reflections

Well folks, today is a special day for me and my blog, which has now been online for 6 whole months! It doesn’t sound like very long, but in terms of blogging it’s quite an achievement!

In the true tradition of blogging milestones, I feel obliged to share some stats that cover the last half a year:

• I’ve had 49,016 unique visitors to the site
• They’ve looked at 101,932 pages
• I’ve written 57 posts
• My most popular post (80,000 views) is this one
• I’ve had 933 comments left by visitors
• The first comment was left by Zep
• Askimet has caught 2096 spam comments
• I’ve got 302 feed subscribers
• Alexa ranks me as 201,043 most popular site
• Compete ranks me as the 267,244 most popular site
• Technorati ranks me as the 27,786 most popular blog (with an authority score of 205)
• 82% of my visitors are using Firefox
• I’ve managed to successfully resist monetising my blog!

I’d like to send heartfelt thanks to everyone who has left comments, sent me messages, or just read my blog - the feedback is what makes blogging worth all the effort, and what keeps my spirits high! I look forward to writing another post like this in 6 months time…

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One of my hobbies is domaining. I buy and sell names on a regular basis, typically for profit - and I have what I consider to be a substantial portfolio. I’m not new to this game though - I’ve been trading names for almost a decade, and I’ve seen all sorts of scams being run around the domaining marketplace…

Imagine my surprise then when I got an email this evening, apparently from somebody interested in buying a domain name I recently snagged in an auction. I was quite excited by the prospect of a quick turnaround on the name - but felt that I should do a bit of Googling on the sender of the message.

The guy who sent me the email called himself Anthony Garringer - and he’s apparently the President of a company called TGNet Consulting. His email address is garringer@toughguy.net.

Here’s what I found out…

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When things in your life seem almost too much to handle, when 24 hours in a day are not enough, remember the mayonnaise jar and the two pints of beer.

A professor stood before his philosophy class and had some items in front of him. When the class began, wordlessly, he picked up a very large and empty mayonnaise jar and proceeded to fill it with golf balls.

He then asked the students if the jar was full. They agreed that it was.

The professor then picked up a box of pebbles and poured them into the jar. He shook the jar lightly, and the pebbles rolled into the open areas between the golf balls. He then asked the students again if the jar was full. They agreed again that it was. Read the rest of this entry »

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I can’t imagine that anybody out there is waiting for baited breath for me to start writing regularly once again - after all, there’s a massive selection of places you can go for an interesting read! Until my workload lightens again (hopefully in about a week or so) you could do worse than to check out Smashing Magazine’s 45 Excellent Blog Designs article.

There’s some awesome blog designs in the post, broken down (quite unusually) by the platform on which the blogs run. Some of my favourite themes are featured in it - including Veerle’s Blog, NorthxEast, FreelanceSwitch and WebDesignerWall to name but a few!

What’s bizarre though is that this blog is also featured in the roundup - something that I’m dead chuffed about, especially since Smashing Magazine is one of my own daily reads and a real source of inspiration to me! Thanks guys - I’m truly honoured to be included!

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I hate giving business presentations, and I do anything I can to avoid them! It’s not that I’m bad at them (many years of practice has made me quite good), it has nothing to do with me not liking to talk (anyone who’s met me will tell you that I can talk the hind legs off a donkey), and it’s certainly not anything to do with nerves (being a DJ means that I regularly find myself on stage in front of large audiences). I just don’t like them - simple as that!

I’ve had many labels stuck on me in the past; including Techie, Geek, Designer and Coder - but recently I’ve been called an Entrepreneur, which is a new one for me! The label stems from my development of Britster - a niche social networking site focused on Britain - and carries with it the threat of presenting the project to potential venture capitalists and the like.

I plan to write a few articles covering this topic, but one of the most important aspects of a presentation is the materials you use to reinforce your sales pitch. They can make the difference between a successful presentation and one that flops - so from slides and brochures to props and snacks, here are the essentials that entrepreneurs should bring to their first meeting.

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