robwoolford.com

I don’t know how you adults do it.

This 9 to 5 shit is boring.

I’ve been done with uni for a couple of months now and I’ve got progressively more bored.

Mark described it aptly by saying he feels like he’s “sitting around waiting to die”.

That’s pretty much it. Maybe it’s post-uni depression, or maybe it’s the fact that there’s sod all to look forward to now. I go on holiday in just over a week but still… I have to come back and do it all over again after that! … I’m not sure you should feel like this at 21?

I can’t think of anything more depressing than doing this for the next few decades of my life…

Currently looking into doing my personal bar license and some courses in cellar management, accountancy and whatnot so that I can move up in the world of bars, clubs and restaurants… earn a bit more dollar and then I can hopefully look into travelling like I’ve always wanted to… lets face it, every city in the world has a bar… I’ve got a better chance of sustaining work and travelling with some qualifications. That’s the only thing that’s stopped me from hanging myself to be honest ! ha

Right… I must be getting off… I’ve got to spend more time staring at the wall…………..

Me and my good friend Dan headed to Essex (Southend) last weekend for the homie Mark’s 21st birthday.

And it was well worth driving the length of the country for.

Too many stories and too little time. I watched a man (a real man it must be said) neck a bottle of vinegar (and promptly head straight to the toilet, and then home), I got free late night rides around a theme park, I whooped everyone up at pool & pro evo, I was forced to sleep on the floor of someone else’s hotel room while Dan got his end away in a room I’d paid for (what a mug I am) and I even managed to catch the sun a little bit.

A big thank you to all of Mark’s boys and girls for making me n Daniel feel at home.

Essex was great. I can’t wait to go back. <3

As for the ‘Essex girl’ reputation (which every lad has asked me about)… this northerner noticed that there are far more lasses than lads around those parts, and they’re all dead chatty rather than dead slutty. They don’t exactly sit around with their legs open, sorry to disappoint you fellas.

… I’m bored, and I’ve just stuck Collateral on. Whilst Jamie Foxx arranges his dream post card in his head rest, I’m going to continue to day dream about what I posted about only the other day.

That post has certainly given me something to think about.

I spent a few hours today looking at how feasible it is to set up an internet business, and just how much traffic you would need to make the kind of money you could live off. (You should, by this point, realise that this could be quite a boring subject if you’re not interested in internet stuff).

After looking at all the standard kind of ad formats - banners, footers, half page ads, small ads and so on and so forth - all of which charge per thousand views, I came to the conclusion that with four or five differing ads on each page I could amass around £28.50 for all the ads every thousand times they’re seen. Of course, £28.50 isn’t a lot of money, but should any website be successful and bring in 100,000 views a month (bare in mind thats 100,000 views not 100,000 people) then £28.50 per thousand views becomes £2,850 a month. That’s a lot of money as far as I’m concerned.

How feasible is it that I could attract 100,000 views to the website in question, and how likely is it that I could sell ads? Well, if the figures are there then the advertisers will come, and after looking at my traffic the other day, my hip hop station averaged between 4,000 and 5,500 views per month. On its best month it achieved 7,749 page views (that would have earnt me about £200 if I’d been selling advertising).

At no point did I promote my dissertation website in any way shape or form during its inception. Everybody that found their way to the site found it through google, or other search engines, or some other way. All I know is that I didn’t promote it one bit and I got nearly 8,000 views in one month - but I averaged near enough 5,000. Now… the million dollar question is… if I promote it… can 5,000 views become 100,000 views?

As I said before, that’s views not people.

If I could do it, that’s near enough £3,000 a month in my pocket. Which is £36,000 a year - self employed. And that’s if I’m selling ads for as little as £5 per thousand views (specialist ads on successful sites can be as much as £15-30 so I’ve read). So there’s scope for improvement, and I’m working with the bare minimum in my plans.

The real trick for this would be to get other DJs on board. DJs from across the world - Australia, throughout Asia and Africa, different European DJs and of course ones from the other side of the Atlantic. I alone attracted 5,000 views a month, so a team of 10 or more DJs would most definitely attract around 50,000 I reckon. If I was willing to open my pockets to them then I’d sure I’d get even more on board…

It’s all theoretical right now, and I’m planning with a very positive mind set (of course). The stats are fairly simple - I have a website that is already more popular than some existing radio stations (worldhiphop.fm is more popular in America than Sunderland’s biggest radio station, for example). I have 5,000 views coming into that site per month and the website has shot up nearly 5 million places to become almost the 3,000,000th most popular website on the net. Those are all fact.

I’m going to talk it out with my Dad, and if he thinks its a good idea then I’ll probably have to seek professional business advice before pursuing this. But at the moment, all of this sounds much better than earning minimum wage in a grotty bar in the North East of England, don’t you think?

The other day I wrote about how this ‘blog’ was the 5 million and something-th most popular website on the net.

I’ve just this second checked out my uni project, www.worldhiphop.fm, to see how popular that was out of curiosity.

3,635,501st is the answer. Up 5,000,000 in the last few months!

And its the 1,145,277th most popular site in the United States!

Damn!!!!!!!!! I might have a think about launching that station for real. Shit more people are interested in that than what I’ve got to say on here haha! Hmmm… certainly food for thought…

A couple of weeks ago, on the 1st of July to be precise, I wrote that I was going to shed my beer gut in time for the end of august.

I’ve stuck by almost everything I penned that day. I’ve been to the gym all but three weekdays (I had guests up for graduation) and I’ve had spells of healthy eating. Unfortunately, when you graduate all this stuff goes to the back of your mind and you fit in as much student living as possible to make up for the fact that, after you don your robe, you will no longer be entitled to the student lifestyle. So that weekend was particularly messy in terms of what I ate, what I drank and the little exercise I did. But that was always going to happen and I’m glad it did.

This is now the the third week of my seven week scheme, and I’m happy to say that I’ve dropped almost 3kg - which is just over 5lbs - which is almost half a stone. That’s not bad at all. The difference in appearance is hardly staggering, but to me its noticeable. And that is motivation enough to continue with round-the-clock healthy eating and gym visits 5 days a week (reading that sentence back makes it sound like bloody hard work).

Looking at my past few attempts to hammer the gym throughout uni, the lightest I’ve been since I was 18 was just over 80kg (or 12 and a half stone). I’m only a few kg from being there again, and I’m within touching distance of being ‘a healthy weight’ according to what your BMI should be for someone of my age and height. Infact, I think with a couple more visits to the gym I’ll banish the label of ‘overweight’! Which is exactly what I was hoping for.

I’ve seen some pretty bizarre and strange people in the time I’ve been gyming it up - mostly in the swimming pool.

There was one guy who had the thickest, darkest hair I’ve ever seen all down one side of his back, and then a hairless left side, so he kind of looked like a walking ying/yang sign - but I wasn’t sure if this was some kind of medical/surgical result, or if it is just natural. Then, only the other day, in a packed pool where everybody was sticking to their lanes, some asian dude got in and swam directly at me - only to stop seconds before we would collide - and swim back to where he just came from. He did this over and over. After a while I had to get out of the pool because it was becoming impossible to do lengths. I’m not sure if the dude had ever been swimming before or what, but that was pretty bizarre, and rather annoying. Then today there were 6 or 7 ’special’ kids - I’m not sure if they were disabled, ‘bad’ or underpriveleged kids or whatever (they all had community supervisors watching poolside), but they basically stood bang in the middle of the swimming pool across 3 lanes. Which meant the other 10 or so people had to swim around them, often crashing into each other, while these kids just stood around splashing each other. Wouldn’t have been so bad at one end of the pool, but in the centre of the pool across so many lanes that became pretty annoying. And when I say kids they were 15 or 16. Old enough to swim rather than play.

And then there’s the old guy who talks to all the young girls (and no one else)… or the rather overweight gentleman who wears a shiny grey jumpsuit like in the “Mo’ Money Mo’ Problems” video (i’m guessing its supposed to help him lose a lot of weight, but that didn’t work for Biggie)… or the two girls who have been in matching track suits every time i’ve seen them… there’s a lot of weird gym-goers.

It makes me wonder what my ‘weird’ gym-goer trait is?

Valencia v Real Madrid.

First leg of the Spanish super cup.

The day after we arrive in the region.

That. is. sexy.

The Spanish season doesn’t kick off until the 30th/31st August.

The weekend after we visit.

Me and Amy have just booked our first holiday of the year. And I’m pretty happy because it’s the only thing I’ve got to look forward to now that I’ve finished with uni! That’s where you go “awwww”.

We’re joining my dad, his mrs and their kids in a villa in the Alicante/Valencia region of Spain for a week.

Nothing but sun, beaches, bbqs and beer I hope (with a bit of luck I’ll catch a Valencia game).

But most of all I’m looking forward to spending some uninterrupted, stress-free time with my dad and step-mum, as well as laying around doing nothing for a week with Amy. She’ll be the first one to tell you that I need a serious tan.

On a sour note, I can’t believe that £29.99 flights with Jet2 shoot up to £200 each after adding baggage, fuel supplements, taxes and every mundane, little charge that they can think of which they don’t tell you about until you’re about a second away from pressing confirm. Tut.

Oh well, who cares, a month today I’ll be in Valencia!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I just played the worst game of football of my life.

Probably the worst game of football anyone has ever played really.

Just awful it was.

You know that kid who gets hit in the face by the ball, and blazes tap ins over the bar, and generally just can’t do anything right? Yeah, that was me.

This was a bit bizarre as I played with the same group of lads last week and I did fine. Was probably one of the better ones there. Tonight though I was actually embarassed at how bad I was.

I did that Kanu-style scoop over the bar not once, but twice. I went to meet a header at the back post, with an empty net in front of me, and the defender got the slightest touch which meant it hit me square in the face and went wide. I stuck a thigh out to deflect a shot goal bound, but instead sent it sky high.

At one point someone said to me: “I’m surprised they’re still passing to you”. Me too mate, me too.

Passes were generally either over hit or not strong enough. I can’t remember putting in a decent tackle either. I got an assist or two but it was a pretty miserable night because I hate being bad at anything.

To supporters of the ‘beautiful’ game, I apologise. It’ll never happen again. (Well, maybe).

To my surprise, a couple of days before graduation I received a text from a friend of mine saying “congrats on the award”… to which I replied “what award?”… my name was apparently in the graduation guide/booklet thing handed out to everybody attending graduation.

“You won some kind of radio award”, he said.

Eh? Surely I would know if I’d won some kind of radio award? The next day, another friend said they’d seen it on their graduation and it was part of ‘a long list of awards’ so I didn’t think too much of it.

Graduation day rolled around and I was quick to flick through my booklet to see what it was that I’d be awarded? The answer - the only radio award going. The Sun FM Radio Prize, which was the award from the city’s biggest radio station, and it was only awarded to one student each year.

I still had no idea why I’d won it though, or when, or how. So I e-mailed my tutor and I’ve only just go this e-mail back…

Hi Rob,

Congratualtions.
The award was awarded for outstanding achievement at Level 3. You got the highest mark on the MAC391 module [which is the dissertation module that runs throughout the year], indeed the highest mark achieved by any student during my time at the Uni.

It was extremely well deserved. Good luck for the future, whatever your plans.

Regards,

…….

OUTSTANDING achievement in my final year. Made even better by the fact that this particular lecturer has been around since before I was at the uni… so my mark was the best in at least the past three years. Wow.

This has been really weird because I’ve never won an award of any type throughout school (I was always close) or in sport (I was never close) or in anything really.

I’m hoping this award, received by only one student out of hundreds of media students at my uni each year, might be the difference between a job interview and being ignored!

Apologies for more self indulgence, but fuck it, I won an award. Why wouldn’t I write about it?