It has been three months since my last “Goals for 2012″ update.  I am happy to say, I have made significant progress on a number of fronts!  As per usual, I will list my original 10 goals with either a pass or fail, and we’ll see how I am doing so far:

1. Get in shape. (PASS)
2. Eat right. (PASS)
3. Grow my business. (PASS)
4. Finish my writing course (FAIL)
5. Publish something and get paid for it. (PASS)
6. Expand my social networking reach. (PASS)
7. Grow my blog and bring in revenue. (PASS)
8. Re-learn to code. (FAIL)
9. Home improvement projects (PASS)
10. Read more. (PASS)

Eight out of ten ain’t bad!  This is a real improvement from last time, when I had only 5 passes.  So let’s quickly take a look at each and I will explain.

I will combine 1 and 2 for simplicity.  I have been walking more, doing the treadmill more and hitting the weights more (although still not as much as I would like).  But most of my progress here is coming from dieting.  I have lost 7 pounds in the last 6 weeks or so.  My goal is to lose 12-15 pounds, so I am on track.  Hopefully I can increase my workouts and get back into a routine.

Growing my business.  Well, I have made some progress here.  First of all I sold my computer camps business, so this is a great step!  Next, I just relaunched my company website at www.digitaladventures.ca — for the last few years it was my technology blog.  I have decided that I no longer have time to maintain the blog, so converted it back.  I will be doing some upcoming seminars/presentations including one on social media marketing in June.  But what has really been taking up my time is a book I am writing for young entrepreneurs.  My initial goal was to produce just an ebook on the subject, but now I am considering publishing it in print form.

I have had some preliminary discussions with a small publisher in the San Francisco, CA and hope to hear back soon on whether they would be interested in such a project.

Although I was making good progress on my writing course, I have been side-tracked by my other projects.  If I can finish up my other short story I will have completed assignment three out of eight.

Publish something and get paid.  Although not an article as I expected, I did publish my short story The Path on Amazon Kindle and actually sold a few copies!  In fact I wrote several posts about my experience creating and selling ebooks.  My experience with that project led me to finally start writing my young entrepreneur’s guide which I have been wanting to do for many years.

Expand my social networking reach.  As of tonight, I have 866 Twitter followers, up from 59 in January when I began my concerted effort to grow my follower base.  It has been an interesting journey…one that definitely requires effort.  I am still working on hitting my goal of 1,000 followers, and hope to hit this by June.  To break it down for you, it took me three weeks to hit 250, and about three months to hit 500.  But then it took only two weeks to hit 750, and two days to hit 800 followers.  How did I achieve the increase?  I started getting active on Twitter…retweeting several times daily, following new people — mostly authors and social media people.  Many of these people have followed me back, and I have also had many more people retweeting me as well, which tends to build your base.

Grow my blog and bring in revenue.  Well on one had, since I actually shutdown my blog it wouldn’t seem to make sense that I have a PASS for this one.  But actually, I have found that I tend to blog more on this site than I have on my tech blog for a while now.  And the traffic has been increasing to my personal site as well.  I had several ads up on my blog using Google AdSense and others but the results were minimal.  But I have already made some minor revenue from Amazon links on my personal site in the last month, so this is encouraging!

Re-learn to code.  This is still a big fail for me.  I just haven’t had the time to move on this one.  Luckily I still get emails from CodeAcademy prompting me to start my lessons!  So at least I know it’s not too late to start .

Home improvements.  Now that spring is here and summer around the corner I have begun the yard work, and have moved all the summer furniture outside.  So the yard is starting to look pretty good.  Although I was planning on building a new shed in the next year or two, this plan has been moved up to next month.  With the quick thawing of snow this year, my shed was flooded and we lost a few items.  Now building a bigger shed and one that is off the ground is pretty much a priority.  I am looking forward to all the additional storage space.  I hope for this to happen in June.

And finally the goal to read more.  This is one goal which I have unequivocally excelled at.  So far this year I have read 10 books!  Although I have always enjoyed reading, I admittedly struggled to finish books in the past.  Between the  busyness of life and that fact that I tend to jump from book to book without finishing, I have only ever read a fraction of my library of books.  But I seem to have taken this goal very seriously!

The books I have read this year so far include:

Twitter 2.0 - a great intro to Twitter (see my book review)
The Start-up
The Start-up – The Anti-Social Network
The Start-up - Beautiful Code
Me 2.0 - a book on personal branding
Moonlighting on the Internet
How I Sold 1 Million Ebooks in 5 Months
250 Ways to Promote Your Book
Asylum Lake - a spooky thriller by R.A. Evans
You are a Writer (Now Start Acting Like One) 

I am happy to announce that I have recently launched my new website at www.digitaladventures.ca!  I had previously used the site as my technology blog, but with less and less time to blog about business and technology developments I decided to convert the site back to a company presence for my business Digital Adventures.  The site is live now and most of the content has been added.  I hope you will check it out!

I put in a full day of yard work today…cut down a bunch of tree branches, mowed the lawn, and put down cedar chips in the flower gardens. I was exhausted. So tonight while my wife was at the movies I planned on getting some writing done. But then I changed my mind. Instead I decided to light a bonfire and just relax and enjoy my evening. I can write tomorrow (which I plan to do!) I also thought it was a good night for it, because at about 11:30 pm the moon will appear the biggest and brightest it will be all year!

I don’t want to miss that! So for all of you writers out there who are working tirelessly all the time…stop. Take a break every once in a while and enjoy your surrounds. You just might get inspired…

Great news for me this week. I am happy to announce that I have sold my computer camps business which I created and grew for over 10 years. Adventures in Computing camps operated on the campus of Algoma University, and offered fun and interactive summer camps for kids 7-16. Initially offering general computing and web design camps with a bit of game design mixed in, due to its popularity the focus of the camps eventually moved towards game design. Camps including Adventures in Video Game Design, 3D Game Design, RPG Game Design, and Pro Gamer camps as well as Adventures in Computing.

Over the years, I worked with some great people, and met tons of great kids — including a number of really smart, really talented kids. One of these kids even became my business partner in the venture, several years later. It is a great feeling to mentor a 13 year old over the years and then have him become an instructor and eventually offer to buy 50% of the company! Kevin has since moved on to further his career in web design. I’m also really please that another former camper and instructor has purchased the camps and will continue to operate them, and hopefully take them to the next level!

The camps were a great learning experience for me and I had a lot of fun. But a year ago I made the decision that I was ready to move on. Since I work full time, and operate Digital Adventures (in my spare time) and I am writing a book for young entrepreneurs, and doing tons of other stuff, I simply don’t have the time, and frankly after hitting the 10 year milestone — I was simply ready for some new challenges.

I am happy to see the camps live on…and I want to wish Stephen all the best in the years to come!

Today I participated in an IGNITE event at our staff day conference. Each person had 5 minutes to talk about a topic of their choosing. Topics included a recent trip to the Dominican republic to help a charity, an introduction to ToastMasters, and one person’s experience of becoming a singer and joining a rock band over the last year. They were all quite entertaining!

The topic I chose to discuss was “How to use Social Media to Promote Your Business or Yourself”. Because I juggle my day job with my entrepreneurial and writing activities, I find it easy and beneficial to utilize social media to promote my “personal brand” as well as my business. I received some great feedback from co-workers. Please take a look at my presentation.

I’ve been getting quite a bit of reading done lately, which is good news for me.  In fact, I have finished three books already this year, with several more underway.  I have also been busy working on my next short story entitled “The Stain” (working title).  I hope to finish it this week and send in for grading.  As soon as I get it back I will post it on my Writer page.

Something else I am working on is a 5 minute “Ignite” presentation for our staff day at work.  The idea is you have 5 minutes and 20 slides to tell the crowd about something you are passionate about.  I will be presenting on using social media to promote your business or yourself!  I will be using some examples of what I do.  Maybe I will post the presentation!  Stay tuned…

A month ago I posted my 10 goals for 2012.  It is still early in the year, but I wanted to take a look at my progress so far…to figure out where I need to step things up!

As a quick review, below are my 10 goals.  I have also placed either a pass or a fail beside each:

1. Get in shape. (FAIL)
2. Eat right. (PASS)
3. Grow my business. (PASS)
4. Finish my writing course (FAIL)
5. Publish something and get paid for it. (FAIL)
6. Expand my social networking reach. (PASS)
7. Grow my blog and bring in revenue. (FAIL)
8. Re-learn to code. (FAIL)
9. Home improvement projects (PASS)
10. Read more. (PASS)

OK, so as we can see I have five passes and five fails — but I think I should elaborate a bit to make things fair.

First of all, I definitely have not gotten serious about working out yet.  I haven’t had the motivation, and have simply skipped too many workouts.  I would say I have averaged two workouts per week — whether a cardio session on the treadmill or weights.  This is way below my goal of three cardio and three weight lifting sessions per work.  Need a lot of improvement here.

Eating right is a little easier because my wife is a great cook, and we eat pretty healthy for dinner.   I think my main problem if I do have one, is lunch.  I often bring sandwiches to work because they are convenient, but I know that if I cut out bread I can get in shape much quicker.  I also have to control my snacking.  But for the most part I eat pretty well.

Have I grown my business in the last month?  Well, its a little early to make much progress there, but I’d say I have indirectly, through goal #6.  Also, I am delivering a social media marketing seminar for the Community Development Corporation in March.

It is also too early to have finished my writing course.  I am giving myself the whole year to complete the course, but hope to finish it by summer. I have just completed assignment #2, however.  It involved writing a 1,500 word short story.  I am hoping to post the story on my writing page, in about a week — once I get it back from my instructor.  Along the way I do intend to enter one or more short stories into a competition and/or submit for publishing in a magazine.

Over the last month I have been focusing a lot of time on Twitter. I have been actively checking my twitter account, reading articles, retweeting, and posting more than I have in the past.  My followers have gone from 59 to 250 in that time.  I have a long way to go, but it is great to see instant results!  My initial goal was 200 followers, and my next goal is 500.  This will directly impact both my business and personal branding in the future.

Unfortunately, I have somewhat neglected my other technology blog — www.digitaladventures.ca during this time. It is very time consuming to run a blog, and since I have been supporting this site along with everything else, I have  not been able to put in the time writing about technology.  I need to improve in the future — especially if I want to increase readers, and revenue!

Re-learning to code is probably the goal which I have supported the least.  I started with good intentions, and even signed up with @codeacademy for free weekly lessons.  Unfortunately, I haven’t even finished the first lesson.  I simply haven’t had the time.  This will be a pretty ambitious goal…

I am waiting for summer before I tackle any major home improvement projects, however, I have already put up some artwork, and hung a number of pictures.  My dad and I replaced one of the baseboard heaters and will be installing a new thermostat for it. So just some little things so far, but definitely on track.

Finally, I had a goal to read more this year (ie. finish more books than I start) and I am definitely making progress here. Once I decided to get more involved in Twitter, I decided to read Twitter Power 2.0 by Joel Comm (click for my book review) which I had purchased a year ago — so I was happy that I could pick it up and finish it within a few weeks.  I am still reading multiple books at once — so it was nice to focus and get one done and out of the way.  I think a goal of one book per month would be reasonable, and hopefully more.

So there you have it.  One month into the year and I have made progress on half of my goals.  I definitely need some improvement, but I have made excellent progress in some areas.

Stay tuned for more progress reports and details as I progress along.  Thanks for reading!

A year ago, in December 2010, I was an extra in a movie filmed in Sault Ste. Marie, Toronto and Scotland. The movie, Irvine Welsh’s Ecstasy, is a follow up book to his best seller — Trainspotting. Some of you may have seen the movie or read the book. Ecstasy stars some well known actors including Billy Boyd, Adam Sinclair, Kristen Kreuk, Carlo Rota, and Dean McDermott.

I was in two different scenes that day — one scene, with Dean McDermott, and others was a boardroom scene where Dean and his colleague are pitching an ad campaign for Scotland Against Narcotics. If I had to estimate, it was about a 5 minute scene — very entertaining, and fun to be a part of. I did not speak of course, but myself and several others were part of the board being pitched to. Irvine Welsh was actually a board member as well!

The second scene involved me walking across the background of the scene, stopping to interact with another character (my brother in real life), and then walking off.  The scene was with Kristen Kreuk (Smallville)!

Needless to say, it was quite exciting and a great experience — and about 8-10 hours overall.

Fast forward to February 4, 2012 — the movie was premiering in Sault Ste. Marie, to a sold out crowd. The film has only been viewed at a few select locations to date, but will be premiering in Scotland in April and getting limited release in June. The movie turned out great, although I was in for some disappointment. Unfortunately both of my scenes were cut from the movie

 As is often the case, many more scenes were filmed than would actually end up in the final version. I was very surprised that the boardroom scene did not make it as it seemed like a major scene, to me anyway. But after seeing the movie, I could see that Dean’s character was downplayed somewhat, and the boardroom scene would not have added a lot to the final cut. The other scene as well was cut, with only a fraction of it being used.

While disappointed, I guess that is the way it works. AND we have been told that the boardroom scene will be in the “deleted scenes” on the DVD!  Better than nothing…looking forward to seeing it sometime next fall when the DVD is released.

Good thing I kept my day job!

I bought this book, written by Joel Comm (@joelcomm) about a year ago, shortly after I first signed up on Twitter. At the time, I was already using other social media platforms like Facebook, blogging, and LinkedIn but I wasn’t yet sold on Twitter. I mean, it’s not that I thought it was just a bunch of status updates from people I didn’t know — I could definitely see where it would be useful for large companies, but for entrepreneurs and others?

But over the last year, I have really been thinking about and working towards growing my personal brand, since I have been doing more business consulting.  I am into many things outside of my day job — including writing, blogging, and consulting.  So I have begun promoting myself rather than my specific business.  I write a technology column for a local youth magazine, and regularly deliver seminars and presentations via local economic development and other business organizations.  The idea of promoting my personal expertise and brand really began to hit home.

Along with this change in outlook, came a new insight and appreciation for Twitter.  I started to follow more social media, business and technology experts and quickly began to see Twitter as a valuable source of information, opinions, statistics and more –  much of which I did not come across through my traditional news sources.

I began to get excited, and at this point I grabbed Twitter Power 2.0 from my bookshelf — desperately looking for Twitter strategies, tips, and tools. The beginning chapters were definitely geared to newbies, and had I read the book when I first bought it, perhaps wouldn’t have been so obvious or basic — but for a new user it is all good information.

But then it got really good.

I learned some really great strategies for gaining followers, and for being “interesting” on Twitter.  Through a combination of retweeting valuable posts from other experts, providing my own insights and information, as well as more personal or fun tweets, I began to pick up followers myself.

I am getting more involved in the Twitter conversation — providing comments and responses to other tweets, tweeting directly to the individuals that I follow — I have become much more active on Twitter.  And it is fun!

I particularly enjoyed Chapters 8 – 11 of the book. Now we were getting down to business!  From using Twitter to build your brand, to making money on Twitter and learning the best ways to use Twitter to drive traffic to your website, blog or affiliate links — this is the stuff I was looking for.

Then I learned about a whole bunch of third-party apps that would allow me to become more efficient at using Twitter. From how to follow multiple Twitter feeds at once, ways to post tweets across multiple social networks, to accessing Twitter’s own data to see trends and hot topics, there are many apps and services that can help you build your Twitter presence and make money.  Most of the services Joel talks about here, I was not familiar with. I have since begun to explore these and I am using several of them already.

Twitter Power 2.0 has not only answered a lot of my questions, but has provided me with a fantastic toolkit for growing and leveraging my Twitter presence.  Although some of the information is becoming dated (the book was published in 2010) I would highly recommend Twitter Power 2.0 to anyone looking to either more fully understand the power of Twitter or (and more emphasis here) anyone looking to take their social media presence to the next level.

I only wish I would have begun sooner!

Most of you probably don’t know that I am a collector of vintage video game systems. My collection includes such beauties as the Atari 2600, and 7800, and Atari XE Gaming System, the original Pong console, Intellivision, Texas Instruments (TI) 90, and many, many vintage computer systems including the Commodore Vic 20 and C64, Atari 400, 800, 800XL and 520ST!  I also have a commodore Amiga and a few others.

I admit I went crazy on eBay for a little while. There were just so many systems up for grabs. I also happened to pick up an original Apple Macintosh computer, and not so old, but very cool Apple iMac G3! Most of this stuff has been put away in storage since moving a few years ago, but I do have on display in my home office, a few classic Atari’s among other things.

I, like many of you, recently read the biography of Steve Jobs, by Walter Isaacson. It came out shortly after Steve passed away in October. I found the book to be well written, and very insightful. Reading about the founding of Apple, and the huge comeback made by Steve and Apple in the late 1990′s inspired me to dig out my iMac G3 to see just how cool it really was.

Not only does it look cool with the different coloured bodies, but it is a little self-contained unit with a handle. It looked completely different than any computer before it. It was really the beginning of Apple’s huge comeback — creating great looking products, which just worked.

My particular iMac has an indigo blue cover, and matching keyboard and mouse. Newly inspired, I have decide to do a few upgrades.  It only had 192 MB of RAM, so I have decided to upgrade to 1 GB.  The cost? Only 15 dollars. It came stock with an upgraded 80 GB harddrive (I think the original was only 4GB), and loaded with OSX 10.1 (Puma).  I plan to install 10.4 Tiger, but first I have learned that I must upgrade the firmware.  For those techies out there who recall, Apple changed over from the PowerPC processor to Intel processors in 2005.  So unfortunately OS X Tiger is as high as this machine will go.

Unfortunately, in order to upgrade the firmware, I have to downgrade the operating system to OS 9.0!  I thought Macs were user friendly?  This is all a learning process for me, as I have used Windows PC’s all my life.  Anyway, I am in the process of acquiring OS 9.0 and expect to be able to upgrade the firmware, and then upgrade to OS X 10.4 within a few days.  I will let you know how it turns out!

UPDATE:
After a  few days of fooling around with the iMac, and doing some research online I was able to figure out a way to boot OS 9.2 from a USB drive, since I couldn’t partition the hard drive already in the unit.  Once I was able to boot the system, I was then able to update the firmware! Success!

Then I was able to install OS X 10.4 Tiger with no problems.  What a quantum leap from OS 9 and even from 10.1 which came with the system.  Windows users could equate this to upgrading from Windows 98 to Windows XP!  Quite a jump in capability and refinement.

 It took a while to complete the install — I am assuming it would have been quicker if I had the RAM upgrade installed, but I don;t have it yet…so the system is cranking away with only 192 MB.  I will update once I have the RAM upgraded to see if there is a significant performance boost!  I am expecting that will be the case…

Well, I have been using the 1 GB for about a week now, and have definitely noticed a difference!  The machine boots up much faster, and seems a bit faster.  The biggest improvement is that I can run multiple programs at once without it bogging down to a crawl.  So that’s about all I can do to upgrade the iMac.  But I must say again what a neat little system it is.  It must have been even more fun back in 2000-2001 when it was new!  Thanks for listening…