Pete Linforth's blog

Archive for January, 2010

I’ve been working on some construction pieces recently and thought I’d share just a small sample with you.

I like these forms as they’re a throw back to my old engineering days. They are constructions, things that could be made and engineered. they feel somehow real and yet they are only real in my own imagination. They do exist of course but only in binary form, it is only when the correct algorithmic code is applied do you get to see what the construction is all about.

Click on the preview images to go to the hosting site where you can download full size images suitable for a desktop background or slide show.

Selly Oak Constituency, Birmingham City Council, is holding its first Arts Trail Exhibition and Competition (optional), organised on behalf of Selly Oak Constituency Libraries and the Constituency’s Be Active Campaign.

The exhibition and competition are open to everyone (over 5 years) and will include:

• photographs, paintings/drawings and poetry (for adults – 16+)
•  photographs, paintings/drawings and poetry – Theme: ‘About My Area’ (for children and young people – 5-15 yrs)

All other entries will be displayed at one of our 4 Constituency Libraries during February and March 2010.

I set myself up with a Zazzle Store some time ago and didnt really do much with it. But to my surprise just recently things have started to move in a positive direction and I;ve sold one of my prints which happens to be a favourite image of mine.

Dolphin sunset by Digital_Illusion
Browse other Sunset Posters

I’m thinking this might be an avenue I need to spend more time on, the site needs an uplift and I’ve so many more designs I could create I ought to get stuck in and start something big.

OK so the guy I’ve got this lot off is someone I know, I’ve not been in touch for about a million years but found him once more whilst doing the usual Google search for some inspiration on taking my life forward. Read the bullets below and see if you are a Scanner or not. If you are and you happen to live in London why not pop along and visit one of John’s scanner evenings. I’ve asked him to think about doing one in a different location, more news on that later.

So answer these questions taken from John’s scanner site Scanner Central

• Are you fascinated by something different every week?
• Does the thought of concentrating on one topic, skill or job for the rest of your life horrify you?
• Do you start lots of projects but rarely finish any of them?
• Does trying to choose between all your interests stress you out?
• Are you currently reading 5, 10 or even more books?

Then you are a “scanner”.

and if you are you really do need to get to that site and switch yourself on, if you;re currently struggling with moving yourself forwards.

There’s been a lot of stuff in the press recently on whether the beer police should step in and put a minimum price on alcoholic products, my interest is beer of course although wine is something my wife drinks so I’m also concerned in that space too but for the sake of this little blog we’ll stick with beer.

They say the need to put some minimum price to stop the vulnerable young people of our nation getting too smashed all the time. by increasing the price per unit to some specific level I suppose young people will not be able to afford to buy so much. It sounds like a possible solution in some ways but does it really solve the problem they are trying to fix or does it go some way but also frigs loads of us beer drinkers out there who enjoy a pint or two or three or four by hiking the price.

I like to go to the supermarket and get my booze, they have a wide selection and the prices are keen making me a happy bunny in the funding department. Check my beer TAB for a sample of some of the beers I’m enjoying right now. Well when I say right now I don’t actually mean I’m drinking all of these this very second. That would be impossible.

I went to my old local off licence last night for a couple of beers and some wine and the price was significantly higher than supermarket prices for the beer but the wine was actually cheaper by £3 per bottle, so it seemed to me in the minute sample last night provided that the debate over supermarkets killing the local off licence is not standing up. So where does all this go in terms of setting a fixed minimum price?

What I’d like to know is whether the price is being fixed over all brands like a tax so for every beer we’ll add 50p to each can or bottle or are they going to say no can or bottle can be sold for under a certain value? If it’s the second I don’t mind as I’m already drinking premium product so the price is already relatively high.

So what do you think on the possibility of rising beer prices?

Whilst tweeting I came across AdLy and thought I’d give it a go. Ad.ly is an in-stream advertising platform that matches top-tier Twitter publishers with top-tier brands. so there is my first hurdle to jump; I need to be a top tier Twitter – not really sure what a top-tier twitter actually is in terms of how they measure such a thing. Is it down to number of followers, number of tweets, ratio of both of those, some other exotic criteria such as a measure of quality of the tweets and followers? I cant tell yet but as my Twitter account grows (I’m a twitter virgin) we’ll see whether the suggested value per advert increases.

I’m fascinated by these online viral type schemes, I suppose as they exist they must work to some extent. How much effort I’ll have to put in vs. how much reward I’ll get is unknown at this point in time. What I can tell from their site is they seem to be a very professional outfit and provide all the usual tools to try and capture people through referrals etc. like the banner you can see in this blog. Press it, sign up and I think you’ll be one of my referrals? give it a go and see what happens.

So how long will it take to earn anything from this?

How long will it take before my rate per tweet grows?

only time will tell….

How easy is it to make money online? By that I mean using the Internet to generate an income stream by any means.

 I did a Google search on ‘Make money online’ and it came back with 163,000,000 results. So not too many to scroll through to find one that actually works!

I’m not going to scroll through any of them, seems a total waste of my time and to me time is a precious commodity something that money can’t actually buy. So where do I start?

First I set some rules to myself.

1. I don’t want to put too much effort into this venture. This needs to be something that fits in with my life already; I don’t want to add to my life’s workload, I want to work with it to generate some additional income.
2. I don’t want to invest too much money into this venture. The whole point is to make money not to spend it.

Well lets start with what ‘thing’ do I have that someone else might wish to have and are prepared to pay me money for?

Well my main interests in life (apart from my family) are:

Creating digital art

Creating music

Now my music creations are fun to do, take a look at my music TAB and have a listen. Probably not commercial so I’ll discount that one.

My digital art creations are a possible one here. I enjoy creating them, in fact have been creating them for years and posting them for free on WEBSHOTS, check them out here  and view/download as many as you like.

Most people use them for their desktop wallpaper. As long as you’re not using them for commercial ventures feel free to use them for what ever you like. If you’re using them for your web site then a little mention of me as the creator and perhaps even a link to my site would be cool.

So you know I’m into creating digital art but I also like the corporate side of things, brand is important and becoming more important as the global reach of the Internet becomes critical to business success. So I looked around and saw an advert in my Computer Arts magazine and they were offering Royalty Free images for sale. The name of this company is Fotolia who I find is actually quite a big player in the Micro Stock market place. A quick visit to their site, a read of the T&C’s and I’m in, all signed up ready to rock and roll.

So I hunt through my creations on my hard drive and load up a few. Some get rejected but most get through their approval panel and I’m now ready to start making money using the internet doing something I do anyway. So for me this is a win win situation.

You can check out my stuff here

AdvertiseSpacesimplifies the process of buying and selling banner advertising. AdvertiseSpace fully automates this process, keeping it simple for buyers while allowing site owners to focus on other aspects of their business.

It all sounds pretty simple so I thought I’d sign up and give it a go.

True to their word this took a matter of minutes to register my domains, set up my banner ads (AdvertsieSpacedo all the work) and then place those ads on my pages. That’s all there is to it, I just now sit back and wait for the buyers of ad space to come knocking at my door. Well when I say my door I don’t actually have to do any more work to start advertising their products. AdvertiseSpace does it all for me. All I need to worry about is what I’ll spend the money on. Now that cant be bad can it?

It seems to be true you really can use Twitter to make some cash bu getting sponsored to tweet. I’m very new to Twitter so need to wait 60 days before the sponsorship will come through but in the mean time I want to share the love and for those of you with an account older than 60 days, more than 100 followers it’s worth giving this little money maker a shot. Just click the little picture and get yourself signed up.

Thought I’d update you on my latest stock acquisition so you too can jump aboard and make some cash to beat the bank. This time I’ve purchased some stock in Avocet Mining Plc. (AVM.ISE) I made my purchase at £0.9974 per share and I’m expecting good things over the next few months. Get in now and make some easy money. Bail out target for me is around £1.45 but I’ll keep an eye on the trends and related news stories in case I need to change this.

and for those who are interested in what this company does read on…

Avocet Mining Plc is involved in the exploration, extraction and production of gold and tungsten.

The Group was listed on the London Stock Exchange in April 1996, having been previously listed on the Vancouver Stock Exchange since 1986 under the name Avocet Ventures Inc. Avocet is a gold mining company operating in Indonesia and Malaysia and a focus on expansion in South East Asia. It has two operating gold mines a new mine in the making and a number of exploration projects.

That’s all from me for now….