I’m sitting here in a hoody in my lounge feeling pretty piss poor after going out and getting hammer-timed last night.  Went out into town armed with £20 and I came back with a couple of quid in my pocket – possibly a record for me.  Currently, some programme is on TV with James May going on about something that I haven’t got a clue about (and it isn’t cars), and opposite me I have got a rather excitable iPhone 3GS user who is quietly tapping away with some painting app whilst lolloping on the sofa…  so I thought I’d have some quality laptop time and write a blog post here.

I’ve done quite a lot of stuff over the last couple of months.  I have holidayed, gigged, and even been bloody pampered at a spa… however despite all this I still feel worn out a lot of the time.  It’s not like I’m burning the candle at both ends either… because my going out into town has decreased drastically – unfortunately I now realise that at the grand old age of 28, my hangovers are now of the two day duration!  So as a result of this downturn, I feel like my general enthusiasm/drive for a lot of things has decreased.

However I think I’ve discovered the reason, and it is my bed – it is crap.  I used to really like it, but after staying in a few hotels recently, I have now come to realise how uncomfortable it is.  It’s some kind of memory-foam type stuff that I have got, and it comes delivered in some of cylinder vacuum packed plastic – this is not right.  I’ve realised how much better and refreshed I feel after a night sleeping in a different bed (ooh err) – so next weekend will be one spent in bloody Beds R Us or some place like that.  Strangely looking forward to parting with up to £500.

Anyone know what you can do with an old matress??  If you know please Tweet me or if you have the Ping! App (awesome) for the iPhone, send a message to samdavisuk.

So with the lack of quality sleep hopefully a thing of the past, hopefully I will be back to normal extremely soon.. and I need to be really, as things at work are hotting up quite a bit.  It has been very busy recently, which inevitably contributes to overall stress.  I must say though that things have got a lot less hectic, as we’ve moved away from selling physical products.  Now we’re solely an online business which makes its’ money through affilliate marketing, service related websites, and also with a huge subscription based training course which is launching soon – more will be revealed at a later date.

So over the last few weeks in the office, I have been mixing up development work on the new stuff, whilst providing handover support for the new owners of the portals we’ve flogged – not really all that easy, especially when these people want things rather different from how they were originally setup.  Anyhow, the new direction of our work is where I want to be, and is although the pressure is on to make it succeed, I am sure with a lot of dedication – it will.

With all this computer work going on, plus doing some websites outside of office hours [Plug Alert: Stairway Joinery and Dave from Fire Radio] – I really haven’t had the inclination to update the Magento stuff on this website at all – such a shame considering how well it is performing at the moment, both in terms of traffic and income.  It’s a frustrating position to be in.

Anyway, aside from the techno-crap, I had a nice treat last week when I went to see Mew in Shepherds Bush in London.  This Danish band, who I regard as being my favourite, were astounding.  I’ve seen them a few times now, and their type of art rock is simply awesome, and similarly their shows are absolutely stunning to watch – with their amazing imagery and fantastic sound.  They are widely regarded as one of the most technically accomplished bands in the world, but as yet, if you mention them to anyone, they think you were talking about Muse…  Jonas, the lead singer, has possibly got the best voice ever.

Elsewhere, equally brilliant was mine and Soph’s holiday in Gran Canaria in October.  7 days in the bloody hot sun – awesome, I won’t bore you with the details however I will post some photos up extremely soon!  It was not so good later in the month though when some twot pick-pocketted my iPhone from me at the BIC during Bloc Party – however thankfully I was insured and everything was backed up so I didn’t actually lose a thing – albeit 48 hours of telephone usage (which was kind of quite refreshing)…!

Not much else to talk about – I really am bereft of alot of originality sometimes, and this is one of those days… however, I expect we can catch up over some mulled wine at Christmas in the German market in the square, by which time I’ll be more awake and full of festive cheer!!!

Up the Cherries.

Anyway we’re in now, and we love it here – its a fantastic flat which is perfect for going to town, Poole, work, the beach, Westbourne, etc. I come home from work every day and have dinner on the table at 6.30pm every night. It is a luxury that I am really lucky to have, and I just hope that my weekend cooking, and doing the cleaning and washing somehow equals it up! Soph seems bloody happy though so that is sweet as.

We went to Wales last week – pretty nice, we had a week off and I didn’t really want to do much at all, but we did go away for a couple of days to the Gower, which was really lovely. Then in a few weeks time, we’re going to do a lastminute.com and will be flying out to somewhere hot for a week from either Bournemouth or Southampton – if you have any recommendations please let me know.

TommyG came back down for the weekend. He has been working in London for a few years and is now packing his bags and going to Australia for two years – so we all got shitfaced at the weekend, which resulted in much hilarity and debauchery – went to the Old Fire Station and saw a number of old faces, and then on the way back I think I popped into Walkabout on my own, danced for two minutes, and left, as you do…

It was interesting talking to Tom about the London lifestyle. I couldn’t ever do it. I know he’s on the big money up there, but I don’t think I could hack the stress getting to and from work, the huge amount of living expenses, and I wouldn’t be so keen in sneezing into a tissue only to find my snot is black! He made it sound like a whirlwind and informed me that I should get up there to work, but as I told him, the beauty of making your income online is that you can work from wherever you want – whether it be London, Lochness or outside Lava/Ignite, plus it earns just as good!!

Have the fortune of becoming 28 on Friday. Being the anniversary of September 11th, I usually tend to get a few more texts than usual to say Happy Birthday, as I find people tend to watch the news, see the New York 9/11 ceremonies going on, and then remember, “oh yeah shit its Sams birthday”. Not really sure what to make of 28. It’s a bit, well, shit isn’t it. Think I’d rather stay 27. To realise that I am now officially ten (or more, where the bouncers are a bit lenient) years older than the clubbers in town is going to make me feel a bit weird. I was there when Waddle hit the ball over the bar, and I was old enough to remember suff like Pobs Programme on Channel 4… were they??

Sophie, on the other hand, is 22. As you might know, it is her birthday on Friday too (yes we share the same day). If we weren’t such best friends and didn’t talk, and more to the point, she wasn’t my girlfriend – I would probably feel a bit bad about saying all that stuff in the previous paragraph, however she knows I am not referring to her! Anyway, at times she is more sensible, wise and adult than I ever will be!!

So, I’ve got the day off work this Friday, and then on Saturday we’re going somewhere which I cannot publish because otherwise I would spoil a surprise. Then the following weekend we’re going up to Oxford for the day and seeing a band in the evening that I’ve been interested in for quite a while called The Temper Trap (I think they may even have a chart position at the moment??) – so it’s all work hard play hard at the moment, which I’m kind of liking…. it might help me to bypass any of the intoxicating Christmas TV and radio adverts which are inevitably going to be prevalent in the next few weeks.

Not got much else to say apart from… follow me on Twitter! I am samdavisuk and I Tweet regularly.

Blasted Thing’s expertise with Magento goes back a long way… well, since the start of Magento!

Since then, we have used the software every day. We know its’ downfalls, its’ contraints – but also the upsides and the plus-points that the software has.

Despite the fact that it has an easy-to-use interface, not one user will have sailed through getting this E-Commerce platform working perfectly – so we want to give something back, and offer a free review of your website.

The review will give our readers a detailed look at your design, and what you have done to harness the powerful features of Magento. We will take a look at your theme, and the style of your site – and we’ll discuss whether we feel any adjustments could be made in order to improve your conversion rate.

Also the speed of your website will be focused on – and we’ll see whether your hosting copes with the resource intensive E-Commerce software, plus, if we feel neccessary, we can provide some advice on what tweaks you can do in order to improve the speed of the delivery of your website.

Not only that – we shall also be looking at your all important product pages and let our readers see what great things you have done in order to entice your visitors to buy the products. There are several important changes that can be made on a product-page which can make sales levels increase – and we’ll share them with you – so we’ll be showing others what things you are doing right, as well as the things that we think could be changed.

Above all, the aim is to celebrate Magento, and to congratulate excellent design & integration. Obviously, as well as the publicity that we’d like to give you, we’ll also pop another link on our ever-expanding Magento website directory – which will be listing thousands and thousands of related Magento sites

We would also encourage retailers to offer our readers back… perhaps a coupon code – we would be delighted if we managed to send you some business.

To enter your website into consideration, simply complete the following form, and we’ll email you back within 14 days!

Thanks!

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