The Next Project (And How To Pay For It)

I've realised over the last couple of days that the computer in my office has begun to run a lot more slowly. While I'm inclined to think an upgrade of a certain anti-virus program is involved in this, I've also decided I should look into getting some more memory for my computer (CTRL+ALT+DEL shows just how much memory the anti-virus software is using - it isn't pretty).

Here's the important detail of the project: I'm not planning to fund it through my wages (or Lorraine's for that matter).

"Huh?" I hear you ask. "How are you going to do that?" Well, let's call this my guide to earning a bit extra for little treats.

1) Google Adsense.
Sensible web advertising. You get money for clicks, not for unlikely and costly sales. Furthermore they're presented in text, not garish and intrusive flash (yes, Yahoo! Mail, I'm talking about you).

The payments aren't huge, and you have to earn a minimum of $100 to get a payment, but it is a program I'd recommend.

2) Amazon Associates.
The program I've used for longest. If you are going to get money for clicks, why not use the UK's leading online retailer?

Simple to implement, easy to follow reports and payouts begin at a more than reasonable £10.

3) Money for opinions.
Being realistic, when it comes to a stick or two of memory the solutions above probably aren't the answer. However what I've found to be a quick and easy way to a little bit extra is to share opinions with people who want them.

I'm not talking about opinion surveys (not too quick in my experience) or consumer websites (where the payments are so small to not make them worthwhile), I'm talking about the magazine market.

It might not sound like much to get £5/£10/£15 for an e-mail, but think of the possible time/reward ratio. I might send an e-mail to a TV magazine which takes me about a minute (or possibly less) to type and send. It's usually something Lorraine and I are discussing anyway, all I'm doing is transcribing thoughts and sending them to an e-mail address I've kept handy.

If you've got opinions why not try your luck? The worst that can happen is that the e-mail isn't published and you don't get paid.

(Actually the worst thing that can happen is that a magazine can ask for a photo of you to accompany what you've written, but that's another matter entirely.)

A Fun Thursday Night

Must admit I did nothing last night. The Braves were on NASN, is a game starting at 5pm BST (midday in New York). A big fifth inning, including back-to-back home runs by Chipper Jones and Mark Teixeira led to a 7-6 win over the rival Mets at Shea Stadium. I really enjoyed those, especially Chipper's which was a thing of beauty, sailing high over the 371-foot sign and clattering half-way up the Mets' scoreboard in right field.

It led to a bit of web surfing, and it made me realise that I've never mentioned David O'Brien's excellent Braves blog. It's impartial reporting that you don't get on the Braves official site (understandable), plus it frequently throws up some funny stuff from life on the road, like this from yesterday:

Oh, forgot to tell you guys, a cab driver took Villarreal and Escobar to the stadium this morning, only it was Yankee Stadium. He was Middle Eastern, Escobar speaks almost no English, and Villarreal was cussing in Spanglish. Ah, if only it were a Taxicab Confessions cab with the camera in place to record that for us all.

David O'Brien cracks me up with stuff like that.

(Notes for non-Baseball fans: Yunel Escobar is Cuban and Oscar Villarreal is Mexican.)

Another site which usually cracks me up is Deadspin, but it does have more than it's fair share of Mets fans. I hope they all enjoyed Chipper's 470-foot bomb (as Kevin Costner said in Bull Durham, "Something travelling that far ought to have a stewardess on it, don't ya think?"). To paraphrase Kevin Keegan, I would love it, LOVE IT if we beat them to the NL East division title this year.

Finally, as David O'Brien frequently ends blog posts with some appropriate song lyrics, I felt as a tribute to him that I should do the same.

M.C. Hammer - U Can't Touch This

You can't touch this (Repeat 5x)

My, my, my, my music hits me so hard
Makes me say "Oh my Lord"
Thank you for blessing me
With a mind to rhyme and two hyped feet
It feels good, when you know you're down
A super dope homeboy from the Oaktown
And I'm known as such
And this is a beat, uh, you can't touch

I told you homeboy (You can't touch this)
Yeah, that's how we're living and you know (You can't touch this)
Look in my eyes, man (You can't touch this)
Yo, let me bust the funky lyrics (You can't touch this)

Fresh new kicks, and pants
You got it like that, now you know you wanna dance
So move, outta your seat
And get a fly girl and catch this beat
While it's rolling, hold on
Pump a little bit and let 'em know it's going on
Like that, like that
Cold on a mission so pull on back
Let 'em know, that you're too much
And this is a beat, uh, you can't touch

Yo, I told you (You can't touch this)
Why you standing there, man? (You can't touch this)
Yo, sound the bell, school is in, sucka (You can't touch this)

Give me a song, or rhythm
Make 'em sweat, that's what I'm giving 'em
Now, they know
When you talk about the Hammer you talk about a show
That's hyped, and tight
Singers are sweating so pass them a mic
Or a tape, to learn
What it's gonna take in the 90's to burn
The charts? Legit
Either work hard or you might as well quit

That's the word because you know...

You can't touch this (Repeat 2x)

Break it down! (Music breaks down) Stop, Hammer time!

Go with the flow, it is said
That if you can't groove to this then you probably are dead
So wave your hands in the air
Bust a few moves, run your fingers through your hair
This is it, for a winner
Dance to this and you're gonna get thinner
Move, slide your rump
Just for a minute let's all do the bump, bump, bump, bump

Yeah... (You can't touch this)
Look, man (You can't touch this)
You better get hyped, boy, because you know (You can't touch this)
Ring the bell, school's back in

Break it down! (Music breaks down) Stop, Hammer time!

You can't touch this (Repeat 3x)

Break it down! (Music breaks down) Stop, Hammer time!

Every time you see me
The Hammer's disco hype
I'm dope on the floor and I'm magic on the mic
Now why would I ever stop doing this?
With others making records that just don't hit
I've toured around the world, from London to the Bay
It's "Hammer, go Hammer, MC Hammer, yo Hammer"
And the rest can go and play

You can't touch this (Repeat 7x)

This Is Why I Don't Shop In City Centres

One of the occupational hazards of working in Glasgow is that there are loads of shops around. You can't help but see them and walk past windows full of interesting items.

Today I was looking for some more CD-RWs. One of my current ones is a bit nicked-up, and on it's way out, so I wanted to get a replacement for burning podcasts onto and listening to in the car.

Normally I get my CD-RWs from a shop in Wishaw. The cost? 60p. Unfortunately I can't really get there during the week, so I took a look for them in Glasgow. After taking a look in two hard-to-find stores (one of the upsides of working in Glasgow, although they're a bit of a trek) which didn't have them I headed back to the city centre.

Finally I found some individual CD-RWs. The cost? £2.99! I think I'll wait until the weekend to get some more.

DVD Blues

Had a bit of a mishap with our old DVD player last week when I went to view my region 1 edition of Top Gun. Basically it appears that our old multi-region DVD player is no longer multi-region, no matter how many times I reset it. When this is the major reason for it being in the cabinet underneath the TV it somewhat defeats the purpose of keeping it.

The good news? A search at Amazon seems to indicate that multi-region DVD players are now pretty cheap. Certainly they're considerably cheaper than they were when we bought our one six years ago.

The lesson here is that technology always gets cheaper, and so it isn't worth stretching yourself to get it. In fact when I have saved for items I have found that my savings and a price dropping have met at a satisfactory middle ground. For instance the digital camera that I want to upgrade to is dropping significantly on some sites, so hopefully it might even be less than it currently is when I finally choose to buy it (here's hoping anyway).

New Office Accessory

Got this through in the post a few weeks ago, and realised that I hadn't posted a thing about it.

After receiving it I put it in a case, and then put it in front of my collection of baseballs (but behind pictures of my wife and daughter).



Bit different than just getting a t-shirt!

If any Ducks fans read this they should still be able to find plenty of these on eBay at reasonable prices with reasonable postage charges. This is the guy I got mine from.

New blog logo

I was tidying up a few settings the other night when I noticed that you can now add an image to the header of your blog.

With that in mind I got to work on what you can see above you. I'm sure it will develop in time, but for the moment this will do the job.

Property: Rent or Buy?

I've become quite a fan of the Get Rich Slowly blog recently. It's a pretty shrewd read and is far more personable (not to mention less repetitive) than The Motley Fool. It is a slight shame from my perspective that it is so American-centred (or should that be "centered"?), but some lessons are universal.

One such entry that was definitely for an American readership was the one on property renting/buying. While an interesting read it appeared that the American market is skewed towards renting, because it looks like renters don't pay property taxes. Over here renters still have to pay Council Tax themselves - there goes that advantage!

I'm pleased to have bought. Most of my friends have bought. The one friend I can think of who is still renting is paying a reasonable price, but I wouldn't say he is getting a lot for his money.

And yet there does seem to be a groundswell of people who think that owning is a peculiar British obsession. Never mind the fact that you're not held ransom to a landlord's whim to raise the rent (especially if you're on a fixed-rate mortgage), for me the big thing about getting a mortgage is the fact that one day that expense will stop. As a friend of mine said a long time ago, "Why pay someone else's mortgage when you can pay your own instead?" At the very worst I'll have my current mortgage paid off shortly after my 48th birthday (I want it to be paid off sooner).
Let's stop all the talk about houses as investments in opposition to shares. Houses are homes, and I'd sooner be owning mine and doing pretty much what I want with it.

There are downsides (that'll be the boiler again!) but on the whole I'm happy that I bought my home nine years ago. It isn't a decision I regret.

My other move

A little while ago you may remember that I posted about moving from Pegasus Mail to Thunderbird, and hinted that there was another move coming up.

This is the move: I'm moving from LiveJournal to Blogger.

The reasons for this are simple, and as follows:

1) Customisation.
Yes, you could pick your own colours with LiveJournal, but could you add in a Technorati badge, a link to add your blog to someone's My Yahoo! page? Nope. You can with Blogger. In fact you can add pretty much whatever you want to add. That's an enormous plus in my opinion.

2) All the pages look the same.
Go to an individual entry on my LiveJournal and you end up at a generic page. Here the themes carry over. That's a big difference in terms of identity and flavour.

3) There are more people here.
My friends Matt and Pamela have had blogs here for a while, and I'm sure I'll find other friends here soon. I already seem to have had more comments over here than I ever had on my LiveJournal.

I'm not saying that Blogger is perfect (feel free to ask me what I thought flagging a blog was about!), but it's a big improvement on LiveJournal, and it does what I need it to do along with most that I would like it to do.

I've moved a lot of my old posts already, as well as Furling everything else so should anything happen to it I have a backup. Farewell and thank you LiveJournal, hello Blogger!

Why I don't play golf

For anyone who wasn't at Neil Povey's Stag Day:

My quick thoughts on Social Bookmarking

Thought I ought to post something as I've not posted anything yet this month, not good!

Anyway, I thought I would chip in on the topic of Social Bookmarking. The favourite of many (including .net magazine, who mention it at the expense of all others) is del.ico.us. Now del.ico.us isn't bad, and I like that you don't have to log in to see a lot of links, and I've found other handy links through the tagging system.

However there are annoyances, my main one being that you can't have (at least from what I've seen) a multi-word tag. Therefore items like Crystal Palace and Fantasy Baseball aren't ideal for del.icio.us.

My personal preference is for a site called Furl. Furl supports multi-word tagging, private bookmarks and also keeps a cached version of a page you save (which I really liked when ESPN used to make Bill Simmons' archive available only to site subscribers). Therefore it is ideal for individual articles, in case they should move or be deleted.

For some reason Furl doesn't seem to like IE6 (at least at work) but on the whole I prefer it, especially as I generally use Firefox.

So in summary, del.icio.us for main site links, Furl for individual articles.

del.icio.us
furl.net
My del.icio.us links
My Furl archive