Jump Out of Your Skin

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I am just back from an enjoyable vacation in Disneyland Paris and had a great time.

While I was away I had limited Internet access and as a result had a lot of fun in the evenings relaxing, reading books and writing some random notes in my moleskin notebook that I bought at Christmas.  I used the notebook to scribble out my To Do list and to doodle in general on all the things I would like to do and achieve.  I found that without access to a PC my thoughts went in different directions and I had different thought streams.  As a result I vowed that when I got back to normal work life that I would at least take 2 evenings a week off from electronic media (including TV) and at least a half day on weekends where I would not be gravitating to e-mail or to the Internet.

Interesting to see how it goes.

Here are some tools that you can while away the whole day on Twitter with looking at who is following who, counting your followers, grading your performance and so on.  One for a rainy day up a mountain with a broadband connection.

• Twitter Grader  http://twitter.grader.com/ – Allows you to calculate your Twitter Grade.  I played with this for a while and basically you have to be tweeting regularly (every day really  as if you stop your grade slides away down) and also you have to be followed by people with lots of followers.  Check out the site.  It is fun to see where you are in the ranking for your area.
• Twellow - http://www.twellow.com It claims to be a Twitter Yellow Pages.  It is built like a ?Yahoo search engine and looks at your profile and then puts you into a section.  Lion taming has no section.
• Doesfollow http://www.doesfollow.com/  Check who is following who.  Its like when you were (or are) a teenager and asked if X was dating Y.  Now you can do this all day long.  I check to see if @Oprah has seen the light yet but she hasn’t to date.
• Twitoria - http://www.twitoria.com – Checks your (or others for that matter – strange) to see if they have been sending Tweets.  Useful for cleaning out inactive followers who may have been either spammers or just joined Twitter and  gave up when their fingers or brains got tired.
• Xefer http://xefer.com/twitter – Shows when you tweet and when you reply.  Cool graph if anything else.  No surprise that I don’t tweet when I am asleep (well except when I slip in the odd feed).

10 things you should do with Twitter and tips that you should have in your toolbox.

1. Make sure your bio information is interesting and relevant to the Twitter traffic you want.  Write it off line till it reads right and then review it occasionally as you do more tweeting.
2. Make sure you have an avatar.  Your own photo or a variation is ideal but have some form of an avatar.  Google for them there are tons of free ones.
3. Silence is golden.  Don’t tweet all the time in fact for a start tweet for no more than 10 minutes in the AM and evening.
4. RT other peoples tweets – make sure of course that you read the links and don’t just to it blindly.
5. Be nice and don’t curse – lots of people think it is cool.  They are usually 12 years of age. 
6. Don’t follow blindly.  Follow people you are interested in.  Read what they tweet.  If it isn’t interesting then unfollow them.
7. You don’t have to tweet 140 characters.  Its not a goal just a limit.  Short punchy tweets are a nice change.
8. You don’t always have to follow people to read interesting Tweets.  Set up and save a search on Twitter on the web and read this Twitter stream.  Follow if you see interesting tweets.
9. Use one of the many tools out there for Twitter (Tweetdeck is my favourite) they make tweeting so much more easier.
10. No tip number 10 but you gotta have 10!!

I am just back after a weekend without access to my laptop or PC and minimal Twitter access.  I got some great blog ideas while walking the beach, p;laying with the kids and drinking beer on the deck.  Here are some of them

• Collecting Mussels - running shoes or wellingtons – here comes the tide!
• That Last Beer - is it worth it?
• Unfamiliar Mattresses - they DO mess up your back
  
• Small Cars why do they go slow when you are behind them.  Both Perspectives
• Milk it pays to have it in the fridge and not in the Supermarket when you get home when store closed
• Bathrooms for young boys - never there when required always there when you ask them
• Garage Coffee – is caffeine and taste extra or did I miss it near the sugar and stirrers?
• Alarm Clocks – Must be set to go off. The manual.
• Washing Machines Should they know which shirt you wanted washed and ironed?

Feel free to add to this list of your weekend experiences.