My real blog is now always at woodyhayday.com, but I see that some people are still hitting this old site so I thought it might be useful to share some bits here.

• ProfitSwarm.ai – my challenge to make a 100% AI ran business in 2025 kicked off at the tail end of January. This new newsletter/challenge will let me play with bleeding edge AI tools and see if I can’t use my years of business practice to build an AI swarm which operates autonomously, generating profit.
  • AI Business Ideas list – As I grew ProfitSwarm I realised it’d help to collect together AI business ideas, so I gathered up my favourite 50 ideas and shared them here.
  • AI Tool reviews – I’m reviewing all the key business automation workflow tools out there – get the latest no-bs reviews. Gumloop AI is my favourite so far.
  • Entrepreneurs AI Automations Guide – I’ve written a free blueprint for entrepreneurs who want to learn the basics of AI and AI business automation in 2025.
  • AI Automation Worksheet & Video Guide – This is the fuller guide for those entrepreneurs ready to commit to automating their business tasks, (we’re all going to have to learn these skills now)
  • AI Glossary of terms – This is a useful primer for those just starting out learning AI automations.
• Strew.app – I am making this Home Education App with my sister. We’re working to help home ed parents more easily log activities that their children do which progress their learning. There aren’t a lot of homeschooling apps, so I’m doing my best engineering to make it the best!
• AI Quiz Wizard for WordPress – I made this in a hackathon so that I could make genuinely useful quizzes for my various projects. I’ve made my first quiz on woodyhayday.com which is a free ‘Find my Ikigai quiz‘. I also added a How to Make Money with ChatGPT quiz and other AI Quizzes on Profit Swarm. I expect to add quizzes to all my other projects so watch this space!
• Vibe Coding Apps directory – As we move away from software engineering and towards vibe coding, I thought it’d be fun to make a little directory of the different vibe coding options.

I’d also like to shout out to my friend who’s launched a fantastic art studio in Welwyn Garden City, specialising in art classes and vintage ceramics. He and his partner have always had a superb eye for design aesthetics and it really shows on their studio site. I look forward to visiting them.

The post Projects 2025 first appeared on Woody Hayday | Blog.

I thought I’d drop one refresher post here detailing my recent projects just so the few of you who end up here have another launch pad to rocket of!

This year I’ve been pursuing the idea of my Ikigai, trying to get closer to the best work I can do. I’m fairly sure at this point that it involves supporting fledgling entrepreneurs who are just about to, or already have made the leap. I’ve found myself mentoring new entrepreneurs naturally in the past, and have made several businesses helping them with products. Now I’m trying to hammer down even further and really work out what good I can do.

Here’s this years projects so far:

Niche Report.io

A Niche Report is going to be the first step for a new entrepreneur, (or a seasoned one entering a new niche). This new service takes 4 weeks worth of work doing market research, and rips through the process with AI, bots, data crunching and multi-exit oversight (me). In the end you get a market research report on your niche within 24 hours; and it’s got all the key signals you need to inform how you should proceed into the niche, or even if you should.

Project Pages

Project Pages is a WordPress portfolio maker, in essence. It’s a plugin I made 8y ago or so, but I’ve rebooted it. It’s focus is on helping makers, creators, and generally capable people document their creator journeys and try to connect-the-dots of their work. This runs parallel to my overall search for my own ikigai, and you can see I’ve updated my own personal project pages recently.

CoupleFlow.app

CoupleFlow is an AI Insights tool for relationship communication. It sits with you in your couples DMs on Telegram and gives you weekly check-ins which help you grow as a couple. CoupleFlow uses tuned AI which is trained on the latest relationship science to observe for the characteristics of a healthy relationship, and steer you towards it. It might help with a range of communication problems with relationships or marriages. (I will keep improving it with feedback over at CoupleFlow.app.)

I also added a Telegram Chat Analyser which gives users chat stats on their Telegram chats.

A small side project: CRM List.io – compares various CRM apps so you can find the one which fits your business.

As ever, you’ll get up to date stuff on my main website (this is an old blog which only gets an update a decade 😀 ): woodyhayday.com/blog

Here’s to all the makers and entrepreneurs! Long may we make things.

Woody

14th Oct 2024

P.S. I’d also like to mention my friend Mike Stott has started a great new blog on Content that Converts, which is also valuable to new entrepreneurs, check it out!

The post Projects 2024 first appeared on Woody Hayday | Blog.

Landmarks, Happenings of Note 2014

Writing this list, I can hardly believe that all this happened in the past 365 days. I am very grateful, and hope for many more such years.

• First draft of second novel and 8th edit of first novel, launched fiction page, failed to finish first novel
• London Book Fair
• 2nd in UK Catan Championship in May, 4th in Catan @ UK Mind Sports Olympiad
• Got allotment in June, plenty of gardening fun
• Visited Ardley, Cambridge, Dartmoor, Peterborough, Plymouth, Salisbury, Wales
• Built computer with brother for his birthday
• USA in July, Seattle, Portland, Yosemite, San Francisco
• Proposed to Alice atop of Glacier Point in Yosemite
• WDS2014
• VegFest Vegan Conference
• World Catan Championship in Berlin, placed 39th overall
• Managed event as volunteer at St Albans Literary Festival
• Saw Ibrahim Maalouf perform at Southbank Center
• Saw Akala perform The Ruins of Empires
• Meditation Classes
• Flotation Tank sessions
• Made fresh pasta, pizza, jam, crumble, strudel etc.
• Veggie August
• Designed ‘Nut Bars’ for reliable organic food source
• Gave up refined sugar
• Advised on first full launch of theme @ EpicPlugins
• Advised SmugPup and helped launch
• Pivoted EverClients, wrote a new vision
• Wrote 10+ WordPress plugins, mostly as Joint Ventures
• Sold nearly 1k copies in 5 days in one JV launch
• Sold several domains, registered far too many more
• Many great meet-ups, meals, evenings spent with friends and family

EverClients – Pivoted to Serve Good-Willed Freelancers

Books, Podcasts, Talks, Videos

In 2014 I read 25+ books and skim-read several others. I’m happy to say that I abandoned several books before I hit their half-way mark, letting crappy books go in preference of better writing. Life’s too short. John Steinbeck, Huxley, Hemingway, and the amazing Frank Herbert lit up my year. Having never read such fiction, I have been blessed by finding as many great works in a single year as I have. I also really enjoyed The Little Prince and Stoner, who both hide life lessons under their respectively different hats.

Through non-fiction I continued to study Stoicism; Meditations by Marcus Aurelius read like an operating system update for my mind, ushered in by the sturdy The Obstacle is the Way by Ryan Holiday, and wholly reinforced by the sweeping greatness that is Mastery by Robert Greene. I’ve found that a mixture of Stoicism and Buddhism blends well and always seems to wrench me from whatever foul mood or false perception I may get stuck in. I look forward to continuing to explore these, and other philosophies.

In June I secured an allotment, and as a result I mixed in ~10 gardening books and plenty of documentaries on the subject of growing food. Monty Don has proven the most apt teacher, with a focus on organic growing, and plenty of worldly experience (see Zen gardens episode of Around the World in 80 Gardens). The River Cottage Veg Patch book was also very useful.

Lastly, and of significant note, there has been a few extra voices which have really affected me at the close of 2014. George Orwell jumped out of the page at me in Why I Write, slapping me in the face with a satirical, but honest glance at the English persona of 50 years past, instilling in me a strong desire to follow suit, to write more, and to do my share of ripping at the illusionary veil of the herd. Akala added inspiration with his excellent short narrative in The Ruins of Empires, (which was wicked to see performed live). Thoreau recently added even more weight to the desire to finish my novel, though reading Orwell and hearing Akala has given most form to my intent, with their modern unrelenting focus on the truth at the crux of man. The voices of these men, along with Marcus Aurelius, Seneca and such, have deeply impacted me this year, all for the better.

• Dune by Frank Herbert
• Doors of Perception by Aldous Huxley
• The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck 
• Cannery Row by John Steinbeck
• For Whom The Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
• The Little Prince by Antoine Saint-Exupery
• Stoner by John Williams
• The Kingkiller Chronicles: The name of the wind by Patrick Rothfuss
• Slaine: The Horned God by Pat Mills and Simon Bisley (2000AD)
• Ark Royal by Christopher Nuttal
• The Ruins of Empires by Akala
• Finding Your Way Without Map or Compass by Harold Gatty
• Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
• Mastery by Robert Greene
• The Obstacle is the Way by Ryan Holiday
• Make Your Mind an Ocean by Lama Yeshe
• Start Something that Matters by Blake Mycoskie
• Tribes by Seth Godin
• What I learned losing a million dollars by Jim Paul and Brendan Moynihan
• A Biography of Alexander Bell by unknown
• Didn’t read Meet you in hell by Les Standiford (on Carnegie, over dramatized)
• Skim-read Jab, Jab, Jab, Right hook by Gary Vaynerchuk (shallow)
• The Complete Gardener by Monty Don
• Veg Patch by Mark Diacono (River Cottage book)
• Skim-read several other allotment/gardening books
• Grammar for Grownups by Katherine Fry and Rowena Kirton (grammar was useful, examples painfully bleak)
• The Elements of Style by William Strunk Jr.
• How to market a book by Joanna Penn
• On Writing by Stephen King
• Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott
• Why I Write by George Orwell
• Started reading “Where I lived, and what I lived for” by Thoreau
• Wrote reviews for all books on Goodreads

Worth Watching/Listening to

I’ve watched plenty of documentaries, interviews and stand-up comedy this year, here’s a few of my favourites:

• Bill Hicks – Revelations (note the black monolith from 2001)
• 2001: A Space Odyssey
• Robert Greene on Joe Rogan Experience
• Jaron Lanier on Future of Technology
• Unlearn your MBA with David Heinemeier Hansson
• John Jantsch at WDS2014 (I was in the audience!)
• How to Change Your Mind – Julia Galef
• Fire in the Booth Cypher 2014
• How School Kills Creativity – Ken Robinson
• Jodorowsky’s Dune
• Ryan Holiday on Tim Ferriss Show
• Kevin Kelly on Tim Ferriss Show
• Fed Up
• Peter Joseph of Zeitgeist Movement on London Real
• Century of Self (4 episode documentary)
• Graham Hancock on Joe Rogan Experience
• Randall Carlson on Joe Rogan Experience
• Noam Chomsky 2014 Interview with Chris Hedges

Stick to the plan?

This time last year I made a plan for 2014, and though I had the best intentions, I’ve not achieved a whole lot of it. But that’s okay; failing is part of the process. Of my 7 goals, I’ve partly achieved 3 and failed at the others. I’ve gladly found a few great people who I’d call mentors as much as friends, had a solid year advising EpicPlugins, and very nearly won the UK Catan Championship (came 2nd, got sent to Berlin World Championships, then placed 39th). It’s been a ride. This year I’ll tackle my year plan a bit differently, opting for fewer firm goals and an overall direction rather than specifics.

In the spirit of introspection, I’ll hammer out some highs and lows below, but overall I am glad for both.

What Worked & Highs

I’ve made less money this year than previous years, but I’m happier. This is a marked change in my outlook which I am happy to note. Culture and the people around me are as important as any economic success, probably more important. “Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.” Thoreau is right, and it’s taking a few years to steer my ship true. I end the year in no debt, in little positive balance, but still I am all the more enriched by the words and sentiment I’ve been lucky enough to have absorbed.

Here are a few highlights which make me smile from 2014:

• Love, Friends & Family
• Great books
• Persistent Meditation (160 day chain & classes)
• Yosemite National Park & proposing atop a mountain
• Index cards for organisation (hat tip to Ryan Holiday & Tim Ferriss)
• Giving up refined sugar (watch Fed Up and give up!)
• Successful Joint Ventures
• Networking, saying yes, and meeting awesome people
• Pivoting my company away from money-chasing toward service

What Didn’t Work

For 2015 I’ll be honing my plans, because although this stuff didn’t come together, I see most of them as a failure in planning. Those that I’ve failed at for other reasons are just good learning. I should be so lucky to fail this much in 2015

Novel not published – It wasn’t ready, but I’ve now done my homework and will attack it again in 2015, watch this space.
Creating a SaaS/WordPress plugins for the money – I could of noticed the hints from my subconscious that I was veering away from my true intent, but I soldiered on trying to force the market to love the product, rather than trying to serve people. Months of work created a good product for a tiny, unaware market. I’ve since pivoted to a new, wholesome vision, and will be building a product for the people in 2015.
Health – Loads of colds, flu’s and hints of my childhood asthma. My immunity is low and my desk-time suffered. After much time wasted at the GP I’ve taken my health thoroughly into my own hands, improving diet and eliminating potential causes. I’ve finally come to a realisation that SBS is likely the main influence, and that my body is particularly reliant on clean air. Thanks to my Withings scales I was able to identify that my modern apartment actually has unhealthy levels of CO2, and that, in fact is a major problem.
Frayed attention – I’ve had this problem for years, but in 2014 it reached fever pitch when I noticed I had over 100 tabs open in Chrome, (I’m thankful for the RAM in this pc). This is just one symptom of a larger failure to organise. Another symptom is my indiscriminate creation of side-projects. I’ve built many, including web-apps to budget my time, but ironically not used or finished them due to a feeling of lack of time. This feeling is without basis, I’ve filled my time very meaningfully, and ought to simply clean up after myself and discriminate more with side-projects.

Summary

2014 was a foundational year for me. More than ever I’ve chosen what to spend my time doing, and through discriminative study I’ve been able to dispel much illusion and chaff. I am beginning to see the ways in which I can help others best, while feeding myself, and truth-seeking. I am grateful for all who have shared this with me, and look forward to elaborating on this base in 2015.

I leave you with two formative videos, and some photos. Hope to see you in 2015!

The post 2014 Review first appeared on Woody Hayday | Blog.

Below is an excerpt of my latest article, written for the EverClients blog. It’s the third in a series I’m roughly calling “Hacking Freelance”, and it goes in to the detail of why we should all track our time at a computer, and how!

Why Should Freelancers Track Their Time?

Freelancing is more connected to time than any other type of business. A lost hour freelancing affects your weekly earnings directly. Luckily, as freelancing continues to grow across the US and Europe, a stable of software is being built to assist solo-workers and small businesses.

Arguably we all benefit from better time management, but this post focuses on the currently available time-tracking software specifically targeted at freelancers, ultimately ending in my review of the top five time-tracking options.

On top of lost billable time, (and therefor money), working time as a solo-worker can easily get messy. Twenty minutes on an email to a prospect, fifteen on a skype call to a client, 47 minutes finishing off a deliverable, (if you get to finish it.) Then your significant other walks in and asks you to put up a shelf or take the dog for a walk…

Read the full article

The post Do you track your time? first appeared on Woody Hayday | Blog.

The post 2014 Plan: Futures. first appeared on Woody Hayday | Blog.

Note: With big intent for 2014 I will be moving to a new blog where I can be more focused and share only the big great/painful stuff, it’ll focus on concious self development and will be the future home of this kind of post. Visit WoodyHayday.com for up to date info on this. For now, back to last year:

Books

In 2013 I read 2x more books than in 2012, I’ve been intentionally amping up my reading. 2013 was a fantastic year for inspiration and looking back over the list of titles I’m glad to say that most were solid reads. Autobiographies gave me great inspiration for living and learning, with a smattering of modern thought tethering it all to today. I was initially looking for role models I could gleam advice from, seeking to replicate – but I ultimately found so much more in a lot of these books.

Here’s my 2013 pick, I can’t recommend these enough:

[None of these are affiliate links.]

Talks, Podcasts, Videos, Music

Glad to have found all of these. Thanks to the friends who’ve shared links and the authors that have lead me to find them. The Joe Rogan Experience podcast is the most coherent thing to my vision of my own existence I have found all year, props to Joe for having rational conversations that tip the balance to positive. Add Akala & Low Key to the mix and I see a future.

• Seth Godin Q & A
• Graham Hancock – The War on Conciousness (Banned TED talk)
• The Pretotyping Manifesto
• Chris Sacca Interview
• Tim Ferriss on London Real (and this post made me smile)
• Akala – Another Reason & Low Key – My Soul
• Joe Rogan Experience Podcast, notably:
  • Lorenzo Hagerty – http://podcasts.joerogan.net/podcasts/lorenzo-hagerty
  • Graham Hancock – http://podcasts.joerogan.net/podcasts/graham-hancock-2
  • Dave Asprey – http://podcasts.joerogan.net/podcasts/dave-asprey
  • Steven Pressfield – http://podcasts.joerogan.net/podcasts/steven-pressfield-aubrey-marcus
  • Stefan Molyneux – http://podcasts.joerogan.net/podcasts/stefan-molyneux

Akala – Find No Enemy

Projects

2013 was a full year of “work”. I consulted for ~3 months, building several WordPress plugins and a few web app prototypes, after which I became CTO at SAM, building the MVP there. Towards the close of the year I’ve now reset my goals and started working on the future of StormGate and Woody Hayday, in business terms (I’m looking for software problems to fix & finishing my novel!)

Social Gallery – Social Gallery moved in to the Epic Plugins.com suite of WordPress plugins, it’s since gone on to continue to sell well and is constantly in the “top sellers this week” section on CodeCanyon. It’s now beaten 2k sales and is on its way to 3k.

SAM – Social Asset Management (samdesk.io) – I joined SAM as CTO in March 2013 at inception stage and spent six months building the first MVP. SAM is a platform for media professionals to find and manage Social Assets (tweets, instagram photos etc.) in a modern, coherent way. It’s at the leading edge of innovation in the market and I’m glad I took it to MVP. I got to stretch my legs with almost all of AWS, and up to date JS. I moved on from SAM in October but I am confident it’s going to be a big success, definitely one to watch. James (CEO/Co Founder) continues to be an inspiration.

Writing/Other/Futures – In the last part of 2013 I began experimenting with a few options. I started working towards releasing my sci-fi novel in 2014 (perhaps August – click here to get notified), but for bread and butter I’ve been working on some software projects (SaaS for freelancers, authors and many other ideas!). I also finalised a joint venture that will begin in January. I’m keen to keep a fairly open field until I find something which matches my desired conditions.

Travel

We didn’t intend to travel that much in 2013, what with moving house, twice. We started in Belgium, moved back to Hertfordshire and still fitted in West Wales, Edinburgh, Dunfermline (Carnegie!) Great Yarmouth, Amsterdam (IBC2013) and finished the year in Romania. I couldn’t think of a better place to spend some time than Sinai with good friends! Now we are back in the home counties we are having lots of great evenings out in London and a few good talks too, it was a highlight of 2013 to go to four Akala gigs, his last featuring Low Key especially.

Time Management

In 2012 I started logging time I spend on a computer against projects. This was in part for consultancy billing but developed into a total analysis of my time spent. In 2013 I logged every minute I spent at a computer, tagging the time against a project (I used Toggl, which is excellent.) The process was interesting, as are the results. Doing this is definitely a solid step towards efficacy in your everyday life.

Time logged: 2871 Hours 54 Minutes

Or: Average 55 hours a week / 8 hours a day!

Here’s the distribution of my time – the big blue section is SAM, the other projects seem to share out quite evenly!

• Email took up way less time than I had expected, totalling around 53 hours (just over an hour a week!) – I had been purposely lean on this in 2013, trying to avoid all “busy work”. Success.
• “Lunch Reading” took up a bigger chunk than I had expected, though was still less than most people traditionally spend on lunch breaks.
• I spent more time in the gym than I remembered!
• I spent less than 100 hours playing computer games (Command and Conquer, Battlefield) – Again I was trying to keep lean here.
• Several little projects produced fantastic returns per hour overall. I wonder how this scales.

2013 Summary

The post 2013 Annual Review first appeared on Woody Hayday | Blog.

I’d like to announce that Social Gallery – the Ultimate Social Lightbox plugin for WordPress has been acquired by Epic Plugins.com (announcement here.) It’s been fantastic to build Social Gallery up as a product and a useful tool, having sold over 1500 copies and many, many add-ons it’s been very well received and helping it grow has been a ball.

Thanks to each and every one of you who has used and promoted Social Gallery – you’re all awesome.

Epic Plugins is a great home for Social Gallery, it fits nicely into their growing suite of fantastic plugins, I thoroughly recommend checking them out – each and every one is hand crafted by Mike – the chief of Epic Plugins and a top dude.

The post Social Gallery Acquired by Epic Plugins.com first appeared on Woody Hayday | Blog.

Owing to the fact that I just wanted to get everything down and perhaps because it was my first ever, my 2012/2013 review ended up a pretty mammoth document. I’ve published bits I would like to share here, the actual review though covers as many angles of my life as I can compute

If you haven’t ever done a personal annual review I urge you to give it a try – it doesn’t even matter if it’s later in the year – it’s a great way to take stock and remember your big-picture intentions.

I hope to get around to a project this year which will delve into such human “systems” in far more detail (I want to write a book on it) – but from this first year alone I can tell you there’s a lot of value in this process, give it a try!

I’m Woody Hayday and here’s my 2012 Annual Review:

(Stolen from my very own facebook)

Books

I didn’t read a whole lot in the first half of 2012 but endeavoured to catch up with myself by the end of the year – in my eagerness to absorb M.Scott Peck’s fantastic “Further along the road less travelled” and the Dalai Lama’s “The Universe in a Single Atom: The Convergence of Science and Spirituality” at the same time I blew my own mind out of the back of my head in January. This was totally unhelpful to my overall flow of reading (this year I’m avoiding heavy stuff when I need to keep motivated.)

Here’s my pick of my 2012 reading – some fantastic books here, I can hardly give them enough praise:

• Poor Charlie’s Almanack by Charles T Munger – This coffee table sized book has more value in it than 80% of business book’s I’ve read, combined. Phenomenal wit  and fantastic, rational truth’s. Learn: Margin’s of Safety & Framework of Models.
• Seeking wisdom – From Darwin to Munger – A more consise edited version of Poor Charlie’s Almanack – you can read one or the other but you might miss 20% of the good stuff overall. This is incredibly dry until about half way through, but persevere!
• Letters From a Stoic by Seneca – Phenominal wisdom from 2000 years ago, shame most of humanity is too preoccupied to absorb it! Absolute imperative read.
• Winning Concepts by Dave Gannaway – Simple, positive, 80’s businessman attitude building
• The Rights of Man by Thomas Paine – American & French Revolution commentary never had such retort, fantastic example of a semi-modern genius rationale, highlighted to me the vacuum of non-correction which seems to exist around societies, specifically Great Britain.
• Hear Us O Lord from Heaven Thy Dwelling Place by Malcolm Lowry – Fantastic, mad literature that’ll catch you off guard.
• The Picture of Dorian Grey by Oscar Wilde – A classic, bored me until it won me over in it’s penultimate pages.
• The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho – Storified advice on following your dreams. Well written and enjoyable, a great, stealthy way to get positive drive on a big project.
• The Universe in a Single Atom by The Dalai Lama – The Dalai Lama is responsible for several great books – this one is a step heavier than some since and covers the convergence of eastern spirituality and wisdom with modern science, quantum physics and such. Immense but heavy!
• Further Along the Road Less Travelled by M.Scott Peck – If you haven’t read “The Road Less Travelled” read that and come back to this a year later. It’s dense with reality, wisdom and psychology in the best way possible, but in being so I also found it overwhelming (perhaps I read it too fast.) This is one I’ll re-read for sure.

[None of these are affiliate links.]

Projects

Mixing client web development consultancy via StormGate with my own projects, 2012 was still a less fractured year to those before it. I committed to a few major projects which I will mention here but I also didn’t manage to get round to a few I hoped to (finishing off that novel) – C’est la vie!

ChooseFest – The largest project I took on in 2012, ChooseFest is “A festival search engine that matches your music tastes to a better festival” and was fairly successful, closing the year with 600+ users and some really great feedback. Long-tail search engine rankings and a viral nature have carried it well into 2013, where it should continue to grow. Unfortunately work on this one was cut short early in 2012 due to other things getting in the way, I hope to work more on it this year.

Social Gallery – A side project founded from a client’s request, Social Gallery is a WordPress plugin which adds a “facebook style” social lightbox to your blog images – it’s pretty kick ass as you can see. Though this started out as a small experiment it’s been fantastically recieved and is now on it’s second version. It continues to sell well on CodeCanyon. (Branding on this one was done by the fantastic MRK Designs.)

Other noteworthy side projects: Remote backup & health monitoring system for shared hosts (I can now get insane value by using the best of the shared hosts coupled with this setup.) Sales Rocket Pro – this client project had some nice gamifaction intentions! Easy Envato Assistant (tiny project but useful.) Base CRM Contact Form plugin. Seedr’s listing for ChooseFest (temporarily postponed). Lots more including several innovative facebook integrations, a Facebook HTML5, CSS3 and jQuery animated game, a handful of mobile related WordPress plugins and lots of other alpha release’s that I can’t reveal yet

Travel & Health

Compared to previous years I only took a fraction of time away from work this year – I was back and forth between Belgium (Gent) and the UK fairly regularly, with trips to Romania and Denmark. I also got a great week of strategising in a log cabin in the Ardenne. I was glad to see lots of my friends and family visit in Gent, but otherwise had wanted to maintain focus on work. I also hit Wilderness Festival which was cool.

I started out the year averagely healthy and ended it about the same – my intention had been to pursue the slow carb diet and continue to do MED workouts at the gym, alas I let work get the better of me and did not maintain this. I did manage to run my first 10k (the Gent Staad Loop) though, which was exciting.

2012 Summary

It was a full on year of development, I probably produced more lines of more elegant code, drank more coffee and blogged less than any other recent year. Overall I am happy with the outcomes achieved, what else is there to be, after all ChooseFest turned out to seal the end of a fantastically large learning curve, Social Gallery a surprise hit and I managed to find 3 or so books which have utterly transformed my outlook. I should hope to remember that any future successes should be proportionally devoted to Charles Munger, Seneca and my special way of learning: the practical art of digging yourself holes you then have to climb out of.

I hope to realise enough success in coming years to confidently share the hell of a ride it’s been so far.

Have a phenomenal 2013!

P.S. You may get a 2012: Looking Forward post too, if your lucky!

P.P.S. I borrowed this post title from Chris Guillebeau’s 2012 Looking Forward (hope that’s OK Chris), if you haven’t read anything of his stuff check out his latest book $100 Startup, it kicks ass.

The post 2012 Annual Review: Looking Back first appeared on Woody Hayday | Blog.

What do you picture in your mind when I say “author”? Perhaps you see a frustrated lonely soul sitting behind a laptop or a smiling “guru” sitting in a Starbucks? Truth is “authors” these days can be anyone. With the invention of the ebook, the internet and the laptop & pc before that, the world of publishing is one in flux, a transforming industry which has moved from the printing press and its limited distribution into a worldwide partly-democratised market.

Write anywhere: I wrote some of my novel up a mountain in nepal!

Platforms such as Make Your Offer are popping up to evolve the way we look at publishing and as a result the barrier for entry has been lowered. New authors spawn every day, and in that way the publishing market has been partly democratised. There’s a question here about the quality of writing this produces, but rather than get lost down that rabbit hole I think I will leave that to time and demand to solve. Back to the point; there are a lot of life lessons to be learnt by writing, even if you never publish what you write.

Read the full “4 Life Lessons Learnt from Writing a Novel (before it’s even published)”

The post 4 Life Lessons Learnt from Writing a Novel (before it’s even published) – My Guest Post at MYO first appeared on Woody Hayday | Blog.

Its official, we have opened up ChooseFest.com, so go check it out, now, what are you waiting for? Click Here!

ChooseFest is all about festivals, music festivals. In short it takes your music tastes (from facebook, last.fm scrobble history, a list you type) goes through all of the line-ups (kept up to date daily!) and then spits out a convenient, summarised list of all the festivals which have the bands (and singers) you particularly like at. It’s kind of a festival search engine, its kind of a music to festival matching site, but it will be a whole lot more in months to come.

What problem does it solve?

Ever tried to find the festival which has the most bands you like at? It’s a nightmare. Each festival has its own “arty” site, each festival has different dates, prices, availability, not to mention they have their bands and artists in obscure orders over several web pages. All that data collating is not easy or fun. ChooseFest.com Makes it easy (and hopefully fun), you just stick in who you want to see and up pops your best options.

Where’s the project at?

ChooseFest is a StormGate production and you can find it on facebook and have a go with the prototype (alpha app) @ ChooseFest.com. We have a few hundred users and are now soliciting feedback, it would be great to hear what you think, and at such an early stage your comments could really make a difference to us.

Want to help out?

Please help us Spread the word, share us with your friends, give us feedback! – the more people we can tell about ChooseFest the more chance there is we can make this a really, really useful tool for us all.

The post Finding Your Perfect Festival – ChooseFest.com first appeared on Woody Hayday | Blog.