2015 is coming...

So you read this, 2014 is either about to end, or has ended. (that pretty much covers everyone, except possibly for Doctor Who)

How's your year been?  Apparently this year I was going to lose weight and hit the gym, which didn't really happen (give or take maybe half a dozen pounds).  So, I've got a bit of a list for the next year:

• Lose weight - I'm aiming to get down to 15 stone, through those wonderful things, diet and exercise.
• Play more tabletop games - I want to try to organise to at least play board or card games once a month, I love playing tabletop games, it's an inexpensive way to have fun with friends and family, so I'm going to try to sort this out.
• Increase views of my blog and videos - I did set myself a challenge of 600k blog views by the end of the month (looks like it'll be about 573k) and 14k video views (and I'm on 13,415) so they haven't quite got there.  I'm struggling, as I suspect many people do, with engaging readers.  By all means, if people have any suggestions as to blogs or videos that they'd like to see, or maybe they'd like to do a guest blog/vlog, let me know.

Longer term I also have the following ambitions:

• Learn to swim - no, I can't swim.  Neither can I ride a bike, but I have a car so I don't see that being a big issue. However there is a possibility that I could drown, and a car would be particularly unhelpful in a drowning situation.
• Study at Oxford or Cambridge (preferably Cambridge).  I'm not talking actually going there, as much as I'd love to, but perhaps a distance learning or online course, or even a short residential course (they do concentrated weekend courses on subjects).  I am a bit of a snob perhaps, a lot of people that I admire studied at those universities and whilst I can't see myself being able to get there to study a full degree or anything, some sort of study programme at one of the two would be great.
• Visit the USA and Canada.  Over the last few months I've been doing a lot of reading about these countries, and I would love to visit them, perhaps on some sort of long holiday (2-3 weeks maybe).  There's so many places in both countries that I'd like to visit that I can't see us doing everywhere in one trip, but perhaps we could break it down over a number of years.

Do you have any plans for 2015 or new years resolutions?  Drop me a comment and let me know.

I should say that I will be doing my 2015 predictions video imminently (possibly tomorrow morning if I get chance, otherwise it'll be New Years Day), so if you do have a question about your 2015 that you want including on the video, do let me know asap, get it in the comments.

And before I finish, New Years Eve is coming!  I've done a video of advice, covering phones, taxis, and even signing Auld Langs Syne.  Be warned - if you listen carefully near the end you can hear a child counting monsters.

Happy new year!

Yahoo Answers!

I don't know if you're aware of this, but something that Yahoo runs is a site called Yahoo Answers.  Basically you can ask any question you want, and the community can answer the question.  I quite enjoy going on and spending an hour or two answering questions on the site.

Now what you can do, when you answer a question, is flag up the sources that you used for your answer.  I've started putting my blog site (thoggy.blogspot.com) in as standard for every answer I make, in an attempt to drive traffic to my site, which works slightly.

But, there isn't any source information on here.

So to resolve this, I decided to summarise here my advice that was selected in the past as being "Best Answers" - this doesn't mean that I'm right, but that in their opinion my advice was better than the other advice offered.

I find it surprising how often I get "Best Answer" for my responses to relationship questions.  As a geeky guy who has many weaknesses I don't think I'm that good at these, but I do still get a fair few Best Answers for my relationship advice.

So here we go!

If your partner is complaining about you being overly clingy (texting/phoning too much) then don't text or phone, leave it for them to contact you.  That will give you a guide as to how often they think you should contact them.  But unless you really are contacting them way too often (and I would say every day isn't too often) then you may want to reconsider your relationship.

There isn't a 100% guaranteed way to find all email addresses used by someone.  Don't bother paying for a service which claims that they can do this.

If you can't connect by ethernet to a router, but another computer is using it fine, check the router settings, security is probably an issue.

If someone at work totally overreacted at a mild joke, and you've apologised but they are continuing to ignore you, just be civil and professional to them.  Let them get over the joke in their own time.

To promote your blog, use everything you can. Facebook, Twitter, comment on other blogs, guest blog, have guest bloggers on your blog, make sure it's submitted to Yahoo, Google, Bing, Technorati, and anywhere else you can find.  Make your descriptions interesting and use tags and locations in your posts.

When responding to rudeness, try to ask yourself "will anything positive come out of my response?" before you respond.  This is generally useful when making any sort of communication.

If you want to ask somebody out, do it.  Life's too short.

Keep your head up and keep going whatever it is you're doing.  If you think you need to go to therapy then go.

Live your life the way you want.  Don't feel that you're "behind" other people if you haven't got the same qualifications or job or lifestyle.

If your kid is ill get medical advice and follow it.

Don't stay with someone if you don't love them.

Aviva do free car insurance for a few days for car dealerships. (At http://www.newdriveaway.co.uk/)

Wifi on a mobile phone should be free to use.

If you want to start exercising regularly, then build up your exercises bit-by-bit.

It is okay to exercise in an evening.

A Vauxhall Corsa is probably a good choice for a first car.

If you can't get work and need experience, consider volunteering.

Don't be afraid of being you.

It's the journey, not the destination.

If you want a place with lots to do both during the day and on an evening in Majorca, consider Magaluf or Palma Nova.

If you're going home during a night out make sure you tell your friends so that they aren't worried about you.

If you need to design a data collection sheet to gather the number of men, women, boys and girls using a sports hall I suggest making a table with a header of "Sports Hall Usage", and columns for "Men", "Women", "Boys", and "Girls", possibly with a totals box at the bottom of each column.


That's it - that's the result of about a year, on and off, answering questions on Yahoo Answers!  Hope you enjoyed and now when I link my blog as a source of guidance I won't be lying anymore!