First of all my MacBook Pro has decided to play silly buggers and it keeps crashing over and over again, so that’s in the Apple shop for repair.

And just to keep on the crashing theme, I’ve only gone and smashed my car into the back of a Volkswagen Passat on the motorway yesterday, so that’s also in the shop for repair.

Oh well, you can either get annoyed, upset and angry at the world about these things, or you can look at the positives and think about how much worse it could be.

The positives in this situation is that I’ve borrowed an old MacBook Air for the time being, so not too bad really on the computer front. Although I’m missing all my files, programs, data and bookmarks it’s not too bad a swap for the time being.

As far as positives on the car scenario, I should hopefully have it back in a few days time with the bonnet looking like it should do (and not bent in half like it is at the moment), and of course the major plus point is that I’m still walking and talking and have no injuries.

Another positive for this week is that it’s my son’s 7th birthday tomorrow, so it’ll be a fine end to an otherwise eventful week.

Here’s hoping next week brings less drama, and more fixed devices and motors

Stay safe, be lucky.

Jon Dean

You see, I said that this year I have a plan to do a few things: keep on learning, lose some weight, learn to unplug and publish more.

I’m happy to report that I’m on track for a nearly all of those things, but the publishing more has completely gone out of the window.

In fact the last post was on 6th January, so not only am I not publishing more, I’m actually publishing less than I did last year.

Don’t be fooled tho!

The lack of publishing is actually down to my success in the other plans I made, and the progress there has been ace.

I’ve lost a good 2 stone in weight, so I’m half way on my plan to be 4 stone lighter by next New Year. I’ve been learning a ton of new stuff and am in the middle of coding 2 apps (both for personal use, not sure if I’m even going to release them), and I’m unplugging and spending way more time with my family.

I really do wan’t to publish more tho, and I’ve been thinking about change and getting on the move.

I’m actually talking both literally and figuratively, because I’m selling my house and moving the family to a new home, and I’m thinking of starting the blog all over again on a new domain with a fresh and clean theme.

Sometimes it’s good to just get a fresh start, and I’ve been thinking about wiping the slate clean for a while and am now ready to take the plunge.

So, over the summer I’m going to drag myself into 2011 and create a nice lean HTML5 / CSS3 theme and kill this blog off, and I’m going to start posting more of my mindless drivel on my other domain jondean.co.

I might even create a separate stylesheet for IE6 users which serves the content to look like the MS-DOS command line (hey, if you’re going to use a browser from yesteryear then be prepared for my sarcastic attitude to luddites )

You’ll notice I just said that I’m moving domains, and this is for a few reasons.

First of all I want to test the .co domain over the course of a year to see where it can get to in the search results by just publishing regular content and not actually doing any major backlinking.

The second reason is to see how all the new Google author stuff is going to work with a fresh domain, and if the content on my new domain starts outranking the content on my old domain.

Think of it as an extended test to see how the new changes fare against an established site.

Also, it might give me both domains in the top 10, so all roads leading back to me sounds like a nice plan

So there you have it, my bi-annual update!

Hopefully I’ll pull my finger out and publish more, and on the new blog I’ll most likely be putting out snippets on things I find interesting and problems I’ve hit with coding the apps, along with some random pictures of the family and have it all laced with my sarcastic dry wit.

Jon Dean

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I don’t normally make resolutions, because I’m more the kind of person who doesn’t like waiting around until January 1st in order to get things started.

You could call me impatient if you like (I don’t mind, I’ve been called much worse )

I just figure that if you’re passionate about doing something then putting it off until January 1st is a step backwards.

Of course, there are things I’d like to do, and looking at 2011 ahead of me there are personal goals and plans I want to achieve.

But let me make it clear – these aren’t resolutions…

…they just happen to be plans I happen to be putting into place this month

So, what are my plans I hear you cry (well, not so much of a cry, maybe I hear one person murmur quietly in the background). I only have a few, and they fall into just a couple of categories.

Continue To Learn New Stuff

Those that know me know that I’m always reading a book or magazine, or surfing the t’interwebs and reading a thousand different things on my Google Reader feed. I can’t help it, I’m just one of those inquisitive types who has issues sitting still.

I read stuff because I find it interesting, and a lot of the time I learn things I never knew before – whether it’s something really useful like how to integrate new Facebook stuff on a website, or less useful (but highly entertaining) stuff on how there’s a gym in London which uses little people as weights.

Either way, I’m gonna continue sticking my nose in books / magazines / RSS readers for the foreseeable future, so I’m gonna continue to learn new stuff.

Learn To Unplug

Although this directly contradicts what I’ve just said, I’m going to make a conscious effort to switch off all my connections to the outside world when I’m at home.

This isn’t to say I’m becoming a hermit who shuns the world and all technology, retiring to a wood cabin in remote wilderness, and living a unabomber lifestyle…

It simply means that once I’ve gone home then I’m going to be spending more time with my wife, my kids, my friends and my extended family – rather than with all my other friends on Twitter, Facebook and the crazies from the various forums I frequent (you know who you are).

This doesn’t mean I love you any less, it just means that I love my family more, and that’s a good thing.

Lose Some Weight Fatty

If I’m completely honest (and as honest as all my mates are to me in the pub), I need to lose about 4 stone.

I kid you not.

I mostly sit around on my ass 24/7 working on a computer. It’s a very nice shiny iMac, which is fast, reliable, clean etc., which makes it a joy to sit at. But nevertheless, I sit on my ass all day and don’t do enough exercise (unless you count making coffee as exercise, which most people don’t).

This coupled with the fact that I love chocolate, kebabs, pizza, curry, chinese food, steak & kidney pudding and chips, beer, wine, crisps [and the list goes on...] means that I have gone in the past few short years from a svelte 12 – 13 stone handsome chap, and grown somewhat into a 17 stone 1 pound behemoth.

It’s not good for me, and in the long term it won’t be good for my kids, so this is the year that I drag my fat butt off my very comfortable chair and do some exercise.

Put My Head Above The Parapet More

Like most people reading this (all two of you), I am just as insecure and fret about people saying / writing things about me. It’s part of the human condition, we all want to be universally loved (especially if it’s Halle Berry or Michelle Pfeiffer), and none of us want people to come back at us and swipe the rug from under our feet and kick us while we’re on the floor.

The problem is that on the internet if you want to make some money or build out a business, then you need to put your stuff out there for people to read and comment on.

Thankfully I’ve not really had any bad incidents of people name-calling, trolling my comments, or saying nasty things about my weight on Twitter (unless you count the people I share an office with – and that’s not really trolling, it’s witty banter, and it’s frequently started by me )

So this year I’m going to be putting out more content, whether it’s quick updates via Posterous, or an update on my Facebook Page (which you should go and like by the way), or even a monster blog post like this one.

I’m also going to be messing around more with all the Facebook changes, so if you are looking at this blog you’ll notice that the comments will move across to FB comments at some point (when I get time / can be bothered), and if you’re looking at my FB page then you’ll see me making changes over there as well. These are as much for my continuing to learn, as well as finding out what works and what doesn’t.

Try More, Fail More, Learn More

This is actually something which has been ongoing now for a couple of years, so it’s not actually a plan for 2011 as such.

You see, I’m not one of those people that cry over spilled milk. I cock up all the time, and each and every time it happens I learn something from it.

So this year I’m going to continue to try to do more stuff, take action, and see what works. If it doesn’t do what I thought it was going to do it doesn’t mean it’s a failure, it’s just new data for the next iteration…

So that’s my ongoing plans (remember, they’re not resolutions), hope the coming year brings you what you’re hoping and aiming for, and if it doesn’t then you have some test data to work with next time round

Jon Dean

It’s a work in progress and I’ve not finished with all the internal WP pages yet (404, archives etc) so there’s probably summat wrong on them somewhere, but hey, it’s better to get something out than leaving it in ‘dev’ for eternity

Feel free to let me know your thoughts in the comments, and you can be as complimentary or as bitchy as you like, I can take it :p

Jon Dean

Posted via email from Jon Dean

Posted via email from Jon Dean

Posted via email from Jon Dean

Posted via email from Jon Dean

Posted via email from Jon Dean

To me this is just all wrong.

The thing is, although at times you need to pick a fight with your competitors, there are other times where you need to focus on what you’re doing and not spend time trash talking the other guy.

Now I’m not specifically talking about Microsoft vs Google here, I’m talking about what you focus and spend your precious time doing in your day to day businesses.

Think of it this way – Is it really worth spending five hours of your time this week focusing on the other guy, or would that time be better spent focusing on positively promoting your brand, your site, your product etc.

Don’t fall in the trap of constantly concentrating on what the other guys are doing, know when to focus on your stuff and at the same time be mindful of what else is going on in your market.

OK, spraff over, I’m off to help my kids make my wife breakfast in bed (well, it is mother’s day here in the UK and I suppose I should focus on what matters to me today )

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Jon Dean
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