Stephen Lean

Here’s a little bit of advice you may be interested in if you produce any form of viral marketing publication. You know the sort of thing: ebooks, pdf reports, courses, reviews, etc.

Never use any link inside the content that you can’t control or change later.

You should always use redirect links from your own domain when putting any kind of link inside your ebook or publication. Most people will insert their affiliate link for a product or service inside their ebook that they are hoping readers will click on and earn them some cash. Read more »

Have a good one, whatever you’re doing. (Canon G10. Settings? Haven’t got a clue, it’s a point-and-shoot!)

As you may have noticed, this blog has a completely new look. I’ve been thinking about changing it for quite a while now as the web never stands still.

So I did a search for 2012 WordPress themes and found this one. I wanted a theme that utilised up-to-date technologies, like HTML5 and CSS3, but also I just loved the simple and traditional look and feel of this one. What do you think?

There’s a link in the footer if you’d like to see more. Want to know the best bit? It’s free!

I watched a bit of this absolute fucking mind-numbing garbage last night and was going to do a rant about it today.

But then I was on Twitter and I saw a link to the article below on justpaste.it and decided that it said everything I was going to say. Only more so, and from an insider’s point of view!

So I’ll reproduce it verbatim below and just let you draw your own conclusions:    Read more »

I found this while looking back through my random notes on stuff that interests me.

Don’t know where it came from or who wrote it but I just love it so I thought I would share it with you.

To my friends who enjoy a glass of wine… and those who don’t:

As Ben Franklin said, “In wine there is wisdom, in beer there is freedom, in water there is bacteria.”

In a number of carefully controlled trials, scientists have demonstrated that if we drink 1 litre of water each day, at the end of the year we would have absorbed more than 1 kilo of Escherichia coli, (E. Coli) – bacteria found in faeces. In other words, we are consuming 1 kilo of poop.

However, we do NOT run that risk when drinking wine & beer (or tequila, rum, whiskey or other liquor)because alcohol has to go through a purification process of boiling, filtering and/or fermenting.

So remember: Water = Poop, Wine = Health.

Therefore, it’s better to drink wine and talk stupid than to drink water and be full of shit.

There is no need to thank me for this valuable information, I’m doing it as a public service!

My sentiments exactly.

Contrary to popular belief, pole dancing is not something that’s only confined to the sleazier side of the street, it has become a popular exercise discipline in its own right.

Now more and more people are taking it up as a form of exercise that’s fun and a whole lot more interesting than hitting the gym and pounding the running machines.

This video clip is from the 2009 US Pole Dancing Championships and, as you will see, a girl has to be pretty darned fit to compete in this arena. Now when I say ‘fit’ I mean as an athlete, we all know they’re FIT, don’t we?!

So I just thought I’d show you what you need to be practising on if you want to enter next year’s Championships.

This post is definitely not just another excuse to show a bit of gratuitous, scantily-clad girly stuff. Even if it was, what’s wrong with that anyway? Great choice of music too.

I like my coffee in the morning, I’m not a caffeine junkie but a decent cup of coffee is on my ‘to do’ list every day.

I bought a cheap 49€ espresso machine and I get my coffee from the supermarket. Nothing fancy, just own brand, pre-ground Arabica costing 1.98€ for 500g (1lb-ish).

Now, allow me to let you in on a little secret: making good coffee is not hard! I just load up the machine, get a shot of espresso, steam-up the milk and voila! Although I say it myself, I make pretty-damned-good coffee!    Read more »

I see that many of the big European supermarkets are now gearing up to stop issuing plastic bags in their stores throughout the EU. This can only be a good thing, and about bloody time too!

Their various spokespersons are saying that the object is to raise people’s awareness of the importance of “re-using, recycling and reducing the consumption of plastic bags which are only used once”.    Read more »

No matter what the doom-mongers may say, the Costa del Sol will always be the place where most of Europe wants to either spend its holidays, buy a home or retire to.

Being so close to Africa gives Spain’s southern coast its perfect climate, yet it’s only 2 – 3 hours away from most northern European airports.

Ok, it might not be exotic like India or the Far East, or spectacular like the Rocky Mountains, but to most of Europe it’s… near! Plus it’s still in Europe, with all the infrastructure and familiarity that goes with it.    Read more »

I was in the UK last week, in Horsham (West Sussex, England), and came upon what can only be described as the biggest fookin’ waste of money and manpower you could imagine.

A classic example of a brain-dead local council’s woefully wasteful practices, totally oblivious to the need for streamlining and efficiency, at a time when the government is making such swingeing cuts in the public sector.

What we had, basically, was a man servicing, or cleaning, or changing bulbs in the street lights. Something that should have entailed a cherry-picker, a couple of operatives and a line of cones.    Read more »