It does take a bit of energy to chop up a carrot though (or ‘prep it’ as I’m sure they would say in cheffy circles), and the temptation to cut corners in cheaper establishments must be overwhelming. I’m sure though that chefs and cooks in most big towns though would have access to pre-chopped fresh fare, thus saving them the time and energy. Its probably a tad more expensive too, but I’d suggest to all restaurateurs, cafe food and pub-grub purveyors its not as expensive as having customers not return because you presented a frozen carrot on a plate to a patron.

These days it seems we are completely surrounded in the media by cooking shows and celebrity chefs. The palettes of the population are being educated via TV. We all know how food should be prepared, presented and how it should taste (even though we can’t actually taste the food that is being paraded before us on the telly box). Subconsciously many of us have become foodies and part-time restaurant critics. It must be a real pain in the *wotsit* for restaurant owners. No longer can chefs and cooks get away with sub-standard carrots.

As you might have guessed by this anti-frozen-carrot rant that I was recently disappointed because someone served me a frozen carrot in a place that was not a school canteen. The pudding that they served following the carrots did not redeem their carrots either. It was a limp apple pie that did not have enough lashings of custard. Shame.

What to do?

I now am faced with the prospect of sacking myself from some things. In fact its high time that I fired myself. Thats it, I quit! Well at least from certain aspects of things.

Enter Ankur Sharma. Brilliant Programmer. He has now sacked me from the HeatMap HQ programming department. From HeatMap V4.0.6 onwards Ankur is now official head-honcho of code poetry, and will be working with the Director of the ‘Brilliant Ideas Department’ (that would be me) to create more things you will love, things up until now which were stuck in my head.

Thanks Ankur, and welcome aboard!

They solve a particular problem.

WordPress can be made to do an infinite number of things, but the real value of a theme is in how many of those possibilities can be elimininated so it helps its users solve their particular problem quickly, and focus on the task at hand.

For example, some themes help you to set up a magazine type blog; some themes might make it easy to set up a shop; and other themes might help you set up a blog that contains Adsense ads using WordPress widgets (ummm.. that would be HeatMap Theme). There are lots of possibilities.

HeatMap Theme Distilled

In the case of Heatmap Theme, stemming from my own personal interest, I created a theme that would help me to experiment with ad placement on my blog. Over the last couple of years I’ve done a lot of thinking about it, continued to build the theme, adding and refinining features to solve the problem more comprehensively.

What all this development means is that if you are thinking of starting out down the same track of creating a blog and want to place ads on it, I’ve already done more than two years of thinking about the problem, and have built solutions into the theme. When you buy the theme you are effectively buying a head start on solving all this stuff for yourself.

Ultimate Do-Everything Themes

Of course there are a few ultimate-do-every-possible-thing themes out there in the market. Sure it sounds good. The power to design the blog of your dreams to pixel perfection is enticing. But wait. Even though the hype says that even you can become a super blog designer overnight with these things, and you can tweak every parameter within an inch of its life, do you really have time for all that? Or would you rather look for a solution that has already solved the problem that you have?

Life Is Too Short – Don’t Reinvent the Wheel

Unless you are actually a proper web designer or are interested in becoming a theme designer, I’d encourage you to look for a theme that helps you to do what you need do, rather than starting from a blank-canvas-infinite-possibility theme. Look for solutions from a theme author who has spent some time thinking about the niche of your blogging problem, and chances are you will save time, and spend more time blogging, and less time tweaking and fiddling.

But if you actually like tweaking and fiddling…

If (like me two years ago) you find that your niche blogging problem hasn’t been adequately catered for, watch out! First of all you start tweaking a theme to make it do what you want, then you get frustrated and say to yourself “I’ll just make my own theme and solve all my problems!” and before you know it you have caught  the WordPress themeing bug and end up becoming a Theme Designer!

Are you a Google SEO obsessive?

Are you a new blogger who worries about the micro aspects of SEO, installing all manner of SEO plugins even before even writing any content?

Do you spend lots of time keywording, optimising, spinning and split testing micro paragraphs to within an inch of their meaning to stay in line with the latest theories about Google’s secret search sauce?

Do you constantly ask yourself questions like “Do I hyphenate here?”, “Will a full stop affect my SEO?”, “Have I ordered my keywords so that they balance their atomic weight with the latest quantum-physics-vistor-report-matrix?”

Have you got the bug?

If any of the above ring true for you then you may have a medical condition which I call pagerank-itis, and its contagious.

Is there a cure for Pagerank-itis?

Yes, there is, but you might not like it.

To make the condition manageable (as I’m not sure it can be cured entirely in all cases) I prescribe large doses of original content and quality organically grown inbound links.

The bad news is that the cure may take some time to work.

The good news is that once it starts working you’ll sleep better at night without the stress of always having to stay one step ahead of Google with the latest SEO trickery (which seems to me to be just as much work as creating original content anyway).

Here’s how it works

If your website contains real content that real people like, then over time you’ll attract good quality real inbound organic links.

Quality content is also your passport to the ‘authority’ sites on the net. For example in my own case I have a link from the WordPress.org commercial themes directory. This brings me lots of traffic (for which I am very grateful). I would never have got the site linked there if my content was not up to par. Your niche might also have an authority site. Its worth finding. It can often kickstart a new website quicker than Google alone.

Your Google traffic percentage shrinks… but you don’t ever worry!

As inbound link direct traffic grows for your site, traffic from Google will often become proportionally a smaller percentage of the traffic you recieve, thus making your site more immune to slight fluctuations in ranking, and less reliant on the Google.

Also, because you are concentrating on quality inbound links, this might also serve further solidify your ranking on the search engines.

Congratulations, you are well along the road to recovery. Now go and make yourself a nice cup of tea and have a lie down.

Its been a long time now since I’ve had to check into an office every day of the week to put bread and butter on the table. I know though that for many of you reading this, that the workaday routine is the daily reality. Get up, go to the office, return home, go to bed…repeat until insanity, retirment or check-out-of-hotel-de-vivre ensues.

Of course, I am extremely grateful that every day some (most) people choose the 9 to 5 life, and that there are still others who actively enjoy it, thrive in it, need it, want it, aspire to it, and don’t seem to go insane at all. I salute all those of you who keep the wheels of industry turning  and operating within normal parameters.

I am one of those people who has a propensity toward madness when confined by a cubicle. Luckily in the past  I mostly worked in jobs where the senior cubicle dwellers thought that my crazy shenanigans equated to creativity, out of the box thinking, and actual productive work. Even turning up with a half shaven pink mowhawk could not convince them otherwise. They gave me a prize and more staff.

I digress. Really, we all have a duty to play at least some part in it, performing some kind of ‘useful to society role’ no matter how much the ‘get rich quick’ merchants proclaim how daft we all are for trading our time for money. Hey, you can only sit around a pool for so long sipping pina-coladas before you actually get a bit bored and say to yourself “there must be more to life than this!’

Productive usefulness beckons…

The wonderful thing about how how our society operates though (at least in my part of the world) is that we do have choices. To opt in, or out, or try something different if the mood takes us. I have chosen to do something different. Maybe you would like to do that too.

I often think back to how things were done in ye-bygone days, way way before any of us here on this planet were twinkles in anyones eyes, when people worked at home, made things at home, grew things at home, loaded up the cart with things from home, took the occasional trip to market with the things, to swap them for other things to bring back home again.

Its called Cottage Industry…

I often think of what my wife and I do as a cottage industry (yes my wife works at home too), but in the 21st century, with the marketplace now being the internet. We make our online art courses, we teach our art courses, we make our WordPress theme, we help people with our WordPress theme, all from the comfort of our ‘cottage’, surrounded by our lively young children, only emerging from the home to get supplies, engage in some kind of sporting activity or do any one of the myriad of things that I’d probably never get round to doing if I were clocking on 9  to 5. In short, we ‘got a life’, ie we are living it on our own terms, making a living off our own ideas. Useful ideas. Ideas that can make a difference to others (not only ourselves – and thats the really special thing we love).

So, maybe now you are saying to yourself “hey, this cottage industry gig sounds like something I should do!”

That’s great! Welcome to the ‘out-of-office-rollercoaster-fun-ride-of-your-life’. The catch is though that on this rollercoaster you lay the track as you go, and determine the direction, up, down, left, right, forwards, backwards or otherwise, even though you are mostly staying put in your cottage. Its amazing how thrilling staying in one place can be in that context.

I recently had the pleasure of laying down some more track; a website in fact. DrawPj.com. It’s a place where beginner artists and art instructors can come together, to jump out of the day-to-day routine to learn how to create art, or even learn how to teach the course themselves so that they too can make their own cottage industry. I like the idea of a whole community of little art teaching cottage industries springing up all over the world, and us all being connected over the internet.

So there you have it, thats my cottage industry; my escape from the getting on the bus twice a day world. If you are ready to start your own cottage industry then I can heartily recommend it to you as a lifestyle choice. Are you really happy with someone telling you that you can only have 45 minutes for lunch, and that you must be interred in a grey carpetted cubicle in front of a computer screen that could very well have been accessed from your home anyway. That’s just plain craziness!

Oh, yes, the website for our online art course is DrawPj.com for anyone who is interested, and, of course, Heatmap Theme is always there for you when you want to monetize your ideas with a little Adsense, if thats your ticket out of the termite hills of corporate life

Gardening seems to be regarded as a gentile occupation, mainly for people who like to wear woolly jumpers when its a bit nippy outside, and retired people with far too much time on their hands. I seek to redress this image… at least around my own garden anyway.

Here’s my thinking…  I see people jogging on the street, cycling in chattering packs, working out in the gym, and yoga-ing until their yin fully is yanged.  I don’t have time for all that. I have to combine my exercise regime with the practicalities of directing all that energy into something useful (in addition to all that healthy mind, healthy body stuff)

So Ladies and Gentlemen, let me introduce to you the Art (and Sport of) EXTREME GARDENING.

I live with a subtropical garden out the back, a garden intent on taking over the very space that I inhabit. You don’t so much garden in Queensland; what you do is engage in a constant battle with nature in a bid not to be outflanked by plants of all tropical persuasions.  It takes a lot of energy to keep this garden in check. It just grows stuff when you are not looking. You turn around for a second and whoosh, when you turn back there’s a whole new tree where it wasn’t before. Extreme measures are needed. Extreme Gardening is needed.

So what exactly is Extreme Gardening? In its most basic form its doing gardening very very fast so as to get a bit fitter than you were when you started. Granted most times I come away from the garden feeling like my legs have turned to jelly, but after a good lie down, a nice cup of tea and a soothing ‘there, there’ from the wife I do start to feel the benefit of all that healthy outdoor, not to mention USEFUL, activity.

Yes of course I could have gained all the same health benefits by joining that crowd of road cyclists who come blethering past my home early in the morning like some kind of fast moving business networking group on wheels, but, that wouldn’t have got the garden done would it. I’d be out on those bikes, puffing, grunting, and wittering for hours on end but the garden would STILL need doing. Complete nightmare. Knackered with an untidy garden taunting me with its unruly twigs and fronds.

“Hey I cant find a WordPress theme that does just what I want…you know what.. I think I’ll design my own!”

and then after you’ve finished creating your theme you get the second brilliant idea… and it goes something like this…

“Wow my WordPress theme is pretty cool now, and seeing as everyone is asking to get their hands on it, I’ll release it to the world!”

For many WordPress Theme designers this is the kiss of death for their actual blogging. The writing gets put on hold while theme designing grows into a magnificent obsession. I have not been immune to this. Alas and alack, I too have been caught up in the cloistered codexed world of theme-ing and diminished my word output!

No more I say… time to start blogging again. So having given my blog a freshen up with my latest Heatmap Child Theme we’re off again into the realm where only words can take us… until at least the time comes when I get obsessed with the next theme update again.

As a youth, pop music ranked alongside soccer as something you must be into.  I never liked soccer that much though as I only ever seemed to reach the position of ‘substitute’ on the infant school team. I never scored any goals and I was better at fouling other players by kicking them than actually kicking the ball. I never kicked any pop stars though.

No, I loved pop music, and even wanted to be a Pop Star, but never seemed to find the time to do anything about it, though I did write many songs and developed a musical style reminiscent of a monotone Pet Shop Boys, complete with 80′s st-st-st-st-stuttering ssss—ssss—samples. (n-n-n-nineteen anyone?).

I’m glad I’m not one. I’ve read many pop star autobiographies and while the bit which involves going on stage and playing a gig in front of 100,000 screaming fans seems fun, the road to the top and back down again seems altogether too smelly, unsavoury and filled with people who would induce anyone to become paranoid (with or without the seemingly obligatory hard drugs). So, when it comes to the pop world the nearest I have got is standing or sitting next to some now reasonably famous people.

Vince Clarke

I once stood alone at the Uni Bar next to Vince Clarke of Yazoo, Depeche Mode, and Erasure fame. I wish I had said hello. I was a shy youth.

Stephen Duffy

I met Stephen Duffy twice (of 80′s Tin Tin and now Robbie Williams co-song writer fame).  He signed my record and I snuck backstage after the gig for photos. For a long time my photo was on his website. My fashion sense of the time though was sorely lacking and shall for ever more be etched in internet history. I also interviewed him once for the ‘Friends of the Lilac Time’, but I was too worldly naive to impress him with my interview technique and he disappointed me by being just an ordinary person with an extraordinary ego. I can’t blame him for that. Artists never match up to perfection of their artistic creations. The interview never saw the light of day.

Mark from ‘Take That’

I sat next to Mark from Take That once outside a solo promotional gig, after Take That had split. He was busy fuelling an unhealthy habit. I always wonder how people who live unhealthy lifestyle can even make it out of bed on a morning, never mind expend massive energy on stage. I guess that’s why the unhealthy habits start in the first place.

The (EX) Prime Minister of Australia

So that’s about it for Pop stars I have met… Apart from one. Even though he’s not a pop star, in the Australian media his persona sometimes takes on the aura of one. I gave Kevin Rudd a hug (now of  ‘I am the (now EX) Prime-Minister-of-Australia’ fame) when he popped into our church. Its a very huggy church, and no-one was hugging him, so I went over and made him feel welcome. He was mildly surprised. I forgot his name and said “welcome to the church PHIL” (temporily confusing Kevin Rudd with Phillip Ruddock). Later that year he became Prime Minister (Kevin, not Phil). I don’t think the two events are related but you never know;  a butterfly flaps its wings here and an earthquake is triggered on the opposite side of the world.

Update!  Poor old Kevin is now no longer the Prime Minister. He has been usurped by the Ginger Ninja Julia Gillard. I don’t expect to be giving her a hug any time soon. I promise though that if I ever meet her I will endeavour to get her name wrong too.

When I was a kid, bananas came slightly blackened and over-ripe. We squished them up and put them in sandwiches. I liked banana sandwiches a lot. I ate a lot of them. My bones are probably built from one third banana sandwiches, one third milk, with the rest being made up of liver, onions and mashed potato.

When I first saw bananas ‘in the wild’ I could not believe they were actually real bananas. I guess its the same kind of disconnection that some people feel between a cow and a steak. I’d never seen a banana tree before. Now there are lots of banana trees in the garden. I had to move countries for this to happen though. There are also paw-paws (came in cans as a mysterious ingredient in fruit salad when I was a child), pumpkins (only seen in American Halloween trick or treat references on imported movies), lychees (they grow in chinese restaurants don’t they?) and Custard Apples (a freak of nature never seen in my native UK). There are also lemons, limes, oranges and mandarins (only ever seen in a christmas stocking previously).

Its a race to eat them. You see, where I live the animals also have an eye on the garden. To me, its a wonderful compendium of exotic fruits for my delectation. To them its just lunch, breakfast and tea, and they seem to have a knack of grabbing things off the tree the instant they become in any way edible, or, more annoyingly just nibbling a little bit of the end, so that you don’t really want to eat it yourself.

There are bananas sat in front of me as I type this, lined up in a row, ripening on the front deck. About 10 bunches. My wife makes great banana cakes with them. You see the problem is they all get ripe at once, and eating 100 banana within the space of 4 days is not really possible for me, much as I like them, and much as the novelty of chopping them out of the tree with a machete never wears off.

My wife tells me that we have Monsterio tree somewhere in the garden. I’ve never got the hang of those. Maybe its the name. Who would want to eat a monster fruit?

Here’s how you do it:

• You see a placename on a signpost.
• You come up with a definition for that word, using it to describe a concept, feeling or thing that currently has no word attached to it.

Here are some of my own examples. These are real Australian placenames. You’ll get the idea.

Goondiwindi:
A small embarrassing fart unexpectedly expelled when laughing out loud in quiet company.

Ardleton:
A person of advancing years who drives at a speed so slow that they could possibly pass away before they reach their destination.

Barrogan:
A frustrated person who is in a hurry to drive somewhere quickly, and who is being prevented from doing so because they are stuck behind an Ardleton.

Conway:
A road that you drive down for a considerable distance before you realise that a prankster has in fact turned the sign at the last junction in the opposite direction.

Hindmarsh:
An inviting patch of lawn which appears to be dry and the perfect spot for a picnic, however, after sitting there for an extended period you discover that your bottom is actually wet.

Bangalow:
A car which has had its suspension lowered so as to increase performance, but which is in such a decrepit state of repair that you wonder why the owner would bother in the first place.

Andover:
The act of hanging around for as little time as possible at a car dealership when you trade your old car for a new one, knowing that the old one is on its last legs and will probably never start again.