THREESIXTYFIVE | AGAIN

No, Not again again... I just thought about it, and doesn't it suck when you think of things that you should have started and that time when you should have started them has passed and you can't go back and start again.. it's too late, get over it, move on.. or, in this case, here's 365 self portraits of ME for YOU to be annoyed at / laugh at / like / smile at / hate / not like technically / wonder why - etc etc...

Red Velvet Cup Cakes - Bloke Style!

So, I love cupcakes, Red Velvet Cup Cakes are win win!! So, as I had no spare time up my sleeve, I thought I'd try my hands at baking me some!! (I've since renamed mine "Red Velvet Disaster that tastes pleasant")

This is a stella example of how they're meant to look (click)

Red Velvet Cupcakes

Here's the ingredients that I used for starters...

60gms of unsalted Butter at room temperature (An average British room, smart a**!) 150gms Caster Sugar (Like what fisherman use, Caster, geddit) 1 Chicken Egg (As opposed to dinosaur, right?) 10gms of Cocoa powder (If you use original, organic unprocessed Cocoa, there's a chance you won't need red colour due to a chemical reaction with the buttermilk, innit!) 20ml of horrid red Food Colouring (That stuff will kill ya!) 1 healthy tsp of Vanilla Extract 120mls Buttermilk (Who the hell keeps Buttermilk! Use this) 150gms of plain (not snazzy, plain) Flour Half a tsp of the queens finest Salt Half a tsp of Bicarbonate Of Soda 1 and a half tsp of white wine Vinegar (Fail on my part, didn't have any oops) Cream Cheese Frosting (I used Mr. Worrall Thompson's recipe) A muffin tin / Baking Tray 12 little Baking paper thingies

And this is what I did with all that stuff!...

1. Preheat the oven to 170'C (325'F) Gas 3.

2. Put the butter and the sugar in a bowl and stir / beat etc until light and fluffy and well mixed (If you're pathetic, use a mixer, but if you're a bloke, use a wooden spoon you girl!)  Turn the wooden spoon up to high speed, slowly add the egg and beat until everything is well mixed. (Try do this with one hand! Physical challenge!)

3. In a separate bowl, mix the cocoa powder, red food colouring and vanilla extract together to make a chunky dark paste. Add in the butter mixture and mix thoroughly until everything looks the same, I used a rubber spatula to scrape the sides and make sure I got it all. Turn the mixer (Wooden spoon) down to slow speed and slowly pour in half the pretend buttermilk. Beat until your arm is sore, then add half the flour and beat it all until everything is mixed up like that awesome album the Cure released in 1990 (Am I that old!) Repeat this arduous process until all the fake buttermilk and flour have been added and your arm is proper sore. Scrape all the wannabe escapees down from the side of the bowl again and give it the good news with the old wooden spoon until your arm really truly hurts. Slowly add the salt, bicarb and vinegar (Which I forgot I didn't have). Beat until Beaten then beat a little more... What's that, your arm's sore? SOFT!

4. Empty your precious mixture into the little paper houses until they're about two-thirds full and whack in the lovingly preheated oven for 20-25 minutes** (I chose 20, who gives a bloke cook a choice, I mean really?!), or until the spongy goodness bounces back at ya when touched. A skewer (I used a spear like thing used for fondue) inserted in the centre should come out clean. Leave the cupcakes to cool slightly in the tray before turning loose onto a cooling rack (The bench really will do)

5. You made your icing when I told you to, right?** When the cupcakes are cool, spoon the Cream Cheese Frosting on top.

Yeah, so, well... mine, they taste awesome! They just look crap.... C'est La Vie!

Oh, here's a STONKING great recipe for them from pickycook actually, it's probably best you avoid using my recipe for anything other than a laugh at a party!

I had fun though... Sime

SEO as it applies to a photographer

As I see it, there's a lot to be said for a well set-up photography website with great SEO structure and lovely, well placed keywords, but that traffic that you get as a result, you're not going to keep it if you forget to be human sometime. I was reading an article by the sassy Laura Roeder about remembering to be human on Twitter... and it certainly applies to your webbish type habits, too.. Here's my take on it!

So, you all know I am a "New Media Producer" during business hours, this means I try to find ways to make people come to certain websites and view content that we produce as a television company. It's taught me many things about SEO and all of that stuff, but I think the most important thing that I have learned after reading all the eBooks about traffic sourcing and tagging and key wording and community building is that you can't expect miracles of flooding traffic overnight and if your website doesn't work how it should, you're going to have trouble keeping that traffic when you / if you do get it with just search engine optimization and tags alone.

everyone starts with no traffic

But I'm not really here to talk about my day job, what I wanted to bang on about today was my "other life" Social Media... Which is a horrific "you should be hit with a bat" term that tries to describe what we all do every day, that's right - talking to other people, saying hello...  some of us just do it with a little more of a serious look on our faces... So, what does it all mean? and why would you bother?

Social Media (ugh) to me is all about communication and sharing information with the people around you, your contacts and their contacts... People use it differently, some of them choose to interact, some tweet and run, some set up auto tweeting / facebook posting gizmos and never reply to anyone, ever... I think this third method is nothing more than worthless spamming in a space that could be much better used.

Me, I'm an "engager" if someone posts on my wall or tweets @me or comments on an image or comments on a blog post, I will, 99% of the time, reply within about an hour (unless I'm asleep!...) You know where this all stems from? I'm the kind of bloke that will stop people that look lost in the street and try help - I'm also not that afraid to stop people, offer help and then admit I have no clue where the place is that they're after... So, translation into the "e" world... I have no quick fix Social Media strategy, but I know what works in terms of engaging people and I will try offer help where I can - in my field.

SEO-Doesn't-Help-You-Clean-Up-On-Its-Own

A lot of people that I speak to suggest that if you have a well optimized website and your SEO ducks are all in a row, that you will clean up in your area of expertise! Well let's look at that for a second, real world... If you and me stood beside each other at a market stall, you in a nice suit, me in ripped jeans and a wife beater.. and both of us said nothing at all to our customers, you might get more passing trade because you look nicer (to some people) ..and this is a bloody weak analogy (!) but if your website is nicely set up but you don't engage people and give them the content that's going to make them come back - the photos that inspire them, the musicality and pod-casts (if that's your thing) the stupid (yet sometimes amusing) insight into your life - your lovely, expensive SEO website is going to be nothing but a place-holder.

All I am trying to say is .....you can have the nicest photography website in the world, but if you don't offer something different and perhaps a little bit of community spirit, a cup of coffee every now and then and maybe some lovely cake... then you're not going to make your website work like it should.

So, in short, forget the SEO bollocks* for a minute, work at being HUMAN (You could have read the heading and then this line and been done with it, really)

*seo isn't bollocks, not really.