I'm Re-Learning to Write!

Life got busy, really busy. I had next to no time to write, anything, so when I finally tried I found myself calling things 'good' or 'great'.  Nothing really more expressive than that.

I hate failing at things like this, and hate is an attractive force. It makes me want to solve my problems, and so, I started In ATX, a blog dedicated to the places I love in Austin where I can really work on my descriptive writing, and hopefully rebuild my written vocabulary.  Stop by, check it out, and I hope to see you all there soon!

SXSW and The Joys of Non-Office Working

Life may be stressful sometimes when you are self employed, but the pure flexibility of non-office life is amazing, especially when you reach events like SXSW, where there are hundreds of fantastic events scattered over a two week period.

Its hard to remember what it was like working in an office (Back when I started this blog) but the dramatic lifestyle change has definitely been for the better. A move to a nicer climate not only makes life a lot more bearable, but being able to work in coffee shops, on my balcony, or even just from my bedroom makes work enjoyable more than a chore.

This is where you need to know that work simply does not need to make you 'unhappy'.

So today, I have done a little work, will be going to a free BQQ, with free drinks, and might spend a little more time tonight.

Freelance Fun

So I have been a freelance SEO consultant for quite some time now, and I have to admit that one thing that really struck me is, that i do not think I could ever go back to an office environment. The whole 9-5 grind, shitty wage for a mind numbing job. Sure, I have been writing about iPhone space games now for a month, but I can do it wherever I want, whenever I want.

One thing that has also become increasingly apparent is that building up a knowledge set is an amazing way to break free of this and launch your own career. I am not talking about an education here. There are two major problems with just having an education, the first is it denotes lack of experience (unless you have experience to back it up) and secondly it means that you have been taught from textbooks not from experience.

This sounds stupid, but in many fields the texts that are being taught are out of date. Case in point, my brother was being taught about web design and his lecturer had the audacity to say that keywords were an important factor in SEO, this has not been true for around half a decade.

The worst part is that if the students do their own research and learn the correct methods of SEO, they fail their exams.

If you have experience on the other hand, you know what works and what doesn't, because you have had to do it.

In an effort to stay on top of this!

In an effort to stay on top of this I have decided to post yet another blog post. This is twice in a month, unheard of since my hectic move to America, but I really do think I should pay a little more attention to this long neglected labor of love which I created.

Today i will mostly be talking about how the American Government decided to shut down for a while. The reasoning behind all this seems a little bit weird (I think it goes along the lines of , the republicans stone-walled democrat decisions until the democrats ran out of money to the point of having to shut down everything for a week or two. then the Republicans said the Democrats couldn't make any decisions on time and that they must be an inept government for having to shut everything down). I have to admit it beats the English version of politics where you sit a bunch of private schooled 'toffs' in to a room and watch them hurl polite abuse at each other.

But I cannot help but think that shutting down the government for a few days sounds like a remarkably good idea, I mean, just think of all the work that could get done without all that bureaucratic nonsense.

In more personal news, I will hopeful have my American drivers licence soon. I am pretty sure my eyes closed when the guy took my photo, so I am looking forward to around ten years of piss taking in the future.

Life Continues!

Life is going past pretty smoothly in the United States right now, so I thought I would give you a quick update, not on my life - per say, but more on my time at SXSWi, a huge festival in Austin which covers films, games and music over an entire month.

Unfortunately I didn't attend much of the film or music side of things, since I did not have a ticket (Though I did get to see the Strokes play a free show at the Auditorium shores). I did however spend quite a lot of time at the interactive part of the festival.

The interactive SXSW festival was a surprisingly big event, with booths from some of the world's largest games companies, including Capcom, Mortal Combat, Sony, and more. There was even a surprise visit from Mike Tyson himself.

Despite my first thoughts, Mike Tyson has not developed a WoW addiction, but he is launching a new game for the iPhone. This game is free, and you can find it under Mike Tyson - Main Event.

Another game which caught my eye was the soon to be released Traveller-AR. This fantastic iPhone game is kind of EVE style, but it works straight from your iPhone. Not only is Traveller-AR one of the first iPhone MMORPG games, but it also incorporates cutting edge technology such as Augmented reality to create an insanely immersive gaming environment!

All in all the event was pretty amazing, while the new Mortal Combat game looked highly appealing, I suddenly started to feel incredibly old as 14 year old girls whooped my ass. This seemed worryingly familiar, until I realized that I used to beat my dad just as easily. Are the years catching up?

Probably.

The Joys of Article Writing

I am doing pretty well nowadays as a freelance SEO consultant, but I have to admit, a lot of my job is tedious. Since SEO is in the most part about getting high quality backlinks I spend a huge amount of my time article writing.

Now I do kind of love writing articles, it is fun. However when you have to write 50, 100, even 1000 articles surrounding one subject, the joy does kind of get spread a little thin!

To stop each and every article I write from becoming Internet dredge I try to follow three simple but effective components of article writing.

The first is to structure my article.Giving it a beginning, a middle and an end really helps keep my writing in check, and on point.

The second is to not ramble. This is a hard habit to break, especially when you are writing 100 versions of the same. However re-reading the article is a god way to spot dross that is just in there to fill space. If you cannot stay interested in your own writing, how do you expect anyone else to care?

The third and final thing I try to do is increase my own vocabulary. A few words which stretch your readers limits will definitely keep them interested!

By keeping myself on point with these three simple techniques I have seen a vast improvement in traffic, and people staying to read my articles!

An Exclusive Article Directory

Over the last few months I have been working incredibly hard on getting people up and running on my latest site, This is Freelance. This site is an exclusive article directory with a stringent application process. This allows us to weed out the spam artists and make This is Freelance a safe haven for high quality writers across the Internet.

If you are looking for a great place to write online, and feel as if you can write high quality articles, please feel free to check out This is Freelance today. There are plenty of opportunities to make money online, get some free do-follow backlinks, and maybe even meet some fellow writers in the process!

A Quick Run Down of My Life Right Now

It seems sad that I don't really keep this site up to date anymore. Every time I come back to it I feel sad, like seeing a photo reminding you of a lost childhood.

The truth of the matter is that since now most of my earnings come from writing copious amounts of bullshit, it leaves me rather drained when it comes to writing for fun on my blogs such as this.

Despite this I am going to soldier on and give you a little rundown as to what has been happening over here in America!

First off the whole immigration proceedings seem to be going really well. Things are progress nicely enough, and pretty soon I should get that good ol' permanent residence status. This means that I will soon be entering the working world once more, and will finally be able to live up to the title of this blog again!

Living in America is strange. It is similar in so many ways, and yet there are little differences which set me apart, and can often make me feel like I am in a foreign country.

The weather here is so much better though, seriously. The heat might get a little bit too much sometimes, but trust me on this, it is way more tolerable than three months of grey skies!

One of the biggest differences over here is undoubtedly the size of the bugs. Cockroaches are just euurrgghghhhh, but even the butterflies are larger than what we seem to get over in the UK!

All in all life is pretty good, hopefully when I get back in to the swing of a day job I will even find some of the old office wit come back to me, and you can once again come here to find depressingly sarcastic posts filled with spite at least once a week!

Google PacMan Game!

Check out Google today, for the 30th anniversary of pacman they have changed their logo to a fully functioning Pacman game in the shape of, you guessed it, the google logo!

The Best Criminals Ever.

When it comes to criminal activity the master criminals who became the most famous where not the ones who stole the most, but the ones who carried it off with the most style and self acknowledgement.

It is for this reason that I think that at least two of this group of criminals sentenced in York this week are destined for great things.

http://www.yorkpress.co.uk/news/8175395.Russian_credit_card_fraudsters_jailed/

On the Road Again

Looks like it's that time again, in just over 24 hours I will be landing in Austin, Texas, where I will start a life as a true American, and will be starting by getting married to one!

Yes, I am getting hitched, not sure if I had mentioned it here, but I am looking forward to it all!

I will seriously try to get some updates up here soon, but I have been way too damn busy!

Yet Again I Apologise....

It seems I have lost track of this blog yet again, this is not anything intentional, I have just been incredibly busy trying to make money online, and fortunately I have been succeeding!

Life has been astoundingly hectic though, the good news is that my American Visa has been approved, and I will soon be living in Austin Texas, where I will undoubtedly at some point re-enter the working world as an office lackey.

I have been writing a lot on Hubpages, and recently wrote a page entitled Hubpages Sucks, since some people were putting down a system which for me has paid off big time!

I will be attempting to catch up on a lot of your blogs soon, but life is very busy.

I would like to point out that I met the lovely Celeste the other day though, a woman jsut as charming in real life as she is on her (unfortunately neglected :P)

Muppets Bohemian Rhapsody

This made me laugh oh so hard, the Muppets Bohemian Rhapsody!

I also apologise for my lack of communication recently, immigration is a nightmare, but I am slowly getting through it, also my workload has increased tremendously, while on the plus side this means more money, on the downside it also means more work.

Fortunately things have been taking off on one of my projects (find out more on Clearview Writing) which is earning me $300 a month, so I am investing a lot of time in to that!

Amsterdam was an amazing vacation, i have returned to a factory job to keep some kind of a cash flow coming in. To be honest I am enjoying factory work a hell of a lot more than my old office job, my value was instantly recognised, and I was offered a full time position with a view to training for further career opportunities. It is therefore unfortunate that I had to decline, since I hope to be leaving the country within the next 2-3 months.

In the meantime however enjoy the hilarious Muppets Bohemian Rhapsody!

Luck o' the Irish

I had to feel for the Irish as I got back from work and saw the numerous replays on TV. Their chance to enter in to the world cup dashed by the cheating French in extra time.

The Irish, ever the good sports, took this reasonably well, I would have been livid. they looked at it philosophically, I on the other hand wondered how the hell the referee and his attending staff failed to notice Henry pick the ball out of the air as it sailed wide of the goal, drop it to his feet and then kick it across for the goal.

How can we expect players to play fairly and honestly when there are no repercussions for vile cheating acts such as this.

Norton NIGHTMARE

My Norton 360 subscription ran out today, OK I though, I'll just renew it.

I clicked renew now, expecting to be done in five minutes, until I was given the bill.

£59.99

£59.99?

SIXTY FUCKING POUNDS and thats just for ONE YEAR!

If I pay £110 I get two years, nice enough to save me a tenner I suppose. But come on, this is not even for updates here, my software has stopped working!

Now I know businesses get shafted by these yearly renewal costs every year, and have done for a long time. But Norton has brought these yearly renewals to the public domain, and in doing so have just lost me, my family and as many friends as possible as customers.

If I buy software as a home user I expect to be left with that software, with security updates. If I want more features, a new PC tune up tool, or similar, then I will buy a new version.

For now however, Symantec can suck my rather large cock. I will be going to the numerous, less resource intensive, free antivirus and firewall options out there.

I do not know how Symantec can even try and sell their product for £60, especially when you consider the American version is, wait for it, $60, with a regular 50% discount, meaning overseas they are expected to pay around £15.

On top of these blatent rip off prices they do not even give you the latest version of the software, my renewal only giving me security updates, not product updates. For an extra £5 however they will allow me to use their latest software, as long as I keep paying them that additional £60.

So on top of us having to pay a value which takes the UK and US exchange rate as 1:1, we also fail to benefit from their discounts.

Goodbye Norton, Goodbye Symantec, Price gouging has pissed me off royally, so I am bidding thee farewell.

I hope your company burns to the ground.

Bring on the free software!

Currently in Amsterdam

Amsterdam, the city of red lights, green lights, and waggamamma. Yes, I am there!

My fiancee and I have toured a fair amount of the city, from the small markets, to the red light district. The red light district is not as seedy as I expected, the window girls have their underwear on, I have not been mugged yet, but the smoking is FANTASTIC!

Anyhow, I will be returning shortly with a more indepth story of my times here!

The Count - Censored

It's been a while!

My posts seem to have slipped from the daily, to the weekly and finally to the monthly. This is not intentional, but my life has slipped in to a slight ditch of monotony, with factory work, sleeping, and eating comprising the majority of my time. While I do try to stay on top of things it is not always easy, especially when I am trying to foster a writing career.

So I guess I should fill my few remaining readers in!

I have been accepted for the process on my new American visa, now I just have to prove that my relationship with Jade is real. Her website (http://www.myveganplanet.com) is doing really well right now, and she seems to be getting some good freelance catering work sorted.

Apart from the boredom, and spending 3 months away from the woman I love, things are pretty much ok, while my life may not directly be progressing anywhere, things are moving forward for my future life in America onwards.

Oh, and Manic, give me access to your blog!

If you want to see something pretty funny, check out http://thejagster.blogspot.com/ for the latest post, which shows a chav getting knocked to the floor by a man who he had been verbaly abusing and pushing for nearly three minutes. The chav who acted so hard gets knocked to the ground in one punch, and then crawls away, not quite so up for the fight as he had been moments before.

So the Post Office Won't be Sold.

"Jesus Christ" I thought to myself this morning, when for the first time I found out that they were going to sell the post office. I mean if the government has not learnt from the mistakes of the Thatcher era sell offs, how it bankrupt our country and skyrocketted our taxes (Despite being meant to reduce them) then I really should despair.

This is the latest worry following our governments initiatives, such as hiring foreign contractors, and selling off our key infrastructure to foreign countries. While I am far from BNP when it comes to immigration policies, I do worry that no other EU country takes the number of immigrants, allows their business to be sold to foreign countries, or allow their currency to be worn down quite as much as our ludicrously inept British Government.

Concertanation

While the American thing may not have gone to plan right off the bat things are still progressing and I will be heading out over that way soon enough.

in the mean time I just have to sit back and relax, chill out and boogey down while I wait for something, anything to happen.

Life goes slow here, and while I may soon kill myself with boredom I cannot help but enjoy the occasional glimmer of sunshine that breaks through the stollid grey British weather.

I have been writing A LOT recently in some vague attempt to make money without a job, I have applied for a bar job close by to keep the cash coming in, but untill that comes around I will have to work hard on finding money where I can.

So - if anyone has any odd jobs and would like to hire a Yorkshire man + Pay travelling expenses, leave a comment!