Archive for July, 2007

As you’ll know, i’m heading off to London tomorrow..

I’m just back from the bank having got a bit of sterling (£0.66 per €1 or £100 for €150).

The thing is i have about £150 sterling sitting in my wallet. But i can’t use it in England. Why? Because it’s Northern Irish sterling..

It’s a pain in the backside having to go in and get english only sterling.. it’s stupid.

Nothern Ireland is part of Britain, yet in effect they have a different currency (well perhaps not currency, but legal tender.)

I really can’t see the sense in it.. pride probably plays a huge role but it’s about time they introduced an all British pound that is accepted everywhere.

If one part of Britain won’t accept another part of Britaind’s pound, how the hell do people think they’ll join the euro

A year ago, i bought my first domain name and hosting package. I went with DreamHost.

A year ago i had no idea how to make a website, how to work a server.. i didn’t even know there was such things as php and perl and all those languages. I’d heard of html and java – that was about it. The rest was gobble-de-guk.
Why did i buy a domain and host? The real reason was to push me into learning about how websites work. I wanted to learn html and how to get a basic site up and running (i never intended to make a living out of websites, i wanted to be an IT manager). So i got hold of dreamweaver and quickly realised it could do the html for me – nice one

After a while this domain – smemon.com became my first live and active website. Standard 5 page website with a custom skinned php forum, chatroom and a manually updated ‘news’ page. Needless to say, it didn’t last long. Zero traffic, about 3 members and a site full of ads

I guess we’ve all been there That was my first lesson. So determined to carry on, i designed theleavingcert.com and added articles – they’re still on it today (no nonsense, ‘what you need to pass’ articles). I also added a forum on there and that went rather well. Adsense started to get results – 1 or 2 clicks per week

From then on, i’ve been hooked. Stumbled upon wordpress, became a little master at it, learned the tricks of the trade in SEO and the rest is history. So although i have a few sites under my belt, i actually can’t code at all or design at all I *understand* coding and design though, which i feel is just as valuable.. for example, when installing plugins into wordpress, you need to understand what you can’t and can edit and what goes where.. so although people will say any eejit can put together a blog, that’s not quite true

Over the past year, i’ve formed 3 partnerships. 2 died, neither my fault. The guys i was dealing with simply disappeared/never replied. This, after spending hours and hours talking and coming up with plans etc.. Both were from the States so i realised that was an issue (time difference, never being able to meet up etc..). I still didn’t give up on an e-partnership though. I came up with the idea for BeerChief – firmly believing it would be a success. With limited experience, funds and skills, i just had to get a partner though.. having failed twice, i was reluctant to have another go.

So this time i snubbed the States and went looking for an Irish partner on an irish webmaster forum. Luckily enough i met Adam through that and the rest is history. He shared my enthusiasm and belief in BeerChief and we’ve now gone about bringing it all together. We’ve both invested a lot of time and money into BeerChief, so i’d regard that as a successful e-partnership

And that’s where i am at the minute – on the verge of launching my first real pet project. Of course, there is this blog which in itself is turning into one of my biggest sites. This time last year, secretly, i would have been expecting to be making a living online by now. That hasn’t happened. But the experience and knowledge gained over the year is perhaps more valuable for me than actual cash at the minute.

I know that sounds cheesy, but it’s the truth. Having no cash can only push me on further and make me hungrier for success. Coming up to launching a site i believe in – that’s the best possible line of thought i can have

The guy behind this deserves a pay rise

Gets the message across in hilarious fashion but also hits home about wasted energy.. genius.

I came across this yesterday.

Basically Avril is being taken to court over the song ‘Girlfriend’ as 70′s group ‘The Rubinoo’s’ claim she’s using their beat or rhythm or whatever in the song…

I’ve listened to the Rubinoo’s ‘I wanna be your boyfriend’, and imo, it sounds absolutely NOTHING like Avril’s ‘Girlfriend’. The chorus is something like ‘hey, you, i wanna be your boyfriend’ and it also has the whole ‘clap clap’ fast beat thing going on.. but it would be very harsh imo if this case was successful.

I pity the judge on this one.. it’s really down to personal opinion, i doubt either side can produce solid evidence to defend their cases.

Just goes to show everyone is out to get you when you’re a superstar.. if you have fame and fortune, people want a slice of it, perhaps they have reason to, but most of the time it’s just chancing their arm

For the past few weeks i’ve been playing around with autostitch – image software which literally stiches together multiple images to create one panoramic image.. see below for a few examples.. i have to say i’m impressed by this software (a) because its so easy to use and (b) it’s freeware..

I shot these two seperately (with a panoramic image in mind)

I then used autostitch to stitch them together.. this is just a quick example, had i spent more time taking the first two shots i could have got a perfect panoramic image.

It means any idiot can now produce panoramic images of whatever they want

It’s clever.. if you ask it to stitch together photos of your night out clubbing and then another image of your dog and cat, it won’t mesh the two together, it knows what fits and what doesn’t

However, if you take a picture of, for example a bedroom.. so long as the floor/roof lines add up and the lighting is in general the same, it will work.. I can’t wait to try this out with my London pictures – i’ll be deliberately taking pictures with the intention of autostitching them..

Perfect to show you guys a full panoramic view of my hotel room, inside the o2 arena or the London skyline from the London Eye..