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Kickstarting a new wardrobe

In Life,Marketing,Social Media,Uncategorized,Work on March 24, 2013 by kiltforhire Tagged: , , , , , ,

I’m a sporadic clothes buyer and I tend to stick with what I know. I’ve been buying Ben Sherman shirts, socks, belts, shows, waistcoats and more for years. They suit my shape and I’ve always found the quality great.

I buy Adidas Star Wars trainers cause I’m a tad geeky and because they are unusual and stand-out. I like that. They are also damn comfy. Plus I grabbed a nice Star Wars hoodie which is pretty awesome. Plus I have a host of Threadless t-shirts as they are a little different

But some times you have to branch out and I’m doing it by kickstarting my wardrobe. Or at least part of it.

So let’s talk about the projects I’m Kickstarting to make me look and feel a little bit more dapper shall we. My Kickstarter profile is here.

First off let’s start with the 10 Year Hoodie
It’s a gorgeous hoodie made with great materials and backed for 10 years. If it rips, tears or pretty much anything else you just send it back (yup to the US) and they will mend it for free.

I remember when I was a kid and clothes seem to last forever. My parents would always pass them on after you grow out of them. But clothes these days don’t seem to last as long. Sure I have a few things that do seem to last a while but mainly because of a lack of use rather than anything else. Say no to disposable I say!

And you know what two hoodies cost $180 including shipping. That’s $90 each. Or $9 a year which isn’t too bad when you think about it.

Next up is my life of getting fit and with that comes the Radiate Athletics t-shirt.

It’s basically the hypercolour t-shirt of the 2010s but with a use. It takes sweat away fro, your body so you aren’t a sopping mess and it shows you which areas of your body are working hardest when you work out.

Now, I have no doubt this t-shirt will not be useful for me at all except from its ability to wick sweat away. That’s why I’m getting it. I go to my personal trainer twice a week and it would benefit him more but you know what? I love gadgets and this is a gadget t-shirt that I can wear to get rid of sweat and stop my bag smelling that much. How much I hear you ask? Well $45 including shipping so not too bad at all.

Then we have the Nice Laundry sock drawer option.

I love socks. I really do. They are the tyre to your toes. They are the barrier for your trainers or shoes. I love the ranges and the shapes and the colours. Not sure why but I do.

And by golly do I love the socks being made by these guys. I’m torn between which package to take but eventually I settled on the Sock Drawer option. 18 pairs of socks, all of which look delightful, and I can actually take all of my old socks – which are getting on a bit – and give them to charity.

The packs I’m gonna get are: Visionary, Exec and Dreamer. Go on. Have a look at how awesome they are. Right? Wearing those every day would simply make you feel like a god (small one) walking amongst men. Every time you look down and see your socks you would want to stand on the table and shout “see these?? How fucking cool are they?? COOOOOOOOOL!!!” Sorry. I’m just kinda excited about these socks.

And lastly I’m gonna talk about shirts and the Ainste Handcrafted premium luxury handcrafted shirts.

I have a lovey selection of Ben Sherman and Herringbone shirts but the moment I saw these Kaden shirts I was in love. The collarless shirt with the stunning cuffs blew me away and had me kickstarting two right away. I’m actually tempted to ramp up and buy more but it’s not possible 😦 I’d love an option to buy four or six shirts. Hmm maybe I should message them.

Anyway these are four things I’m kickstarting. If you haven’t got involved in kickstarting then I suggest you should.

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My Facebook Rules

In Lessons,Life,Marketing,Media,Social Media,Technology on February 11, 2013 by kiltforhire Tagged: , , ,

Following on from My Twitter Rules here are my Facebook rules. Now where Twitter is about conversations with anyone about everything Facebook is slightly different. It’s where people from your past and your present all get together and update their lives, interact and chat but in a more reserved way.

I have a love and hate relationship with Facebook. I enjoy seeing what my friends are up to and it’s nice to get snapshots of home and lives that I’m no longer fully part of but on the other hand there are a lot of people who use it as if it was their personal diary and that just isn’t for me.

The rules aren’t for everyone and I totally get that every person uses their Facebook differently but these are my rules that I generally stick to when using it.

1. Spam. I hate it. You hate it. We all hate it. You remember those days when you would get chain letters sent by email? We all thought we had got rid of them but we forgot one single thing – some people are dumb and are now using Facebook and failing to do basic checks before diving in and commenting on dumb images and stories which are usually a total piece of shit and full of lies. I never comment on them unless it’s to point them to Snopes however I have since realised that by even getting involved other people who follow me may now see it and, well, stuff that. So now I ignore.

2. I try and post between three to five times a week. On the odd occasion I post maybe once or twice in a day and on a rare occasion three time. I don’t believe you should fill up other people’s feeds with constant up to the minute running feeds of your life. I ain’t that important and neither are you so let’s not annoy too many people.

3. When it comes to pics of my friends I have a really simply rule. I never ever tag a friend in a picture if I think it is unflattering. If you tag it it appears on their wall and if ain’t a good pic then I don’t want to make them look bad. They are my friends and they always look good to me so I don’t see why other shouldn’t see them in any other light than when they are at their most awesome.

4. If you want to play games on Facebook that’s just great but I don’t. And therefore you will never get a game invite from me and I’d really appreciate if you didn’t ever send me a damned invite for a game. Please don’t. I’m sick of them. I’m a gamer and I have an Xbox and a Wii U and a PC and an iPad all for gaming but Facebook is not a gaming platform for me and I simply don’t give a rat’s arse about any of them.

5. Hashtags in Facebook. Leave them over on Twitter please. Thanks. Appreciate it.

6. I do believe that Facebook is a place for long updates as opposed to Twitter 140 characters. I have no problem with that. Write away. I usually do. Sometimes people even have to click the little blue button to read all of my update.

7. Baby pics. I am delighted when my friends have babies. It’s wonderful. Especially my friends Alan and Lesley who have gorgeous triplets but you don’t need to share 8000 pictures each and every day. Next time you want to take a spree of pics and post them why not pick up your kid and give them a hug. I have to admit I’m really lucky that the majority of my friends with kids at the moment do a great job of limiting the pics but I have seen overkill in the past.

8. It’s called Facebook not Facesbook. Leave your profile pic as just you and don’t have you AND your other half. C’mon we don’t need to be reminded how much you both love each other every single day. And if you really have to use a pic like that please don’t make it one where you are expressing your tonguitude into them.

9. I never upload funny pics and tag my friends. Personally I think it’s rude to do that. There really is no need for it.

10. Ultimately I try to be considerate. I don’t really post anything inflammatory. I don’t flood people’s timeline with funny images. I don’t pester people and I do like things that I genuinely like. I don’t click on something for no reason.

11. Comment. Getting involved in your friend’s lives is important. If someone has put up a good status update that I’ve enjoyed then I’m not afraid to get involved in a chat or discussion about whatever the post is about.

12. I try and be funny when I post. If I can make one of my friend’s smile then it’s all worth while.

13. I’m happy to unfriend someone if they are being horribly racist, sexist, vile or downright intolerable. I’m also happy to add new people who I’ve met online who I believe will add a little bit of colour to my life.

Looking at this list some are rules and some are things I avoid doing but I think you kinda get the gist of where I’m coming from. Similar to My Twitter Rules I believe that you should always hover before posting to think about what you are saying and if you are happy with it slamming into 200+ people’s feeds.

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Marginal Improvement and big thinking

In Digital,Lessons,Life,Marketing,Work on February 10, 2013 by kiltforhire Tagged: , , , , , , , ,

This is a post about marginal improvement and my recent list of rules

I’ve had a few people chat to me about my recent bunch of rules I’ve posted and have been saying that life needs fewer rules or that they thought I used to be a rebel would would always break the rules so I thought I would explain.

I’ve already posted these:

My Twitter Rules

My Train Rules

My Cinema Rules

And I’m currently working on a set for Facebook, LinkedIn, Vine, beach, elevators, escalators and more.

However, what I want to say is that they are more guidelines than rules. I follow the majority of them most of the time and I try to do what I can to be considerate to others. The guidelines or there just as a reference that if we all did all them well maybe, just maybe, the world would be a little bit of a better place.

Which brings me to marginal improvement. I’ve recently taken an interest again in economics (yeah I know who would have believed I would start enjoying that stuff all over again) and have been devouring podcasts on them.

The ‘Team GB’ cycling team in the UK won so many Gold Medals thanks to the their Head of Marginal Improvement, Mr Matt Parker. There is a good article on him here.

Basically he looked at how he could help increase the team’s performance marginally. Just a tad. Just enough to make them a little bit better. For instance he made the team where heated shorts before races to stop the players muscles going cold. The only team who did this were Team GB and I have no doubt at the next Olympics all cyclists will have toasty legs.

Now normally I’m the kind of guy who likes to take risks and who isn’t afraid to speak out. I’m always willing to go for the long shot and see how it pans out and I dream big – however I see that one of the best ways to dream big is to start small and that is with marginal improvements.

I’ve been re-focussing how I work by seeing which small things I can change and what things I can do that will make a small but important change in delivery and result and so far, so good.

I realise that you need a mix of marginal improvement and long term thinking. You have to dream big but also look for the small things that improve your life and your work marginally because the small things really do make an impact.

I’m not saying that from now on all I’ll be doing is looking for the little wins, oh no, I’ll always be looking to make a big impact but until they pay off I’ll be making small leaps rather than massive bounds.

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My Twitter Rules

In Lessons,Life,Marketing,Media,Social Media,Technology on February 6, 2013 by kiltforhire Tagged: , , , ,

Rules.

We all all live by them. We all have our own code.

Twitter.

It’s the second love of my life. It’s the communications platform I always dreamed of. It gives anyone the ability to talk to anyone else in this world as long as they have a Twitter account. Not once in the history of the world has this been possible. Yet here we are exchanging words across the globe with anyone and everyone.

I’ve been using Twitter for nearly five years. I don’t cheat the system. I don’t play the follow me and I’ll follow you game. But I do reply to nearly everyone who speaks to me – its only polite – and I do hunt out fun and interesting people to talk to because its what makes life interesting.

But you got to have rules and that’s where My Twitter Rules come in to play.

1. If I follow you and you send me an auto-DM then I’ll unfollow. It’s rude to think that because I’ve chosen to engage with you that you suddenly have the right to barge into my life and try to sell me something or direct me to your blog or your website. If it’s in your profile chances are I’ve already looked.

2. If you tweet more than five times in my timeline in less than a minute and it’s not a scream for help because you are in a dire situation the I’ll unfollow you. I follow you because I’m interested in you. I didn’t follow you to know the exact contents of your mind one a second by second basis.

3. I don’t read celebrity gossip. I don’t wait patiently every week to find out which celebrity has been knocked up, divorced, having an affair or simply put on some extra pounds. You know what? I simply don’t care. Everyone deserves their privacy and I’m not a fan of peering into people’s lives through an 800mm lens.

4. Kim Kardashian or Paris Hilton. Retweet them and I unfollow. I have no desire to know anything about either of those two. Basically I suggest thinking about your followers before you retweet certain things. I always hover for a second and think about my followers before I retweet.

5. Quotes. If you think continually tweeting quotations is cool well that’s just swell however if I want to read quotes the I’ll head on over to one of the million quote pages on the web and read some.

6. Every week I try and find a few people I’ve not engaged with in a while or at all and see what they have to say and try to chat to them. Find something they have said I have found interesting and let them know.

7. If you have connected your account to a site that is sending DMs to me telling me ‘people are saying this about you and has a link’ I’ll DM you back and let you know. You may not know the account is sending on your behalf so it’s only right I let you know.

8. If I have just followed you and we haven’t interacted and you send me a DM asking me to subscribe to your YouTube channel or your blog you can be assured I won’t be visiting your site and I certainly won’t be following you any more.

9. I will block you if you are a troll. I have been abused a few times on Twitter (this one comes to mind!) and I simply won’t put up with you being an asshole. I’ll accept it a few times as you may be having a bad day but if you keep at it it’s block city

I guess they are my standard rules. I’ll probably come back and update when I think of others I use. If you have any rules I’d love to hear them.

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Apple Focus

In Digital,Lessons,Marketing,Media,Technology on October 10, 2011 by kiltforhire Tagged: , , , ,

I have spent a lot of time recently thinking about Apple since the death of Steve Jobs. He got me thinking about the meteoric rise of the company from it being months from collapse to where it sits today – a technological marvel and marketing maestro that seems to be ahead of the game against their competition.

It seems like many others have also been thinking about the company recently but one person’s comments really stood out to me – William Gibson.

Now there are obviously many people who have helped influence my life but both Steve Jobs and William Gibson are up there pretty much close to the top along with my parents, my Uncle Kenny and my best mates who I grew up with.

And I’ve spoken about Steve Jobs recently in my blog and what he meant to me.

William Gibson’s Neuromancer took me to a new world and made me see the future was cyberspace. I talked about it in school. I talked about it to everyone but no-one really understood what I was saying – this was late 80s remember and technology wasn’t as big as it is now.

And he recently spoke about Apple and why he has used their devices.

In an interview he said:

“I was never interested in getting any more intimate with whatever made my computer work. I wanted the most transparent interface possible; that is, that least required my personal attention. I wanted my personal attention to be elsewhere, focused on other things other than my computer. Design at that level kept me at Apple…”

And that sums up my relationship with Apple.

I love their equipment because it allows me to quickly pass through the fact I’m using a device and simply allows me to do what I need to do.

I have a number of friends who love to tinker with things, they want to know how things work and the majority of them are all Android users or PC users. They want to find out more about their devices and really dive deep into their software and what is possible with them – which is great but for me I want a device that lets me do my job as quickly and efficiently as possible without reminding me I’m using it.

Many Microsoft products drive me barmy because they have a habit of taking my attention away from what I’m doing (and I can be easily distracted at the best of times) and cause me to focus on the program and not what I’m using it for. I always felt that way with PC running Windows – and still do to be honest.

To me Apple computers remind me of my body (work with me here). I don’t stop to think about how I breathe I simply do. I don’t stop to think about how my muscles work and allow me to type it just simply happens. So my relationship with my body is the same as the one I have with my Apple – it exists and allows me to do what I need to do without thinking about all the stuff going on inside it.

And it was Jobs attention on getting the user-experience right that makes them so damn useful to me.

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Selling out your national team

In Lessons,Life,Marketing,Media,Social Media on October 9, 2011 by kiltforhire Tagged: , , , , ,

I am full of rage right now. Pure unadulterated rage.

I was watching the Australia v South Africa rugby match in this year’s Rugby World Cup. I glanced at Twitter and saw a few people in my stream tweeting to the @qantaswallabies account.

This rage has been building up inside me for all my time living in Australia but I feel that I should put down in words what I’ve been thinking.

HOW DARE YOU SELL OUT YOUR OWN COUNTRIES NATIONAL TEAM BY FLOGGING IT WITH A BRAND!!?!?!

If the Scottish Football Association even attempted to brand the Scottish football team and tie it in with say the Royal Bank of Scotland or British Airways or anything … even Irn Bru there would be a war in the country with people storming the HQ of both the SFA and whichever company decided to try and take over the team.

A national football team is just that. It’s a team associated with the country. It has nothing to do with a brand.

Yes brands can sponsor. Yes they can even have their names on the tops but they should never have the right to re-brand the name of the country from Australia to the Qantas Wallabies. The Twitter account, the Facebook account etc should all be named after the country and code or the Association – it should NEVER be linked intrinsically with a brand.

Forgive my writing today. I’m just so angry that people in Australia seem to take this for granted. It’s wrong. It’s really fucking wrong. The people who came up with the idea should be flogged in the main streets.

They have taken the identity of their country and sold it.

Imagine that.

Imagine selling your country…to a brand.

Total and utter disgrace.

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