39 Days of Christmas - Day 02

I mean, how do you follow ‘an axe’ …also, who suggests an axe? Well, these gifts aren’t all for kids, some women and men may appreciate a good (ok, an average) axe…

Day 38 spots us dipping into the old ‘music’ category.

Guitar… maybe you’ll buy your kid one, maybe they’ll play it three times and get bored because they can’t make it sound like …well, anything good. Get your kid a second hand guitar, get them a guitar introduction course, make sure the teacher isn’t boring (but obvs is teaching more than the intro to Smoke on the Water!) …If you’re in Melbourne, take your kid to Music Swap Shop, wander around in there for a couple of hours, just get a look and feel for a few different guitars…

There are a whole range of crappy cheap guitars on Amazon and sure, with the right strings and ten minutes spent setting the guitar up, they might sound slightly better than a cat attacking a chalk board, they might even sound ‘Just fine’ - Have a look through here (Click) …but yeah, Music Swap Shop if you can.

https://www.musicswopshop.com.au/

Now, here’s a selection of photographs of guitarists I’ve taken over the years, how many can you name?

39 Days of Christmas - Day 01

39 Things I’ve found handy in the last 39 Years. Accompanied by a random photograph from the last 39 Years.

Day one is, and mums everywhere (because so so many of you read my blog) will hate me for this, but one of the things I loved as a kid, growing up, was my mini-axe (hatchet) …I wish I still had the one from when I was a kid, alas, I don’t… But grab your kid one of these and take them camping, find a dead tree, let them cut some chunks out of it - they’ll remember it.

The Axe: https://amzn.to/3ggk3vb (It’s a Spear & Jackson, they’re not the worst and they’re not the best, but they do the job and can be re-sharpened (or, if you’re that helicopter type, just leave them blunt…whatever floats your boat)

And the photo? I couldn’t find a photo of me as a kid with my axe (Mum?) But here’s one my 12yo broke in the back yard…

This wasn’t a Spear & Jackson… it was a splinter and electrical tape.

Come back tomorrow. See you then.

Ho Ho Ho

Making things easy - Wood work for dummies?

I’m having a bit of fun with wood, I don’t have a whole lot of space… Like, no space really… So I wanted to share a list of smaller shop tools that make a big difference and don’t take up any room! The first one is a Bahco Cabinet Scraper …

“A card scraper or cabinet scraper is a woodworking shaping and finishing tool. It is used to manually remove small amounts of material and excels in tricky grain areas where hand planes would cause tear out. Card scrapers are most suitable for working with hardwoods, and can be used instead of sandpaper” - Wiki

This is the tool in question…

Best thing about this simple tool, you can sharpen and use it over and over again… Take a look below

You can get your own here on Amazon - https://amzn.to/3C719Q3

Have you ever deleted an app to stop your browsing?

alt title: A social (media) experiment - Part Two of ?

24 hours without somewhere to ‘story’ stupid stuff. 24 hours without somewhere to share incidents of appreciation for tools I use, to support stuff I like… 24 hours and I think there’s maybe 10 people I missed seeing the regular updates from.

Maybe there’s another way?

And for most regular people, with Instagram now allowing uploading from your desktop computer, or via apps like Later or Hootsuite, removing the app from your phone is a completely legit thing to do… That impulse to browse when you have 28 seconds spare is removed (after a while of not having the app on your phone)

But for me, that’s not possible… There are some things in social media land that you can only do via the app ( which I find utterly stupid in this day and age! just fully open up that api already)

So given the deadlock, where does that leave me?

…it leaves me painting the front gate! Another coat of natural white Dulux something-or-other on my crooked pickets (thanks, Lee)

A social (media) experiment

Last night I ‘turned off’ my Instagram account.

I manage social media accounts to pay the bills, I spend a lot of time online each day, part of that was managing my own social media. After some thought, there’s not really much point maintaining my own social media… I’m a 47 year old bloke that actively encourages his kids to stay well away from social media, lead by example, right?

The answer I’ve always given myself when I ask myself the question “Do you need to actively partake in your own social media to be an effective social media manager?” Is ‘Yes, absolutely’ but with social media management tools the way they are now, the ability to search content and be present without being present as myself has come a long way - I can effectively be online as my clients and not myself.

Well, that answer made sense in my head, so let’s see if it sticks.

I’m doing this to drag back some time for myself/my kids. My time is allocated in various sized chunks to my clients, that has never been a hard and fast line - it’s always been fluid and almost invariably much more than i’m contracted for… The management of content, looking for that content, looking for audience (with most social platforms putting the organic screws on so tight so they can sell advertising for mostly fake reach), looking for chatter and guiding that chatter… It all takes time. My time and my expertise at guiding those conversations is where my value is, but i’ve found it very hard to find the ‘off switch’ while doing that.

I guess working from home, well, not working from home as such, it’s not like I have anywhere else to work - my office is in my house, it’s a dedicated room. Working from home maybe means I’m not restricted by office-bound norms, e.g. it’s 10:32am and I’ve had one Zoom for a client’s bi-weekly round-up call, I’ve popped down and made myself breakfast just now, and I think I’ll grab a shower and perhaps try slot in a haircut… Those types of things aren’t conducive to a 9-5 environment, but that also means that if I need to, I just push my day out into the evening. I’m not really a sit and watch tv kind of guy, so I don’t mind shelving work during the day and getting it done at night - as long as it gets done. I’m rambling.

Long story short, I’m pulling back from the added distraction that is my personal social media, using that time elsewhere, focusing on client work when online and daydreaming about the small farm I want to buy…

Glad we had this chat, if you don’t see me online, that’s ok, I’ll be here and via email and likely Twitter…

Also, here’s a chopping board I’m working on, more on it later, but I’ll say this, some of the timber in this piece is from an interesting place - more soon.