how many times I make this mistake. Everything can be right but there's one key piece of html in order to make it work.

I'm making an effort to make my blog posts readable, interesting, and accessible to the general public but this goes against all of that. Most people, these days, have used a file up-loader, when you upload photos to Facebook or Flickr you do that via the file upload, which looks like this:

Just like any programming, html has it's little "nuances" when handling complex tasks like file transfers. In this case I'll show you the html required to make a file upload form and highlight an often overlooked requirement.

Read more.

]]> 2011.10.23 By: Simon Le Pine

In risk management there is tangible and intangible property. Tangible property is easy, its things like building, auto, employee handbags, etc. Intangible property is a much more difficult concept to grasp and often harder to manager associated risks. Intangible property is reputation, brand, logo, employees, etc.

Likely the most valuable intangible property items are data and reputation. For a lot of intangible property I suggest the best risk management is to consider location, access, and influencing factors. Let's look at a couple examples to illustrate the point:

Read more.

]]> 2011.10.20 By: Simon Le Pine

I had a discussion with Mark the other day about communicating risk management to customers/clients/end-users. I respect Mark a great deal and he is very knowledgeable in IT but I know a great deal more about risk management. He said risk management measures should be kept somewhat secret as its a risk to exposure your measure. I agree with that but, on the flip side, users want to know their data is safe. Proof of that appeared on InfoSecurity this morning, the British public is losing patience with companies that risk data loss.

Read more.

]]> 2011.10.20 By: Simon Le Pine

Regular readers (there are none) will notice some minor changes to the menu layout on the left. When thinking about it realistically, I don't think anyone actually browses [this blog] by date. Certainly blogs written more as a daily journal or written for friends and family would be navigated by date but the majority of posts here are technical in nature and thus users are much more likely to browse by topic/tag.

Read more.

]]> 2011.10.18 By: Simon Le Pine

I was reading this InfoSecurity bulletin on the new SEC guidelines for disclosing cyber security events.

Read more.

]]> 2011.10.16 By: Simon Le Pine

Just a quick post, attempting to educate the public about insurance.

Read more.

]]> 2011.10.14 By: Simon Le Pine

I've run into my fair share of negative people. In my age & wisdom I'm learning to identify and deal with them with the least amount of impact on me.

Read more.

]]> 2011.08.09 By: Simon Le Pine

Just like my post on my to-do list, this is an ever evolving list of books I intend to read. Part of the reason for this is, I haven't yet decided if Amazon/Kindle is the best ereading platform and/or if I should buy a tablet. If anyone has any suggestions on the best ereading platform I'd love to hear it. My main concern is I want to "own" the books, in other words I expect to be able to read a book at any time in the future if I buy it now.

Read more.

]]> 2011.08.08 By: Simon Le Pine

@CFOWise posted a link the other day to a blog post about financial literacy for small business owners and entrepreneurs. I read it and was fascinated as my financial literacy is questionable at best, I understand income/expenses, cash flow, etc. but the effect of stock options, deferred earning, GAAP, etc. are a bit more challenging.

Read more.

]]> 2011.07.25 By: Simon Le Pine

Yet another business idea I don't have time for...

Read more.

]]> 2011.07.18 By: Simon Le Pine

The CAIB1 is the first course int he Canadian Accredited Insurance Broker designation. I've done the CAIB2 and CAIB3 but mistakenly skipped the CAIB1 early in my career. I'm now going back and completing it as the CAIB designation is a prerequisite for the MBA program I'm enrolling next year. I figured sharing my studying here might be helpful for other insurance professionals as well as a good resource for me and help the public understand what insurance brokers do. I've tagged all of my study resources with caib1.

Read more.

]]> 2011.07.17 By: Simon Le Pine

I apologize for the photo and video quality, it's all taken on a Blackberry. There was a crazy storm tonight so I set up my phone to record. Then I had to figure out the best way to display the video. First I found this command:

ffmpeg -y -r 1000 -i "/media/2BA9-3D2B/BlackBerry/videos/VID-20110716-00000.3GP" -sameq "/home/username/test/image.%04d.jpg"

That's really cool, it takes a video and splits it up into thousands of images. Because the video is taken at night, it was really easy to create large thumbnails of the images and then scan through them. So I literally scanned through about 20,000 frames in 15 minutes picking the bright ones because they were obviously lighting strikes.

Then I found that WinFF can crop video based on time. so I managed to crop the 4-6 minute videos down to the 3 below. One of them has the sound of the rain so I apologize if it auto-plays, I've tried everything and can't get that to stop (on Linux/Chrome)

Read more.

]]> 2011.07.17 By: Simon Le Pine

The CAIB1 is the first course int he Canadian Accredited Insurance Broker designation. I've done the CAIB2 and CAIB3 but mistakenly skipped the CAIB1 early in my career. I'm now going back and completing it as the CAIB designation is a prerequisite for the MBA program I'm enrolling next year. I figured sharing my studying here might be helpful for other insurance professionals as well as a good resource for me and help the public understand what insurance brokers do. I've tagged all of my study resources with caib1.

Read more.

]]> 2011.07.14 By: Simon Le Pine

I just watched this video, read the content, and took notes as part of my goal of life long learning.

As a side note, I love the quote in the background: inventional wisdom (play on conventional wisdom+ innovation/invention).

I also love the hosts opening remarks: good afternoon, I applaud everyone that's still here and I hope you've had enough caffeine or your drug of choice...". I bet MIT is a hotbed of all sorts of caffeine like substances.

Read more.

]]> 2011.07.07 By: Simon Le Pine

As many know, I've been forced by work to get a Blackberry (I've been very vocal about how much I disapprove). It's interesting to put it side-by-side with my Android thought. I noticed a huge difference today. When the screen is locked on any Android or iPhone it has a preview of messages. For example, if I have a text message my HTC Desire shows me who the sender is and the first line of the message. Compare that to the Blackberry, the notification light flashes and it shows an envelope with a little red "+" sign, but that's it. So, on my Blackberry, in order to judge the urgency of a message I have to unlock the screen and navigate to the "Messages" app. On my Android phone I simply hit the unlock button and without even unlocking it I can determine the urgency/sender/content of a message.

Read more.

]]> 2011.07.07 By: Simon Le Pine

I was listening to The Wall Street Journal this morning and they were talking about the new video chat feature in Facebook. They raised the concern that a lot of people on Facebook don't necessarily want to be seen. For example, women want to make sure their makeup is right, men don't want to be sitting there shirtless, etc. So, why wouldn't Skype/Facebook offer voice only? It only makes sense for lower speed bandwidth that a user might prefer audio only but still want a quick/easy web based service. It would be so easy to include it all in a single plugin, that way the user installs it once and is able to do voice-only or video chat.

Read more.

]]> 2011.07.07 By: Simon Le Pine

This morning I was listening to The Economist daily podcast

Read more.

]]> 2011.07.07 By: Simon Le Pine

I have decided, after finding this link, to take more learning/development into my own hands. The only way, for me, learning is effective is if I take notes to help me remember and for future reference. So, I've created this series of posts for my reference and your amusement.

Read more.

]]> 2011.07.07 By: Simon Le Pine

I finished up writing the registeration and login for amorphous_projects tonight (yes, a user will have 1 account for all projects I write and I only have to write it all once).

Read more.

]]> 2011.07.03 By: Simon Le Pine

Once again I apologize for the obscure title. This post is is all about the first things I'll do if ever I'm in a leadership role in an organization. This is based on some tough lessons learned recently.

Read more.

]]> 2011.06.28 By: Simon Le Pine

OK, I apologize now for the obscure title, just having some fun with it. This post is about aggressive sales people when you call to cancel a service.

Read more.

]]> 2011.06.15 By: Simon Le Pine

I just took a shower, which means I have an idea (I always have the best ideas in the shower).

Read more.

]]> 2011.06.09 By: Simon Le Pine

I don't have cable, I refuse to pay $30+ per month to watch 1-2 channels. I do have Netflix and watch a lot of content online.

Read more.

]]> 2011.05.27 By: Simon Le Pine

If you saw my previous post, good news I'm back. All it took was a few nights of binge drinking and really loud techno music to stave off impending burn out.

I was in the lunch room this morning and one programmer said to another: "I'll just store the order in a $_SESSION object". This is bad, don't do it. This post is tagged technology and risk management because it's going to touch on both.

Read more.

]]> 2011.04.27 By: Simon Le Pine

A number of times I've heard doctors suggest it's "difficult" for newly diagnosed patients to gather information online. Doctors can't provide their entire medical texts on a given condition and every patient absorbs information in different ways and at different times (when you're diagnosed with cancer the last thing you want is to be handed a bunch of pamphlets). So, what's the solution?

Read more.

]]> 2011.04.26 By: Simon Le Pine

So, this is an outline of my current or impending burn out. For those who don't know me, I'm extremely motivated and work too hard, I was called an overachiever yesterday. I'm involved in so many things it's not unheard of to pull multiple all-nighters, which hopefully I'll do tonight and tomorrow. But, lately I've been the complete opposite, I can barely get out of bed, I can't focus, I'm not motivated, and I'm not crossing things off the giant to-do list. I'm either burnt out or about to be.

Read more.

]]> 2011.04.25 By: Simon Le Pine

I've taken a bit of a break from posting on this blog but wanted to get back into it. I know, or at least hope, after the presentation to Manitoba Tourism a number of visitors here will be looking for insurance information. I figured now is a good time to write about a common insurance term, which the public is generally unaware of; moral hazard.

Moral hazard is something insurance companies (and lenders) look at when underwriting a risk. It could also be called moral character and it's a reflection of how the insured views insurance and reacts to claims. If a person is of low moral character (high moral risk) they are going to view insurance as a tool to be taken advantage of, they will make insurance claims if they see a way to benefit (such as fraudulent claims). More importantly, this low moral character is unlikely to prevent claims or take measures to reduce the impact of a claim when it does occur. Conversely, a low moral risk will take every measure possible to prevent & reduce claims and ultimately cost the insurance company less money. As a side note, when it comes to lenders a low moral risk is less likely to default on a loan and more likely to make payments on time.

Read more.

]]> 2011.04.13 By: Simon Le Pine

I am very excited that Tourism Manitoba asked me to do a presentation for their members on Insurance & Risk Management. This is an amazing opportunity for me personally as well as Premiere Insurance and amorphous_projects. I have very little experience presenting to large audiences and am looking forward to the challenge.

To answer a common question, the presentation is supposed to be an hour long. I'm a little concerned though, the amount of information and 20-30 minutes of Q&A will be under that allotted hour.

Read more.

]]> 2011.04.07 By: Simon Le Pine

I'm very fortunate to have a rather large network of entrepreneurs and similar type people.

Read more.

]]> 2011.02.28 By: Simon Le Pine

The topic of this post came to me while studying an insurance text book, which had a section on evaluating software solutions. Specifically, the text advised the user to evaluate the who/what/where of technical support. i.e. who was providing it, what they provide, and where they're located.

Read more.

]]> 2011.01.31 By: Simon Le Pine

I, like most people, use online banking. In its most basic form, online banking is CRM (Customer Relations Management). It is a single technology solution to manage all aspects of your account such as balance, cheques, address, email, phone number. So the question I have is, why can't the insurance industry do the same?

Read more.

]]> 2011.01.27 By: Simon Le Pine

For the past few months I've been writing posts on risk management in technology focusing on specific exposures or management techniques. I figured it's time for a basic overview of the entire risk management plan. This can really apply to any industry but I will provide some technology specific examples.

Read more.

]]> 2011.01.20 By: Simon Le Pine

I attended the Membase meetup tonight, it was really cool. Non-tech savvy readers shouldn't worry, I'll do my best to outline this post in very simple terms.

Read more.

]]> 2011.01.18 By: Simon Le Pine

I'm currently going through all the (current and planned) pages on the amorphous_projects website and outlining the purpose for each page (i.e. what stage of the buying cycle the page is designed for).

Read more.

]]> 2011.01.17 By: Simon Le Pine

I can say, from personal experience, mass email doesn't work. People automatically delete them without ever reading or sharing with co-workers. Otherwise the email may never be delivered due to spam filters. In addition, send too many junk emails and people may start ignoring all your emails. Mistakes in email marketing can completely destroy business relationships.

Read more.

]]> 2011.01.17 By: Simon Le Pine

I was thinking of a way to force myself to write a mission statement for amorphous_projects, IDEAS, and another one. It occurred to me this morning the problem is distractions. I suggested to a business partner we should start high speed, collaborative, time limited brainstorming.

Read more.

]]> 2011.01.12 By: Simon Le Pine

Over the weekend I was randomly looking around the Ikea website at tea pots and cups (I'd like nice cups/saucers and a tea pot to provide office guests with tea). In the process I had to register with a username and password where I discovered, in my opinion, 2 usability flaws.

Read more.

]]> 2011.01.10 By: Simon Le Pine

Warning:

This is a tech-no-dweeb post, if you don't know what javascript and web development are you probably won't understand any of the following post (but I encourage you to read on and ask questions as needed).

Progressive Enhancement

I deeply believe that javascript (JS) should be used for progressive enhancement only and you can never rely on every user having JS enabled. Being that you can't count on JS being enabled it should only be used for nice extras and your website should not break without it.

Read more.

]]> 2011.01.09 By: Simon Le Pine

I'm writing mission/vision/value statements for the homepage of amorphousprojects.com and just come up with the following. I'm really excited about this so far, it highlights what amorphous_projects stands for and what I feel is important.

Read more.

]]> 2011.01.07 By: Simon Le Pine

I've heard from a number of industry sources that the insurance industry is really struggling to understand how they can utilize technology as well as social media. This is the first in a planned series of posts outlining my thoughts and ideas.

I will assume, since you're here reading my blog, you know what a blog is. Basically it's a website updated on a regular basis with news articles or other informative posts. The idea originated from people keeping public journals online.

Read more.

]]> 2011.01.05 By: Simon Le Pine

I know, I know, everyone is saying print media is dead. Whether you agree or disagree, you have to admit access to media in general is changing. We can now read books online/electronically (ebooks), we can listen to news when/where we want (podcasts), and we can access news online.

Read more.

]]> 2011.01.03 By: Simon Le Pine

I was just listening to Peter Day's Business Podcast where he interviews the current CEO of Ford. Allan has some great ideas and some very unique leadership methods. In the interview he says (4:00 minutes in):
I think everyone wants absolute brand clarity, they want to know what your brand is about. People want to know the products & services and that you're operating a strong business. People also want to know that you care about what we all care about, social accountability, economic sustainability, environmental impact, etc.

Read more.

]]> 2010.12.30 By: Simon Le Pine

It's been a while since I wrote a post on user interaction in web design. I just came across a link to this site. The person who sent me the link seemed to think the menu was a genius idea.

Read more.

]]> 2010.12.30 By: Simon Le Pine

It seems the entire Intrawebs was freaking out the other day because Yahoo! leaked something saying they might shut down the del.ic.ous social bookmarking app. This isn't the first time a social bookmarking site has shut down and it occurred to me today I should write an open source one.

Read more.

]]> 2010.12.29 By: Simon Le Pine

A buddy of mine is trying to get in shape and I came up with a fun concept, I challenged him to a fitness task (100 days/100 pushups). It occurred to me, this could be a really cool social challenge web app.

Read more.

]]> 2010.12.29 By: Simon Le Pine

I saw this video from a Harvard course on scalability a while ago and have been meaning to write a post on it. Thank god for airplanes as a way to force you to catch up.

Read more.

]]> 2010.12.16 By: Simon Le Pine

For those who don't write computer programs, a task tag is a line of code in a computer program left as a note to yourself for the future. This could be '//TODO clean this up' or '//DEBUG check users ip when site goes live'. Tonight I'm procrastinating about working on the Reporter project so found an excuse to write a blog post.

Read more.

]]> 2010.12.10 By: Simon Le Pine

#whyIread is trending on Twitter today. I was going to post to Twitter but the list is too long.

Read more.

]]> 2010.12.08 By: Simon Le Pine


I'm just sitting here "trying" to go to bed and for some reason I designed a new logo. Not sure what the business will do, but I have a logo.

Read more.

]]> 2010.12.06 By: Simon Le Pine

Today I'm talking about risk audits, otherwise known as risk inspections in the insurance industry. For the most part these are undertaken by insurance companies and involve inspecting the business premises of an insured. It does raise a good point though, It's a very good idea to have a a documented process for reviewing your risk, mitigation techniques, and changes made, etc.

There's are a number of good reasons to do this:

Read more.

]]> 2010.12.06 By: Simon Le Pine

I was just messing around with flatblog because I uploaded it to the server.

Read more.

]]> 2010.12.04 By: Simon Le Pine

I'm doing some finishing touches on flatblog tonight before I call it a final product. One of the things I did is add a timer that says if the user tries to log in unsuccessfully 5 times the system locks for 15 minutes. A friend strongly objected to this approach and in fact called me "retarded" for implementing. I do feel it's a good idea because one way of implementing DOS (denial of service) attacks is to submit a form over and over again. Login attempts stored temporarily can easily be wiped by the attacker whereas if the system locks via cookies, hopefully, they don't think to wipe cookies.

Read more.

]]> 2010.12.03 By: Simon Le Pine

On my way to work this morning I was listening to the BBC Bizdaily podcast.

Read more.

]]> 2010.12.02 By: Simon Le Pine

@jessemenn and I were just having a 'semantic' discussion on clean urls and I think we both quickly realized how big such a simple topic can get.

For those who don't know, a clean url is a human-readable url that makes navigation easy, is better for SEO, and often shorter than the alternative. For example, if you look at the url of this page it's http://amorphousprojects.com/blog/?action=view&post_id=100 compared to the url http://amorphousprojects.com/blog/about_me. Both of those urls point to blog posts stored in a database but the second is a clean, easy to read url.

Read more.

]]> 2010.11.28 By: Simon Le Pine

Being that I'm on the verge of completing the CRM (Canadian Risk Manger) designation, I've decided to formalize my risk management posts. Todays post is about copyright infringement, which we're seeing much more of in the technology industry.

Read more.

]]> 2010.11.27 By: Simon Le Pine

I use a lot of technical terms throughout this blog and decided I want a single place to reference definitions.

Read more.

]]> 2010.11.27 By: Simon Le Pine

Just a quick post about feature creep, feature richness, and enhancements while I test a new security feature in flatblog.

Read more.

]]> 2010.11.27 By: Simon Le Pine

I was talking to someone the other day about TED Talks and referred to it as "a great content delivery system". It occurred to me after the fact this is a new term I've never heard before but is a good description of TED, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, etc.

Read more.

]]> 2010.11.18 By: Simon Le Pine

I'm working on a couple different business plans right now. The number one issue, in my opinion, is the competitive advantage.

Read more.

]]> 2010.11.18 By: Simon Le Pine

I'm not normally a fanboy of any brand. I refuse to let a brand sit back and rely on past achievements.

Read more.

]]> 2010.11.17 By: Simon Le Pine

Today in insurance....

Read more.

]]> 2010.11.12 By: Simon Le Pine

Speaking from personal experience, many salespeople think they're doing a good job but in fact they're annoying their customers and reducing the chances of actually making a sale.

Read more.

]]> 2010.10.28 By: Simon Le Pine

Most web designers (at least any over the age of 25) know about 'the fold'. For those who don't, the fold is a hypothetical line on your website, to view content below that line users must scroll down. The name fold comes from print/newspapers where content placed above the fold (front page news) was read far more than below the fold simply because readers were too lazy or didn't have time to read the rest.

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]]> 2010.10.27 By: Simon Le Pine

I just read a great post on You're The Boss about secure passwords.

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]]> 2010.10.26 By: Simon Le Pine

Twice in as many days I've visited sites on my phone that have had a Javascript (or I assume it was) refresh loop. The issue is, these sites try to offer a fluid width by using Javascript to add width. The problem arises on any smartphone that doesn't have a defined screen width (most smartphones/Iphones/etc). So what happens is the page continually reloads and is completely unreadable.

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]]> 2010.10.25 By: Simon Le Pine


Again, this is building on my new habit of short, to-the-point posts on a single thought. Specifically, this post is about user interaction in design/development. I'm working on a web app, which involves a lot of interaction with users. I went looking for inspiration and thoughts on user interaction (form design, display of errors, etc.) and found nothing. There's lots of information out there about color choices, placement of registration buttons, A/B testing, etc. But where's the information on 'placing a label next to each form field' to use a basic example? Where's the information about vertical form design versus horizontal? That's the purpose of this series of posts. I don't consider myself an expert in this field, but I am keen to learn and use the information on a daily basis. Feedback and user thoughts are certainly encouraged and appreciated.

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]]> 2010.10.24 By: Simon Le Pine

I saw a great post on GigaOm about Twitter apps remembering messages.

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]]> 2010.10.17 By: Simon Le Pine

Via American Express OPEN Forums:

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]]> 2010.10.08 By: Simon Le Pine

This is a clear case of any-day-now. Based on the graph of net exports shown below, how do they justify the prediction that it'll "flat-line" (shown in red) starting tomorrow?

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]]> 2010.09.10 By: Simon Le Pine

This is the fourth (hence "#4") in a series of posts on risk management as it pertains to technology companies. Specifically these posts speak to web application companies, web designers, etc. This post, however, is a bit more general and has good advice for any company.

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]]> 2010.09.05 By: Simon Le Pine

I'm not sure if this will help anyone but I figure I'll post it in case it does. This is an ever evolving document outlining the application development cycle I go through with each new project. I find I have to keep it formalized or I jump in and start writing code, which leads to sloppy code & poorly named variables/databases.

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]]> 2010.09.04 By: Simon Le Pine

Security/Spam

I had an ingenious idea for added security on my website. For the CMS/blog, I defaulted the password to something other than the actual password. Of course, this will confuse spammers/automated attacks. For anyone trying to crack it, every time they get directed back to the login page they have to enter a new password.
Every little bit helps.

I was getting 100+ spam emails/comments from drivingordriven.com and amorphousprojects.com (shortly after I posted links on twitter, surprise surprise). So I implemented a trick I heard about on the Boagworld podcast. I put in an extra input field and hid it with CSS. Automated spam bots can't help but to fill out every single input field so you simply validate if the extra spam field is filled out, if it is the message is spam and you delete it.

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]]> 2010.09.02 By: Simon Le Pine

Problem

It's very hard for newly diagnosed patients of Crohns, Colitis, IBD, GERD, colonoscopies, etc. to find accurate/useful information. Not only is it hard to find information, it's even more difficult to find the best information or let others know what information helped the most.

Solution

A website/web app that allows users to submit/rate links and sort a list of links by highest rated, most commented, etc.

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]]> 2010.08.30 By: Simon Le Pine

Wow! Another huge day for flatblog. I reduced the file size by about 10kb (on a 70kb file that's a big difference). I updated all the error handling to redirect to the proper page and show a friendly error message. Because of the way I refactored this everything loads faster and it'll greatly reduce number of clicks. For example, when editing a post if you click save it returns to editing with a message saying "post saved".

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]]> 2010.08.24 By: Simon Le Pine

In the process of developing flatblog tonight, I came across an odd issue. I was using $_SESSION['message'] to display a success message to the user. I was finding that the variable was getting unset every time it was displayed.

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]]> 2010.08.23 By: Simon Le Pine

I'm writing the TOS (Terms of Service) for amorphous_projects right now. As I write it, it occurs to me that every website, business or personal, should have terms of service. Even if that TOS simply says "Don't sue us", you need to make users aware that by visiting/using your site they are subject to your TOS. A TOS can be very effective in two respects.

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]]> 2010.08.17 By: Simon Le Pine

This is most definitely 100% a personal post. It is only very remotely related to amorphous_projects and not at all to the web, technology, or insurance. More importantly, it's going to come across as completely egotistical.

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]]> 2010.08.11 By: Simon Le Pine

I've had this concept in mind for a while now, this is my idea for the logo for Reporter:



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]]> 2010.08.10 By: Simon Le Pine

So last night a friend asked me to give him a hand implementing an AJAX solution (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML for those who don't know). Basically AJAX allows web pages to load new content/data without reloading and it's what's behind (most) of the dynamic websites and web applications out there today. For example Facebook, Twitter, Google Reader, Gmail all rely on AJAX techniques to to deliver new content without the user requesting it (refreshing/reloading).

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]]> 2010.08.10 By: Simon Le Pine

We all know I'm lazy, but did anyone know I'm this lazy:

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]]> 2010.08.04 By: Simon Le Pine

I've worked hard today, I did a lot of cleaning, went shopping, was up until 4:30am working on a_p, etc. As such, I'm feeling a bit "crotchety". This post is going to be one big complaint, if it offends, too bad.

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]]> 2010.08.02 By: Simon Le Pine

I wanted one [public] place to keep track of the features and bugs for flatblog. I have a private list with some additional info and some proposed things that can't really be visible to the public. I think it's a good idea to let people know where it's going, that it's being actively improved, and that feature requests are honestly considered.

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]]> 2010.07.30 By: Simon Le Pine

With 3 lines of code in my template I've just implemented one of the most important features in a blog. As you can see in the picture, it now allows for 1-click-editing of blog posts. No need to go to the user control panel, just browse the blog and edit posts as you read them.

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]]> 2010.07.29 By: Simon Le Pine

This is the second post (hopefully in a series) on risk management as it pertains to technology and web/software development. These posts are designed more for the average user/programmer and not for risk management professionals so I apologize if I define terms commonly used by risk managers.

In this post I figured I'd talk about planning and forethought. First, a little additional information. There are 8 commonly used risk management techniques; avoidance, prevention, reduction, separation, duplication, diversification, transfer, and retention.

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]]> 2010.07.27 By: Simon Le Pine

The other day I got into a discussion on risk management as it pertains to computer programing and web application development. I find all risk management incredibly interesting and even more so when I know a great deal about the topic. It occurred to me that there's not many resources out there or places to discuss the topic. As you can see it the title, this is the first post of hopefully many on the subject.

Anyone from the risk management world reading this knows that risk management is a toolbox, you have many management techniques available to you and you select many based on feasibility, cost, effectiveness, etc. Note that cost relates to time and money.

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]]> 2010.07.25 By: Simon Le Pine

If you look closely in the picture, you can see that I already have 3 blogs/CMSs running on a single flatblog installation. They each have their own database so there's no "cross contamination" and if something happens to one the rest continue to work. The key here is, if/when I release a new version of flatblog, I update 1 file and all my sites are running on the most current version.

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]]> 2010.07.24 By: Simon Le Pine

I was working on the contact form for drivingordriven.com tonight and discovered Google Chrome does not complete/remember/suggest entries for email inputs.

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]]> 2010.07.22 By: Simon Le Pine

I'm posting this from my IPhone. I have to point out that my UI (user interface for the non technical) is easier than blogger and my blog loads faster (uses less bandwidth), which is good for mobile users.

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]]> 2010.07.21 By: Simon Le Pine

I know hosting & hosting support are 2 very hot issues for web developers. I've experienced a number of times how awesome the support from JustHost is. They always reply within a few hours and are always happy to fix my stupid little problems.

Tonight, I did something dumb while testing the latest flatblog release and screwed up all the file permissions on the server. In the process of trying to fix this, I accidentally deleted all web content. I quickly discovered they do daily backups and only lost a small edit I did on a blog post. They fixed the file permissions quickly and easily.

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]]> 2010.07.21 By: Simon Le Pine

I just updated to the latest version of flatblog!

I have to say, this is the coolest thing ever and the exact reason I wrote flatblog. I've done a lot of work and added some cool features/killed some annoying bugs. I wanted to run the latest version and the process consisted of:

1. Login in via ftp to the server
2. Navigate to the "forbidden" folder
3. Upload the new file overwriting the existing one

I've now hit refresh on the blog page and the new features showed up. I can't believe how fast and easy that was.

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]]> 2010.07.21 By: Simon Le Pine

If you can't read the pic, my to-do list today (Sunday) was:

1. All insurance underwriting
2. Cleaning
3. Cut hair
4. Eat
5. Shopping
6. Expenses
7. Feature/Bug Blog Post

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]]> 2010.07.17 By: Simon Le Pine

I've lost track of the number of bugs I killed today, lots though. I do remember fixing:

Search tags: previously it searched all posts even if they hadn't been posted or if it was set as a blog_page. In the process I added in a backup so this will never happen on any db query.

HTML symbols: users can now put html symbols in title, tags, and post content. Any ©, &apos, & remain encoded for html5 validation, but they also remain encoded in the edit box. NOTE I would not recommend using html symbols in tags as its not possible to search the db for these symbols.

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]]> 2010.07.14 By: Simon Le Pine

FYI I do know the amorphous_projects main page is down at this time. I have my ftp program set to overwrite files without asking (get's really frustating being asked when you're uploading 150+ files) and I accidently uploaded a flatblog template on top of the main page. It'll be fixed this weekend.

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]]> 2010.07.13 By: Simon Le Pine

Have gotten a lot of work done late this evening (currently 4am) on flatblog. I have:

• Looked into a bug report on Get Satisfaction
• Changed the tags to be stripped to lower case so tag searches are more accurate
• Updated the UI in the backed for flatblog so it's nicer/easier/intuitive AND HTML5 compliant!
• Discovered a new bug, when searching by tag it pulls all posts, even those listed as pages or not posted yet, this is a BIG deal
• Formalized bug tracking/debug/documentation internally
• Started thinking about the future renditions of flatblog and am already fighting feature creap
• Worked on RSS output and have a valid file outputting posts already

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]]> 2010.07.13 By: Simon Le Pine

I've spent most of the night working on encoding the above mentioned symbols for flatblog purely in the name of hml5 validation. I have checked and they get written to the database in symbol form and are outputted to the blog property.

This issue is, there is no filter_var that will only work on those and not all html. There is no way to ensure they come out of textarea in the right format without a lot of horrible javascript. The final option is to use str_replace but it seems impossible. I did some fiddling with searching for the copy symbol in a string and had no luck.

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]]> 2010.07.13 By: Simon Le Pine

It occurred to me that Mashable & Gigaom are simply big blogs with multiple publishers. This is the reason I'm building multiple user/admin support into flatblog. I would like (with the help of my friends) to create a community blog. Basically anyone could contact me to be added as a user, assuming I trust that person I'd happily add them, and any user can post any content.

I think this could become an interesting experiment in social blogging. With any luck you'd get the "creme of the crop" of blog posts. You'd have a whole bunch of intelligent people posting interesting posts.

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]]> 2010.07.11 By: Simon Le Pine

I've spent the last week writing flatblog and will continue to refine that over the coming month/months/year/years/decade/lifetime.

One of the reasons (there are many) I wrote flatblog is an idea I've had for a while called general_cms. The concept being, you have a centralized database for content management/blog posting. You then only house templates on a site and those templates make an API call to general_cms, which returns the data requested.

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]]> 2010.07.11 By: Simon Le Pine

I'm posting this from my IPhone, it's actually a pretty easy interface, even on a mobile device

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]]> 2010.07.11 By: Simon Le Pine

One, of the many, methods of creating a url shortening service is to utilize the 404 page. Effectively if a page isn't found it's assumed to be a short url, so when a request is made of the server it's directed to the 404 page, which then makes a request to the database to determine the expected url. One of the major downfalls of this method, and most, is an unnecessary number of requests to the database. If a request is in fact for an unknown page, the back-end still makes a request of the database to determine this.

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]]> 2010.07.10 By: Simon Le Pine

This is the first post ever on the flatblog blogging platform. With any luck, all the testing is done and this post will be up for good.

The content of this post will change but the post will stay up. As I have time I'll write more about what prompted me to write blogging software amongst a host of good competition and a general exodus from blogging by some big names.

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]]> 2010.07.10 By: Simon Le Pine

Rather than a profile on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Blogger, and every-other-social-site I created this page. This is an outline of the things I'm involved in, what I do, and who I am. If you want to know more, feel free to contact me.

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]]> 2010.01.01