Dual post - New toys, future toys, and G.I. Joes I'm giving to the dog.

This post was originally posted on my new blog - GrantSidwell.com. Please visit this page to stay up to date with me and this blog will only be active for a limited time.
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Since I decided that my old blog just wasn't cutting the mustard anymore I've invested a fair amount of time into learning new things.

1. Drupal

I first time heard of Drupal was at the first MiniBar evening I went to. At the time I was seriously new to the more technical aspect of new media and as such I paid it little to no attention. However the name stuck, and I revisited it a couple weeks ago whilst I was playing around with wordpress for this blog. Within a couple hours I had everything sorted and to my complete amazement I had created my blog, from start to finish, completely by myself. Whilst I'll admit it's not pretty... it is 100% me, and I really feel like I have been empowered thanks to Drupal.

2. Xobni

I found xobni (inbox spelt backwards) thanks to techcrunch and installed it at work. Talk about a nifty app! I have been enthralled by my email usage. My favourite thing to do is look at when a particular person responds to my emails. So now I know that contact X seems to only like getting back to me in the afternoons... bonus now I know not to expect anything until then and can manage my own time more effectively.

3. Twitter

While I've been tweeting for just over a couple months now, and still not used it to it's full extent, I'm still confident that it's popularity will continue to grow. Twitter is hard to explain to others why it's cool... It's not IM, it's not blogging, it's not a facebook status, and the blank look I get when I say 'micro-blogging' gets enough blank faces to discourage from using it ever again. However you put it, if you give it time, twitter rocks.

Some things I'm going to learn about

1. Entrecard

Eager to see if it's worth the effort.

2. Affiliate activity vs Adsense

Even with the meager traffic I used to get on my old blog, I still managed to generate a google cheque eventually. For my new blog I'm going to be using a combination of different affiliate activity and I'll see how it goes.

Things I'm not going to be learning.

1. Facebook

FB is sooo 2007!

2. Blogger

Goodbye my old friend... you served me well.

Much love.

GrantSidwell.com goes live

As I mentioned recently, I bought GrantSidwell.com for the purpose of moving over to using it as my new blog and all round online presence. Well I've finally got a something together which I'm vaguely happy with as a starting point and it's up.

I will be dual posting for a short while, but eventually this site (thecolony) will change to serve a different purpose for my online activity.

So please go have a look and feel free to get back to me with any suggestions... I definitely need them. Also let me know if anything doesn't work, I've never proclaimed to be the most technically orientated individual so there is a good chance something's fooked.

Much love!

WTF! Encyclopedia Dramatica

You can imagine my surprise when I took a look at my logs to find out why there was a sudden spike in traffic (turns out I'm on the first page of google images for the term- london snow) and I find Encyclopedia Dramatica in my referrer logs.

Encyclopedia Dramatica is a spoof on wikipedia and the South African entry is beyond description... let's just say it wouldn't exactly feature on SA Rocks!
So you can imagine my disgust when I found that this entry was linking to my blog.
"Typical example of a dumbfuck saffa blog"

Hmmm... initial reaction was who, what, where...can... whoop ass... now! Edit- history search- user search. User=Stabularasa, and then I thought... hang on a tick...

(little voice inside my head)
"Grant... is it really worth getting worked up because some wanker who frequents (and edits) this sort of content decided to link to your blog?"

The answer is, of course, no.

So I checked out what Encyclopedia Dramatica was about and it clearly states:

"While the articles themselves are mostly satirical jabs at Internet users (both individually and in groups) and phenomena, bear in mind that the Encyclopedia Dramatica itself is a parody of a much less funny online encyclopedia. As such, ED articles tend to make fun of the supposed objectivity and accuracy, elitism, and stupid edit wars of such sites. In other words, expect blatant, biased lies, and expect boring truths to get deleted quickly."

Calmness restored.
Whilst I do not condone the majority of the content of the South Africa page, and I find it mostly in particularly bad taste, I can accept the attempt at satire. So... Stabularasa... I'm honoured you feel my blog is worthy of a link to this site. (Really, there are far better people whom you could've baited with this.)

Much love!

Big Brother - Celebrity Hijack

The tears are literally pouring down my face! I'm an seconds away from wetting my pants!

I'm currently watching the latest incarnation of Big Brother. This time they have celebrities controlling the housemates. The housemates are all crazy over achievers; racing drivers,dancers, circus performers, entrepreneurs, etc aged 18+.

Matt Lucas (Little Britain) is currently controlling some poor scottish guy and making him do the most insane things whilst the rest of the housemates enter the house unaware that he is being controlled. "John - Go and ask the newest housemate if his beard is stuck on, John - tell that housemate his hair is lop sided, John - collapse on the floor and fake cramp in your leg, John - shout the work 'cake', John - Tell the new dancer housemate that you are the best irish dancer in Scotland..."

I doubt this translates as exceptionally funny when you read it, but, my word, this is outstanding!
I'm not a fan of Big Brother and my interest in this series only stems from the fact that I'm working on a online campaign for an advertiser... but if it continues in this vein I'm going to be hooked.

Update: John - Who turns out to be the chairman of the Scottish youth parliament has just passed his task and won the house a party and himself a safe route to the final of the competition.

I'm getting a face-lift.

As a christmas gift to myself I have finally purchased grantsidwell.com

In the next couple weeks I'll be moving everything across to my new online home. It's going to be running on wordpress and I'm currently shopping around for a cool design.
I'm hoping this will get me posting more often, and with the developments on the own business front I should have more to write about.

Merry merry

A quick note to say that I hope everyone has a wonderful festive season and a great new year.

I'm sitting in my house on a cold wet and rainy London evening alone with my remote control. I had a great Christmas lunch with mates at a restaurant, and I'm not far from my bed. I'm looking forward to a great bowing day breakfast and then the boxing day sport.

A bit of a note to self here... I've come up, with what I think, (as I often do) is a great idea for a blog. It's sure to get attention, and easily monetized... although I'm still pondering on a way to keep it going.

Crazy times

Okay, so I have been seriously neglecting my blog.

Some of this neglect may stem from the fact that I'm hating my blog at the moment. I just hate how it looks. When I interact with peeps online I feel like the kid who got their grannies hand-me-down car while everyone is driving shiny citi golfs. (Not sure if this analogy works but sounds great in my head.) Giving serious consideration to treating myself for christmas and paying for something... add to wish list (along with various other gadgets).

The next reason for the neglect is that I am crazy busy at the moment. My day job is really going well and keeps me out of trouble during the day. By night... (makes me sound like a superhero)... I'm swamped with the development of our new project. Add to this an attempt at a social life and trying to renew my passport and you have one busy mo-fo.  

In the spare moments I've had, I've been watching intently the developments back home. The amatomu update, the topic of venture capital investment, and online shopping in SA this christmas. I felt very out of the loop the other night night when I wasn't at 27dinner Jozi to hear the Afrigator news. Thankfully Neville was in the same boat and told me about IRCMaidon's twitter updates.

Thankfully it is Friday. I'm going to attempt to go to watch the boks play the baa-baas tomorrow at twickenham, however I don't have a ticket yet...ah well, it's all part of the fun.

So until I have the time to make a proper post, critically analyzing some menial topic or other, you'll have to accept my apologies on the relative blog silence.

(P.S. Cardiff last weekend was amazing, it really is true what they say about the Welsh national anthem.)

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Feeling pretty pumped.

I just got back from a seriously productive meeting with my business partners to discuss some amendments to our site. There is an awesome buzz amongst the group s we can see everything coming together. As you can imagine there is more than a fair amount of work ahead of us, but none of us seem too worried by that... it's part of the process.

Read today that online retail in SA has increased a further 35% year-on-year up to R900million odd....sweet! Gimme a piece of that pie.

It's very tempting to start saying more than I should but my partners have asked me to keep my big mouth shut... so I will.

So I've got home after the meeting feeling pretty pumped... so much so that I've had to open a beer just to ensure that I chill out before heading off to bed. Guess this is the passion that people speak about!

Tomorrow is a hectic day at work as I have two more major proposals to do, but having said that the day job is still pushing all the right buttons at the moment, and having TASS as a distraction is awesome.

Anyway, as it has become a theme over the past couple posts... here's another music video:

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