10 ways I can rock you
Dave Doolin started it. I blame him almost exclusively.I mentioned in Me Manifesto that 2010 was my year of Giving Back.I referenced this as a system of returning all the love and inspiration I've received from numberless sources since I entered the Earth Life Project from my mum's parts, 35 years ago. So far, so great. Do a good deed every day, get good karma has been a philosophy of mine since a brief sojourn at Tushita in northern India changed my live in October 2008. But what does all this actually mean, mused Dave. Dave, the guy who has developed an incredible way to learn the ins and outs of WordPress in a weekend and shared it with hundreds of people for free. Now that's making an impact. So what's mine? What am I doing to make the world a sweeter locale?
Well, I'll tell ya. I'll lay it on the line, give you the bottom line and line it up for you.If you ever want me, need me, I can do any of these things for you. For free. I'm Freemium Dave. So grab a shopping basket, head for the aisle marked Inspiration and ask me to:Read you a story. Since I was a young chap I've been passionate about entertaining people. It started on stage, then as time progressed, in bars. And as my mind evolved, I started to inspire people on the phone. A friend rings up, despairing, I find something inside them that makes them sing and focus on that. They see the rainbow and figure out it's not so bad, after all. In fact it's wonderful. It's a challenge that makes them stronger. Ya-hay! As a natural extension of this 'talent', as I loosely coin it, I took up podcasting in 2008. And I absolutely love it. Some American type folks even say they like my voice, which is a bonus. I'm sure the kids in the UK would beg to differ. Opportunity: Send me a chapter of your favourite book and I'll read it out loud, in a style of your choosing in a dialect approximating a mish-mash of French, Welsh and Scouse. Using the magic of Audacity I'll knock it into shape and send it to you in the form of a gift-wrapped MP3. So long as your favourite book isn't the Karma Sutra. Be your counsel. I have a great ear for listening. In fact, I have two great ears, as you'll know by my picture. In conjunction with a brain that's on occasion been recognised for imparting wisdom via my mouth, I can provide a sounding board for anything. Opportunity: I'll be happy to hang out with you via SkyPe and riddle what's occurring. Don't let the fact that I'm a journalist put you off - I've been whoring my reporting skills on the corporate side of life for too long to sell your story to Take A Break or the National Enquirer. I'm lovely in pure and simple ways, now. No more ambulance chasing for me (unless my hat were to get caught in its chassis). Solve your tech problems. I thought long and hard about whether I should offer this, or to walk your dog. Since you might live in Alabama or Africa, the concept of taking your poodle for a trot sounded costly. And besides, I'm way better at curing technical ills than I am cleaning up poop. 28 years ago next month, I received my first computer - a ZX Spectrum 16k. It had no ram pack, but copies of Cookie and Pssst. A nice man would come round to our flat once a fortnight with a brochure brimming with games, and I used to get proper upset when he didn't turn up. I think by that point my mum had taken up with the milkman and had no interest in exchanging coins for my pixellated pleasure. Opportunity: Tell me what's bugging you with anything approximating technology and I'll figure it out for you. If you have relationship problems, I can help with those too - but don't go waving your mouse at me, else I might get scared and scurry back into my central processing unit to go and live with the other Little Computer People. Change your life. I'm an ideas guy. You give me something, I'll give you it back with a reason why. And 17 other ways to use it. I create, I spend an insane amount of time each day wondering why they didn't do it like that. I used to be the digital marketing manager of a big travel company, and we did great things. Smashing campaigns. And people used to love us - no small feat when the product we worked with came under the description of timeshare. Opportunity: Business need a hitch-up? Looking for motivation to swap slouching for staggering success? Count on me.Get you fit. As a kid I was a real chunky monkey. I delight in telling people I weighed more aged 9 than I did aged 29. And the same holds true today. Two things happened (actually, three, but running away from bullies isn't something I'd recommend to anyone these days, unless they're the one with the grenade. Unless you have the pin...): 1. I went on a high-fibre diet. 2. I shot up. Don't misunderstand me, no drugs or syringes were involved in this plan. I shot up about a foot, to 72 inches tall. Being big in the vertical sense is a whole lot more fun than sideways. I feel your pain. Opportunity: Need exercise inspiration? Want to know what to eat? Tell me what you like - what you really like to eat, and I'll figure a plan to get you back on your feet. Can't be arsed with exercise? I'll tell you how to get the focus to start small, and work your way up to fitness fulfillment. We can do it - together. Build your blog. I write, and since picking up a lovely contract to create, maintain and run a WordPress CMS site for a great client, I now have the skills to at least approximate an intermediate blog coder. It's a spanking experience, seeing it all go up. It's like building a Big Top - and then populating it with all manner of virtual tigers to impress your visitors by balancing characters on their tongues. Try not to pop your head in the lion's gob, though: he gets hungry at the most inopportune of moments.
Opportunity: You want to get your voice heard on the web? Drop me a line. We'll get you there, way quicker than you think.Fix dinner. I blame Justin Tadlock's omelette (why do you Americans spell it with two e's? And don't get me started on the vaguaries of herb. It's got a h, so use it!) for inspiring me to offer this wonderful gift. I love cooking - in fact, I even did a kitchen shoot for a European travel magazine after returning from India (I didn't tell readers about the state of my constitution while learning the art of Occidental cookery, since you don't get a lot of dysentry in the West and it wouldn't have added much spice to the concoction in hand). Now entirely repaired, I spend much time in the kitchen of our apartment, despite it being designed in the 'fur coat, no knickers' style that epitomises trendy but crap flats in city centres. Opportunity: Next time your fingers dance your eyes towards the Food Channel or BBC Food website for culinary inspiration, tell me what you have in your larder, the proximity of a shop stocking essentials, and I'll figure it out for you. In exchange for a photo of the finished masterpiece. Teach you a language. Round here, any language would make a difference. But you, my fine friend, probably already possess the ability to converse in eight different languages and 46 dialects. If by any chance you're missing French, Spanish, or the hugely useful Latin tongue, then you can count on me to deliver. If you're scared of human contact, I strongly recommend you take up Michel Thomas or the Rosetta Stone interactive language systems. Both are excellent, and Michel Thomas also has some great stories to tell about being a Prisoner of War. Edit: Michel Thomas is actually dead; has been for four years, but his voice and wisdom lives on. Opportunity: Let's grasp this multilingual world by the scruff and make some sense of it all. If I had my way, we'd all speak Amenglish and drive Buicks powered by water, but that's just because I'm a sucker for that Mexican fast food chain beginning with Q and will they please open an outlet in the UK? Inspire you. What's eating you today, Mr Grape? I love to hear the whirr of the neurone engine. The sound of success bubbling up in your craw. I love Chianti and mung beans, too, but it doesn't mean I hack people to death for a living. No, I do much worse than that: I write. But aside from my notorious fiscal pursuits, I can be startlingly motivating. It's the attitude of gratitude, see? The Buddhist thing. You're only ever one step away from turning your life around. Opportunity: Hit a gnarly spot in your career? Let's find you a new way to harness that limitless skillset of yours. Heads together, now. Let me take your mind for a spin on the cerebral dancefloor and between us we can create a Me (see You) Manifesto that'll rock your '10. Shoot you. I left this one til last because it insinuates finalcy. But it needn't. I can show you how to master the dark art of photography, you see! I've been loving lenses and cavorting with cameras since my dad bought me a big book of photos from the cheap shop. He might be dead, but my passion for imagery lives on. And I want you to see life through a lens, too. Taking photos isn't just inspirational, it's a way of looking at things in a totally different way. If you're anything like me, a paintbrush is for tickling, not creating stuff with liquid mess. But anyone with sight can create incredible stuff with the camera. It just takes a little time and some basic pointers. Opportunity: Learn those basic pointers. Shall we set up a Flickr group where we can all share our photos and how they epitomise our Me Manifestos for the year ahead? That would be sweet! But more than that, I can give you some great ways to get started on your journey as a snapper, and we can grow together. Before you know it you'll be appearing in Amateur Photographer, fully clothed, and I'll be your agent! Or the other way around. Now how's that as a way to start your Monday with a spring in your stride?And what can you do to make a difference? To give more than money? Because we all have the world inside us: it's simply a case of getting a ticket and taking the tour.
Well, I'll tell ya. I'll lay it on the line, give you the bottom line and line it up for you.If you ever want me, need me, I can do any of these things for you. For free. I'm Freemium Dave. So grab a shopping basket, head for the aisle marked Inspiration and ask me to:Read you a story. Since I was a young chap I've been passionate about entertaining people. It started on stage, then as time progressed, in bars. And as my mind evolved, I started to inspire people on the phone. A friend rings up, despairing, I find something inside them that makes them sing and focus on that. They see the rainbow and figure out it's not so bad, after all. In fact it's wonderful. It's a challenge that makes them stronger. Ya-hay! As a natural extension of this 'talent', as I loosely coin it, I took up podcasting in 2008. And I absolutely love it. Some American type folks even say they like my voice, which is a bonus. I'm sure the kids in the UK would beg to differ. Opportunity: Send me a chapter of your favourite book and I'll read it out loud, in a style of your choosing in a dialect approximating a mish-mash of French, Welsh and Scouse. Using the magic of Audacity I'll knock it into shape and send it to you in the form of a gift-wrapped MP3. So long as your favourite book isn't the Karma Sutra. Be your counsel. I have a great ear for listening. In fact, I have two great ears, as you'll know by my picture. In conjunction with a brain that's on occasion been recognised for imparting wisdom via my mouth, I can provide a sounding board for anything. Opportunity: I'll be happy to hang out with you via SkyPe and riddle what's occurring. Don't let the fact that I'm a journalist put you off - I've been whoring my reporting skills on the corporate side of life for too long to sell your story to Take A Break or the National Enquirer. I'm lovely in pure and simple ways, now. No more ambulance chasing for me (unless my hat were to get caught in its chassis). Solve your tech problems. I thought long and hard about whether I should offer this, or to walk your dog. Since you might live in Alabama or Africa, the concept of taking your poodle for a trot sounded costly. And besides, I'm way better at curing technical ills than I am cleaning up poop. 28 years ago next month, I received my first computer - a ZX Spectrum 16k. It had no ram pack, but copies of Cookie and Pssst. A nice man would come round to our flat once a fortnight with a brochure brimming with games, and I used to get proper upset when he didn't turn up. I think by that point my mum had taken up with the milkman and had no interest in exchanging coins for my pixellated pleasure. Opportunity: Tell me what's bugging you with anything approximating technology and I'll figure it out for you. If you have relationship problems, I can help with those too - but don't go waving your mouse at me, else I might get scared and scurry back into my central processing unit to go and live with the other Little Computer People. Change your life. I'm an ideas guy. You give me something, I'll give you it back with a reason why. And 17 other ways to use it. I create, I spend an insane amount of time each day wondering why they didn't do it like that. I used to be the digital marketing manager of a big travel company, and we did great things. Smashing campaigns. And people used to love us - no small feat when the product we worked with came under the description of timeshare. Opportunity: Business need a hitch-up? Looking for motivation to swap slouching for staggering success? Count on me.Get you fit. As a kid I was a real chunky monkey. I delight in telling people I weighed more aged 9 than I did aged 29. And the same holds true today. Two things happened (actually, three, but running away from bullies isn't something I'd recommend to anyone these days, unless they're the one with the grenade. Unless you have the pin...): 1. I went on a high-fibre diet. 2. I shot up. Don't misunderstand me, no drugs or syringes were involved in this plan. I shot up about a foot, to 72 inches tall. Being big in the vertical sense is a whole lot more fun than sideways. I feel your pain. Opportunity: Need exercise inspiration? Want to know what to eat? Tell me what you like - what you really like to eat, and I'll figure a plan to get you back on your feet. Can't be arsed with exercise? I'll tell you how to get the focus to start small, and work your way up to fitness fulfillment. We can do it - together. Build your blog. I write, and since picking up a lovely contract to create, maintain and run a WordPress CMS site for a great client, I now have the skills to at least approximate an intermediate blog coder. It's a spanking experience, seeing it all go up. It's like building a Big Top - and then populating it with all manner of virtual tigers to impress your visitors by balancing characters on their tongues. Try not to pop your head in the lion's gob, though: he gets hungry at the most inopportune of moments.
Opportunity: You want to get your voice heard on the web? Drop me a line. We'll get you there, way quicker than you think.Fix dinner. I blame Justin Tadlock's omelette (why do you Americans spell it with two e's? And don't get me started on the vaguaries of herb. It's got a h, so use it!) for inspiring me to offer this wonderful gift. I love cooking - in fact, I even did a kitchen shoot for a European travel magazine after returning from India (I didn't tell readers about the state of my constitution while learning the art of Occidental cookery, since you don't get a lot of dysentry in the West and it wouldn't have added much spice to the concoction in hand). Now entirely repaired, I spend much time in the kitchen of our apartment, despite it being designed in the 'fur coat, no knickers' style that epitomises trendy but crap flats in city centres. Opportunity: Next time your fingers dance your eyes towards the Food Channel or BBC Food website for culinary inspiration, tell me what you have in your larder, the proximity of a shop stocking essentials, and I'll figure it out for you. In exchange for a photo of the finished masterpiece. Teach you a language. Round here, any language would make a difference. But you, my fine friend, probably already possess the ability to converse in eight different languages and 46 dialects. If by any chance you're missing French, Spanish, or the hugely useful Latin tongue, then you can count on me to deliver. If you're scared of human contact, I strongly recommend you take up Michel Thomas or the Rosetta Stone interactive language systems. Both are excellent, and Michel Thomas also has some great stories to tell about being a Prisoner of War. Edit: Michel Thomas is actually dead; has been for four years, but his voice and wisdom lives on. Opportunity: Let's grasp this multilingual world by the scruff and make some sense of it all. If I had my way, we'd all speak Amenglish and drive Buicks powered by water, but that's just because I'm a sucker for that Mexican fast food chain beginning with Q and will they please open an outlet in the UK? Inspire you. What's eating you today, Mr Grape? I love to hear the whirr of the neurone engine. The sound of success bubbling up in your craw. I love Chianti and mung beans, too, but it doesn't mean I hack people to death for a living. No, I do much worse than that: I write. But aside from my notorious fiscal pursuits, I can be startlingly motivating. It's the attitude of gratitude, see? The Buddhist thing. You're only ever one step away from turning your life around. Opportunity: Hit a gnarly spot in your career? Let's find you a new way to harness that limitless skillset of yours. Heads together, now. Let me take your mind for a spin on the cerebral dancefloor and between us we can create a Me (see You) Manifesto that'll rock your '10. Shoot you. I left this one til last because it insinuates finalcy. But it needn't. I can show you how to master the dark art of photography, you see! I've been loving lenses and cavorting with cameras since my dad bought me a big book of photos from the cheap shop. He might be dead, but my passion for imagery lives on. And I want you to see life through a lens, too. Taking photos isn't just inspirational, it's a way of looking at things in a totally different way. If you're anything like me, a paintbrush is for tickling, not creating stuff with liquid mess. But anyone with sight can create incredible stuff with the camera. It just takes a little time and some basic pointers. Opportunity: Learn those basic pointers. Shall we set up a Flickr group where we can all share our photos and how they epitomise our Me Manifestos for the year ahead? That would be sweet! But more than that, I can give you some great ways to get started on your journey as a snapper, and we can grow together. Before you know it you'll be appearing in Amateur Photographer, fully clothed, and I'll be your agent! Or the other way around. Now how's that as a way to start your Monday with a spring in your stride?And what can you do to make a difference? To give more than money? Because we all have the world inside us: it's simply a case of getting a ticket and taking the tour.
