Category: Blogging

Just a quick note, for those in RSS land, and for those not, although less so for you as you (I hope) have already spotted what I’m about to mention. I did, finally, update the banner a little and add a splash of colour too. If you aren’t seeing any changes, please refresh your browser (press the F5 key on your keyboard or CTRL+F5 (PC), CMD+F5 (Mac)).

I’ve also updated my other websites appropriately (here, here and here).

That’s all.

Told you it was a quick note.

In my usual style, just when I should be doing something else I find the spare minutes and hours (which aren’t actually spare) being whittled away by something completely different.

And I don’t mean in the Monty Python sense.

Speaking of which I missed a Python reference the other day, but thankfully re-gained some geek cred by asking if anyone else knew how C3-PO got his name (or R2-D2 for that matter).

So, despite the fact I’ve got a website to build for a client (I HAVE started it, honest!) I find myself, once again, with Photoshop open, working through a variety of potential options for reworking the banner of this website. I’m a bit stalled on this and, as it will affect the my other websites, it’s kinda crucial that the whole ‘brand design’ thing works.

No, I don’t think of myself as a ‘brand’ but I do like things to be neat, and lined up and uniform and have a sense of design to them. Yes, it’s a bit anal and weird, no I’m not apologising for it, and yes I will be making similar changes to all my other websites.

However, as I’m stalled on this, I thought I’d open this up to you guys and gals. I’d like your opinion on the following, please. Leave a comment with your thoughts.

(more…)

For the past few days I’ve been noodling about in Photoshop, trying to come up with a revised banner graphic for this blog (and, subsequently a theme I can take across the other two ‘one man’ websites). It’s been quite educational, mixing general research with photoshop tutorials on what is probably pretty basic stuff but is all new to me.

Whilst the change won’t be radical it will add another colour to the theme, and generally make the website a bit richer. I’m all for minimal but I do think the design needs something … else … a little more … oomph …

I’ve also been playing about with Yahoo Pipes, largely inspired by http://www.gregorsmith.com/. If nothing else it’s something to do with my name domain website (that’s www.gordonmclean.co.uk, if you were wondering).

What all of this means is that, for the moment, my writing mojo is in short supply. I do have a couple of things drafted I want to publish but I don’t think I’ll be doing that here in the first instance, mainly because I’m determined to publish something to the excellent Writer’s Bloc; you have been to visit, haven’t you? Some wonderful, wonderful writing there.

In fact, it’s a little daunting, submitting something to another website in the hope that it might get published. What if they said “No, it’s rubbish, you are rubbish, never go near a keyboard again your horrid horrid word mangler you”? I don’t know if I could stand it.

Perhaps I’ll just go back to faffing about in Photoshop, it’s much nicer there.

Yes, this was forwarded to me by a friend. No, I don’t post these very often. Yes, number 4 made me laugh the loudest.

1. At lunch time, sit in your parked car with sunglasses on and point a hair dryer at passing cars. See if they slow down.
I’ve sat in a white car with a camera which had a big lens on it (the camera, not the car), same effect. And no I didn’t do it on purpose!

2. Page yourself over the intercom. Don’t disguise your voice.
How many offices still have an intercom?

3. Every time someone asks you to do something, ask if they want fries with that.
Ahhh so this list originates from America

4. Put decaf in the coffee maker for 3 weeks. Once everyone has gotten over their caffeine addictions, switch to espresso.
This is evil. And I started doing this one this morning.. day 1 of decaf

5. On all your cheque stubs, write ‘ for marijuana’.
What’s a cheque stub? It’s 2009!

6. Skip down the street rather than walk and see how many looks you get.

7. Order a diet water whenever you go out to eat, with a serious face.
But… I’ve seen bottles of diet water, they do exist!!

8. Specify that your drive-through order is ‘to go’.

9. Sing along at the opera.

10. Five days in advance, tell your friends you can’t attend their party because you have a headache.

11. When the money comes out the atm, scream ‘I won! I won!’

12. When leaving the zoo, start running towards the car park, yelling ‘run for your lives! They’re loose!’.

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In other news. There is no other news. As you were.

January draws to a close (already!!) and it is time for me to own up. I’ve been experimenting on you. Sorry about that but, on the bright side, it’s not like some weird alien abduction involving probes and brain washing.

In fact, if I’m honest, it’s only really occurred to me these past couple of days that I’ve been experimenting.

I’ve been posting to this blog for a very long time and it’s fair to say, and indeed I did say it, that my blogging mojo was slowly eroding. To try and see if it was just laziness I decided that I’d try and post every single day for at least the month of January, and then see how I felt.

This is contrary to most of the advice and reassurance I was given, which largely boiled down to the fact that I need only post when I wanted to and that the lovely, smart, beautiful people who read this blog would be quite happy.

Quality not quantity they said.

Pfffftttt, I said.

Which brings us right up to date.

Putting aside the part of me that writes all this for the sheer fun of it, I turn to my stats. Surely with a more regular stream of content, my stats would be on the rise? I may it stands to reason, doesn’t it?

You’d think.

It hasn’t. Not one jot. My average (130 visits a day) remains as it was throughout all of last year. Flat, static, constant.

Mind you, I don’t actually know how many people read the posts via RSS (dear people who make clever website stats thingies, can’t I get ONE single via of all the consumers of my content?). I’m an avid RSS user myself and I know how often, on average, I actually click through to read a website

So I’d like to extend my experiment a little. For today only, could I trouble you, dearest RSS reader, to click through to the website? You don’t have to leave a comment, just load up the website if you read this post.

I’ll post before and after stats, so come on people LET’S MAKE A DIFFERENCE!!!