February 2012
1 post
4 tags
10 reasons I am not using Pinterest
Twitter
Facebook
Google+
Tumblr
Producteev
Evernote
Google Reader
Google Alerts
150+ emails/day over 12 inboxes
SMS, Phonecalls, Pidgin and Skype
TMFI ;)
December 2011
2 posts
7 tags
My Microstock Portfolio Browser
“Investing in good developers is such a good bet at the moment, that if you have...”
– Forbes - The Rise of Developeronomics
October 2011
1 post
24 tags
September 2011
6 posts
10 tags
8 tags
Your, Yore and You`re
Just a short followup to my previous post There, Their and They’re:
“Your” is posessive like ‘Their’… “Your grammar is terrible!”, “Hahhaa… Jack and Jill ate all your pies”
“Yore” means ‘a time long ago’ or ‘days long past’… “Jamie Hyneman was born in the days of yore”.
...
6 tags
I Wish...
I wish I was half-an-inch taller, so I was 6 foot tall.
I wish I could wear a wide-brimmed-hat, without looking like a freak.
I wish I had straight white teeth. Not scary-white, just big-smile white.
I wish I could sing. I ‘can’ sing, but not well.
I wish I could be ‘free’ and NOT poor.
I wish the world was different,
Not much different, just a-little-bit-better...
11 tags
There, Their and They`re
Another pet peeve of mine, unsurprisingly, is when people use the wrong ‘there’ in a sentence. You can see it ALL THE FREAKING TIME on facebook and twitter (not so much on Google+, mainly I think because early adopters are not complete idiots).
And yes, I KNOW it makes me a pedantic, pretentious dick to really care about it, but when someone I know uses the wrong ‘there’,...
4 tags
7 tags
The Power of "Thank You"
I’ve always been a big fan of the ‘Thank you’… all too often people go to extraordinary efforts to do something, or create something for the ‘greater good’, or to save others time or money.
Often these efforts go unrewarded for a whole host of reasons.
It happened to me today with a local recruiter, who simply sent me a message saying a local short contract...
August 2011
2 posts
12 tags
Sittin' Pretty (or... I Suck at Design)
For the most part, I’ve always been an ‘if it works’ kinda guy; I never really paid that much attention to how pretty anything I ever made looked.
When I was a kid, my family taught me all the crafty basics… how to knit (and french-knit), to sew, papercraft & papier-maché, to carve wood, to do a whole bunch of that type of thing.
My LEGO and Meccano builds were more...
18 tags
50px (pixel) wide TweetButton image
I recently added a group of share buttons to a few of my sites (please go drop me a Like, +1, or tweet on picWorkflow.com if you have a second) and found that whilst most sites use 50 pixel wide images, Twitter’s share button is 55px wide.
I’m a bit of a neat-freak so this was unacceptable, but I do think their button looks pretty cool, so here’s their image, modified slightly...
June 2011
3 posts
9 tags
World's Number One!
If you say you’re the world’s number one/biggest/most popular/cheapest/oldest/newest/most original/only/most exclusive/fastest/hottest/coldest/massivest anything in the world/on the internet… it had better be hard-fact tack-sharp 100% true.
Because if you say it is, and ‘I’ KNOW it isn’t, I already think you’re an idiot and a liar… you’re...
9 tags
Damn Maths
IM Conversation…
[Me]: too much wow [Not me]: no wow is too much wow [Me]: wouldn’t that essentially mean that an infinity of wow is not too much wow? [Not me]: no it wouldnt [Not me]: it would mean its infinity times too much wow [Me]: not necessarily [Me]: depend’s if you are using base>2 or boolean algebra ;) [Not me]: god, im not having this geeky conversation :P [Me]: I...
6 tags
Yet another x-men movie
I’ve never been much of a fan of this latest round of comic-book based movies. They usually can’t decide whether they want to be a special-effects masterpiece, or a meaningful canon-friendly artwork (like most of the comic series’).
Sadly this means they become neither, and end being a mildly entertaining but ultimately conventional bland mishmash of vaguely consistent tosh.
...
May 2011
16 posts
11 tags
We Don't Believe Your Lies
We’ve all seen your lies… and we don’t believe them:
Retiring to spend more time with the family … means … Someone blackmailed you into resignation.
“I did NOT have sexual relations with ‘that’ woman” … means … “I DID have sexual relations with ‘that’ woman”.
“I am NOT a crook” … means...
9 tags
Gossip is a Virus
A few simple rules of life:
Politicians lie.
Footballers sleep around.
Musicians take drugs.
People seem to be surprised enough however when any of these things happen, that they rush out and buy more newspapers (or watch the news, etc etc). This gives the ‘media’ a legitimate reason to focus on such bullshit subjects… money!
These people then of course discuss the matter...
10 tags
Training Day
I’ve never been one to really benefit from ‘guided learning’. It’s just not really the kind of teaching that can keep me engaged and inspired.
In school I wasn’t focussed, so managed fair-to-middling results… the same in university; I always had more fun (and so learned more) with projects I could run with on my own, make my own mistakes, and not get stuck in a...
8 tags
Stop Nagging Me!
I don’t want the ad-sponsored local free-paper shoved through my door 3 times a week.
I’m content with my mobile phone provider.
I don’t want to ‘upgrade to gold’… ever.
I’m happy with my current faith. (Agnostic if you must know)
I don’t want ‘rock-hard’ abs… a wee bit flabby is fine by me.
You can’t have my spare change...
12 tags
13 tags
Droidalicous
18 months ago I jumped on the apple-bandwagon and got myself an iPhone with the intention of developing a picNiche application for it… only after I had it though did I take the time to look into the details of how the apple developer programme works. In brief… it’s evil.
Their programme not only requires developers to pay a fairly substantial ‘registration’ fee just to get the appropriate...
Be Right Back...
This REALLY annoys me… people who say brb, when what they really mean is bbl, or bbs, or one of the other be-back-(time) statements.
Here’s a general guideline in ascending order of duration:
BRB: Be Right Back… generally very short, less than a minute or so. ie. Immediately. I will wait for you.
BBS: Be Back Soon… short, but not immediately, usually within a few...
Life.com contest, will this make contributors... →
azurelaroux:
At first I was surprised to learn that a respected company like Life.com would pair up with a less than respectable micro-stock agency like iStock for a photo contest. But then I remembered that Life’s images are actually owned by Getty. Is Getty under the impression that a photo contest will some how soothe contributors who are still upset by the massive royalties cuts, lack of...
arenacreative asked: How many coffees did you have so far today? LOL
8 tags
Each new day
Months and years pass, and friends leave or stay.
Pains and joys seep, and fears draw or stray.
Same though I walk, and weave each new day.
7 tags
Priorities
I have a hard time with priorities. I always have had. Right now in fact I should probably be working on 20 other things more important than writing posts for my ‘opinion’ blog; though right now, this is really the only thing I ‘want’ to be doing.
I keep thinking: “oh what a great piece of software” beit outlook in 2006, evernote, producteev, tasksched, or...
4 tags
You can't please everyone
I get a lot of questions from many people using my tools, software, websites or reading my various blogs. This is usually a good thing, but sometimes, just sometimes mind, I can NEVER provide a satisfactory response; sometimes I am too busy to get into something deep, or refer to the fallback of ‘google it’.
This doesn’t mean I don’t care about your question, just that...
11 tags
Social Media needs an I-Care button
Anyone else out there have hundreds of ‘friends’, ‘fans’ or ‘followers’ on their social-site lists? yes, me too.
I’d like to have the ability to set only some of them, those with something important to say, as people I care about, people I want to really focus on and be actively involved with.
This doesn’t mean I want to ignore everyone else, just...
13 tags
Tales of horror!
Once a week I get a coffee at my favourite coffee-place and take an hour or so to read the local paper (my friday-morning ritual I guess).
This particular paper I like because it’s fairly liberal and fairly light-hearted, but still manages to get a reasonable amount of new information (mainly I check the tech, cinema/theatre reviews, science news and local business sections) into an issue....
12 tags
Getting really tired of ad-packed blogs
I realise the web is fuelled by ads, and for the most part I’m delighted that it’s grown to run (and run well) that way. Content is (mostly) free for all, and for the most part it’s incredibly easy to find.
What’s really getting my goat lately, is article-directories, blogs and reposting ‘indexers’, which are coated floor to ceiling in advertisements, which...
9 tags
Books, books, dead tree books
I’ve been reading books on my kindle for almost 2 years now, and in all that time have not read a single ‘real’ book. With the cost of shipping, the unnecessary fuel I know it uses, and organising the volume on my shelves, it’s just not worth it.
I picked up a name for real books a while back on the kindle forums for these increasingly outdated volumes: “dead tree...
April 2011
1 post
5 tags
Sucker Punched by Robot Samurai Nazi Dragons
I’ve waited a LONG time for the ‘perfect action movie’, and for a long while, I think Sucker Punch is the closest we’re going to get.
It may not be 100% perfect, but 99% is pretty close: hot girls with ample cleavage and short-skirted ass waving, tons of guns, explosions aplenty and a body count to marvel at. Clockwork Nazis are of course… awesome, with samurai...
January 2011
15 posts
10 tags
Buried
One of the things which can turn a good movie into a great one is the soundtrack.
Likewise, one of the things which can turn a good movie into a steaming pile of manure, is the soundtrack.
Buried fits into the latter category: the premise, and the dialog were both compelling, the problem being that when the dialog really matters all you can hear is the melodramatic soundtrack.
Whoever scored...
15 tags
in the dark of night every atheist half believes
Quote: Edward Young (or Frank Gallagher)
Now I’m not a religious person, in fact most of the time I think it’s complete bunk. But I’m not an atheist, never have been. Denying anything to the point of absolute certainty is just plain impractical, given how often new discoveries are made and the world is turned anew.
So what do I believe? I often wonder myself, as I know...
15 tags
Answer your emails please!
I send quite a lot of emails, and sometimes end up sending them to people who don’t ‘particularly’ like me.
This is usually because someone (or sometimes many people) using one of my tools or websites has specifically requested something which requires me to contact these other people.
I just wanted to mention… sometimes a “No” is fine. I’d even settle...
11 tags
The Life of a Cat...
Oh sometimes I wish I was a cat. Sleep all day, sleep all night, eat when you’re hungry, and have your own tiny door which don’t even need to worry about whether you’ll lose the key if you have a bit too much ‘nip.
And you get to be REALLY cute all the time, and if you’re somehow managing to have a bad day you can scratch people and they just put it down to you...
12 tags
Be pessimistic, sometimes.
I release new products, ranges, software or other stuff quite often, I’m one of those people who has to have 100 projects on the go at any one time.
When I first started out with my own business, every release or every new project was ‘going to change the world’, or at least my small part of it… but one thing you learn when you’re running your own business, is that...
11 tags
As tall as a field-mouse on stilts giving a...
Ever notice in newspapers, magazines and blogs, that there are always some pretty strange units of measurement to describe the size of things?
Presumably this is an effort to make the size ‘relatable’ for the average idiot who doesn’t know how big 75 meters (67.5 yards) is… Well that’s roughly the size of 15 double-decker buses, or the distance of a 1 hour crawl...
9 tags
Sorry for my poor [insert-language]
Please don’t apologise for your ‘poor english’.
It’s far far better than my russian, polish, german, italian, french, spanish, hungarian, svensk, or any other language except english.
I get quite a lot of emails from russia and poland (where a lot of stock photographers are) and almost all of them apologise for their english. Please don’t, I understand, and if I...
10 tags
Things I don't care about...
Football: what a load of pointless twaddle. Playing it is fine, great, fun even, but who won what cup, when and who scored how many goals. Which footballer sleeps with prostitutes or just crashed his ridiculously expensive car… I just frankly don’t give a shit. My only football knowledge is that Uruguay won the first world cup, and I don’t even care about that.
Boring people:...
8 tags
Things I care about...
My friends and family: first and foremost. Offend, affront, insult or injure them in any way and I won’t be nice to you.
My freedom. I like my lifestyle, and despite the fact I only earn enough to get by on, I’m not a status-junkie, so I’m happy with my freedom.
Christmas. Christmas is awesome, not because I’m crazy religious or anything, and Christmas shopping is a...
6 tags
The National Lottery
Why does anyone play the national lottery? Euro lottery? lottery bundles? Euro-raffle?
Granted when it first started, it was a bit of fun, but there are people who’ve ploughed hundreds, if not tens of thousands of their hard-earned cash into the vaguely remote chance that they ‘might’ win a couple of million.
“It could be yooouuuuu…” says the big finger in the...
6 tags
Christmas Tree, oh Christmas Tree...
I should have taken my christmas tree down by now I know. Surely it should be up 12 days before christmas and taken down by 12 days after, but hey, I like it.
Granted I don’t want to be ‘that guy’ come july, you know… ‘that guy’ who still has his christmas lights up, but really, is there anything sadder than the space in the living room where the christmas...
9 tags
Pet peeves: An hotel...
This is an annoyance:
I visited an hotel
I ate an ham
I own an hamster
I wear an hat
Yes yes, I know… for some (possibly most) english-speakers, the leading h is silent when spoken aloud, but when written it is ‘a hotel’, ‘a ham’, ‘a hamster’, ‘a hat’. It’s a consonant, and until it becomes a vowel, please, I am begging you, treat it...
14 tags
I'm... Feeling... Sleepy... Not!
I’ve always found sleep quite intriguing; we all spend between a quarter and a third of our entire lives doing it, both us humans, and every other species, yet it seems to offer no obvious evolutionary benefit (something I’m surprised the intelligent design nutcases havn’t jumped on).
Yes, ok, it allows our bodies time to regenerate lost cells and our brains some downtime away from our...
Alcohol... what's the point?
The UK has a big drink problem. Let me rephrase that: the UK has a MASSIVE drink problem. Why?
Is life here so f&$king miserable that people just feel the need to blow out what remains of their teeny-tiny brains and escape to a world where they are king, and everyone else is a mere peon?
Are people so f£$king stupid that they don’t realise that binge drinking is so incredibly bad for...
tumblrbot asked: WHAT IS YOUR EARLIEST HUMAN MEMORY?
December 2010
3 posts
New Year Resolutions
1) Improve my websites.
2) Make enough money that I don’t have to worry about whether I’ll meet my rent next month.
3) Blog a bit more, it’s fun.
4) Finish writing one of my books.
5) Continue to be happy :)
11 tags
Rage, Rage, Rage against the machine
This is a photo of me my first day of University.
I still remember the feeling of walking down the road from my Mum’s house bright and early on ‘Registration Sunday’, with 2 big carry-alls, one over each shoulder and a ruck-sack in the middle. I hadn’t lived outside my hometown of Flint before, and part of me couldn’t really believe that I was on the way out.
...
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