James Avery’s blog

December 26, 2009

Re-discovered my love for Scrabble

Filed under: Uncategorized, random — Tags: , , — admin @ 2:12 am

Have re-discovered my love for Scrabble, but avoided playing rude 4 letter J word as it might have offended other players. Settled for jam instead and saved the S for a better turn - a win all round :)

Thanks Alan Yentob for reminding me what a great game it is - invented by an architect, and world champion is an architect from Thailand - shows that it is a game of strategy and that the meaning of the word really doesn’t count.

And yes, I did ‘breathe’ a deep sigh of relief when I could play QI and collect 44 points :)

Now time to find some more local players (anywhere on the axis between Manchester and London will do if the players are good enough). Apparently there’s a good pub in London where people play regularly, and I’m sure the rude words are welcome!

(When posts are too long for Facebook and way too long for Twitter, they end up here)

October 3, 2009

Hopefully this tells you what I’m on about

Filed under: Affiliate Marketing, Blogging, Music, Social Networking, Trains, Transport, random — Tags: , , , , , — admin @ 7:21 am

Please excuse the messy theme whilst I’m upgrading the blog, but I hope that the ‘map’ above provides a better overview of my key interests than any set of text links ever can.

I’ve set out some of the key topics I expect to blog about here on the left - I supposed I should add cycling and general transport together with trains, and social networking could also be expanded to include affiliate (online) marketing, although my interest here is more as a passive way to earn extra revenue, rather than an end in itself. Having said that, I’m always available for consulting if the price is right!

For the past 7 years, I’ve been working on Flightmapping.com, which is driven by affiliate marketing revenue, but which is also managed by my brother Mark and colleague Dan, who is the best person to contact about anything affiliate related on there.

So everything else here is starting off with a clean slate - lots of new projects on the go, but I hope this diagram shows how they are linked all together. The dotted line leads to new websites which are currently in the pipeline. Oh, and how did I forget a tag for music? I guess that’s because I just like to regurgitate other people’s lines, rather than create the stuff. One day, I’ll go out and get that drumkit!

 

You need to find out
‘Cos no one’s gonna tell you what I’m on about
You need to find a way for what you want to say
But before tomorrow - Oasis, Supersonic.

May 29, 2009

I’m off to DENver, have a nice weekend.

Filed under: Blogging, Chess Board Maps, Social Networking, Trains, Transport, Travel, random — Tags: , , , , , , , — admin @ 9:16 am

Morning,

I don’t ‘usually’ get up much before 11am, and often a great deal later than that, so this week I’m really pleased to say that I’ve been up before 9 every day (except Monday, when I got up around 11, why not - it was a bank holiday). For someone who normally has a chaotic routine, I’m pretty excited about this, because it is all down to one very simple tip I was given a couple of weeks ago. It took a week to get into the routine, and it has taken another week to keep it on track. This week has been extremely intense at times, but I’m hoping I can stick to the plan, and plan to make sure this happens.

So, am I off to Denver this weekend? No, Essex actually, but that just doesn’t sound all that exciting (nothing against Essex of course). To put it the other way, I could say I was going to cycle or drive to Stratford, which wouldn’t be much of a big deal, as Stratford is about 45 mins drive / 2 hours by bike from Coventry. But for an American, Stratford is an amazing place to visit (and in my opinion, Warwick Castle is even more impressive, but it isn’t so famous).

So,  I’m actually off on a bike ride to somewhere I might otherwise call ‘Glorious Middle Earth’ - it doesn’t have much to do with Lord of the Rings (Tolkien was inspired by The Black Country) - and I don’t know if the people who live there are particularly happy, but it is a very pleasant typical English village. On the village green, there’s a memorial to cyclists.

Speaking of which, I’m ‘flying’ with ‘BA’ (Bike Airways = the rest of the world’s favourite airline), and the ‘gate’ (front door) was supposed to have closed 5 minutes ago (my aim was to be out by 9, back around 10 - I’m running 5 minutes late, oh the stress is killing me (softly-not).

HAVE A NICE DAY :)

May 28, 2009

Manchester United - Come Home and Don’t Look Back In Anger

Filed under: Travel, random — Tags: , , , , , , , — admin @ 10:34 am

Well, I really can’t claim to be much of a football fan, but I guess the Champion’s League Final has become a must-see event with English teams appearing so often in the last few years. Last year saw an unprecedented four English teams reach the closing stages, with the losers only being knocked out by a fellow English team. This year, it was looking like the same thing might happen again, and that Manchester United could lift the cup for a second time, but let’s face it - as an Englishman who doesn’t really care too much for any team (supporting Coventry City is just a one way ticket to despair), I’d still have to admin that this scenario would just be too good to be true. And of course, most things that look so good end up disappointing, just like so much of the game last night.

So, as I was saying yesterday, I knew the ‘team that sings to the tune of Gaudi’ would win, it was just a question of which team that would be, because depending on your knowledge of Architecture (Gaudi is the Architect of Sagrada Familia, Barcelona’s famous un-built cathedral) or Mancunian music (as opposed to stadium chants - Gaudi is an obscure album track by the band James), that phrase might mean anything or nothing, just like any other attempt at predicting the future. Which is why I like talking about bookies’ odds so much more, since they can calculate the chances of something happening mathematically. Speaking of which, I had a small bet on Barcelona winning the game outright, so I could have a few drinks to drown any sorrows about Manchester losing tonight. Not that I’m really that bothered - so I think the money is going in the juke box.

And what better than Manchester music to celebrate the joys of glorious failure  (made even better because many of the artists mentioned below are City fans)?

  • Don’t Look Back In Anger - Oasis.
  • Super(t)onic - Oasis.
  • Come Home - James.
  • Ball (Born) of Frustration
  • (Not) Getting Away With It All Mess(i)d Up - James.
  • How Was(n’t) It For You - James.
  • Pleased To Beat (Meet) You - James.
  • Dragging Me Down - Inspiral Carpets.
  • This Is How It Feels  - Inspiral Carpets.
  • I Wanna Be Adored (But Everyone Hates Us) - Stone Roses.
  • (Cup Aspirations) Ruined In A Day - New Order.
  • Cuplifters of The World (United Didn’t Take Over) - The Smiths.
  • We Hate It When Our Enemies Become Successful - Morrissey.

Anyway, I could go on, but I breakfast is calling…. But if you want a corny airport reference for Man-U fans, then it has to be ‘Veni, Vidi, left empty handed from Da Vinci’.

Enough!

May 27, 2009

At last, a placard with my name on it :)

Filed under: random — admin @ 8:57 am

I might do a fair bit of travelling (especially using Google maps these days), but I’ve never had the limo experience. So it was nice to see that Vauxhall workers in Germany had so kindly come up with a placard with my initials on it:

March 2, 2009

Too much to say today

Filed under: Politics, Travel, random — admin @ 4:54 pm

What do you do when you have several different things to add to a Facebook status update, but none of them relate to each other?

How about a simple list? Here’s a quick 10:

Today, I am:

  • Still in awe of the delightful concert of architectural anthems served up by the film ‘The international’ — but I have quite a lot more research to do before I can do any kind of full article on this.
  • Amused that Ryanair are now advertising easyJet on their website.
  • Reasonably pleased that I managed to book some flights to Italy (Birmingham to Bologna & Pisa to Birmingham) yesterday for just £9 return.
  • Disgusted with the arrogance of Harriet Harman (one of four solicitor sisters), who thinks she can change the law to take away Fred Goodwin’s pension, after her colleagues signed it off. Talk about closing the stable door after the horse has bolted, taking our cash with it. And since when
  • Wondering when this morning’s delightful sunshine will come back.
  • Hoping to get back on the bike shortly. Saturday’s ride was good until Maxstoke - come on Lad, you need to do better than that next time.
  • Supposed to be writing loads of stuff about flights to Germany, but writing blog posts is more interesting, even if it is much slower going.
  • Hoping to finish work early enough to tidy up the front room.
  • Looking back at my articles on airline handling fees and Ryanair’s suggestions about charging for on-board toilet use — I hope they are both useful.
  • Putting out another reminder — the cheapest (or sometimes just the most interesting and best value) way of getting where you want to go can sometimes involve flying to another country — e.g. for flights to Switzerland, try Friedrichshafen in Germany and for flights to Morocco, avoid the Gordfather’s skyway robbery of £40 air passenger duty by taking flights to Gibraltar instead, and then going to Tangier by ferry.

 

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