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Globalwarming Awareness2007

Just popped back in for a minute.  I've set up a site so I can take part in a contest being run by the good folks at SEO World Championship.  The challenge is to push your site to the top of the search engine rankings for the term 'Globalwarming Awareness2007'. 

So, I thought I'd give myself a leg up by giving my site a link from the trusty old Sortapundit.  With a little luck I'll be able to hit the top of the rankings for Globalwarming Awareness2007 and win myself a brand spanking new Citroen C2.  The old Fiesta seems to be on its last legs, unfortunately.

So long, farewell, auf weidersehen, goodbye...

I know, I know... I abandoned you all.  Flitted off without notice to competing websites while you sat beside a cooling pot roast, a solitary candle burning down to a nub as you silently rued the day you met me.  For that I'm sorry.  Still, it's not as if anything I ever wrote here ever rose above the level of mediocre dreck, and the blogosphere has grown far too competitive in recent years for my old aching bones to handle.  I'll leave this blogging business to the energetic young bucks and indestructible old hands.  Five years is enough, I think.  Besides, now blogging is cool it just ain't cool, if you know what I mean.

Anyway... I suppose I'll leave one final post before signing off for a final time and letting the old Sortapundit become, finally, a purely commercial venture - sponsored links and all.

2006 has been a fairly interesting year, to be honest.  After a quarter century in the making I finally achieved my goal of becoming a professional writer, and my secondary goal of not working very much.  As it happens, there are a lot of people willing to pay me quite respectable sums of money in exchange for my limited talents with the English language.  As a result, I haven't worked a full day since late October and yet I've earned much more than I used to make when I had to work at a real job.  Can't complain.

I went to New York. It's been on the list for many years, but only now did I have the resources and opportunity to do it.  Fortunately, it was everything I'd imagined and much, much more.  While I'm not a fan of cities I can make an exception for the Big Apple.  The first guy who works out how to take the sense of vitality and dynamism that suffuses that place and bottle it will be a wealthy man. 

Anyway, I'm tired and I need to take a bath before heading out to see my brother.  I'll sign off with this.  I offer a sincere thank you to everyone who stumbled across this place and the blog I ran before it.  I've enjoyed every moment of it: from the days when it was just me and 4 or 5 lost browsers to the days when ten thousand readers decided to drop by.  Writing this here blog gave me the confidence in my writing to pursue it as a career, and without the experience I'd still be stuck in an office job.  I wouldn't take the mawkishness so far as to say it changed my life, but I can't imagine I'd have the job I have today without Sortapundit.

Right.  Time to get drunk.  Merry Christmas, folks, and I wish you all a very happy new year.  LOL, ROFL, WTF, etc. etc. etc...

 

Wireless For Less

Here at the Taylor household we’re upgrading to wireless broadband this week. We’ve always had a fast broadband Internet connection, but I just bought a laptop so I wanted to be able to get online from the comfort of my bed. As I’ve probably mentioned on several occasions I’m a world champion at laziness, so the ability to connect to the Internet while comfortably wrapped in a duvet strikes me as one of the greatest advances of technology in the history of the human race. Besides, I keep strange hours that means I’m usually in bed while normal folks are at work, so wireless broadband access from my bed will allow me to keep in contact with clients while they’re awake – you have to agree that being conscious while clients want to speak to me is a sensible way to run a business.

I was amazed while looking for a decent deal at the number of cheap broadband providers around these days. Last time we changed our ISP it seemed to be a simple choice between AOL, BT and a couple of crappy upstarts. Today there are hundreds of ISPs in the broadband game, and a large portion of those offer wireless broadband.

Anyway. Due to my legendary sloth we’ll be sticking with AOL. Not that the service is anything to write home about, but at least there’ll be no hassle switching to wireless, and they throw in a free broadband modem or router when you connect. I’m far too lazy to try anything else. Those of you who have a little more energy than myself (or just care about finding a decent wireless deal that’ll offer good service at a low price) should take a look around at the options available. If other people followed my example we’d all be being fleeced by monopolies.

Cheap Phone Deals

As well as a wireless upgrade I’m looking into a new phone. Again, I’m surprised at the number of cheap mobile phone deals available nowadays. I’ve been using a Sony Ericsson s700i for the past couple of years, and to be honest it’s seen better days. It’s been a great phone, but I’ve thrown it around so much it barely works any more. There’s a strange rattling noise that I’m sure isn’t part of the design, and it occasionally shuts itself down in the middle of a call (not a good idea when I’m speaking to my motor insurance carrier about why I haven’t paid this month’s premium).

It’s been a couple of years since I went to a mobile phone price comparison site or took a look at mobile phone consumer reviews, so I was surprised to find the sheer number of cracking phones at ridiculously low prices. There are even a few handsets that work out costing only £50 per year once you factor in the rebates you get for mailing in your bills (though, of course, you have to remember to mail them at certain times during the year, and I’ve never been that great at remembering to do so). After a few hours browsing through a few mobile phone sites I’ve got my options down to a few mobile phone best buys, so with a little luck I’ll have a shiny new mobile in the next couple of weeks.

God, I'm Cheap

I’m a big fan of getting things for free. The last couple of weeks have cost me somewhere in the region of two grand, so I’m on a big ‘get stuff for free’ drive. Fortunately, the Internet is perfectly designed for skinflints like me.

For the last few months I’ve been switching around between DVD rental free trials to get a pile of free rentals before settling on an account. As long as you remember to cancel your trial before they start taking money from your bank you can watch a ton of movies for free. Unfortunately, my cheapness is paired with a criminally poor memory, so I forgot to cancel two free trials and ended up paying for services I didn’t use. Bah. Still, as long as you have your head screwed on straight you can get a lot of mileage from a DVD rental trial, allowing you to figure out which is the right service for you before committing for the long term.

As well as DVD rentals there are bags of special offers and freebies to be had from the Internet. Just follow the links and you’ll find a ton of free stuff. While in the past the majority of free trials and special offers have been confined mostly to the US, British retailers have finally caught on to the fact that consumers love special offers and free gifts. Today, there are endless freebies in UK sites for motor insurance, mobile phones, credit cards and a million and one other things. All you have to do is take a look around before buying anything bigger than a chocolate bar and grab all the free samples and discount vouchers that retailers are willing to throw at you for the privilege of shopping with them.

God, I’m turning into such an old man.

Cheap Shopping Through Directories

With all the money I’ve spent in the past few days – on cameras, laptops, plane tickets and hotel rooms – I’m gonna have to do all my shopping from now on through an online shopping directory or two.

As it turns out, I’ve been missing out on cheap deals for years. The way I usually shop online is by randomly picking a site and sticking with it religiously for years, regardless of the price and level of service. I really am that lazy.

Thing is, if you exercise just a little more initiative in your online shopping than I do you can find cracking deals on all sorts of things. F’r’instance, by using a mobile phones directory you can track down not only the best prices on handsets and contract deals, but also a range of technology blogs that offer reviews and advice on which deal to choose.

And it’s not just mobile phones for which you can find bargains. The best shopping sites directory offers categories for computers, gifts, fragrances and much more. By simply spending a few minutes browsing through the sites in the directory you can save a packet on everything you buy online – and if you spend as much as I do shopping on the Internet that can add up to a sizeable portion of your income.

Finally, if you run an online shopping site it might be a good idea to submit your site to something like this search engine friendly directory.

Global Medical Insurance

Ever since I was a we boy I've had a dream to get out of this drizzly country and set up shop somewhere warm - warm all the year round, and not just for two days in July. 

In the past the idea was just a pipedream.  I'm not qualified to really do anything that would require me to live overseas.  A geography degree doesn't really give you any unique skills that can't be found in the native population.  Since I went freelance, however, it's become a distinct possibility. 

Not just that, but it might actually be beneficial to become an expatriate.  You see, all I need to do my job is a computer with a stable Internet connection.  I can get that here in the UK - paying my high taxes and seeing my income flush down the drain with a high cost of living - or I can move to a country where I can live on a few dollars a day and and the sand I can burn my feet on, all the while still bringing in exactly the same income as I earn now.

Of course, there would be a few additional expenses - primarily health insurance.  Here in the UK healthcare is covered by our income tax, so we don't need to consider any special arrangements.  Once I leave the country, though, I'd have to sort out global medical insurance to cover me in the case that I got sick or broke something.  After all, if I was hit by a huge medical bill I wouldn't be able to afford that well appointed beach house in the Caribbean. 

Ethical Banking

There's a building in Manchester that was, until recently at least, the largest in the city.  The CIS building, home to the Co-operative Bank, towers above the city.  Of course, it would be lost in the mix if you put it in any other large city in the world - it probably wouldn't even get into the top 50 tallest buildings in Manhattan.

Still, the Co-op has for over a hundred years been a source of pride for those in the north of England.  Born in the nearby town of Rochdale, the Co-op - originally known as the Rochdale Equitable Pioneers Society - began as a way to increase buying power among groups of relatively impoverished workers.  Growing from this base the movement grew from a loose collection of shops and other interests to become the massive worldwide movement we see today. 

These days the Co-op is best known in the UK as the Co-operative Bank, along with its Internet branch Smile.  Still true to their roots, the bank is wholly owned by its employees, and the profits are re-invested back into the company instead of channeled to a small group of owners.  The Co-op recently announced an update ethical policy that outlines its intentions for the future, focussing on the development of ethical Banking and ethical insurance. 

I've always been a fan of the Co-op.  I financed a trip to Australia in 2002 by a Co-op overdraft, and even when I fell behind on my repayments for 6 months they treated me fairly, keeping the late payment fees to a minimum.  I got a letter from them this morning, in fact, reminding me that I still owe them a couple hundred to clear the account, so since I have a little money in my current account right now I might as well finally pay them off.   

Good Luck

Tonight should be a good night.  My little sister is going off to university this weekend - she'll be the third of the four kids in our family to get a degree, something a fact that I hope our parents are pretty proud of.

We're having some farewell and good luck drinks tonight with a few friends.  She only going 50 miles away, so she'll be going home to the folks every weekend, but it's still a big step. 

What's different about my sister is that her degree will be the most artistic of the three.  My older brother got his degree in English, while mine was in geography.  The little'un, though, is getting hers in... hell, I don't remember, but it's something like 3D design or something that involves using the occasional potters wheel or something.

She's also pretty handy with a camera.

Clearly she got the lion's share of the talent in our family.