Blogging Along

Have you ever truly reflected on the transient nature of our existence and our lives? A mere century from now, in 2123, we’ll all be dead and the earth will embrace us, nestled beside those we held dear. The homes we painstakingly cleaned, and invested in will echo with the laughter of strangers, and the items we once prized—our cherished books, the jewelry passed down through generations, the technology we marveled at—will either be relics of a bygone era or lost to time, perhaps gathering dust in a collector’s corner or recycled into something new.

Will our descendants recount our stories with reverence or curiosity? How many of us can even recall the dreams and desires of our great-grandparents, or the sound of their laughter?

As the sands of time slip through our fingers, our legacies, no matter how grand, might diminish to a few photographs or letters, eventually fading into the vast tapestry of history. Our vibrant lives, our struggles, and triumphs, were reduced to mere footnotes or whispers in the wind.

Profound Transformation

Yet, if we were to truly internalise this fleeting nature of life, wouldn’t our values and priorities undergo a profound transformation? We’d begin to value the roads less traveled, the stories left untold, the songs unsung. We’d yearn for the embraces we missed, the adventures we postponed, the sunsets we didn’t pause to admire, and the shared meals where stories and dreams were exchanged. These moments, radiant with raw, unfiltered joy, would become the milestones of our existence.

However, in our relentless pursuit—be it of wealth, status, or mere distractions—we often lose sight of life’s true essence. We’re ensnared by ambition, blinded by desire, and made impatient by the ticking clock. Yet, it’s never too late to recalibrate, to live with deeper intention, and to cherish every fleeting, precious moment. After all, it’s these moments that truly define the legacy we leave behind.

Completed a few short 45 second long promo videos for the Freedom centre. These just highlighted future events and turned out really nice. Gave me a boost on pushing this type of video to other businesses and the good thing is they can use them on their web site and are featured on Humber.TV too.

Looking to cut back on my domains I’m letting a lot drop that in my eyes I could do without renewing as 10 would cost £70 for 2 years! On the flip side all my Hull domains are now listed on HullDomians.co.uk and give the ability for visitors to show an interest and place an offer in through a form system. To start my campaign off to either rent them out or sell them I’ve placed an Ad in the Hull Daily Mail for a week starting 19th February.

Just bought 2 domains YorkshireSEO.uk and YorkshireDesign.co.uk for £60 which I thought was a bargain and should be able to get them ranking and sold on to a local business. (if I don’t use them myself)

Looking through my SAGE accounts I noticed I’d dropped a bombshell and missed nearly everyones hosting renewals from last year. #fail But should be a nice boost for a few bills I have come up or have now.

I took a punge and turned off my shop plugin for JokeShop.org.uk and made posts as normal posts but mirrored the path so not to upset Google etc. Instead of actually selling products myself I’m giving” Paid on results” affiliate links from Silly Jokes. Traffic from my site is directed to them I make a sale and I get a cut of it but has proven shite TBH.

I may turn the shop back on if by the end of this month I don’t make one sale.

I’m quite a laid back “do anything for anyone” kind of guy, but over the past few months I’m seeing more and more reason to look after No1 more. Dog eat dog world it’s turning into I just need to look at every situation a little more before jumping in to the rescue or offering.

I found my CV on an old memory stick and decided to apply for a few jobs in SEO, Marketing etc just to see what response I get as theirs no harm in trying to see what bites I get from it. I actually wouldn’t mind going into a decent company to work on SEO and online marketing for companies. I would do a bad job too! ;o)

I decided to pull the internet connection from Beverley as I was only using it twice a week for 1 or 2 hours and was costing £40 + a month. So just a waste really.

Final thought for me about my Hull Domains, I may need to educate business about mini sites and “do what you say on the tin” domains buy hopefully enough will get it and opt for the rent option to try and test.

My Son is Transport Tycoon mad which came from his addiction to Locomotion by Chris Sawyers. I bought Transport Tycoon Deluxe only to find it was Windows 95 and that old would not work on any operating system in the house, and even in compatibility mode.

Did lots of Google searches to find a resolve but felt I’d failed until I searched “TTD” ( Transport Tycoon Deluxe ) and found this site http://www.openttd.org/en/ which basically solved our issue and we now have a working program.

Download this program and browse to your CD/DVD drive when prompted for the data disk and it should all run through the wizard with no issues. Once installed you’ll have a working version thanks to a lot of people working together to bring this classic game back to life for newer operating systems.

Manual and WIKI on Transport Tycoon Deluxe –

Looking forward to HumberMUD on Thursday night at the Fruit Space down Humber Street in Hull, where I’ll hopefully catch up with a few people and meet like minded people in the online media world.

I’ve been asked to talk about Humber TV at one of the future ones and feel I need to push the site by posting to it daily with new events and news.  I don’t know why I missed the scooter ride across the Humber Bridge event at the weekend either #fail :o(

One of our video’s we produced as a podcast chat, paid off for them today as we replied to a request on Twitter asking for that service they offered and they ended up booking time with the guest that appeared. RESULT! Quote “She sounds Great” Hence Video is more powerful than an “About Us” page.

Placed a bit of Adsense code into HU17.net website through Paul Smith who runs it to see what the results would be revenue wise. The results are ok but the amount of traffic Paul gets is great with 1500+ daily unique visitors I could only dream of at Humber TV. This just confirms more events, more posts would give the site the push it needs.

Bit of a bombshell hit me the other week which I won’t go into but god it felt like I had a voodoo doll somewhere and was getting it right in the neck! Hopefully I will sort that situation out before the end of September and can move on with a clean slate. Big black cross next to that individual.

I always say people who want jobs doing for next to nothing and/or haggle on prices are not worth the hassle. Well how true is it with a job I have now, it’s a peanuts job but they want the earth to revolve around them 24/7. Although the extra cash was welcomed I feel like a genie in a lamp who needs to perform miracles.

Setup and Getting into FaceBook, Twitter, You Tube, Vimeo and are seeing results by the way of people viewing the pages whether it be a video or a post but then clicking through to Humber.TV which is a result for unique visitors.

Twitter I use daily, i do seem to be getting on well and are trying not to follow every Tom, Dick and Heather that follows me.

You Tube is a great one as I’m posting RAW unedited video and prviews of video’s that are say 20 minutes long ASAP of me recording them. People are searching for that event and viewing the video but then clicking through to Humber.tv from You Tube which is a FAB way to increase the uniques per day.

Vimeo and FaceBook I only kicked off this week and so need to see results filter through over the coming weeks.

I’ve been building back links up for the site and am hoping that Google takes note and rewards it with a nice PR score and even better search results.

Recently we’ve done a bit of OB (outside Broadcasting) for Howden Show and Hull Pride to name just 2 and just them 2 alone drew in 100’s of extra visitors who wanted to find out more or wanted to see the video we shot. (T-shirts we wear have URL on back)

Just like buses this week I have had 2 calls regarding domains, but never struck a deal with either of them, which was a pity as they both need developing. I’ll maybe follow them up in a few weeks for a final nudge which would be nice to pay for an iPAD.

Latest bash at converting hard work into cash/results is my Hull domains AGAIN I know. I have bought a few 01482 numbers and placed them on a few sites one been Hull Recovery which gets a nice flow of traffic but not much revenue. It’s going quite well as I forward the numbers to businesses (helps to track calls) and hope once shown the statistics agree a small monthly fee, and then multiplied 35+ will a nice monthly income. (fingers crossed)

Final thought for today to self – Get out more, meet and talk to people but you must get an iPAD soon!
UPDATE: I have an IPAD WHOO HOO – If you need help setting one up and your in Hull call 01482 240087 and quote this site!

As for the numbers I bought for sites like Hull Recovery, Hull Taxis etc they died a dealth. When I called they didn’t think they would or was doing any good (call records proved other wise). It maybe that they would be ideal for a new start up who hasn’t got any traffic or exposure, but we’ll see.

So it’s been a week or so now since Coco (the puppy) arrived and has forced me to have many sleepless or broken sleep nights. Problem with the pup waking up,  it also wakes my 2 year old daughter up too :o( Not good as it works vice-versa. Life goes on and I need to catch as much shut eye when I can.

One of the interviews we recorded with Jackie Cowie, she said about weather having an affect on our happiness and well-being . Sun comes out people tend to be happier etc, well

WHAT THE FREAKING HELL IS GOING ON THIS YEAR?

The sun and temperature just needs to get it together and give us a summer we all deserve this year.

I’m finding a lot of clients are now GETTING “online marketing” and are warming to Twitter, other social media and Generic domain mini sites. This is great to see my clients I help and offer support to doing well. This made me think I maybe missing a opportunity for offering a service to all companies that need to up a gear on the online roller-coaster and maybe need to shout out a bit more.

I am finding more and more that besides other CMS’s Word Press out performs a standard html in many ways I mean

• Indexed into Search Engines faster (tried and proven)
• The ease of having 30 pages indexed with little effort to create them compared to the standard way of producing pages in HTML say using Dream Weaver
• TAGS you add to posts or pages to help identify what that post is mostly about
• You want some new feature WP will have a plugin to do it if not someone on the planet will be able to build it

The only downside is a Data base is needed to run every WP install.

So I’m off to ERBN.co.uk tonight for 7pm in the hope to spread some Humber.TV love and either get people interested in the whole idea or actual on the shows for interviews. Fingers crossed !

Attended a Hull and Humbers Chamber of Commerce speed networking and lunch today at Cave castle (FAB grounds complete with moat) and I realised I need to get out more.

I did use to go to a few networking events but was trying to promote web design and VoIP. Web design is saturated and VoIP people didn’t want to take or trial it.

So out this morning and people I spoke to warmed to the idea of my Humber.TV idea and concept which made me feel fuzzy inside! Also people came up to me and was saying “Are you Mr Humber TV?” again this was a little strange and almost felt like a celebrity  😉

The Chamber hold a speed networking and lunch every month and WILL be going to every one from now!

On another note with Humber TV Valerie Prentice (our only host) is departing to France for a month and needed a stand in. Jess from Divine Clark PR was very interested as an extra permanent host and bagged 4 interviews next week at £50 a shot for advertising. “Result” I thought and hope she keeps her intro rate up.

This made me realise I need to up a gear with the whole Humber TV game and am now on the look out for more willing people to help out on a short term volunteering basis (hope to pay on invoice for their time ASAP). Wanting people who see the potential of the concept, are willing to stick with it and help out how they can to make it work/grow.

3 days till D day, D been DOG! “WOOF WOOF”

Adsense has nicely increased daily which is nice and aren’t sure if it’s with me adding new content on a few or just people looking on-line more leading up to gardening and getting out weather.

Needed to raise some funds and sold a few domains in the past week which in one way wish I never as I let them go for peanuts but altogether made a nice tidy sum to help out. Tried to sell my scuba gear too but think it may be harder than I think due to testing etc.

Signing off and catching some Zzzzzzz

Just a quick post and a few requests really.

Ok I have so many ideas and tasks to do that I don’t benefit financially from (YET) I am opening my arms to anyone wanting to get involved with (the below post) Humber.TV

People possibly needed for the following tasks below, all of which I can do but I don’t have 12 arms, 6 heads and 50 hours in a day!

• Graphic designer (show and site logo’s for shows)
• Voice over (some people with great sounding voices)
• Transcription (turning shows into text)
• Video Editor (tidying shows up and adding adverts)
• Marketing (the idea to advertise on shows)

I am getting a lot of positive feed back and people wanting to be involved in shows, so do YOU?

Do you want a slot to discuss the papers or latest news?

Maybe your into gadgets and have 3 you want to tell more on.

Are you an expert in starting up a small business and can explain and answer questions in how to do it.

Which pubs, bands, clubs or just nights out in general are shining in your area and why?

The Humber is a big area to cover for one person and would be sensible to have area helpers who orchestrate the people and shows for LIVE streams. Shows will then be ready for the broadcasting kit to just arrive at a designated venue and got for it. Local knowledge is better from a local person!

So does that sound a plan? Contact me!

Attended the first UK east coast digital conference today the KC Stadium and just in short FANTASTIC Jon!

Speakers as follows and briefs I my add to over the next few days:

• Rory Cellan-Jones – Very real, down to earth, and surprisingly quite funny
• Jaan Orvet – Calm, controlled, great ideas about nodes and how projects should or could be worked
• Charles Arthur – Great tips on how to get noticed by journalists with stories or exclusives
• Stuart McFarlane –
• Mike Butcher – Bursting at the seams this guy, so much to say and share. Could have a pint or spend a week with this guy and NOT get bored.
• Rob Palmer – Web guy from Newcastle, great design skills and ideas. Hope he has the balls to go it alone some day full time. Good luck Rob!
• Kai Gates –
• Karen Barber – Despite a tech glitch at the beginning, she sort of enlightened us all to new ideas and Audio Boo in general
• Anand Verma – He has his fingers on the pulse of what not to do and what to do in the digital market place. Very watchable.

A lot of it that was said I knew a fair bit about but the main part of the whole day I’d take on board is “Got and idea? Go for it! Make it real.” This is directed at Jon and his teams efforts.

He had a vision and went for it! I do think a lot of it was down to who he knows. This follows true in life all the time, but if you have an idea, talk to people ask for help, go to Hull Digital meetups and don’t look back.

Jon is sending out questionnaires I think for feed back but