RickSeymour.com » Opinions

PlentyofFish offers chance to see Lady Gaga Concert

Rick.Seymour — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 22:49:19 +0000

It seems that PlentyofFish.com is trying another marketing campaign and linking up with the music industry again to promote itself as “happening”. POF has previously done this with a campaign Akon, including a video that was hastly withdrawn (most likely due to bandwidth issues). The competition clearly states US + Canada only once the user clicks through on a link, however, why as a UK citizen am I being shown this link as it is only a very basic check to determine the location of the user.

The following line in the Terms and Conditions is interesting. Fancy your face being on a billboard?

“Winners consent to the Contest Sponsors’ use of his/her name, city of residence, photograph, likeness, voice, statements and image for any publicity or programming purposes, in all media, without remuneration, throughout the world in perpetuity.”

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Who people vote in an election for and why? – BNP

Rick.Seymour — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 15:50:19 +0000

Why did the BNP do well at recent local and European elections? (From the recently published YouGov study into voting habits)

BNP voters tend to be totally turned off by politics and think that politicians are corrupt, for example 81% think their MP is corrupt compared to 48% of Labour voters. They have very specific reasons to vote BNP, which tends to be focused solely on immigration. BNP tend to take votes from skilled manual labour jobs. eg Plumbers & Electricians, which leans itself neatly to previous statement as immigration tends to be of semi-skilled and skilled people seeking more pay for their skills. BNP voters tend to usually vote Labour but would consider themselves more “right wing”, and appreciate the “self made working man”.

This demographic tends to be the hardest to convert but their likelihood to participate in the political system is the lowest, however if pushed they will come out. Therefore one must question the whole ideology behind the “Stop the BNP” campaigns as it appears to be these campaigns that actually motivate BNP voters to come out.

Legal Bit: All figures, unless otherwise stated, are from YouGov Plc. Total sample size was 32,268 adults. Fieldwork was undertaken between 29th May -4th June 2009. The survey was carried out online. The figures have been weighted and are representative of all GB adults (aged 18+).

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Tate Modern Art Gallery London – "I don't get Modern Art"

Rick.Seymour — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 17:06:22 +0000

Modern Art - A Table and Chair

Modern Art is an interesting phenomenon taking abstract things and allowing the “artist” to call it art (and of course let’s not forget sell it for millions!!). But the interesting question is… “What is art anyway”?

After chatting with one of the assistants walking round the Tate Modern Gallery in London, she was saying that because photographs and digital imaging are now of such a high quality that there is less call for portraits to be comissioned.

“There is now not as much call for realistic paintings and artists must find new ways of expressing themselves. Art is now trying to find new ways of causing a reaction, illicting a response.”

Modern Art Comic Sculpture

I replied with “So it’s more about empathy with the artist rather than the work that they’ve put together”. “Sort of”. Ah well.. I tried!

I respect art, be that painting, sculpture or craftwork, but for me… I don’t get modern art. I understand that it does cause reactions in people and maybe that’s just the point. But a table and chair in the middle of the room doesn’t leap out of the space that the artist has put much thought into it.

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Past Present Future – Transparency on a blog

Rick.Seymour — Sun, 31 May 2009 10:03:21 +0000

Recently I used archive.org to copy blog post from back in 2007 when I started blogging (although RickSeymour.com dates back much further when it functioned as a place to store, my then, 3000 photos).

Being Transparent

If you have to hold back saying what you think you are not being honest with yourself, yes there has to be a level of decorum to what you put down, but if you have something to say you should feel that you can say it. I’ve got political ambitions (not MP style expenses crap that’s going on at the moment), community based, local government that you can’t make a living from, ie doing it because I want to rather than to live off it. As someone new to the scene, people need to feel that you give your heart, soul and your time to a project.

Which is why being transparent is so important, so show you are who you say you are…. one word….. Integrity.

Keep your licensing simple

The license for this site is Creative Commons (not a pure copyright), so if someone uses ANY of my text, words or video they MUST link back to where they found it, which allows readers of their content to verify what has been said. (So you don’t have to worry too much about being misquoted)

Legacy

Make them proud, a quote from Gary Vaynerchuk in that he wants his grand kids to watch the videos that he puts online and to be proud. As I said before with archive.org anything you put online, be that video or textual content is archivable, searchable and mashable. Be aware though that yes anyone can read what you put and it’s likely that anything you publish can be saved, copied and redistributed. Remember that this is your content, and the essence of you, being able to look back is as important for you as it is for anyone else.

HR Googling your name

Recently I had a conversation with Franky and he suggested that my website is too open, too much personal information on, that a HR department would Google my name and instantly not progress me to the next stage of interview. To me this assumes one thing, that firstly I want to work for a company that spies on it’s employees. I have no intention of ever being a robot, I’m an individual and any company that tries to stiffle that creativity and that individuality isn’t a company worth my time.

Creativity is what makes us human, it allows us to see a problem and come up with a solution, and I feel that is much more important in any business than employing a robot that looks at the clock every 2 minutes waiting for that 5pm to pass.

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nosce te ipsum – Know thyself

Rick.Seymour — Wed, 27 May 2009 20:26:07 +0000

Knowing who you are, where you want to go in life and what you want is really important. It gives us purpose, and a self of identity. I’ve had to rethink a few of these recently from whether or not I want kids to whether I want to travel the world and explore. But it’s what we do with these ideals that’s important…. how we translate and pass on our experiences to others.

Choice is so important in knowing yourself, the choices you make in the world, the decisions you take and the lifestyle you wish to lead. We all need education to make choices as we are all a blank canvas to begin with. I truly believe that the education system we have in place at the moment doesn’t really set you up for major life changing decisions that you have to make…. but I’ll leave that for another time….

But for now…. it’s all about personal and social growth….. see you on the other side

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Ujima – others problems are our problems, solve them together.

Rick.Seymour — Fri, 22 May 2009 08:12:58 +0000

Ujima (Collective Work and Responsibility) To build and maintain our community together and make our brothers’ and sisters’ problems our problems and to solve them together.

This is from the African America holiday “Kwanzaa” established in only 1966 by Dr. Maulana Karenga to keep alive the traditions and ideals of social responsibility. The tag line that you see above “I am what I am because of who we all are” from the African Ubuntu makes us all aware that we are a product of our environment and the people around us, that our morals and goals are influenced from a young age.

While we form these ideals from a young age it is important to know that these ideals are very localised and that even on the European continent there are subtle yet definable differences. I am hoping that I get the opportunity to find more subtle cultural differences between communities and the socio-moral ideals that flow through them.

For more information please visit

Everything about Kwanzaa

Wikipedia article

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Mish Mash (Melting pot) Website

Rick.Seymour — Sat, 16 May 2009 13:51:24 +0000

At the moment this website is a bit of a mish mash… a melting pot of ideas, which is sort of representative of the my work history has gone and the way I operate, checking out new ideas, experiencing new things… as some sort of hit and miss dart board till I get closer to my target… something.

I’m having a go with video editing, with narration, with reporting, with counseling. Covering everything from sex and relationships to philosophy to local issues. Following the Preston Bloggers talk from a professional blogger (and other influential bloggers I’ve met) I’ve tried to follow (and generate) advice for new bloggers.

One of the key motivating factors though has to be, keep it relevant, keep it local, keep it fun!

So at the moment I’m putting myself out there, seeing what targets and target audiences I hit.

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How has the recession affected UK Towns and Cities

Rick.Seymour — Thu, 14 May 2009 23:50:50 +0000

Many towns and cities now have premises on the high streets that remain vacant, what impact does this have on the image of a shopping area.

What is the future of high street retail?

(This is my first go at narrating and video blogging…. a MUCH more positive video coming tomorrow)

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Police cordon off Carpark of Booth Fulwood, Preston

Rick.Seymour — Thu, 14 May 2009 16:55:20 +0000

Police cordon off Booth Fulwood Carpark

Today at 16:30 Preston Police cordoned off part of the carpark at Booth in Fulwood. Attention seemed to focus on a black convertable Audi, with a Scientific Support van present on scene.

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Intelligence Knowledge Reasoning

Rick.Seymour — Mon, 11 May 2009 05:15:09 +0000

I’ve met some very smart people over my years. But I’ve also been pondering what is smart, how do I define it and when do I define someone as “stupid” (ok ok .. start the flame wars) and where do I position myself on the whole spectrum of intellect.

I have an amazing desire for knowledge but I wouldn’t describe myself as knowledgable on many subjects and prefer to keep what I know to what I need to know about. However I believe my strengths lay in my emotional intelligence and reasoning of a problem. (Although sometimes taking your own advice can be a hard thing to do).

Do you define your intellect as the conversations you have with yourself on a Sunday morning laying in bed? Or the drunken slurrings you have with your best friend on a weekend night? Does either one make you more or less of a conversationalist?

So to end it all, to be honest, it doesn’t matter really whether you are smart, dumb or somewhere inbetween, so long as you keep an open mind to learning new things and don’t believe that you know everything, cos ….. you don’t….

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