I seem to have jumbled around a few words in the chorus, which just goes to show how rough and ready these kitchen recordings are, but it’s not perfection I am after.
Switching off – Elbow, Kitchen Ukulele Session
Easy Chocolate Cake – A mothers day winner
easy chocolate cake, the mess we made
Enough of SEO and kitchen ukulele sessions. I thought I would share with you a cracking cake recipe. A couple of weeks ago I posted a fairy cake recipe and told you about the bear and my adventures in baking.
It was mother’s day last weekend. I’ve always found it a bit of an odd one, it’s not about buying presents (except perhaps for some of her favourite chocolates or such like), it’s about Tilly and her. We’ve already done some framed photos, picture mugs and such over mothers day, birthdays and christmas and I really wasn’t sure what to do this year.
So given our recent baking endeavours I thought something from the kitchen was a good idea, but I wanted it to be a bit special. I wanted to back a cake but if I’m honest, I was a little worried. I’ve never really made proper cakes. And proper cakes involve your measuring being spot on, and I’m a bit haphazard.
I hit google with chocolate cake searches and very quickly found the BBC’s easy chocolate cake recipe. It looked straight forward enough, so I grabbed some of the ingredients and thought we could give it a go, if it didn’t go well, nevermind at least we tried.
Let me say now, it was gooooood. Really, really chocolatey lovely.
Let me also say, it is really easy to make. Tidge had a blast, I didn’t panic too much. The only sticking point was how long it took to cook. It’s quite a wet recipe with oil and water being added, and it took me alot longer than the advised time to get it cooked. But it worked.
We left the layers over night, then made the chocolate sauce the following morning, which is painfully simple. That takes a little planning as you need the sauce to set a bit, but it is good. We used is as an opportunity to go to the park and chase bouncy balls.
Decorating was alot of fun, we used white and chocolate buttons on top of the chocolate icing, we had plenty leftover so enjoyed munching that, and the bear enjoyed swiping buttons while I wasn’t looking. All in all we had an awful lot of fun, and mummy was suitably impressed.
I think I shall be making chocolate cakes fairly regularly now….
the finished chocolate cake
Fleet Foxes Ukulele Cover – He doesn’t know why
Not a Job Elbow Ukulele Cover
This is Not a Job, from the album Cast of Thousands. I always say it’s my least favourite album, but some of my favourite songs are on it. This is one of them.
I have also uploaded a ukulele cover of switching off by elbow
Bloodless, Tom McRae Ukulele Cover
Another kitchen recording on the ukulele. This time it’s Bloodless by Tom McRae. It’s from his eponymous debut album. Only recently started playing it on the uke, hopefully you’ll excuse the coughing!
Why not check out my cover of he doesn’t know why by Fleet Foxes or Bon Iver’s Flume
Flume, Bon Iver, Ukulele Cover
Since I picked up my ukulele I have been playing flume alot, it’s simple and alot of fun to sing. The acoustics in my new kitchen really help too.
In the spirit of just getting on with it and generating some content. I have been recording a few quick takes of some songs the last couple of days, my ‘kitchen ukulele sessions‘ if you will. The quality isn’t the best out there and the performances are a bit ragged, but I don’t see that it much matters.
There are more floating around on my youtube channel, which I will share with you, but for now, I thought I’d start you off with this.
Blogger relations
Bloggers are an essential part of alot of businesses SEM campaigns. Bloggers are the fleet of potential brand advocates or natural link builders that every business craves. And if you can approach them in the right way they can be massively powerful for your brand.
There are two articles I wanted to share to whet your appetite with blogger relation ideas. The first is simply some very basic what not to do, the second are some examples of blogger outreach campaigns that have really caught the imagination. These two posts cover to extremes of the blogger relation stratosphere.
- The Bad Pitches Bloggers Sometimes Receive is a post I found via @manvdadhood. It’s worth a read if you are already approaching bloggers or are considering it. Quite simply, it’s a common sense approach, so make sure your common sense is intact
- 9 examples of great blogger relations From Econsultancy, gives you 9 examples of great campaigns
I think there is alot that can be said about reaching out to bloggers, for me two things scream out
- Get it right, think about who you are talking to and what you are trying to achieve. As ever it’s that base of influencing, people will do things that you want for their reasons, not yours
- Think creatively and the opportunities proliferate wildly
How to train an SEO in 5 days
Search Engine Watch is one of my favourite SEM resources. I thoroughly recommend signing up for their daily newsletters.
They shared an article the other day about taking someone new to SEO and giving them what can only be described as a baptism of fire and squeezing in everything you need to get started in SEO in one week including analytics, link building, server side stuff and optimisation. Simple!
Have a read of How to train an SEO in 5 days
Google SEO starter guide
As I’ve already said in the introduction to the Search Engine Marketing section, there is alot of great content about SEM out there, but there is also alot of crap. I thought I would work through sharing some of my favourite sites, resources and articles, to give you what is at least in my opinion worth a look.
There’s perhaps no better starting point to learning about SEO than the Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide from those cheeky monkeys at Google. Love them or hate them, what they say about SEO is what goes (assuming you are in the UK, western Europe or USA), so their starter guide is worth a look.
It has been translated into over 40 languages so should be accessible for most, what I would say is this is Googles world view and isn’t going to provide you with many strategies, just the base values to make sure you tick off. It is also now 2.5 years since it has been updated and alot has been changing in the world of search in that time. Either way, to understand the principles it’s a great starting point
Welcome to DanPatmore.com
The first post on this site did a job of introducing what this new version of the site was all about. Essentially, rather than bumbling around the internet on lots of sites, I am now bumbling round the internet on one site. You can find out a little more about me on the about Dan Patmore page
My Creations
Where you will find my kitchen ukulele sessions, poetry, spoken word, flash fiction and art and whatever else I try my hand at
Ideas for Dads
A blog with my meandering experiences in parenthood and list of ideas for dads of stuff to do with their kids
Sharing Cool Stuff
Simply sharing some of the stuff I’ve found that I think is cool, I’ve split it into a few sections, such as ted videos, personal development etc..
Search Engine Marketing
I am a bit of a search geek, as I work in Search Engine Marketing , so through this section I will share any articles, ideas and stuff that I think are worth a look
Hope you enjoy some of what is here, if you do would be lovely to hear from you (dan@danpatmore.com).
Peace, love and respect
Dan x
