Scott’s throwaway tweet made me chuckle. Pick two random four letter word, and tattoo them onto a pair of fists. Hilarity is bound to ensue. Well, I found myself bored one evening a few weeks ago and figured I’d spent a couple of hours cooking up just such a generator. It didn’t take too long—the recipe was simple.

1. Crack out some basic PHP, and whisk together a quick script.
2. Add one lovingly photoshopped image.
3. Layer the base with a suitable open source font from The League of Moveable Type.
4. Add a dash of HTML structure and CSS positioning to hold the mixture firm.
5. Gently fold a 2,000 word list into the mixture. Do this gradually, painstakingly refining the list as you go to ensure it contains only the funniest four letter words.
6. Bake at 180°C for 2 hours, and allow to cool.

Voilà! You now have your very own knuckle tattoo generator—I call mine Fistbump.

If you fancy wasting a few minutes, check it out and let me know what you think. Refresh the page or click the Randomize link to get a new word combo, or use the Permalink option to save your favourite phrase.

Of course, all credit for the idea goes to @MrScottFletcher.

Sundial was a very simple webservice using a hacky Python script and a few CSVs. It did the job… and that was that. It had a fair number of defects such as missing DST support and a cluttered homepage, and I decided a few weeks ago that it was about time I addressed these issues.

I took the opportunity to brush up on my Java, and I re-implemented the entire thing from scratch over the course of a couple of evenings using Java servlets, JSON and the Google App Engine. (By the way, the App Engine is an excellent free platform for small tools and prototypes — check it out.)

As before, you can use dialti.me in a few different ways. The simplest is to visit the dialti.me website and enter a US telephone number that you would like to lookup. Format is unimportant—the number will be extracted as necessary. And as before, the alternative way in which one can use dialti.me is to navigate directly to http://app.dialti.me/Mobile: (651) 342.2323 or similar. It works well with Firefox keywords or as a Chrome custom search engine, too.

Unlike Sundial, dialti.me might actually see some further development such as support for international numbers. I’d love to hear any suggestions you might have, or feedback on the design. Let me know how you get on in the comments, or drop me an email.

There’s only one difference between entrepreneurs and the rest of the world. To sum it up in 10 words:
Entrepreneurs don’t just have ideas. They bring them to life.

Next time you wonder what the difference is between you and the next young millionaire (or billionaire), I want you to stop pretending you don’t know the answer. It’s simple: everyone has ideas, but entrepreneurs make their ideas into reality. Now stop reading Reddit, stop watching TV, stop playing games and get out there and build something.

Ladies and Gentlemen, this is Quantum Number 5.

s, p, d, f, g
Everybody in the lab, so come on let’s see;
Drive a quantum oscillator
They say that it’s classically forbidden
But so did Weber.

Funded like we were last week
We need more kit,
but hydrogen’s cheap
I like Niels Bohr, Max Born, and Erwin Schrodinger,
(I won’t touch Marie Curie
Cos she was a minger!)

Blame uncertainty, nothing’s certain any more,
Position or time, we just guess what’s in store,
Nobody knows, but it’s all good, let me dump it
Please send in the trumpet

Chorus:
A little bit of Heisenberg in my life
A little bit of Fermi by my side
A little bit of Pauli is all I need
A little bit of Planck is what I see
A little bit of Feynmann in the sun
A little bit of Zeeman all night long
A little bit of Einstein here I am
I’m quantum theory’s biggest fan.

(Quantum number five)

Spin up and down and tunnel all around
The ideas are profound
But keep your feet on the ground
Emit a photon left
And a photon right
One to the front
And one to the side
Check spectral lines once
Spectral lines twice
And if it looks like this
You didn’t model it right

Chorus:
A little bit of Heisenberg in my life
A little bit of Fermi by my side
A little bit of Pauli is all I need
A little bit of Planck is what I see
A little bit of Feynmann in the sun
A little bit of Zeeman all night long
A little bit of Einstein here I am
I’m quantum theory’s biggest fan.

(Proton)
(The proton)
(Quantum number five)
(laugh)

Chorus:
A little bit of Heisenberg in my life
A little bit of Fermi by my side
A little bit of Pauli is all I need
A little bit of Planck is what I see
A little bit of Feynmann in the sun
A little bit of Zeeman all night long
A little bit of Einstein here I am
I’m quantum theory’s biggest fan.

I do all to
Get entangled with a girl like you
When you interact, we’ll change together
With spooky action through the ether.

(Quantum number five)

I practice what I preach, and over the past few months I’ve been using a cheap ruled notebook for this very purpose. But this cheap notebook which is on hand wherever I go, so it somehow seems to get used for everything from meeting notes to shopping lists. The simple utility of always carrying a pen and paper has in itself managed to detract from my creative process. Now when I try to get inspired, I have to trawl through page-upon-page of scribblings about other menial tasks and irrelevant notes which seem to end up distracting me from my immediate goals.

This problem was a simple one to solve: get a new notebook which will be used purely for business ideas and innovation, and carry both notebooks around with me.

The notebook I chose for this purpose is the wonderful Moleskine Pocket Ruled Notebook. Considering this is essentially “just” a notebook, I can’t overstate the simple beauty that Moleskines offer. The form factor is stunning. The hefty 192 pages have a wonderful weight to them, as well as being lined and acid-free. The notebook also has a ribbon placeholder, elastic strap to hold the notebook shut, and a back pocket to hold any loose slips of paper.

Buying such a beautiful notebook has helped me out in more ways than one. Now I have a dedicated space for creativity—something I find myself treating as an hallowed, almost sacred object. I wouldn’t dare use it for anything other than the intended purpose. Plus the pages are thread bound, so any temptation to rip them out when I write down something rubbish is dramatically reduced.

I’ve decided to use the Moleskine as a library of business ideas. Whenever I think of a potential business proposition, I turn to the next free double-page in the notebook and write as much or as little as comes to mind. I leave the full double-page dedicated to that single idea, move the ribbon placeholder to the next page, and close the book.

This process is slowly but surely providing me with a beautiful repository of raw potential. Whenever I want some inspiration, I have pages of opportunities to browse. Each time I do, it seems inevitable that I come up with new additions and thoughts which can be noted against each central idea. In time, I expect that this book will be full of such a variety of ideas (some wonderful, some terrible) that starting a side business is almost inevitable!

The point I’m trying to make is a simple one: creativity is important, but so is respect for your ideas. Treating inspiration with reverence beyond a quick scribble will help you to build a bank of great ideas with real potential—and doing so in a book you can be proud to carry will only make the process easier. Invest in ideas today. You’ll thank me in the future.

How do you capture your winning ideas and make sure you don’t forget them forever? Do you have a great process for refining them over time? I’d love to hear from you in the comments.

This happens when brainstorming for all manner of tasks, as varied as blog posting, writing a Powerpoint presentation, planning a photograph or writing a quick Android app. The common theme is that your work has some quantity, but no quality. So what’s the next step?

The key to a good piece of work—be it academic, professional, creative or otherwise—is a cohesive, accessible, comprehensible message. In a word, the key to a good piece of work is simplicity. Perhaps not in terms of subject matter, or in terms of style, but in terms of message. It is critical that your audience leaves with an understanding of the idea that you are trying to communicate.

How do we get from quantity to quality; from complexity to simplicity?

Some measure of simplicity can only be achieved through clear and concise language and a flair for design, but I believe that a great deal of complexity is caused by a single flaw: the creator didn’t have a clear message in her own mind. Before you can communicate effectively, you need to first get a firm grasp of the message on which you are focused.

How do you do that? Well, let’s say you’ve started with an analogue brain dump and you’re faced with a messy page to get you started. The first step is to look over the scrawl and see what connections you can make. Look for patterns, common themes, inter-related points. Start to join things up—numbering them, perhaps, or drawing connecting lines. Spot the patterns.

As you begin to find these links, this common ground in your work, you will find yourself beginning to realise what the connections really are. Focus on a particular few points, and try to discern how they gel together. The interesting thing is not the content you already have on the page, but the common theme running through it. Once you figure out the core message or idea beneath a group, then you can think about what additional content you might want to add to it. What else might be relevant or interesting? What might reinforce the theme or even explain it?

As you continue down this path, you may find yourself able to link up not just content, but also the various emerging themes that are forming on your page. With a little extra thought and a few extra scribblings, the themes will begin to come together to form a cohesive movement. Perhaps one follows into another; or perhaps one core theme runs through the rest of them. Either outcome is good: you now have a central focus on which every aspect of your work can reflect.

As you begin to create your product—be it blog post, slides, or otherwise—keep referring back to your core theme. Are you being true to the message? Are you being concise and clear? Are you going off on a tangent? If in doubt, split your work up into multiple parts. If you have two conflicting messages, why try to communicate them both in the same breath?

This technique has worked particularly well for me on business presentations—even intimidating ones to senior management teams. It really helps me find hard-hitting messages without getting bogged down in content-heavy slides.

I hope you find success with this method. If in doubt, keep it simple!

Do you have your own strategy for staying on topic, finding clear messages and communicating clearly? Have you used similar techniques? Do you have any feedback or suggestions on my method? I’d love to hear from you in the comments.

Let me tell you: nothing that you can use with a keyboard, mouse, touchscreen or otherwise will compare to the sheer creative force of a pen and paper.

Whenever I’m feeling creative, or whenever I would like to be feeling creative, nothing spurs me on like a crisp, blank page stretched out before me. Open a notebook, take a pen in your hand, and wait. When I see that yawning expanse of emptiness and know that I alone am expected to fill it, it flicks a switch in my mind. It somehow reaches inside me, drawing my creative energy into my fingers, through my pen and out into the world.

If it all sounds too simple, too easy—or even beautiful, somehow—then let me assure you that it is most certainly not. When that inky wave of energy hits the page, hurling itself against the white, narrow-ruled cliffs, it is nothing but flotsam and jetsam. All that lies before you is a tangle of half-formed ideas: themes that have yet to become a symphony.

But the themes are present.

Start with an idea, sketch it out, and begin to brainstorm. Don’t worry about structures or links; get the fragments onto the page in whichever way you see fit. If you find yourself grouping thoughts together, going back up the page to add new ideas, drawing lines or even scribbling things out, then go with it. Let your ideas flow, but don’t try to line them up too neatly. Elaborate on the initial thoughts when you can think of something clever, but move on to new pastures if you can’t.

Before you know it, you’ll have a burgeoning mess of ideas. Some will be good, some will not. Some will drive you from one page to the next. Some will prompt you to rush off on a tangent or push you in a direction you hadn’t considered. Others will stop dead and be left hanging in the air like an awkward silence. It doesn’t matter: another thought will soon take their place and fill the page with easygoing chatter.

Later on, the next time you sit down to work on something seriously, you will find yourself forearmed with a slew of thought-provoking prompts to help you out. You already have a way around the writers’ block, a hint for when you run out of steam, or a gentle push towards your next great piece of work.

Pen and paper have helped me to achieve a great many things over the years. Whiteboards have done the same. Without ink, I wouldn’t have thought up BritishBonus or Surely Not!, projects which ended up paying for my degree. Without a notebook, I wouldn’t have come up with the killer slogans and core messages behind the Warwick Atheists society. Without a whiteboard, I wouldn’t have passed any of my final year exams.

Getting offline and using our hands inspires something primal, something creative that has existed since we made our first tools and painted our first caves. Try it: you’ll be pleasantly surprised.