…the sound of the ocean at night…

…the colour green – in so many different shades…

…Db – D flat that is…

…touching clothes in shops…

…the smell of Jasmine in nature…

…the warm sunshine on my face…

And some newly discovered ones:

…the amazing sight of rain hitting the surface of the sea from below…

…mango fruit…

…the feeling of making someone’s day really special…

Plenty more to be found.

Random things for the moment:

I saw this in a club in Manchester - 

Much more to come – when I can find the time of course!

As I gazed out of the window and looked at the surroundings (although not impressive or inspiring awe in any way) I distinctly remember the feeling of a complete blank canvas being before me. I didn’t really have any expectations or any definite plan other than to find somewhere to sleep that night and what the local beer was going to taste like. After dumping my stuff I headed out to have a look around. Then I had the second occurrence of a feeling that it quite amazing. I had this feeling that I knew I was going to be there, that I would call it home. There was nothing really awesome to see, just the crowded streets and busy roads with millions of scooters. The weird thing was that I celebrated this feeling with what actually was the last time I had a MacDonald’s – that was 7 years ago now and I’m still proud of that! I ended up finding my feet and staying there for quite a long time.

So what’s the point to all this? I guess its an event in my life that I always remember and always think about when something new comes up. Expectations are a natural circumstance of any event, you can try and not think about it but you always will. With a bit of introspection, I find you can train yourself to switch it off and actually approach new situations without any preconceptions as to the what, where, when why etc. What you have is in effect, a complete blank canvas in which to create your own phenomenology. Sometimes that can’t always be the case as turning off your brain in certain situations is impossible and lets face it, sometimes against your personality. However, that doesn’t mean to say that when there are too many variables to consider and your pre-conceptions are limited due to the lack of experience, it actually is possible.

The here and now shapes what we do and how we experience life. By dragging too many of our preconceived thoughts and experiences, are we actually creating our environment based on what we already know – or think we know? A always precedes B, water is always wet and the sky is always blue. Being hot does not make you sleep well, all women act the same and all men are bastards. Really? I certainly don’t think so. Things can change, people can change. The idea about the canvas being blank allows you to really start again, fresh and from the beginning. Its like experiencing snow for the first time or the feeling of being totally comfortable with who you are in a crowded room.

There’s nothing to spoil what you are about to experience or make things happen the way you completely expect them to happen. Everything happens in a new way and because of it, you become a new person free from everything that you once were. No barriers, no negative thoughts, no dissonance just a complete new experience.

Letting go and feeling something happen around you that you’re not in control of is totally liberating. When was the last time you experienced something for the first time? Everyday – you just have to let it all happen.

Everyday gets that little bit closer though and that little bit more exciting. There’s so much to achieve now and so many possibilities that all the waiting and heartache was worth it.

Things to look forward to right now:

• Turkey: Finally going to make it there for fun and sights. The best thing about this is that I’ll be able to see it from a Turkish perspective
• London Calling: not in the way I used to dread but in a far more exciting way
• The Far East: Calling me yet again but a great time to catch up with everybody and enjoy the sunshine.
• The Business Case: Mum’s the word and not word up!

So much to do that’s there not enough hours in the day!

Tally ho.

Two thousand and ten was quite an eventful year. In fact, it was the most eventful year since I came back from abroad I guess. The most notable thing about 2010 was how quickly it went by. One minute it was May and the next we’re having the Christmas party! One minute I was in Australia and the next I was moving cities. New job and a new life in a new city as well as a month off with a bit of travel.

One thing that reflects the past year is all the new people that I’ve met. There’s been some great friends I’ve made in some great places of the world and I’m happy to have taken chances to reap the benefits. I’m not a great believer in fate as I think it removes all control I have over my life. The things that happen are a consequence of the choices that I’ve made and fate implies that all my choices are made for me. If this were the case then out of all the millions and millions of possible outcomes open to me in my life, a predefined path has always, and always will, exist. Sorry but I don’t believe that. I see something in my life that I believe is the right thing and I go for it.

I’ve never been one of those people who has been afraid of change. Change is the only way we can make ourselves better and achieve what we desire. This is where I start to get a little contradictory in my beliefs. I do believe that everyone has a destiny to fulfil. This is of course subjective to every person and is not always the achievement of enlightenment, becoming a multi-millionaire or  composing a symphony. Everyone has something that they all aspire to be or do. There is a point at which we reach the one thing that we’ve always wanted and I believe this is the point of destiny.

Not everyone is the same and we all have our different goals. Some set the bar higher than others and this is what creates the richness and diversity of human beings. Finding your destiny is about a life journey. Taking chances. Trying something new. Experiencing as much as you can. This is where I feel my destiny lies. I come from a family of travellers so this is partly in my blood. But the same family is also one who are not afraid to move around and almost be a little nomadic. The older I get, the more comfortable I get with doing this and that is what makes things so exciting.

2010 was a year that I got my search for destiny back on track. The start of the year was painful, the middle of the year was confusing but the end of the year has been awesome. The new people I have met are special and I know that this will be a new stepping stone in my story.

Its good to feel excited again. One thing that brought this to my attention was re-reading my first interview. Hopefully many more to come but here I can share a little as its sometimes good to celebrate your successes:

http://www.insidermedia.com/productsandservices/archive/ybi/october_2010/instant_returns_/index.html

I can remember the last time I did this was at Uni. We all decided to have a bet and see who could grow the best ‘tache in a week. The funny thing was that we all went the whole week with a beard (no-one wanted to just shave and leave the moustache) and then have a shave on the morning of the parade. I can remember having a shave to leave the ‘tache and being totally horrified. “There’s no way I’m going out of the house looking like this” I thought. The best part was that everyone had the same thought and shaved completely. There was only Andy P with his proud as Larry moustache looking like a total tit. And we all laughed.

So this time I’m older and have that ‘couldn’t give a crap what people think’ attitude so I’m going for it. However, I’m not just ready to bear the ‘tache just yet so I’m growing the beard…for now. Then the ‘tache will appear.

This will be a weekly update with how stoopid I look with a ‘tache. Enjoy

I’ve moved into my apartment and been without Broadband for nearly 3 weeks now. The upshot is I’m finding it just a wee bit difficult. Being without my blog or my work and my other online business is proving to be a struggle.

Still, I’ve been watching a lot of movies recently – including an entire catalogue of Muay Thai – and the across-the-road pub is proving a real winner. There’s always a million things to do and Leeds does kick ass for being able to just being able to do something fun and interesting.

Living in Leeds city centre does rock the caskills…now if only I could get online…

The decision was made quicker that I had initially thought and I found it easy to say goodbye. Not that I didn’t love it but that it was time to move on. It won’t be long until I move into my city apartment where I won’t actually need my car much, apart from the weekend bit of fun and trips down to Notts et al. Another bright light is that I’ll at least have the MX5 to play around in on the odd weekends.

So now the plan is forming for a new set of wheels. I’m thinking big this time and something to satisfy my needs as a red blooded man who likes cars. Hmm, the list is long and distinguished but for some reason I’m swaying towards a Nissan 350z. Don’t know why but thinking it would be a lot of fun. Other thoughts include Focus RS, TT, S2000, Skyline or perhaps Civic Type R or Golf GTi. I even saw an M3 on the market for £10k recently. So, with all that in mind I’m thinking of at least 250 – 300 bhp to play with. Now that would be muchos funnus!

City apartment with weekend rocket…hmm many exciting things ahead.

Fancy a spin?

1: Multiple Accounts/Profiles

I can remember a blog post put out by this company MD (and it was within the search industry) trying to emphasise the need to have both a personal and professional twitter account. Hmm, there’s some logic in that and if you’re someone who has a lot to say then this is a definite strategy. As I mentioned above, I can remember when Twitter was the domain of the SEO professionals so why would your friends and family want to hear about Google updates or social media strategy? That most certainly would be very boring to read. However, two twitter accounts you need Tweetdeck and a shed load of time to manage it. Organising everyone into lists helps but that still means you have your homepage Tweets to sift through.

2: Just had toast for breakfast

As the title suggests! I once followed someone in the industry (I won’t name names here) who tweeted almost on the hour, every day. This included quite a lot of updates on the guy’s cats. I love cats but to be honest, when I’m following someone for their brain and position I’m not at all bothered about his cat that just ate some prawns. Seriously, are you really bothered about who had what for breakfast? In my mind following a celebrity and getting excited about what they had for breakfast sort of puts you in the bracket of a stalker. This should be saved for something really special – or funny.

3: Updates from conferences

This is actually near the top of my public beating list. I recently attended a conference that had quite a number of big names in the audience. One of which sat next to me during a talk with his laptop. I saw he had TweetDeck open and he spent the whole session tweeting what the speaker was saying. Adding of course the obligatory hash tag for the conference. If you follow this guy, your entire inbox will be taken up with on-the-minute tweets about stuff you’re not privy to or will be able to know what it’s about. And if you’re not able to attend, are you going to get any value from fragmented lecture notes which you’re not able to know if full? I seriously doubt it. Would it not be better to simply take notes, write a good blog post and then share it with people later, with of course a hash tag for the conference? Isn’t that a more useful means of tweeting the learnings from a seminar?

4: Auto follow

Its great to get people following you. Obviously, Twitter does fall victim to spam bots putting fake profiles but some follow you for legitimate reasons. What is worst though is the automated follow. Its quite funny when you mention something quite simple, say ‘Microsoft’ or ‘Apple’, and then your followers doubles in minutes. These people who follow you may or may not continue to do so or after close inspection they may have followed you for the wrong reasons. I would hate to know how much time that a user has to spend to sift through the autofollows to see which one(s) are actually useful. Not a profitable use of time if you ask me. Seems that this should be developed further to include more broad and exact match keyword following.

5: The chronic re-tweeters

This either shows a lack of originality from the person, a lack of understanding about how to use Twitter or even a lack of anything worthwhile to say. It would be nice to know that there is some personality to the people you are going to follow. Obviously, points 2 and 6 need to be taken into account before starting to tweet!

6: The constant updaters’

Not to be confused with points 2 and 3 above. Its good to have a regular amount of Tweets as this will encourage people to follow you back. However, sometimes some people just don’t know when to stop. This is even applicable to people who are putting out good information and even better re-tweets. I have regrettably un-followed quite a few people who are guilty of this and I may have suffered for it. Some people in the industry just put out too much information so the problem occurs that you can just be bowled over by information overload! The main problem with people who Tweet too much is that they don’t consider their followers. More than 70 updates a day will totally clog up your homepage so the likely hood of seeing updates from other people you follow becomes remote. Quite often News sites are the most guilty of this. The result…Unfollow! Its like Email Marketing, you should only send out a mailshot when you’ve got something to say. Anything more, or send too much and people just un-subscribe. Simples.

7: The bandwagoners

Quite easy to spot from the randomness and general lack of thought to the Tweets. I think these people have been hearing about Twitter a lot on TV or heard about it from other people and have just joined because everyone else has. A lot of businesses are guilty of this approach as well (explained more in my previous post here). If you don’t believe in Twitter or sharing information, why bother setting an account up in the first place? This trend is also guilty of being nearly all of this top 10 list in one.

8: The clear mistaken identity

This doesn’t happen very often but some followers don’t really search correctly or just simply follow the wrong people. I once got a follower from someone who thought I was a long lost friend from College. Quite easily done but this chap didn’t look at my profile to actually see that I was English and not American. Therefore, clearly the wrong Stu. Twitter has perfectly allowed the facility of having the official account of people (mostly celebrities) to appear as  Verified Accounts. Its a shame that the same can’t be true of brands or companies. It can be quite annoying when trying to find certain businesses or brands only to see that there are 20 odd fake accounts. The official one could be elusive. This I think is something Twitter should really be doing for brands by adding the Verified Account to give the confidence that they are following the correct one. Another reason is brand protection. Just as Google prevents brand advertising on PPC, the same should be true of Twitter accounts. If you are a big brand, the last thing you want is to miss out on your Brand username as someone who is sending out fake updates with your details defeats the legitimacy of the Twitter account in the first place.

9: Twitter is not a competition

A lot of people on Social Networking sites seem to treat them as some sort of popularity contest. Just as I don’t add people I’ve had a conversation on a bus with as friends on Facebook, I don’t see the point of following as many people as possible. As I mentioned on a previous post about how many people you can effectively follow on Twitter, there is a finite number of people that you can follow. Similaraly, there are finite number of people who can follow you. If you’re not someone who is an industry expert on something, famous or a big brand, you can’t possibly know 56,000 people all of whom are following your every more. If you’re just using Twitter for fun, why go out to follow as many people as possible in order to get that 50% of people that will follow you back. Lets face it, unless you’re Richard Branson or Rand Fishkin, you’re not going to get 56,000+ people following you so why try?

These are just my thoughts on the issues that Twitter faces along with how to monetise the site. After all, its still a young site and has plenty of room to develop. I hopefully see Twitter developing to being the place to get information. I use it everyday and I love it…but that doesn’t mean there is plenty of opportunity for people to use if effectively.