Rant – Page 74

@SMLP you are my hero, Love Michaela Strachan

Time to sit down a write another blog post. I’ve had a bit of busy few days recently so sitting down to write a post presents me with one big fat problem. What to write about?

I was going to do a little bit about what’s going on with @Twitchhiker over the last week. Maybe highlight the press coverage that he’s been getting and the fact that he missed out on a interview on BBC ONE’s “The One Show” or the fact that my tweetdeck “Twitchhiker” search has been going crazy since the first tweet about his plans were sent out.

But then I thought I would give it a rest for now and pull together another post closer to the 1st March.
But my final decision on what to post about is something that ran through my mind while on the bus on the way into Newcastle.

Michaela Strachan.

Yes you may remember her from such shows as “The Really Wild Show”, “Wacaday” and for the older readers “The Hitman and Her” and it is my mission (well until I give up) to get Michaela Strachan to sign up to tweet me the words “@SMLP you are my hero”.

At 42 years young she is the girls off TV that you and your dad could happily watch while learning about animals. She was is still is the sexiest presenter on TV but do we really know what she’s all about and what she is doing? The girl deserves to have an a better online status and I think twitter is the way to do it. I want to see her presenting more mainstream prime time TV shows like “Big Cats” or even a total take over of Country File (Move over John Craven). She also lives in Cape Town, South Africa so her life has got to be more interesting than some of the celebrities out their, imagine some of the TwitPic’s she could be sending out. Lets tweet it out and tags it clearly Tweeter Tags #MICHAELASTRACHEN we want you on twitter.

Twitter hiking across the world

Imagine trying to hitchhike from Newcastle in the UK to New Zealand in… New Zealand; not an easy task. Well Newcastle blogger and media guru Paul Smith is going to do just that.

The plan is to travel from Newcastle Tyne and Wear to the other side of the world with no other help than the kindness of the global network of twitter users. I have meet a number of people on my own doorstep using twitter and I believe that it is possible to complete such a mammoth task based on the kindness most twitter users give. The internet is an amazing place for making the maddest of tasks possible; remember “one red paperclip” and the Million dollar website. All became possible because people from all around the world talked about it, blogged about it and told their friends. The media circus that followed help drive what seemed like an impossible tasks to become possible. The task that Paul is going to undertake maybe an adventure for him; but more so, it is to raise awareness for a good cause – charity: water.

My idea to help the process along is to shout about it on twitter, I don’t just mean to re-tweet about it, but focus the shouts towards the twitter big guns. Celebrity’s like Stephen Fry, Jonathan Ross, Kevin Rose and God! The more noise directed toward people like this will puch them to talk about it and the quicker the world will find out about and support such a great idea for such a good cause.

Please… if you do one thing today…. Donate towards this great cause

If you do two things today make the second to follow and tweet about Twitchhiker to any and all of the celebrity’s you follow on twitter.

http://www.twitchhiker.com/
http://www.justgiving.com/twitchhiker

Name that Mobile!

I’ve been collecting a few photo of some of the old mobile phones that pass my way. After wondering what the hell to do with them I thought I would play a little game of”name that mobile”.

Come on Cops check out my hard Drive!

The plan from the Home Office (driven by the EU) is to allow Police to remotely access peoples computers with out having to apply to the courts for the privilege.

Now I’m all for a easier and quicker way for the Home Office and the Police to track down things like Paedophilla and Terrorism while bypassing the court for the purpose of evidence collection. The word is that they will have to get authorization from a Chief Constable before being allow to do this but the problem with this is the police having access to technology/software to access people’s computers remotely. How do we know they aren’t going to be looking for naked pictures of peoples wife’s?

I’m not saying that the Police are going to be running around “looking though peoples windows from the helicopter” but giving them the tools to “hack” and lowering the rules on when and how they can do this; may open up a risk in peoples privacy that is not necessary. Information released by the home office say that in 2007/8 the Police hacked into 194 computers in the UK, all of them with a court order. What they haven’t released however is how many of these “Hacks” resulted in an arrest. So why would they need to bypass the courts when in two years they have only needed to hack into peoples computer around 8 times per month. Even if the number of times they need to do this triple in the next two years it will still be a small blip on the bigger picture.

Read the full storey at: http://tinyurl.com/9ytubw

Do you think the Police should be able to access people computers remotely and when is it right to do this?

It’s all about the girls

Just been having a look a my video views for my first video post “vID 001: Hello’s and Mushrooms” and it looks like the girls are digging it… I just don’t understand why!?!
First off I would like to thank everyone that took the time to watch it and even more so to the people that commented on it. One of the things I have learn very quickly when it comes to doing something people might want to read, watch or look at; is feedback. Understanding what people like or dislike will always help me to improve the quality of my online content.
So how did the video do. Well as I write this – SMLP: 102 – Viddler: 16 – You Tube: 28 – so that’s 146 views in 5 days. Not bad for the first time I have published a video post. So what about the girls?
You Tube provide a brake down of who is watching your videos (You Tube Insight); including their sex. I know that not all my views have been from women but all of my views on You Tube are, well; that’s what their telling me.

Now I’m not to sure if this is a good of bad thing (my girl would say bad thing) but for now I’m going to bask in my own self worth that for once in my life the girls are digging it.

Don’t forget to let me know what you think about this post or any others on SMLP:

You can now also post Video comments directly to the site. Just click on the “Add Video Comment” button below.

Follow me: http://www.twitter.com/smlp
See me: http://www.viddler.com/smlp/ – http://www.qik.com/smlp
What I see: http://www.flickr.com/photos/biscuitsmlp/

Video Blogger

No reason could justify looking at my ugly mug for any length of time and to subject the world to it is nothing less than cruel. That said I’m can a cruel guy at times; so here is my first video post.

The idea behind it is that…. Well the truth of it is that I talk lots and because of that I find it much easier to talk about something I have done than to write about it. Sitting in front of my laptop and type up what I’ve been up to on my latest photo outing, a news stories that is driving me round the bend or trip I have been on is always enjoyable the only problem is finding the motivation to sit down the type it up. Any one that knows me will know that I need no motivation to talk.

I’m still playing around with Viddler at the moment but expect my first video blog very soon.

SMLP: Rebranding

Just been playing around with a few things lately to try and do one simple thing. Brand everything I do on-line.

For a long time I have used a very similar user name for all of the different websites that I use. I’m sure most people do this; your “sign up” email address will normally match the user name you register when you head over to a new social network site. twitter.com/bob digg.com/bob etc etc.

For a long time I used “biscuit” which was great to start off with but lets be honest there is no way I would ever show up in a Google search with a user name like that. So I have been moving everything I do across to “smlp”.

My goal was to make it easier for people to find some of the crap that I put on the interweb. Basically I wanted to get things to the point of when you search from my avatar/name you would easily find some of the things that I do. Now there is no prize for doing this you understand, it was just to see if I could do it.

Turns out.. it was easy. I basically changed (where possible) my user name for sites that I’m registered to match my website address (i.e. smlp.co.uk or smlp) and I’m starting to re-register to all others using “smlp”.

Six of the top ten searches in Google now find my different networks and also just typing “smlp” into the address bar in most browsers take you here. Before I did this it was only one in ten on the search results and finding my site was a nightmare unless I pointed people straight here.

Basically I have set-up my own online brand.

or have I?

Let me know if you don’t think I have even come close to Branding my on-line stuff or if you think I’m just full of shit… I would love to hear from you in the comments below.

Also if anyone out there want to help me with a bit for wordpress theme editing…. I want to use a 3 column layout just @smlp me.

The Great North Run

Its was Sunday morning and I had nothing do with my time; fortunately for me several thousand of people did had something to do…. RUN!
It’s the biggest half marathon in the world and its on my doorstep; so with nothing better to do on a Sunday I thought I would head down to the start line and see what photos I could get. I’m not going to lie I didn’t think I would get any photos was worth showing people but once their the atmosphere kept me there.
First it was to see the people heading toward the start line. This picture set the mood for the day for me. Normally people want to do nothing but move out the way when you point a camera at them, however the friendly atmosphere everywhere seem to put have put people at ease. There were a lot of faces with a real look of panic and worry but 95% of the people I seen on the way to the starting line were laughing and smiling like they were on their way to see an old friend.

Next to see people walking down to the start before to gun fired. Other than there being the largest collection of men pissing in bushes I have ever seen, it was nothing more than a mass of people all doing there last minute preparation before starting the race. I did find Banana Man with a worried look on his face and I couldn’t help but think it was worry about how he would hold up wearing the outfit he had on.

After not being able to take any photos for a but due to being bang in the middle of a sales at Primark and fear of people pissing on my bike I had to move on. Off the new Northumbria University footbridge; almost as soon as I got there the celebrity bus of death headed passed on its way, directly to the finish line.

I then got a shot of the first wheelchair athlete whizzing passed at some serious speeds.
I decided to head to the Tyne Bridge to see the masses. The atmosphere on the bridge was electric. Everybody cheering on the determination of each and every runner and it was contagious. Every time a runner waved of shouted the spectators went crazy. It wasn’t till I seen a man in a very small thong run passed followed by a group of women running directly behind he that I started to think about heading home.

No sooner had I start putting away my camera to head home; the roar the engines hit the bridge like an explosion. They were so quick that I almost missed the shot. On the second fly by however I was lined up and ready to shoot. The feeling for the people running across the bridge as the Red Arrows flew overhead must have been a great adrenalin rush.

If any of you took part in the race I would love to hear about it in the comments below.

You can also check out my photos on Flickr HERE.

Do you think I’m some kind of comic?

I’ve been playing around with an idea of posting more things about my everyday life to my Blog recently. Then I remembered that my life is not all that interesting so a gave up for fear of making my life even less interesting. Andy Cap isn’t the most interesting person in the world ether but for years people have been reading his comic strip. So with that in mind I thought I would give my own comic strip a go.
Basically the idea is to do a comic strip about some of the things I see, hear and get involved in that make me smile or laugh. There is one major problem with me doing this. That would be my inability to draw a straight line; or for that matter a wavy one. The fact that I can’t draw however; shouldn’t put me off.
So hear it goes; my first ever comic strip with its educational story line and its high quality drawings. Hope you like it and please let me know what you think in the comments below – smlp

(Click on the image to see full size)

New Toy.

Today we my first outing on my new bike… I’m sure none of you actually care about this fact however I was quite excited about this so I’m going to tell you about it anyway.

I’m very must a new starter when it comes of Mounting biking; about three months ago I bought a bike from my flat mate for next to nothing. It was one of them cheap £79.99 things that are always on offer at Harfords. I had been using it to get to work and back but it became apparent that it was not going to last me long the way I had been riding it. When I found out my company did a Cycle the Work scheme it was time to get myself something that won’t fall apart on me when I was riding up a hill.

I got myself a Carrera Kraken; with Suntour XCR 120mm travel fork with magnesium lowers, 30mm stanchions, Adjustable pre-load, rebound damping and remote lockout, 27 speed, SRAM X5 front mech, X5 triggers, and X5 rear mech, Tektro Auriga hydraulic disc brakes, wavy rotors, 180mm front, 160mm rear AND Truvativ Isoflow chainset with Powerspline bottom bracket. Sounds good? Just don’t ask me what the hell it all means because I just don’t know. Basically I got me a voucher for £700 popped into Halfords picked what seems like a good bike and got loads of acessiores; Panya rank and bag, clothing etc etc. So today was here maden voyage from Gateshead to Newburn and back. Camera on my back…

First trip out so I thought I would get a nice picture of my new toy.

Anyone out there into there monuntian biking got any advise for a new starter I would be more that happy to hear it.