Jul 9, 2009 | Friends and Family, Websites
HURRAH!
My Dad’s new website is live 😀
http://www.gone-fishing.co.za
My name is Pat Bromilow-Downing (@pbdphoto) and I am a 63 year old, semi-retired freelance photographer, living in Noordhoek, Cape Town.
I am on a journey of discovery.
My long term plan is to try and cover as much of the South African coastline , as possible in my little old Sprite Sport caravan, both photographically and fishing wise. I have already discovered that it will be unwise for me to try and get to places that are only accessible via dirt road.
I have now started the journey and am at a place called Brandkaros near Alexander Bay on the Orange River.
The first couple of posts are going to be catch up of how I wound up here.
Apr 1, 2009 | Websites, WordPress
Sir G finally got his A into G and created his very own WordPress theme to relaunch his blog!
He did good. Go say hello 😀
(Yes, that’s me at the bottom wah!)
Shit. I’d better get *my* A into G now and get cracking on my own theme!
Mar 20, 2009 | Websites, Work
It’s been about 6 years since I published the last version of our company website and TODAY we finally launched our brand-spanking-new site WOOHOO!
It’s great to have finally had the time to design something fresh for The Forge and to see the whole team pull together to make it happen. So THANKS everyone for all your hard work and input (you *know* who you are being LOL).
Great timing too – it coincides with The Forge’s 9th birthday 😀
Mar 4, 2009 | Randomness, Websites
Being the self-absorbed Aries that I am, I was curious about this “blog personality analyzer” I’d heard about on Twitter, so I indulged myself and headed over to Typealyzer to find out what type of blogger I am.
Here are the results:
The analysis indicates that the author of http://www.justbcoz.co.za/headspace is of the type:
ESFP – The Performers
The entertaining and friendly type. They are especially attuned to pleasure and beauty and like to fill their surroundings with soft fabrics, bright colors and sweet smells. They live in the present moment and don’t like to plan ahead – they are always at risk of exhausting themselves.
The enjoy work that makes them able to help other people in a concrete and visible way. They tend to avoid conflicts and rarely initiate confrontation – qualities that can make it hard for them in management positions.
Analysis
This show what parts of the brain that were dominant during writing.
Hmmm … no surprises there, I guess. Heh.
More about Typealyzer (from their About page):
How can a computer know who I am?
It doesn´t. But with a good amount of text it can make a pretty good guess. In addition, we all have different roles in different situations. By studying how people write, we can get an glimpse of what is on the mind of the person and what is characteristic of the person – or, as in the case of a blog – what is typical of the role/persona used when writing that blog. A person can have several blogs – and often have different roles for the various blogs – perhaps as a way to live out more sides of themselves.
What does a text say about the writer?
A lot more than most people might think. But it does NOT tell you who you are! However, the words and expressions we use, especially when we write for our own pleasure, tell about if we are more inclined to logical reasoning, personal values, fantasies or the reality for instance.
Jul 21, 2008 | Finances, Websites
My Dad’s always telling me that I should keep track of exactly how much I’m spending, that I would probably be really surprised to see where my money’s going at the end of every month … It’s not a bad idea and I KNOW I need to watch my money a lot closer than I do at the moment, especially as things are starting to get reeeeeally tight!
The trouble is, I *always* forget to record my personal expenses – I’ve tried to remember to make a note every time I spend money, but somehow I just never get there! The business is another story – I am meticulous about recording where every cent goes, but my personal finances are chaotic, to say the least. I lose track of stuff like how much I spend on groceries and pocket money dished out in dribs and drabs to the kids. I have endless receipts and little pieces of paper floating all over the place and it’s a nightmare!
Thanks to one of my Twitter contacts, geekrebel, I have now found an EXCELLENT way of keeping track of my personal day to day expenses =)
Xpenser
“Fire and Forget Expense Tracking. Record Your Expenses as soon as you incur them, using Xpenser.
We were fed up with how painful expense reports and tracking were. After many experiments we found a workable solution: record expenses as soon as they happen and forget about them.
Xpenser lets you do just that – record expenses via whatever means are available to you quickly and painlessly. Send them in via Email, SMS, IM, or voice … Use the Web interface to edit and finalize them or export them to your favorite financial management software. No more forgetting your cash expenses, no more half-day expense entry sessions.”
I’ve set up Xpenser to work with my Twitter account so I can DM (Direct Message) my expenses to the service from my mobile while I’m out and about.
I’ve also tested out the email option and that works perfectly too (no more scraps of paper to keep track of YAY!).
If I had an IM service like Google Talk or MSN, I could use that as well.
I can insert keywords with each expense and then log in to the website to generate expense reports using the keywords I select, e.g. petrol or food or pocket money, and export the reports for various applications, including Excel.
Pretty nifty hey? I think it’s a winner =)
Jul 15, 2008 | Friends and Family, Websites
LINDA PAGE!
Kat has just emailed me to tell that she’s chosen the winning name for her new blog …
KatScan
Well done to Linda for winning the “Name This Blog” contest!!
Your $50 voucher from Amazon is on it’s way =)
And well done to Kat for getting an awesome name!
NOTE: Although Linda happens to be an old friend, and I sponsored this competition, I had absolutely ZERO influence over Kat’s decision.
Funny story … I only discovered that Linda was online and blogging when I followed the link from her name on Kat’s blog! And yes, this is the very same Linda I tagged yesterday. She and I grew up together as kids =) Isn’t Social Media the bomb?? I love this wwworld!
From Linda’s blog today:
It’s a strange thing: I started this for me, and perhaps my mother and father, but now I have to come to terms with the fact that there are actually other people out there who I don’t know (not even someone I’ve vaguely heard of!) who may be reading. I mean, OF COURSE other people are going to read it, I’m just realising the magnitude of it. Specifically because I have recently been “tagged”.
I am very much into my online social networking phenomenon that is facebook (it is absolutely perfect for me to keep in some kind of ‘touch’ with my friends who are scattered all around the world) and I do tend to follow links and look at peoples websites and things that they have published online.
I have been reading a blog of an old family friend of mine and getting to know her a little better without actually putting in any effort…I’ve been a passive friend. Are we even friends? We were when we were little. We had lots of fun together, but I’m struggling to find those memories…they are sitting in a dark corner, not wanting to step into the light, so I’ve left them there and am focusing on the new, older, wiser, broken, fixed, mother of 2 that I am observing through her blog.
We did meet a while ago. We didn’t really have the chance to connect again, it was hard to think of things to say and I admit to being completely distracted by the fact that it was my birthday and I was seeing a whole heap of other friends and family who’s friendship timeline was more intact. I was interested to see if she really was as stunning as the photographs of her I’d seen…and yes, she was fit, toned, tanned, and all grown up – my mental picture of her had to change somewhat (it was 30 years out of date).
Turns out she also follows links and things, and found me here. And tagged me. Which means that I have to share some random things with the readers out there about myself: thing they don’t already know. Since I imagine my mother to be my number one fan on this site, it’s quite a challenge to think of 8 random things that she doesn’t already know. Or my husband. That is a big challenge, so I’m thinking, I’m thinking!
What’s good is that I’m actually writing again. I’ve been thinking up some absolute beauties of late, but am finding it hard to manage that final hurdle of getting it committed to my blog! Distractions and daydreams…
