Jonathan Davies

Always looking for something new to bite my teeth into, I’ve decided to start a new project on the side called Blogging Adventure. It’s been a few months in the making and am so far very happy with the results.

So what is Blogging Adventure? Here is a quote from the introductory post:

Blogging Adventure is a blog that I have created to document what has become one of my biggest passions. Blogging and how to be successful at it.

I don’t pretend to have all the answers, after all the site is called Blogging Adventure. It is just as much a learning experience for me as it is for you.

I can use Blogging Adventure for different experiments, for trying various different methods, whether is being ad campaigns or writing styles. That’s what is so great about Blogging Adventure, I can make all the mistakes so that you don’t have to!

I’ve let a few blog posts trickle out and have decided for quality over quantity and should be posting three times a week.

One reason I started this blog is because I noticed that a lot of what I have been writing about here has been falling into the Blogging category.

I’ve been trying to decide if I should bring guest writers or other permanent writers into the fold. It would sure make getting posts done a lot easier and allow for some more exposure.

However, for now I am quite complacent with being the sole writer.

So, check it out. Leave comments and tell me what you think. I’m excited by it - I just want a lot more people to know about it!

PS: I would like to integrate Linked Lists into this blog. If you know how I would greatly appreciate any help you could give. Contact me here!

I love writing about cool products and software.

But I also like writing about issues that the online world faces, something that you may have noticed I’ve been covering a lot more of lately.

Why this sudden change of heart? Well, I look at the posts and say to myself: “Do I feel satisfied with writing about things you can find somewhere else?”. Surely on my personal blog I should get the upmost satisfaction from every word on it? I feel a commitment to write product reviews, but inspired to write about things that we face everyday. At the end of the day, which should be more important to you?

Anyways, I like writing for blogs like Desktop Vibes because it allows me to bring my writing to a wider audience and lets me keep writing about issues that I am more passionate about.

So here are some changes I’d like to make now or in the near future:

• No crap - I think I’ve let a few things slip on this blog, and editing my posts is one of them. I want to like reading my own material. I wince currently when I read my writing.
• New blog design - Linked Lists and a more minimal site coming your way very soon (hopefully). I’m thinking of going for a darker look
• Comments - I’ve thought about it long and hard and am not totally convinced. I see more and more reasons every day to remove comments from my blog - and I think with a new design you’ll see them go.
• More passion and more me.

This blog is for me, and what I care about. If you don’t care. Don’t read.

PS: Thanks Merlin, Michael and Shawn.

Who are you?

This is the first question I ask when I read a post from a newly discovered blog.

I think that the best bloggers in the world have the ability to tell you just about everything you need to know about them without mentioning a single fact.

Meaning that from their style, layout and language they are able to convey their feelings so well that we can see into that person’s life.

Just a thought…

The coverage sucks.

The iPhone is the one thing I wanted a phone to every do for me. Work. With my old phone I had no idea how to take a picture and nor the patience to navigate its ridiculous interface to find out. I can probably count the amount of pictures with the phone in a year on one hand.

As I mentioned in Revolutionary, the iPhone set the standard for all other phones. I just wish that 02 (the UK carrier) had followed suit.

Over the last couple of weeks I have been all over the country and only once have managed to get five bars of 3G coverage, which quickly dissipated.

The problem seems to be that the 02 webmap showing all their varying coverage seems to be fictional, I don’t get 3G, it seems, anywhere I should.

02, as with AT&T is the weak link in the chain. I just hope that in the 18 months that I retain the contract that the figment of imagination that is their coverage map with become reality.

…because I don’t have the time!

I really, really, really want to read all these great blog posts that the blogosphere is producing. They’re in depth and add that little touch that makes you, you.

However, I don’t like forcing myself to read your blog post at another time because it doesn’t fit in to my schedule.

I don’t have the time to read a three paragraph introduction that tells me two facts.

The Solution

Every new article that appears in my RSS reader (NetNewsWire, my feed reader of choice) has three minutes of my time to impress me. Not a second longer not a second less.

If I run out of time and think that it is worth more of my time I’ll flag it for later when I don’t feel the inevitable rush to get my feeds read before breakfast.

It’s a real pity that I have had to resort to this is some of the best things I read are at a slightly longer length.

So to all the bloggers out there, who waffle in their blog posts about things that may not be on topic or no interest to the reader: STOP.

a complete or dramatic change

This is what the dictionary defines as revolutionary. However, I like to see it as something that changes the way that people see things.

The emphasis is on the word people. I don’t care how good you think your product is, if it is only relevant to a niche or only a small amount of people know about it or use the item in question - it isn’t revolutionary.

The iPhone (not 3G) was revolutionary, it changed the way that people graded their cell phone. It set a new standard. Your average consumer realized that phones don’t have to be unreliable, ugly and hard to use.

That there was something better out there.

Some may argue that my two points contradict. That the iPhone isn’t revolutionary because everyone doesn’t know about it. Well, that may be true but I think more people know about it than they do about your automatic toaster.

After all, how many average, everyday people queued for hours on end for this phone?

The fact is: they can’t have all been Apple fanboys!

Apple has sparked a rejuvenation in the phone market that they are slowly evolving over time (aka the iPhone 3G) to stay ahead of the competition. Imagine if there had never been iPhone. Would there have ever been an Instinct, Bold or Diamond? I doubt it.

Picture Credit: Andy Carvin

On Thursday I picked up, on my way back from Norfolk a brand new piece of hardware - a MacBook Air.

Initial Impressions follow as: thin, surprisingly fast and very, very, light.

Coming from a MacBook Pro with 4GB of RAM I can’t say I’ve seen much of a performance drop. Some apps; like Photoshop just take a bit longer to load up. No big deal.

The one big bottleneck for me is the hard drive. But I’ll be supplementing that for one of these in the near future. A for my iPhone, It’ll be a week or so until I get a chance to pick on up; but it seems that the 16GB model is a lot easier to come buy now that things have settled down a bit.

I’ll be putting my final thoughts down in a review in the near future, but lets say that apart from a few glitches the MacBook Air seems to be performing beyond what I expected of it to be capable of.

I’m terrible at getting things done. Literally. I put things off, I get distracted and go off watching YouTube videos and get lost in time. In fact the only way of making myself do anything is by creating a seriously strict plan with timings and goals to reach - this tends to work quite well but sometimes I wonder whether I should be doing some of these things if I don’t feel inspired to.

Moving along…

Currently, I’ve been pretty good at keeping my RSS feeds up to date. I have started to make an effort to read more and pay far more attention to the posts. I don’t subscribe to many feeds at all (compared to a lot of the blogosphere) but lately I have been especially looking into writing blogs.

These either focus on writing on the whole, i.e.. grammar and producing writing that reads better and is also more enjoyable to write. Hopefully you’ll start to see the effect these are having over time, preferably positively!

I’ve also started to read a lot more blogs on blogging. I think there is a wealth of information out there on better SEO, attracting advertisers and making blog posts that people will actually want to read and get something out of.

In fact, this topic has really caught my eye, and I want to learn as much as I can about better blogging and also have a way to share this knowledge. Watch this space.

Canada 2008

As you may be guessed, I’m back! I had a really great trip to Canada and did some really exciting things varying from white water rafting to flying in a biplane.

I also got some fantastic chances to take some photos, and you can see the best in this Flickr set.

So much stuff is happening so fast, and already I’m going away again for a few days, this time with no chance of getting on the internet. I’ll take the camera and hopefully get some nice shots though.

PS: I have no idea why I have called this post Rubbish

Tomorrow I set out on my holiday to Canada and more specifically Ottawa. The main goals for me in this holiday is that I: one, explore a bit more into photography - I’ve heard that there are some great areas around Ottawa, especially Parliament Hill to take photos. I’ll be armed with a D80 and snapping everything I can. And secondly to relax: I’ve got a load of things planned for when I get back - some I can’t really talk about and some I just don’t want to yet.

One of my deepest regrets is that I am not spending enough time producing content for this blog. I know I keep saying I will be writing more and not much has come of it…

I have been thinking of branching out a bit; maybe talking about things I wouldn’t normally care to mention. However I will not let this blog simply become a news website - frankly I think a lot of you would prefer a no blog posts than repeated ones that you can find anywhere.

What would you like to see from the blog?

On another note I’ve written an article for Desktop Vibes that I’m quite proud of: Five Reasons Why You Should Use Google Docs. I’ll also be having another article of mine published sometime tomorrow.

Even with the release of Firefox 3 I still remain an avid Safari user. Why?

Because when I was using Firefox 2 I was bit two many times with it crashing on me over and over again and it using to much in the way of system resources. I didn’t use any extensions (I don’t feel I found any that I really need to use or enhance my computing experience exponentially).

Yes, I know Firefox 3 has changed all of this, but still. I have no need to. Safari does everything that I need and more. It’s faster, looks better and has better integration with the OS.

It’s a simple reason, but they’re simple problems - sorry Firefox but I’m not about to switch today.

I know a lot of you probably think I’m wrong, why?