2009 May | The Adventures of Scribbleboy

Archive for May, 2009

May

Working with the Smurfs

By Scribbleboy 3 Comments

Categories: Life

You’ve stuck with me through job applications, jobs rejections, actual jobs and temp work so it seems like you deserve a read of this. As promised, here is my application for my dream job, a Social Media Internship out in Asia with Ogilvy PR.

While I was writing this and since I’ve sent it off I’ve been reading through all the pages on what Ogilvy and Thomas Crampton do. I said to Baines, “These people must be big, they’ve worked with the Smurfs.“ When I said that this afternoon it was a flippant comment, now it’s starting to sink in how big they are.

As this is a social networking job I’ve started following Thomas Crampton on various social networking sites. On my LinkedIn profile I class myself as a journalist based on a year’s worth of a journalism degree, an NCTJ Law qualification and a handful of articles published in the local press. Then I looked at Thomas Crampton’s about page, feeling a little humbled right about now.

Hi Thomas,

Two of the key things I love in life are travelling and meeting new people. Last year I spent the most amazing summer of my life backpacking around Asia with four friends from university.

Starting off in Shanghai, we headed across China and into Tibet before flying to Hong Kong. Along the way I walked part of the Great Wall, admired the terracotta army, travelled to Everest Base Camp and saw the world’s largest seated Buddha statue carved into a mountainside.

For six weeks Lonely Planet China was my Bible and this along with the help of the locals allowed me to learn a lot about the culture. My friend took thousands of pictures and I documented the trip by selecting and captioning the best ones in Facebook albums.

Since I returned from Asia, social media has allowed me to keep in touch with a lot of the people that I met along the way and has helped to improve my life in the UK, this very job was recommended to me by one of my followers on Twitter.

I joined Twitter back in February and since then have amassed over 150 followers, making me the seventh most popular Twitterer in my area. In this time I have experimented with a wide variety of Twitter clients, favouring TweetDeck for Windows and Gwipper for Ubuntu (TweetDeck still seems to be having teething issues with 64 bit Ubuntu and Gwipper gives me the option to add additional micro-blogging sites).

I tweet each of my blog posts with the hashtag #scribblog and it is for this reason that my favourite short URL service is ow.ly. I can use ow.ly in conjunction with Hootsuite to monitor my stats and see which links are the most popular. Hootsuite is also used by friends at my local newspaper to manage multiple accounts and has proven to be very useful.

My blog www.scribbleboy.co.uk is a record my life and my attempts to complete challenges as suggested by readers. I update the blog regularly and spend a lot of time playing around with WordPress plugins, trying to get them to both work properly and be standards compliant.

Alongside my passion for social media and blogging I also have a set of well developed traditional communication skills. I currently work with Totem Films, a media production company, as a freelance writer. I work in a office environment and spend a lot of time approaching potential clients via email. I am also responsible for drafting any necessary press releases and most recently have written a short piece for The Main Event (the industry magazine for event organisers) about what companies need to consider when commissioning a promotional video of their event.

I am currently based in the UK but would love to move. I have attached a copy of my CV to showcase some of my more traditional skills and have listed all my contact details below. I look forward to hearing from you soon,

May

Twitter the Twird

By Scribbleboy 2 Comments

Categories: Life and Technology

We’re not even a sentence in and some of you are already eyeing the adorable blue bird opposite like he’s a ravenous vulture and you’re a desert-ridden animal in its death throes. Yes, I’ve written about Twitter before. Yes, I’ve written about Twitter again. And yes, I’m going to write about it a third time.

If that really is so objectionable to you why not join the debate about gender roles and the Bible that is taking place on Baines’ blog. Or check out Gingell’s most recent run. She seems to be pushing herself more recently and is truly glowing in these pictures (and I don’t mean that as a euphemism for sweating profusely, more that she genuinely seems to enjoy exercise and this shines through). You could even catch up on Guy’s travel diary (how do I know you’re behind? Call it a hunch).

On a side note, the adorable blue bird to the right (plus the one to the left) were drawn by the good people at webdesign.fm. They are featured in a good selection of free Twitter icons at creativeNERDS.co.uk.

The internet may be a disturbing place to visit but Twitter is one of the nicer communities to pass through. When I last wrote about Twitter I mentioned that @david_elks had tweeted my blog and when I duly thanked him I received the response, “Ney probs. I thought your blog was amusing, you’re local so I linked to you. Isn’t that how it works? :)”

Well, yes I guess so, just I’m not used to internet communities being so nice. @estelledarlings tweets tips such as;

Smile and say hi to someone when they look like they wanna speak with you on the train/bus, crossing the street.

find someone you haven’t spoken to in a while – get their address (could be 15 min away) and write them a letter.

Call someone when they text you. in stead of answering (use ure free minutes!!)

@fattybellybella had her tweeple writing themselves notes, which are simultaneously really positive and really schizophrenic.

Dear Self: when I grow up, I wanna be just like you

Dear Britt, Everyone can’t see the weight that’s on your shoulders but I see it and I’m behind you holdin it right with you.

dear self, just smile. It can’t last forever. Listen to your mom. Cheaper isn’t always better. Stay away from open bars

But this world is made up of more than black women that sing (so I’m told), it’s made up of people that always seem to be there to share juicy gossip, newsy tidbits and dirty jokes. People who want to make sure my transition to Ubuntu is as smooth as possible and that my gran doesn’t get a lousy present for her birthday.

One of my favourite followers at the moment is @nci1, not only did she tweet me the quiz below when I asked for blog suggestions but she also tweeted me my dream job. The first sentence of the job description is “You love it, live it and would crawl across broken glass to spend all day working learning about Social Media across Asia.” This weekend I’m going to be sending off my application and like all my other employment attempts I’ll be sharing it with you, right here on the blog.

In the mean time let’s do this quiz.

The idea is that you take the first two words of each sentence, for example “Jonathan is” (obviously use your own name here), put them in quotation marks and put them into Google. Then paste the first result to wherever you post such stuff. Comedy ensues.

Jonathan is no longer in solitary confinement but prison life remains harsh

I’m too pretty for prison life, I shudder to think of the shower time favours I’d be performing just to keep myself in lipstick for when people came to visit.

Jonathan looks into beauty

Jonathan has been working with transgenic plants for 20 years

Isn’t the top result but the first one that made any kind of sense. You’d think in 20 years I’d have learnt what transgenic means, sometimes I am such a blagger.

Jonathan thinks we all went away

Jonathan needs someone to talk to

The top result is really “Jonathan needs a C compiler” but this one seemed funnier. Since I moved in with Gingell and Baines, two people comfortable with silence and adverse to mindless chatter, I’ve come to realise how much I need conversation. A talkative nature is the second trait I’ve discovered that almost all of my friends have, that and brutal honesty.

Jonathan wears his engineer’s cap to drive his virtual train

Jonathan says “I’m leaving this morning”

This sounds unlikely. The word “morning” clearly suggests I’d be sleeping.

Jonathan asks gas association to support government

Jonathan Wants Co-Stars To Get Naked Without Whining!

I can’t stand actresses who won’t take their clothes off. It drives me nuts. I want to cut their ears off. If it says in the script you’re naked, be naked, instead of moaning and saying, ‘I really don’t want to show my tits, I don’t want to show my arse.’

Jonathan Loves Snowballs

Jonathan Likes It Hard, Good

A lot more innocent than it sounds. This link is safe for work but then I’d be surprised if anything this boring wasn’t. I still don’t know what would compel anyone to write it.

Jonathan eats Qarly’s head flesh

Man eats fruit in comical manner with sexual undertones.

Jonathan was delighted with the show

and on that note tweet dreams,

@scribbleboy

May

Day Late, Dollar Short

By Scribbleboy 0 Comments

Categories: Life List and Money

Week commencing 11th May (blogged three times)

Incoming: £500 in Premium Bonds

I had expected last week’s bonds to be wiped out when my landlord cashed my rent cheque. Only thing is he hasn’t cashed it yet. He did however come and do a day late “house inspection” (although he didn’t actually look in any of the rooms).

His reason for being late was that when he was in Crimea his helicopter got shot down and he bashed his head. Since then he randomly falls over with no warning and had to get a doctor to jab him up with something. Best excuse ever, am tempted to start using it myself.

One good thing that did come from his visit though was the reminder that I will be getting my deposit back. To be accurate the lead tenant (Gingell, who else?) will be getting all the deposits back and it is then her responsibility to distribute them. So looking forward to what is going to feel like free money hitting my PayPal account in a couple of months time.

I thought it’d be amusing to create a PayPal donation button for this site but apparently they can’t decrypt their own encryption, amateurs. I guess I could use an unencrypted button but then you’d see my email address (no offence, I’m sure you’re all lovely people, but I’d rather keep the rape and Bible spam on my WordPress dashboard rather than in my inbox). If you really want to send me sweet nothings you can head on over to my contact page.

Outgoing:

£28 food
£15 drink
£20 loan over calculation repayment
£50 Vodafone (I had to buy a new phone because the speaker packed up on my Samsung SGH-U600. People could hear me but I couldn’t hear them, this made conversation difficult).

Let’s pause here to review my new Samsung J700i (my fourth ever mobile), a phone that was described to me (apart from the camera) as an upgrade.

Pros

I can hear my callers.
No slide buttons. Be a button or be a touchscreen, don’t try and be both. I’m sorry I’m just prejudiced that way.
The menu icons are prettier; their shapes and colours suggest the kind of marzipan covered cakes that would be served if you were ever invited for high tea with Mr Kipling.
Menus are more intuitive in places.
Standard issue backgrounds are marginally more inspirational.
The phone has more of a physical presence to it, seems sturdier and makes a more satisfying sound when you close it.

Cons

Camera seems to have lost 1.9 megapixels somewhere.
On my old phone I could fit half of Outkast’s Stankonia, on my new phone I can only fit two songs from Wild Young Hearts by Noisettes (album is a lot more chilled than the single would have you believe, has something of a Fiona Bevan vibe to it).
Vodafone won’t let you change what has to be the ugliest homepage I have ever seen. Browser feels even more broken than the last one, although that’s a gut feeling rather than anything scientific.
Menus are great until you want to send a text, then it messes you about by asking if you want to send the text to additional people and it doesn’t save your sent messages automatically you have to prompt it everytime (maybe this option is buried deep in the menus somewhere, in which case another menu fail).

Back to the numbers.

£15 insurance monthly direct debit
£15 toaster (don’t really have a category for this, sorry)
£16 rounding error

Total: £159

End of Week Total: -£2,820

May

Brain Dump

By Scribbleboy 0 Comments

Categories: Life

Ideally each post that I write for this blog should be either a self contained entry (like Twilight: Cheaper Than Heroin or Celebrate Originality with Adidas) or part of a series that progress towards a specific goal (There’s No Such Word as C*** was the first post in a series that followed my progress as I quit swearing for Lent. Down and out in Downtown Stoke is where I first began tracking my progress on the path to a debt-free employed existence).

Most of the time however thoughts buzz around my head like a cloud of flies and while none of them are worthy of a post I need to do something to get rid of them. That’s when you end up with entries like Laughing in the Face of Brevity and Relevance or Where’s Your Head At? Here’s another one.

Employment

If you’ve been following the blog recently you’ll have noticed that I’ve been looking for work. The most useful website I’ve found to help me so far has been reed.co.uk. Application forms are the most time consuming and tedious part of the job hunt and a part with which reed.co.uk dispenses. Simply click apply, type out an optional cover letter and then the website will send this and your CV to the employer. The site also recommends you jobs, and not just positions that no one’s applying for but ones that suit you.

Today I have applied for the following jobs; “Summer Opportunities in Marketing & PR”, “Summer Opportunities in Marketing & Customer Service Events”, “Editorial Assistant” and “People required who have the X – Factor for PR position”. Tonight I shall completely restyle my cover letter and go for some retail positions as well. It’s also worth following their man on Twitter, @careerfrank.

Summer Ball

Carole, Moi, Frosty, Damian & Nick

My brain, shot through with cynicism as it is, always imagined the ball to be an overpriced Gobble with additional vomit. How wrong I was. The Students’ Union did themselves proud and put on an excellent event with fairground rides, food & liquor, great decor and a good variety of acts. If you haven’t already, it’s worth checking out the photos on the website.

House of the Dead: Overkill

While this Wii game does little more than confirm my role as a human shield in the imminent Zombie attack, it is fun for all the family. A family that likes bloody violence and gratuitous swearing that is. Plus the Wii gun looks like the one out of Who Framed Roger Rabbit? and this makes me happy.

News

You’re probably well aware of my unhealthy obsession with religion and so it’s no surprise that the headline New Archbishop of Westminster Vincent Nichols attacks secularists on The Telegraph’s news feed caught my eye. The word “attacks” makes his statement sound harsher than it is in reality, in fact I agree with it. Especially this bit;

Let us be a society in which we genuinely listen to each other, in which sincere disagreement is not made out to be insult or harassment, in which reasoned principles are not construed as prejudice and in which we are prepared to attribute to each other the best and not the worst of motives.

Unfortunately The Telegraph then followed it up with this paragraph;

The archbishop played a leading role in fighting the introduction of gay rights laws in 2006, which now make it illegal to discriminate against gay couples when placing children for adoption.

This seems like an argument that we should have left behind long ago. The old testament is a confusing mixture of stuff that applies only to the people in the book, stuff that applies to the culture of the time and stuff that we can still apply today. While the ten commandments sit side-by-side with rules on slavery only a fool would try and apply the latter to today’s society.

Vincent’s right that religion can cross racial barriers and unite communities but it also has the power to divide. Alongside the discrimination above I am also particularly unimpressed by Ratzinger unpicking all the good work of the late Pope John Paul II to unite faiths and his preaching against contraception in Africa.

In other news, it turns out that 13-year-old Alfie Patten is not the father of 15-year-old Chantelle Stedman’s baby. Yes, we knew this a while back (I even hinted and linked to it in this post) but it’s taken the law a while to decide that it’s okay for people in this country to publish the truth. Turns out it was some 14-year-old kid called Tyler Barker.

By my calculations (Alfie+Tyler+allegedly “five other lads”+allegedly “Five more boys”) Chantelle’s put at least twelve notches on her bedpost. Tyler “claimed he had regularly stayed at her home, sleeping in her bedroom with the knowledge of Chantelle’s mum”. This is an ultimate fail in parenting on every level, to let people like this raise children and yet complain about gays adopting is lunacy.

In the words of Chris Rock, “You thought you had a household, no, you got a ho camp.”

Megan Fox

Ms Fox is still gracing my calendar and will be doing so for the next nine days. I mentioned her in this post and had intended to discuss her more but unfortunately the event was overshadowed by FHM’s 100 Sexiest Women in the World 2009 catalogue of errors.

Thankfully Guy seems to have picked up the slack in a post entitled The Megan Fox Appreciation Society, he even asked me for a quote when he wrote it (that quote is ““scribbleboy.co.uk wholeheartedly endorses Megan Fox’s breasts”). While I can’t compete with Guy’s grangerised* illustration I did quite like this photo.

In the off chance that any of you people think like me, here’s a shot of her standing so you can get a better sense of the dress and here’s a photo of the back (with extra bag and shoe detail). The photos were taken at the Versace show in Milan last year, as to who made the dress I haven’t a clue (the website I found these photos on had filed them under “boneration” and didn’t have quite the commitment to fashion journalism I’d hoped for).

On a semi-related note Guy’s blog now displays correctly in Internet Explorer, so if you like your browsers non-compliant you can rest easy in the knowledge that you can once more read his words.**

I still want to write about Ubuntu and European Elections and the state of my finances but I see you’re tapping the mat so I’m going to stop now. Night.

* Gingell – That was the word that Stephen Fry used on Twitter that I was trying to think of earlier and, yes, technically it doesn’t refer to websites but I’m expanding the definition.

** Guy had been copying his travel diary posts from Microsoft Word directly into WordPress. Word had been sneaking a whole load of confusing code into his posts. The only browser that couldn’t understand this Microsoft gibberish was the one made by Microsoft.

May

Spending, Sleeping, Writing, Bleeding

By Scribbleboy 2 Comments

Categories: Life List and Site

There’s been two posts about icons recently and if I’m not careful this site may become overrun with them (they breed really quickly). With this in mind I’m going to devote each Monday(ish) to slapping the five most recent designs up on the blog and getting your feedback, then I’m going to add them to the challenges pages, so head over there to see the complete set and suggest new tasks for me to complete.

No it's not pinstriped Kleenex 1. Write More

Out of the four options I posted a few weeks back this was the favourite, unfortunately Gingell thought it looked more like wadded tissue. I have added an obvious corner and, on Antonio’s suggestion, made it lined paper. I think I discussed this challenge in enough detail last time.

Bad black penny that keeps coming back 2. Get out of Debt

This was originally black, to represent credit, but I have toned it down to a charcoal shade (once again based on Antonio’s opinion). I used a pound sign because my silhouette of the Queen was so bad it was probably treasonous. Other possibilities such as crowns and lions didn’t seem to be intrinsically linked to money.

I grow closer to completing this challenge each week and it wasn’t long ago that my bank account was in the black for half a morning (although my overdraft isn’t my only debt). Back in April I said “Over the next few weeks I will update this post as I join more agencies, sign up to new websites, hand out CVs and fill out application forms.” This was a stupid idea that would force my readers to shuffle through the archive on a regular basis to find the most recent news, instead I’m going to write a little update here.

Back in March I applied to write for US-UK Review. I sent them five examples of my writing (the majority culled from this very blog) and waited. US-UK Review had set a deadline for getting in contact with applicants which they then extended by almost a month due the large response. Ten days after their second deadline they called me up. They asked me my age and the dates that I was at uni and then said that my writing looked good and they’d be in touch. I’m still unsure as to whether it was the politest brush off ever or if there might be a job at the end of this. According to the latest news on their website I should know within the next week.

In the mean time I have been applying for local temp work. I have applied to be an administrator in Newcastle-under-Lyme, a secretary in Stoke and last Tuesday I earnt £80 recording the vital stats of Stokie buses (this work was acquired through the university JobShop, so might be worth people signing up). I have filled out an application form to work at Schuh which I will be handing in tomorrow and at the same time dropping CVs into any places with vacancies (I know WHSmiths is hiring at the moment).

I have joined the Birmingham branches of Addeco (recommended) and Blue Arrow (once gave me three days work in a factory processing crab meat) and am on the mailing lists for the Arts Council and the newly launched JobPlot.

The Red Stuff. Are you made of it?

3. Give Blood

This icon speaks for itself and this is one of the few challenges I have completed so far, successfully donating one pint of the red stuff on Friday 27th March. I have also sorted it out so that I now only appear once on their database, hooray for accurate record keeping.

Nope I've got nothing appropriate, move along 4. Wake up at a Reasonable Hour

In the beginning this was a simple clock face with the hands just about to graze half nine. To make it more obvious which challenge it relates to I’ve turned it into an alarm clock. While this challenge is not being accomplished on a daily basis, it’s happening more frequently. This is predominately down to Gingell.

Not to say that Stoke is polluted but this is what our snowflakes look like 5. Quit Swearing for Lent

I decided to use an asterisk to represent swearing because I had so much fun playing about with them in this image. Unfortunately no one seems to link this solitary charcoal-coloured star with swearing, so if you have any ideas please comment.

Over forty days and forty nights (and six Sundays that represent mini-Easters) Mr Piggles (aka the swear tin) raised £23 which I used to sponsor Gingell in her bid to raise money for Lupus UK by completing the Asics British 10K London run. The run isn’t until next month, so you’ve still got time to time to show your support. Might also be worth keeping an eye on her blog in an attempt to snag one of the goody bags she’s giving away in the next few weeks.

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About

I'm a Stoke-on-Trent based blogger, journalist and semi-productive member of society. This blog is a record of my successes and failures as I try and complete life-improving challenges suggested to me by readers.