Anthony Bliss

A tuesday without a rant, I know… amazing!

Rather than moaning about some driver making me late to work today (there werent any who got in the way today) I thought I would ease into the day with a gentle blog post. So ive been sitting mostly infront of Google analytics today, climbing my way through the incoming referals, keywords and other bits and peices trying to locate twitter and what its doing for me, when a collegue asked for abit of assistance on the Climbing Frame ecommerce site we manage, they need some rankings, its a new site and google is being difficault, there arent alot of rivals for climbing frames online, but its such a niche market that it has some feirce competition for search marketing!

Part of the problem with this site’s initial set up there was just a singular generic category, no manufacturers listed, no variations in the types of climbing frames available (they sell monkey bars, sandpits, towers and slides) and the product pages had the name of their product in the title, but then a SKU (product ID code) which pays pretty much zero relavency to search.

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How do you Tweet successfully in the UK? Where are the UK followers hiding?

Lets face it, the UK isn’t the most technologically intuitive country out there, infact most people are scared of microwaves, and due to being so far behind in telecommunication infrastructure (compared to other European countries) how can we really expect to delivery a Twitter marketing strategy oozing with success.

There are plans now for a new ‘broadband tax’ or something. 50p tax per month for land line owners to help stimulate enough cashflow to roll out broadband to every home by 2012.

HEY BRITAIN, YOUR ALREADY 12 YEARS TOO LATE…

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These “rant posts” are starting to become common practise now, so I’ve given them their own category. :)

I have a black list, a list full of cars which I mark down to believe that they seem to have a common type of driver. The ejit. Now not all drivers of these types of cars are ejits, I know a few of them personally and they aren’t, its just the majority. In the past Ive blamed the Yaris drivers, the Ford KA drivers (old type not new) and the BMW Mini Cooper (I utterly detest anyone who gets behind the wheel of one of these, sorry Julie)

Today’s rant however revolves around the drivers of the Vauxhall Zafira (like this one), oh yes. You know who you are.

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Avensis, Yaris, Prius, Auris, Aygo. Apart from being confusing to spell, they’re even worse to try and pronounce right. That’s not what I’m getting at though, where has the oomph gone?

What has happened to the Supra, the Celica the MR2? Toyota’s backbone seems non existent, mundane family hatchbacks appear to be all that’s left to them, with all their eggs neatly packed into one Prius shaped basket.

Toyota used to make very capable, very fun cars which had a popular following, but when a manufacturer starts churning out the same as what all the other manufacturers are doing then where is the dazzle? Lotus have spring-boarded into action with their new Evora, their plans for F1 and the Esprit it shows they’re focusing on what they’ve been good at all along. Toyota should have maybe thought about doing this all along.

Wouldn’t it be great to have another line up of sports cars to offer from Toyota dealers rather than the colourful selection of Toyota Yawnis, I mean Yaris.

Not just any 500, the Abarth 500.

Well the real question is why shouldn’t you get one? They’re cool cars, 1.4 Turbo? Well that sounds cute, and the SS model is around 160 bhp to boot, check out that interior. A boost gauge the size of a fat chiwawa’s head who can deny such a capable recreation car.

Is it simply a Fiat in frilly underwear? Designed to lure all the blokes into the 500 that Fiat couldn’t do with such a girly stylish type of car? Why would you get one then? The same reason you buy an A3 over a Golf GTI, because your mum drives a Golf.

I’m not telling you to go out and buy this car, but I’m just saying, what’s stopping you? On my way into Maidstone (where I work) and yes we have Abarth dealers, but that isn’t the point, my day to day car broke down, it broke down spectacularly and I don’t know why yet but its over 10 years old and maybe the 500 is the car to replace it.

They have a devoted fan base on the Fiat Forum, and with a scrappage incentive currently circulating the air what have you got to loose? Hot hatches are back, and Abarth are leading the way it seems.

More information about the Abarth 500 ? There you go, say thanks in a comment!

Did I miss something? What the hell is going on with these adverts! 

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Well I’ve finally managed to migrate one of the old pages from my old website, the resources page. It has a few links going to photoshop tutorial sites, inspirational sites, stock photography, some useful guides and some just generally useful websites.

So what are you waiting for? Go ahead and check out the new Designer Resources page, you might find something useful.

If you find any errors with the links then please let me know, and if you have a link that you think should be on there then drop a comment below and I’ll include it!

So I made this a year or so back when I was working as a designer for a web company for a few of the guys who didnt know much about shortcuts, its very breif but think of it as a little cheat sheet, but with more detail than you would come to expect. You might know these things, you might not – but its worth a glance for new photoshop users and veteran photoshop designers. Let me know what you think.

Download the PDF Version

Things you may not know in Photoshop

1. Holding control will nudge the layer you have selected whilst pressing the arrow keys! HOLDING SHIFT whilst you hold control and nudge with the arrow keys will move the layer along the grid, (a bit further each nudge, and much more accurate)
    
2. Holding control and alt, then nudging or dragging with the mouse will create a copy on top of that selected layer.
3. Selecting multiple layers in the layers palette and pressing control and E will merge all the layers together.
4. The Edit in Image Ready button and key combo is annoying and useless. FACT. It is just there to make you cry.

Some times you just see a concept car that looks amazing, fantastic, something that is brand new or might have passed you by, but you cannot help but wonder…

Why the hell didn't they make that?

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This is always being echoed to me, whether its via emails, or in person – everyone is saying it, everyone says it and everyone knows it. But unless you can make absolutely EVERYTHING! we speak about exciting, awe inspiringly amazing how can you create resources with Wordpress all day?

Well the truth of it is you can’t. So don’t bother!

That isn’t to say you can’t create resources and useful posts on Wordpress which will help others, but you certainly can’t do it in a way that will work for every post you make, surely.

I mainly have a multitude of automotive clients who need abit of publicity here and there like this Mazda dealer, Hodgesons of Newcastle but if you know the UK at all you’ll know that where I live –  ’down saarth’ as the locals would say is no where near to Newcastle, one thing is for sure, car dealers all sell cars – but how do you create resources for something like that?

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