Category Archives: Doing

Why I Switched to Poster

You may have noticed some changes here recent­ly. Here’s a hint: fresh con­tent! Want to know my secret? The Poster app! Now I know we’ve all heard that the iPad is not a con­tent-cre­ation device, but I’m find­ing it pret­ty easy myself. In fact, I haven’t reopened my Mac­Book once, not even to change my blog theme!

Why do I like it so much? It does­n’t try to do any­thing more than allow you to draft, sched­ule and pub­lish con­tent. I don’t need a read­er baked into the app, or to see stats on my per­son­al blog. I just want to dive in and bang out 250–500 words about some­thing I liked enough to write about. Like Poster! If you want to start using your iPad for blog­ging, you should check it out.

Dressing Well for the World Wide Web

2012 was a mon­u­men­tal year for me, both per­son­al­ly and pro­fes­sion­al­ly. One of the things that was trans­for­ma­tive for me was learn­ing to dress well after sev­er­al false starts. If you know me, you know I came from a world of rock tees and torn jeans. Like many guys, the tran­si­tion to work wear was painful. I strug­gled with ill-fit­ting busi­ness casu­al, wore bad shoes and only got it right if I picked the wardrobe out with help from my wife. Jesse Thorn’s Put This On changed all of that for me in 2012.

I don’t remem­ber when exact­ly I start­ed watch­ing and fol­low­ing Put This On. I devoured Sea­son 1 and have been fol­low­ing Sea­son 2 with great inter­est. I even bought a Sav­ile Row suit on eBay and had it tai­lored for me! Quite a leap for a guy who used to wear a torn (and awe­some) Son­ic Youth “Sis­ter” tee to the office on a rou­tine basis.

Need­less to say, the series changed the way I viewed menswear. The mes­sage that clothes are impor­tant nev­er sank in until I start­ed to see that you did­n’t need to spend a for­tune to present your­self in a man­ner that makes you stand out. Just know­ing how shirts, pants and jack­ets should fit goes a long way toward look­ing bet­ter and project confidence. The best part? I already had lots of great pieces hang­ing in my clos­et! You may, too.

As my col­lege bud­dy Tom told me once, “There’s no such thing as being over­dressed; there’s only look­ing good.” It was great advice, and I’m sor­ry I wait­ed so long to take it. Please take this advice: if you’re a guy who wants to improve his wardrobe and does­n’t know where to begin, please vis­it putthison.com, watch all the videos and read it every day. You’ll be glad you did.

A New Look and Identity for Ramsayings

As my per­son­al blog­ging iden­ti­ty cri­sis con­tin­ues to evolve, I’m find­ing more than ever that pur­su­ing a niche is the only way to be tru­ly suc­cess­ful with blog­ging. It’s been near­ly 10 years since I launched the first ver­sion of Black­mail Is My Life on Blog­ger and I can hon­est­ly say that being a gen­er­al­ist who tries to incor­po­rate aspects of his per­son­al life is a fool’s errand, that is, unless you can ded­i­cate your heart and soul to it.

You know what’s com­ing next.

Yep, a new look and iden­ti­ty for Ram­say­ings! Yes, I’m work­ing with my Inter­net super­friend Len Dam­i­co on installing a new theme that I hap­pened across on Twit­ter this week­end (you should total­ly hire Len for what­ev­er you need that involves, you know, the web) and I’m going to focus on the social web here going for­ward. I know it’ll be a total snooze­fest for friends and fam­i­ly, but, you know, thought lead­er­ship is a thing that I prob­a­bly should invest some time in as I con­tin­ue to grow as a com­mu­ni­ca­tor on the social web.

The new theme? You know I get bored and it’s been almost two years since I installed the cur­rent theme. As much as I loved adding things like the Fol­low Suite with Roz’s help, it just does­n’t make much sense to have any­thing to speak of in the right rail. So I’ll try the new one for a while and see how it goes. Could be a real­ly cool way for me to get more moti­vat­ed to blog about the sort of work I do and my thoughts about how we’ll talk about brands in the future. Look­ing for­ward to think­ing about it more here.