Author: Quentin Pain
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Why We Have Difficulty Selling
Picture yourself arriving on your own at a network meeting. There’s a bunch of suits plus some casually dressed people. Half are smiling and the other half seem deadly serious. A few are standing on their own too sipping a cup of coffee. You eavesdrop in on a conversation, and after a short wait they ‘let’ you…
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Derek Sivers Entrepreneur Guide
Who Is Derek Sivers? If you haven’t heard of Derek Sivers before, you’re in for an inspiring story that highlights the power of purpose-driven entrepreneurship. Derek is an entrepreneur and thinker best known for founding CDBaby.com. Starting from zero, he built this platform into one of the largest independent music stores online. His journey culminated…
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Legendary
Understanding the Concept of ‘Legendary’ The term legendary is often used to describe individuals, stories, or objects that have achieved a level of extraordinary fame and admiration. It signifies something or someone that leaves a lasting impact, often transcending time, culture, and borders. From mythological heroes to modern icons, being labeled legendary elevates a subject…
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What would I do if I had to start again? – Sir Richard Branson
The title of each section came from Branson. The content came from a variety of sources. Of all of them, by far the most important advice is this: “Conduct thorough market analysis and customer interviews”. The problem is, for the most part, the customer doesn’t know why or what to do about something that isn’t…
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Music Modes
If you stick with just the white keys on a piano (C major), you can create pretty much any sound or emotion you want. The reason this works depends on the note you start with, or perhaps just as importantly, the note you return to for each musical phrase you create. Here are all the…
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How to plot a novel using a spreadsheet
Why Use a Spreadsheet to Plot Your Novel? Many writers, myself included, have started novels only to abandon them partway through. Writing as inspiration strikes can feel creatively freeing, but it often leads to a tangled, unfocused narrative that is difficult to revise and even harder for an editor to untangle. A structured approach, such…
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Do photons die?
Here’s a transcript of a chat I had with the Ollama LLM on photons and our perceptions of life. By the end, it gets highly philosophical. But we start with the science. My prompts are highlighted in a quote box in italics, everything else (apart from these opening paragraphs) is produced by Ollama. You can…
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How to Write and Test Code for PHP: Master Standard and Advanced Test Frameworks
Some programmers write code in a random kind of way as they don’t have clear goals in mind for whatever it is they’re writing. This is fine if you’re working on something new and are not sure which direction it’s headed, but for a serious application, writing test classes for every major part of your…
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Getting Started with Laravel 10: Your Quick Guide
[NOTE: Laravel is updated every year, so Laravel 11 came out in 2024 and Laravel 12 in 2025. It’s usually fairly easy to update to the next version of Laravel, so you needn’t worry about the version you start with as long as it is fairly recent – up to 2 versions ago is usually…
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Object Oriented Programming using PHP and Design Patterns: Efficient Techniques Explained
Introduction: The Evolution of Object-Oriented Programming and Design Patterns When I first started programming in 1981, the concept of software design patterns was not yet established. It was not until 1987 that Kent Beck and Ward Cunningham introduced the idea, and only in 1994 did the seminal book Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented…