Creative Spam

Ahhhh sometimes you get emails about your blogs, sometimes you get comments. Most of the time people just read it, and pass by, or steal photos for school projects or the like. Then you get something like this.....


Hello!

I just want to thank you for your wonderful blog garthsgranduer.blogspot.com.

I read the post "Singing in Singas" and then I spent another hour on your blog by reading your posts with pleasure :) Every article is interesting and easy to read. I really like the "On a big airplane".

I work for Jooble company, we aggregate job adverts around the world.

My job is to persuade bloggers to link to our site.

I really love my job! We have a friendly team and good management, but unfortunately I have no idea how to convince a blogger to link to us, I'm afraid I might lose my job because of it :(

And that is why, instead of sending letters to thousands of different blogs, I am reading yours.

Honestly, I am not really sure if the link to our website in United Kingdom - jooble-uk.com, will be appropriate for your blog, but if you believe it will and you can add it, I would be really grateful to you! Our site is really cool, it can greatly help hundreds of people to find jobs.

I wish you to have a good day and excellent mood! Thanks again for your nice blog. Write more! Thanks!

 

 

Best regards,

Serge Lavange
Account Manager


Seemingly personal yet there in lies the fault. Spam and one from a bot like this one relies on someone believing everything they read. Being a blogger you actually end up more defensive than many people as you get a lot of this sort of "link to my site" traffic. Either way appealing to a simple mans vanity may work on occasions, I at least had a good laugh at this one. I'd prefer if he had just got me a deal on viagra or want to put the $US10M from Uganda into my bank account.... I will live in hope.

P.S. I know it is not true as I have analytics to tell me how long people spend on my blog ;)

On my mind

At the moment on my mind is a couple of things. Tomorrow's ciabatta, whether or not I should bottle my nettle beer now or in a month and what will my elderberry wine taste like?! This is in relation to a blog that I enjoy but don't read religiously as it makes me sad I live in an apartment, you can see it here

Nettle beer, hooded ciabatta and the elderberry wine.

Ton Up! Sto Lat! Centurian! Cien! Hundert! Cem! Honderd! Sata! сто! εκατό

One Hundred! One Hundred, I made a hundred posts,
One Hundred! One Hundred, all are different boasts.
One Hundred! One Hundred, from cities to coasts,
One Hundred! One Hundred, alas none about goats.
One Hundred! One Hundred, raise your glass for toasts
One Hundred! One Hundred, but 99 are electronic ghosts.

Ton Up! Sto Lat! Centurian! Cien! Hundert! Cem! Honderd! Sata! сто! εκατό!

No matter how you say it, it seems pretty insignificant. Just three numbers two of which actually mean nothing, 0. So why am I excited? Well many reasons. I really never thought that I would write anything after leaving school, even there I didn't do English in my final year. However, since moving to Poland, and living with and then marrying, a fabulously inspirational woman, I now feel the need to write, draw, bake, cook, roast, boil, concoct, preserve things whether it be food stuffs and ideas.

I constantly bubble over with thoughts, I am always writing silly things down that make me laugh or texting them to Marta to make her giggle at work. When it comes down to achieving the goals or ideas I had, I just seem to lack the time/money/ability to make them all come true.

I am hoping for Daddy Warbucks for Christmas, but I am guessing he won't be coming to Sokolka purely due to the distance from airports. I have created some OK stories this year, there is "The Grimlaut", and "Jack Frost" and I am probably 3/4 the way through "The Sound of Apples". So it has been fun, I have also taken many many photos. The other love, the Canon 5D MkII, has been getting a work out although it has been sheepish of the snow lately. However, the photos is what brings me to this post. The winners of the competition for the best photo I took in 2010. From a grand total of 54 photos, the winners are below.

"Nuclear Leaves" was only a slight winner over the second place, but it won none the less.
As close as it was in the Black and White the colour was certainly no run away. Even if the "Night Lavender" was chosen by 47% of the total voters, so it would nearly have won a regional election in Poland!

There were over 420 votes cast between both series of photos. So thank you to all those who took the time to vote, it means a great deal to me. I am thinking of maybe one day to having an exhibition, and you are all invited to it! Yay! Even if the voting public came from 18 countries in Poland, Australia, Germany, USA, England, Mexico, Spain, Guatemala, Wales, Ireland, Sweden, Denmark, Canada, Iceland, New Zealand, Chile, Holland and Switzerland.

OK, so the most important thing this 100th Post will tell us is the winner of the prize for voting for your favourite photos. So instead of just one, I have decided to draw two one for each series. Both winners were each picked at random by people who didn't even know what they were choosing for! So it was completely impartial.

The winner of the colour is........ Kinga from our Krakow Konnections
The winner of the B & W is........ Ela from Warsaw

So because we had two Polish people as winners, I then decided to draw one person who voted in both categories out of a hat.

The overall winner was.......... Margie from England!

So now the challenge is you all need to contact me via email with your address! This way I can send you your prize, so just email by clicking on my big ugly face on the left of the screen and there is an email link there.

I hope everyone has a fabulous Christmas and an even better 2011, this year has been fabulous for me, I got married to the most amazing woman, I have travelled to Australia, Czech Republic, Holland, Belgium, seen one of my brothers married in Holland and unfortunately missed the other in Acapulco later that month, sorry Flavio. I really hope you all can follow your dreams and passions as life is allowing me to.

“For every minute you are angry you lose sixty seconds of happiness.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson, American Poet, Lecturer and Essayist, 1803-1882

“A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.”

Winston Churchill, British Orator, Author and Prime Minister. 1874-1965

So next year I am planning to try to continue being happy and to look for the opportunity, I hope you can too.

Thanks for reading! Don't forget to follow me by clicking on the follow icon on the left too.