Entries from May 2006 ↓

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Ethel Bonkworthy Gets Linked

Hey everyone, Ethel got linked! So go see her blog here

Had to be creative with the badge and miss out a few letters to get as much of Bonkworthy into the available space which as you see is very limited but hey I think it is a mighty fine linkbadge overall. Ja?!

It gets you to Ethel’s blog dunnit!

Get Unstuck and Get Going

In case you wondered what the banner and links badges at the top of the sidebar represented, let me explain:

In life you will reach a point where you cannot seem to move on with your life. Know what I mean? Here’s the thing, you get stuck in a rut and can’t find a way out. You are doing stuff but it does not seem to be the right kind of stuff. There is something deepdown that is nagging at you to do some good or great stuff. But your life suddenly lacks direction. You lose control of your destiny to that alltime favourite - apathy. To move on, you need to make a decision and might need to take stock of wha you need to do and where you are going. Regrettably, like most of us, the decision to do something about it becomes yet another chore riddled with the need to do this and that before the other can happen. So you put it on the backburner and carry on with whatever rut you are in.

You are not stimulated anymore.

I was there. I was in the rut of life. And then at a NLP seminar I saw a wierd orange coloured book for sale. It intrigued me. So I picked it up and found that it was not a normal book. It was constructed differently and had another booklet inside and the pages were torn into 3 sections with each section having different text……and well it was wierd but it did something great to stimulate me to read it. So I bought it. You can too.

Since then I have added more for family and friends and work colleagues and also met and attended a seminar with the author and Canada’s Coach of the Year 2006, Mr Michael Bungay Stanier.

Michael lives in Canada but is an Australian (with that wierd twangy flat vowelled accent we antipodeans have), and he has created something that works. It seriously works and is so simple. It makes you want to move your ass big time!

If it worked for me, it’ll work for you. Everyday I use the book for inspiration and self-coaching.

How has it had an impact on me? Well, here’s the thing, after reading the book and doing some self-evaluation, I went and did it. Did what you may ask. Well, I just did what I wanted to do and this blog is one of those things I’d stupidly put off for a long time for any number of irrelevent excuses. Wearing striped socks is another thing I just did. I wanted to do it before but conventionality and uniformity with my fellow ’suits’ prevented me from breaking away.

Another ‘thing’ I did was find myself transfixed by a brilliant picture. This picture inspired the best outrageously original idea I have ever had.

The idea or innovation is now a work in progress due to explode onto the UK and international scene in the summer of 2007. Beige people say I am crazy to take on the 2007 project. They cannot see beyond their fishbowl or even see that the chance of success is only proportional to the required passion, drive and commitment to bring it off. They lack all three and have the audacity to tell me to stop!! Outrageous. Or is their fear of my success beginning to raise its ugly head? Yes, people do fear others’ success and no amount of rational explanation can reduce the “fear they will succeed” level. I am up against it everyday but because GU&GG helped me to get to the place that finally helped me to get to the place that inspired this original idea, I have nobody out there to turn to for advice on what it is I am putting together, nor are there benchmarks to guide me. I am creating the benchmark, the guidelines the originality. I own it all and that is so incredible to realise that you and only you can make it happen.

More about the 2007 ‘biggy’ later.

OK that is my explanation over. Go see what Michael has to say and decide for yourself if you want to Get Unstuck & Get Going on the stuff that matters.

Answerphone Voyeur

If your name is Diedre, your Aunty Marge has left a few messages for you on my answering machine. Just like Steve did when he called Chris to apologise for being late and inquire about the pub you two were going to meet at and also about the quote.

I have received so many wrong calls lately I am nearly able to build up a profile of Diedre’s life! It is scary. I mean, doesn’t Aunty Marge ever worry that Diedre never responds to her messages?
Maybe tomorrow I will get home from the office and find a message or messages from Aunty Marge cussing Diedre out to hell and beyond!

If this type of repeated wrong number dialling and leaving messages carries on, should I call and tell them to dial correctly!?

What If

What if we all never made mistakes?
What if we all were happy?
What if peace existed?
What if I could blog all day?
What if the fighting stopped?
What if success arrived in a bottle?
What if life never ended?
What if I was talented?
What if all the above was never asked?

Consumers are Traitors

“…If you had a set of customers today, you could be pretty sure most of them would still be around two years, five years, ten years from now. That’s no longer true. A study by retail-industry tracking firm NPD Group found that nearly half of those who described themselves as highly loyal to a brand were no longer loyal a year later.”

[an article on Wired by James Surowiecki]

So Guys, You Spot a Beautiful Woman

You are in the pub or at a club and you spy the woman of your dreams. What do you do next?

Listen to me, DO NOT DO ANYTHING until you have read ROX’s tutorial.

Rox tells us guys how women like to be approached by a hunk of a stranger like me….!

Go read more here

The Phone Makes A Comeback

For a long time now we have forgotten the art of conversation. We’d rather converse anomynously through blogs and emails.

Apart from the severe social repurcussions this creates in our personal lives insofar as interacting face to face with fellow humans is concerned, we must be aware that business can suffer too. When was the last time you emailed a colleague who is seated only 25m from where you sit?

Bad.

Let’s not let the fabric of society deteriorate any further. Start conversations. If you have forgotten how to, here is a hint - get off your arse and walk over to someone and say “Hello”!

All things Must Pass

Sad fact of life. Sad fact of technology. Sad fact of innovation.

But bright new concepts will replace the old ways of holding conversations.

What we create tomorrow from today’s ideas will be different. Will have moved the goal posts and will continue to strive to do things differently.

…and after ‘different’ comes….? Next!

Seth says,

…make something that works a little better, you’re playing the same game, …….. When you make something different, on the other hand, you’re trying to change the game.

So OK we do ‘different’ and change the game and let it run for a few years, then what do we do?

Make the game change again and do it different or do a better change? Make a better change ‘different’?

Different is not ’sexy’ it is vital to survive and keep widening audience appeal. Forget short term gratification sexy. Do longerlasting different. Change the game to your rules. Make others play catch-up. Then change the rules again and again.

The combinations and unique opportunities for change are infinite. Just keep it different. Do it.

African News for Africans at Zangu News

byEric at Whiteafrican.com

Eric is one active guy. Luckily for Africa he does not stop innovating and developing mobile technologies to harness the communications channels for all citizens of the African continent. His latest gig is detailed below and with Thakadu over at Muti, they are onto something great.

For ease of reference I have reproduced Eric’s original article verbatum.

Read on:

Many of you either know about, or have read, the paper I wrote called A Web Technology Idea for Africa back in March. Since that time, I’ve been working with Thakadu of Muti and News Map fame to develop the news portion of that idea - it drives our focus.

In summary, we believe that the web can truly impact Africans in a profound way. The trick is to make the social power of the web available to them through both the internet and mobile phones. Mobile phones being the most common technological platform that Africans have access to since the mobile explosion on the continent started in the mid-1990s.

Zangu is the platform that we are creating to make that vision into a reality. Our first phase is “news”, which will be followed by “community” and “search”. Our goal with the prototype of Zangu News is to bring both traditional and user-generated news (ie: blogs), to the masses in an organized way. Our first step is to make it available on the web, then integrate that with the mobile component.

We’ve got some great ideas that we’re testing now to make sure that the news is fresh and relevant each time you visit. Both Thakadu and I (Erik Hersman) are very excited about where the application is going, and can’t wait for it to be ready to actually test.

At this moment we are allowing people to sign up to be Beta testers of Zangu News. This early sign up group will be notified of when the Beta testing will begin and will be an integral part of making it work. We also look for feedback on making this application uniquely African, and know that the feedback from the African digerati will be very important

Article reproduced in full by kind permission of Eric Hersman

Happiment Extremus

It was a thunderflash moment, a replication (to a degree) of that black and white movie scene from The Bride of Frankenstein when Dr Frankenstein, in his castle laboratory, pulls the lever down to send a trillion volts zapping into the lifeless form shackled to the operating table.

It was a miraculous instant when you feel and hear every atom in your body beat to the rythm of life which then yanks you into a timeless zone of utter and complete sublime and unconditional happiment.

My moment happened last night when I found Rox in The City. Go see what I mean

And yes, this is a gushing moment!

Jingoistic Principles

All those of you who see blogging as a means to change the world - stick your hands up!

Hands up all those who see any old queue and join it.

Hands up and stand proud all those who see a queue at the Army Recruiting station and have a really tough time arguing with yourself to not join it but win the debate anyway and slope off to Fourbouys newsagents for the latest Jobseeker and a packet of 10 Royals.

Own up all of you who joined the anti-hunt campaign just because your vegan friends down the road are holding a midsummer garden party and Sophie Dahl will be there too so this is one event to so go and be seen at!

Hands up if you are part of the Range Rover ‘n Barbour ‘n Hunters wellies ‘n flat cap brigade because all the ‘right’ people, the tosser toffs, stockbrokers and marketing geeks are all made up and are pretending to be part of the royal echelon.

Fess up all of you who don’t read The Independent or Observer nor give a rat’s arse about the Range Rover ‘n Barbour ‘n Hunters wellies ‘n flat cap brigade or Burberry scarves, Gucci bags, Foxes or our Macca’s about to be record-breaking divorce settlement nor give a toss about Sophie Dahl, Kate Moss or McDonald’s veggie burgers or vegans in general who also see war as a necessary evil but being on the wrong end of a bullet or cannon fodder ain’t their style, and finally, hands up if you’d rather be soaking up the zzzz’s in an Ibeza holday apartment where all 16 of your best mates can all cram into 4 beds and kip off the excesses of the night before.

If any of you put your hand in the air to any one of the options above, you are a Jingoist. I am.

I am so shallow, my shadow has had to pack on the kilos in order to remain below me. I love and make a habit of following the latest craze, fad or self-indulgent indignant principle like Save The Liposuction Waste to make your chips in to prevent cultivation of fields of rape seed for veggie oil. Last week I signed up to Sponsor An Escargot that was orphaned when a truck drove over his parents who were too slow crossing the M6 at 5:30pm on a Friday evening.

I can get righteuosly indignant. I can. I know I should. I could but when is the issue. And at what is even more of an issue. I love Range Rovers, I have a really well worn Barbour that no longer stinks of wax, I own a pair of blue Hunters but do not own a flat cap. Oh I just thought of something I need to create an action campaign against - courdroy trousers.

Yes, who will join me to get courdroy trousers banned? I detest them and the young men who wear them with ‘country’ shirts which only the 60+ should be seen wearing. If you are old, I fully expect you to age yourself even further by donning courdroys, but for any male below 40 to put on a pair of courds is absolutley kak.

What other jingoistic principles can we apply?

The Wine at Highclere

The wine at the rock concert held this Saturday at Highclere Castle was supplied by an American cellar (silo is more appropriate). It was well received. Amply consumed.

Lost opportunity for a South African vineyard to get in with the right ’set’ of people.

I think the guys at the various vineyards in Western Cape don’t blog too much so miss out on opportunities. Slanghoek has a Belgium partner whose website records only 3,300 visits! Ooops! There is a need for some drastic action if they want to increase market share. Each day lost is another xk cases sold to EU by one of their opposition estates.

Africa No Rain

And Still It Rains