© 2012 – Snooze Australia. All Rights Reserved

Finding a new bed can be a daunting experience, especially when there is such a large selection of mattresses these days. The biggest question that puzzles us all is “Which mattress should I buy?” and “Which mattress is right for me?”. I can say that last weekend I too was facing this conundrum and ventured out to find the solution. Before we begin I will happily admit that I went into this experience never having really selected a mattress for myself (properly) before and so I was most definitely the uneducated mattress buyer.

After having a look at a few different stores at the Homemakers Centre in Alexandria, I poked my head into Snooze Alexandria where I was met with a sea of friendly faces. After some friendly banter I went on my mission to see what they had available, and this is where Tom stepped in. Tom came over and took me from the A to Z of what I needed to know about buying a new bed, he was able to chat to me on my level and give me the details I needed as well as ensure that I got the right mattress to suit my body and comfort needs.

It is not often you get a person who provides exceptional customer service, but I have to say Tom really went above and beyond and spent as much time with me as I needed to make sure I was comfortable, had seen all the options and had all the tools to make an informed choice as to the mattress that I needed. At no point did I feel rushed and at no point did I feel unattended, Tom always seemed to be there in the background when I was ready to try the next mattress.

The age old saying goes, if you give someone a bad experience they might tell 7/10 people… I prefer to go with if you give me an amazingly exceptional experience, like Tom did, I will shout it from the rooftops till the cows come home.

So if you are in Sydney and in need of a new bed, a new mattress, or both, I would have no hesitation in telling you to head over to Snooze at the Alexandria Homemakers Centre, the staff are great, the selection is great and they have some great deals available (YAY for Easter Sales).

Keep up the awesome work Tom and the rest of the team at Snooze Alexandria.

Stuart

The post Snooze Alexandria… THE place to go for a new bed or Mattress appeared first on Stuart Ryan's Personal Blog.

©Depositphotos/Konstanttin

I have never been a big drinker, ever… I can safely say I have only ever been drunk twice in my life and didn’t like it much at all. So when I *do* have a drink I like to make sure it is a good one. After recently attending a wine tasting with a workmate I purchased a case of Teusner Riebke Shiraz (2011). Out of all the wines we drunk on the night it was definitely an all round favourite (out of the four of us that went I think we ended up with three cases of the Riebke and a couple of bottles of other wines).

I got to share this with my lovely new girlfriend this year to celebrate the end of 2012 and the onset of a new year and a new me for 2013.

After being on my learner license, and two provisional licenses over the last four years I am happy that I can now enjoy the occasional drink (as NSW rules are VERY strict with ZERO blood alcohol level until you are on your full license). While I don’t plan on drinking regularly, and am very much against drinking and driving, it is nice to know that I can now safely enjoy a glass with dinner.

I can also definitely say, while I am NOOOOO connoisseur, I can tell you that if you need a good bottle of red to go with a BBQ the Tuesner Riebke Shiraz is well worth it. I don’t exactly know how to describe it but I can say it is a wonderfully full flavoured red wine and the first time I tasted it I thought, quick give me a BBQ now.

While we are here, a quick Happy New Year to everyone and this year should *hopefully* see more of me blogging now that my university studies have completed and I have graduated.

If there is something you would like to see me write about, review, read, dance or otherwise please let me know.

Stuart

The post The Riebke Northern Barossa Shiraz 2011 – an amazing taste appeared first on Stuart Ryan's Personal Blog.

It was great to see and a great song too. You can see more about it at http://outpostchoir.com

The post Sydney Gay and Lesbian Choir sing for World Aids Day 2012 appeared first on Stuart Ryan's Personal Blog.

LOL OK… go on, did it make you really truly LaughOutLOUD?

The post Call Me Maybe? – The wonders of what people will do for 15 minutes of fame! appeared first on Stuart Ryan's Personal Blog.

©Depositphotos/nitrub

We all have our vices in life, I can definitely say my biggest vice is Diet Coke… well WAS diet coke… My caffeinated beverage of choice and the addiction to caffeine are something I know all too well. I also know that I drink far too much of the stuff and now on doctors orders, I have to cut soft-drink (diet or otherwise) out of my Diet except on occasion. So I guess my one vice is gone LOL… However, we all have our vices, that secret pleasure, the thing that we turn to after a long hard day to help us unwind.

What is your vice? What is it that tickles your fancy?

Anyhoo today marks the end of my excess consumption of the drink, I am down to one a day, and am starting to cut that out as well (going cold turkey AINT pretty believe me).

Stuart

The post Vices in life… what is yours? appeared first on Stuart Ryan's Personal Blog.

©Depositphotos/iqoncept

Ahh good old social media, how it dominates our lives these days. One of the questions I often find myself asking is how do you say no to someone who requests to connect to you with social media when you really have no reason to. This is not so much a problem for platforms like Twitter where everything you say is public, but more a problem for platforms like Facebook where I like to personally restrict my circle to family and close friends.

Anyone who knows me on Facebook will know that around once a year I do a Facebook “Culling” to trim the fat off the list. As a little amusement I post everyone letting them know it is coming then a “YAAY, if you are reading this you survived” before and after the cull. As a quick sidebar for some reason these are ALWAYS the posts that get the most discussion and laughs on my facebook… go figure.

This time I did it however the one person who was the biggest reason for me doing the cull chimed in and said “oh I hope you won’t be getting rid of me”, LOL I had to be frank, “yea I will, sorry”. But this raises the point, should you straight up reject friend requests when they come in, or do you accept them, wait for a while and then silently remove them.

The people who you haven’t seen in years, who barely even knew you at school, or you are no longer friends with due to a falling out, how do you manage this unpleasant area of cutting the Facebook knot?

I am curious to hear other’s thoughts, leave a comment if you have a suggestion

Stuart

The post How do you say no to a friend request? appeared first on Stuart Ryan's Personal Blog.

©Depositphotos/scanrail

With all the writing and posting we do, we bloggers often find spreading the word can be a significant challenge. When the stars align, our fingers strike the keyboard in juuuuust the right way and we manage to hit that awesome note and write a perfect post, the challenge of sharing that with the world can be the hardest tasks for a blogger.

Often we rely on friends, readers, and people who find our sites via search engines to help us spread the word if they find a post interesting or informative, helpful or hilarious. Most blogs you will see have like buttons (similar to those on the left) or at the bottom of the post to help make it easy for those that appreciate what we have written to spread the word.

The other thing that greatly drives a blogger is when people comment on his or her posts. Be it feedback, constructive criticism or even just someone letting us know that we put a smile on their face, that is what brings us back to keep writing time and time again.

So if you ever find a post that you are reading on any writers blog that particularly tickles your fancy don’t hesitate to let the blogger know with a comment, or like it with Facebook to help spread the word and share the post with your friends.

Stuart

(or if you are really bored I totally understand if you just want to poke, prod and tickle me in comments also… can’t blame you for that)

The post How sharing with social media helps us out… appeared first on Stuart Ryan's Personal Blog.

©Depositphotos/robeo123

The key thing to remember in life is that sometimes you have to just take a leap of faith and ask. Remember that there is never any harm in asking and as the simple saying goes… If you don’t ask the answer WILL be no.

Often people say to me “How on EARTH did you arrange that… no seriously?”, or “How the heck do you manage to do things like that?”. Often as crazy as it sounds, my simple response is that I just asked, I figure when you’ve got nothing, you’ve got nothing to lose (so to speak). Take the case and point of last week. I saw that Samsung had a new vacuum cleaner on the market called the Navibot SR8980. Being the geek that I am I thought that the product looked awesome and I wanted to get my hands dirty with it and see just how well it perfomed. Luckily for me the PR contacts details were on the bottom of the article which made my life significantly easier.

I dropped Alexandria an email and mentioned that I had participated in a blogger product review program previously (by Canon Australia), and while it had been some time I would really like the opportunity to get my hands on a unit to do some real, in home domestic testing of the unit and to do a review of the Navibot on my technical blog.

A few days later I received a lovely email from Alexandria, while all the units are currently out for review, she kindly offered to send me one in two weeks time so that I could get my hands dirty. While not *everyone* would be able to do this, having a tech blog that I am posting on regularly again certainly helped my case, it does re-iterate the point of… you really do just have to ask.

So never be afraid to put your feelers out and simply ask the question, when you are polite, friendly and chirpy it really does work wonders for building rapport and working your way towards a YES!

Stuart

P.S. Keep an eye out on TechnicalNotebook in about a month’s time for the review of the Navibot SR8980.

The post If you don’t ask the answer WILL be no! appeared first on Stuart Ryan's Personal Blog.

©Depositphotos/iqoncept

Every day we see, hear, and consume advertisements in an ever increasing number of formats. I will be the first to recognise the irony of me writing this post on a blog that itself serves advertisements via Google Adsense. However, one thing I have come to realise, is that advertising is an unfortunate, necessary evil and one first has to acknowledge that lest they lose their minds.

With the advent of personal TV recorders and time shifting devices such as TiVo which have now been on Australian shores for a few years, control has begun to fall back to the consumer to be able to skip over these advertisements and help to manage at least a portion of what we are consuming. However, the waters are not always as clear as that, in the current season of Masterchef, for example, Channel 10 has started showing  ’Masterchef Moments’ about half way through an adbreak. These are clearly designed to confuse the watcher who is fast forwarding through an ad break to think that the show was back on, when in fact, the ‘Moment’ was followed by a sponsor message and then more ads.

When you add these attempts to trick the user to the almost constant product placement throughout shows like Masterchef it becomes almost increasingly difficult (and nigh on impossible) for the average consumer to avoid being bombarded by all these messages. At times this can be overwhelming and stressful, not to mention confusing, especially when mixed messages are being received.

You will note that earlier on I said advertisements are a necessary evil as unfortunately it is something that we have to accept. In order to pay for content (in the context of radio and television) and to ensure the business gets sales and is profitable it is essential for businesses to use advertising and to disseminate their message. However I do feel that businesses need to manage more effectively, the fine line between getting their message across and overloading consumers to the point of pushing them away.

One perfect example of this comes from Neil (a.k.a. @en_gy on Twitter) in which he stated recently: “Dear @Coles. Just left the Waterloo store with a third of what I was going to buy after the #DownDown ad started playing twice in a row”. I too have had a similar experience when at the Coles Concord store in which I just wanted to leave the premises due to the sheer annoyance of the constant flooding of the #DownDown campaign. This bombards the customer within the store, whereby adding to the already large marketing campaign outside the stores via any and all forms of media that Coles seem to be able to get their hands on.

Some of you might say that Coles has themselves a winning mix here, as in fact here I am writing about the very campaign which annoys so many of us, but with Coles and as with Masterchef’s constant bombardment I can happily say that I am starting to vote with my feet. If companies are overloading the customer, like Neil and myself, people will start to vote with their feet, by either leaving the store, or simply changing the channel (as I have done more regularly during Masterchef when I have just been frustrated by blatant product placement).

I think it time companies took a page out of campaigns such as Qantas ‘I still call Australia home’ campaign. I remember reading some time back in an in-flight magasine that the reason we see this ad so infrequently, is to ensure that on the rare occasion we do see the ad it has that same effect that it had had the first time we saw it (and in some cases a more profound effect).

So what are you thoughts?

Do you find that the overload of advertisements from every possible media format is becoming too overwhelming? Furthermore are individual campaigns losing their effect by their sheer saturation of use and beginning to drive customers away? I would love if you could post your thoughts below, and if you are bored and could spare a minute to share on Twitter or Facebook that would be AWESOME!

Stuart

The post Advertising overload, when it all becomes too much appeared first on Stuart Ryan's Personal Blog.

©Depositphotos/zastavkin

As strange as it sounds when she is smoking! I notice it so often these days, a stunningly gorgeous lady that suddenly pulls out a cigarette and instantly goes from hot, to not. What I cannot believe is in this day and age people know the medical issues that can result from smoking and yet they still do it?

I remember back in the days of high school, people offered me cigarettes on more occasions than I care to remember, luckily I had seen more than enough people that were trying to quit and therefore had the sense never to start in the first place. I do wonder however, why to this day people insist on smoking.

As far as I can tell, it is expensive, dirty, there are less and less places you can do it, and thankfully it is becoming less socially acceptable. I also know more and more people are finding it an extremely unattractive trait in a potential partner, due to both short and long term factors.

So I pose to you smokers out there:

1. Why do you do it, what is the actual benefit in smoking a cigarette?
2. Are you starting to feel like you are outcast because it is falling on the social acceptance ladder? and…
3. Do you wish you had never started?

For those of you that don’t smoke, what are your thoughts:

1. Have you ever been a smoker before? If so why did you quit?
2. Do you hate smoking or does it not bother you?

#CuriousRandomThoughtOfTheDay

Stuart

The post When is a smoking hot gal, not a smoking hot gal? appeared first on Stuart Ryan's Personal Blog.