Steak Pie

I love the internet :)

I replied to a lady on the internet a couple of weeks back, who was kindly asking what I wanted, with details.

Over the last couple of days the tweet has been getting some likes, which led me to this morning messaging a chap a recipe for a steak and ale pie, and clarifying what is meant by good honest gravy.

And what I mean - chip shop gravy.

Not "ju".  Not thin, watery stuff that rolls off the plate should you tip it.  Proper gravy.

Thinking back, when I was a kid and went to my grandparents for dinner, sometimes they would ask if I wanted gravy, but because they didn't actually like gravy, you'd actually get a chicken & leek cup-a-soup. Which was fine because I love chicken & leek soup, but is a bit weird calling it gravy.

In other news, my wife has been awesome.

On Wednesday, our son drew up plans for a toy that he wanted.

The only trouble is... you can't buy it.

Basically, it's an erasable whiteboard with a series of numbers at the bottom on loops, each in a particular colour.

My wife made it last night, which led to the cry this morning from my son's bedroom of:

"It's BEAUTIFUL and AMAZING!"

She's awesome :)

Hope everyone has a good weekend!

Car Advert

I keep getting this advert appear on my Twitter feed for the all-new Jaguar.  It looks like an awesome car, but I get distracted by it's name...

Yeah, I'm a twelve year old boy, I can't help but swap two letters over and say "P-Face" to myself and giggle.

In other news, I finally got around to doing a new video, I'm really pleased, particularly because it's one of my parody adverts, which I love to make, but hardly ever have ideas.  Do check it out :)

Follow the Government of Japan

Why do I keep getting promoted tweets from the Government of Japan?  Been getting them for about a week now, and it feels like they're advertising something that doesn't really need advertising...

I remember when I was a kid there used to be loads of TV adverts for things that it seemed pointless to advertise.  For example, energy companies like British Gas - I can understand the reason for doing it now, because there is a choice of companies to buy your gas from, but way back then your choice was either to have gas, or not, and if you had it, it came from British Gas.  I imagined someone sat in their house shivering for hours, then watching the British Gas advert and thinking "Hey! I could put the gas central heating on!"

And so for the Government of Japan.  Although I would love to visit Japan...

Speaking of travelling, I've just finished "Cycling Back to Happiness: Adventure on the North Sea Cycle Route" by Bernie French, It's a tale of an everyday guy, not a super cycling enthusiast, taking on the adventure of the North Sea Cycle Route, and as you might imagine, he encounters all kinds of people and experiences on the route.  I've been getting into my travel books lately (which are always a bad idea because it makes me want to go travelling) and this book looked worth a try.  It is definitely well worth a read if you like Bill Bryson or Michael Palin, I found it particularly interesting because of the route taken Bernie goes through a lot of small villages and other settlements that you wouldn't probably visit on a typical holiday.

Trying something new

Let's be honest, part of the reason for blogging is the audience. I started blogging because I wanted to essentially force myself to regularly write something, and I need an audience to keep me going.

And I wouldn't be surprised if, at least a portion of us bloggers, do dream about going viral and suddenly rolling around in advertising income and power.  And offers of free cruises in return for giving a review on our blog.

(For the sake of clarity - to any cruise lines reading - I will be happy to review your cruise ships on my blog in return for a cruise)

Anyway, one blog that I read - although not as often as I should - is the Hootsuite Social Blog.  Hootsuite, if you're not familiar, offer a service for social media folk to schedule tweets, manage social media searches, and lots of other stuff.  I've used Hootsuite for scheduling tweets for absolutely years, and it's a handy tool, mainly let down by my erratic tweet scheduling.

But on their blog they give great advice in the form of interesting blogs for anyone wanting to boost their social media presence.

One of their blogs which I recently read talked about lessons from 15 of their best performing tweets, which gives some examples of good tweets they've done.  And one of the key things is including photos in tweets, so that they stand out better in Twitter timelines.

So with the latest set of scheduled tweets I've included photos, and it'll be interesting to see how (if) it makes any difference to how much the tweets are noticed.

And of course, you need a good photo on any blog.

So here's one.

It's a pig with the ability to vibrate lurking within the pyramid of mystery. Let the memes begin.

Thanks for reading!

Don't forget the transatlantic debate on Saturday - US vs UK, which has the better political system?  Stay tuned!

New video - Omega 4!

I have a new video live!  Meet Omega 4 - he's a geek, he's a hero, he's a heroic geek.

There is a rather bad continuity error in the video (actually 2... at least!) - why not let me know (comments box below, or get in touch at me at my Twitter account) if you spot it or not?

Let me know if you can't view this video - I've had a report from someone that it wouldn't open on a tablet so if you have this (or any other problem) with any of my videos I'd really appreciate knowing about it.

YouTube have announced that any channels with 100 subscribers or more will be able to live stream.  I'm currently 76 subscribers away from this, so if you do have a Google or YouTube account it'd be great if you could check out my channel and subscribe if you like my stuff!

In other news, milk bread is one of my favourite foods of all time, which my mum makes occasionally and she's seen fit to put her recipe up on her blog.  I'm going to have a go at making some!

Finally - it is National Watermelon Day today!  Apparently there are over 300 different kinds of watermelon.  For a (healthier than chocolate) treat I'd recommend a glass of chopped watermelon pieces, mixed up with a crushed meringue nest, and a spot of single cream (you can always use low-fat cream like Elmlea) - lovely!

Being appropriate with social media

When I was at college studying IT far too many years ago (fourteen perhaps?) one of the things we learned about was "netiquette", or basically the practice of being polite whilst on the Internet and using email.

This has evolved as social media has taken off and we are ever more connected to the world (and more importantly, our contacts) 24/7.

However, this can cause issues.  I personally feel for those people in their teenage years who may make one or two mistakes in their time, acting silly or making bad judgement choices.  We are all human and none of us are perfect.  However, the new generation is under more and more scrutiny, everyone has a camera attached to their phone (and everyone has a phone in their pocket) so anything occurring can be photographed and shared with groups of people within seconds of it happening.  This is a great freedom but also means that people need to be careful how they behave and with who.

For example, I have my blog, my twitter account, my LinkedIn account, my Facebook, and several email addresses - professional, personal and mainly spam ones.  And I have to make decisions on what gets posted to which account, as what may be suitable material to appear on one I may not want to show on another.  Some people have more than one twitter account, one for work and one for personal use - I've not taken that option (yet) but as a result I am aware of what is going up on my twitter feed and try to ensure that it remains acceptable.

Also taking seemingly safe options such as "liking" something on Facebook - I may like the thing I've clicked on, but if friends of mine (who may also be work colleagues) see me liking something that they find offensive, does that cause an issue?

Possibly.  Do be aware that everyone has slightly different senses of humour and can take offense at different things, and something that you find absolutely fine can be anathema to another.

Very important for anyone in work is to be aware of your organisations social media policy and guidance (if available).  I've certainly read my organisations details several times and do strive to ensure that I stay on the right side of the guidance.

To hear from someone who is far more of an expert on these things than myself, check out Paul Wilkinson's website, pwcom.co.uk - Paul is a specialist in social media and is a fantastic speaker about the subject too.

I'll finish off just to give an update about the G4C event I've been arranging - the event we've been doing on Employability is taking place tomorrow at Sheffield Hallam University.  Everything is looking extremely good for the event and I'm very much looking forward to it.  We have now sold out of tickets for the ticket which is great (although I feel bad for anyone who wants to attend but now can't) so fingers crossed for a great evening and everything running smoothly!  We are filming the event and hopefully we'll get the video up at the weekend.

Is anybody on Twitter real...

Following on from the virus last week, it's now hit my other half pretty hard, plus my son seems to be coming down with it this morning as well which is worrying. It also seems to have given my system a kicking in general so I'm waiting for advice from my consultant and being very careful what I eat (translation - not much) so altogether I'll be happy when we're all better.  On the plus side losing a pound or two wouldn't be the worst thing in the world.

I keep getting followers on Twitter, which is really cool.

For the uninitiated, Twitter is a "microblogging service" - basically you can write tweets, which must be a maximum of 140 characters, which then everyone who is following you can see.  You can follow people yourself, to see what they are tweeting.  Popular celebrity twitterers (twitterati?) include Stephen Fry and Lady Gaga - the latter has almost 30 million people following her, which is just insane if you think about it (or not for the matter).  Personally I recommend The Guild, Geek & Sundry, Felicia Day, and Wil Wheaton.

My twitter account is at RavenswingThog if you want to follow me.

But how many (I presume) fake Twitter accounts are there?  I have, at the moment in time, a huge 68 followers.

Of the 68, about 44 are work related in some manner.  A few more are friends, but there's a few which are clearly fake accounts.  When I say fake accounts (lets call em zombies), its usually a female with a random name that includes "xxx" in it and all their tweets are random garbage like "once I went outside but it rained".  Quickly scrolling through I can see at least nine zombie followers.

It just seems odd to me to have zombies trailling after me, listening to my tweets. I guess the reason why is that they follow real people in the hope that they follow them back, they then have a long list of followers and sell tweets to businesses (for $100 we could tweet to all of our followers about your urinal cake business!)

More worrying, I did a quick search on the net for "fake twitter followers", which led me quickly to a website that would check how many of these you had following you.  But to do this, the website would have permission to post tweets on my behalf.  I wonder how many people sign up to something like this, and then the app happily goes along tweeting about whatever it wants on their account.

Facebook apps do the same.  If you're not careful all types of Facebook games and the like take the ability to post on your timeline about themselves.  Generally I try to be fairly careful and reject those apps that want too much access, or if there's an option of "who sees the posts from this app" I set it so that only I can see the posts, and it doesn't bother my friends.  After all, I generate enough noise without apps helping!