The move to Spain complete: a brief update on my situation and the future of this site

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 Submitted by RagsToRich on Mon, 2011-05-23 19:28
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Hello everyone,
 
You'll have to forgive me, it's been a rather long time since I've wrote an article on this website and as you might expect from the challenges that relocating to Spain offered, I've been rather busy.
 
Most recently I've been working on a new project which is online at www.profesorrich.com. For the moment this consists only in me giving private English classes to local Spanish speakers and also in writing an initially free downloadable e-book, in Spanish, about the methods which I have learnt, used, and adapted for language learning which allowed me to learn conversational Spanish from level absolute zero in about one year.
 
My plans for this website are somewhat hazy. I would like to get the site redesigned, updated with the latest drupal, and perhaps start updating it again. I am certainly just as commited to self-development as ever, more-so if anything. My walls are covered in post-its and notes, I have a white-board stained with plans and designs, and my desk is pilled up with note-pads and scraps of paper. Make no mistake, rags is still "on it". But I would struggle to find the time to compose high-quality articles on the subject right now, plus a lot of what I'm doing is quite experimental and I'd like to perfect it a little more before unleashing it upon the world ;). In the mean time I will continue to renew the hosting on this site essentially forever so the articles and texts on here will always be available to whoever wants to read them.
 
If you want to know more about the move to Spain and how that went there's a rather tounge in cheek video blog which me and a few friends put together documenting the whole thing. It's pretty raw and immature in parts, but if you can handle that sort of thing then I'd suggest you check it out and have a laugh: migratingtospain.blogspot.com.
 
Thanks for reading, feel free to leave questions in the comments and I promise I'll answer them as always - eventually. ;)
 
Rich

Where has Rags gone?

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 Submitted by RagsToRich on Fri, 2010-08-13 09:59
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Apologies for the lack of updates – but there may be some more of that to come. In the mean time I’d suggest anyone stopping a by check out some of the articles in the archive – there’s some good stuff on this site which I revisit myself from time to time.
 
I’m now 3 weeks off moving to Spain – that means I haven’t found much time to keep TRM updated. Also I have this ever-growing desire to completely redesign the site from scratch. That’s going to mean reading books on design, creating designs, and then implementing the whole thing and I’d estimate the work at about 100-200 hours. So it could be a couple of months before I find somewhere to fit that in.
 
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Trialing the MotivAider

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 Submitted by RagsToRich on Tue, 2010-07-20 13:36
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My MotivAiderSome time ago I was asked by Steve Lorinson to test out his product the MotivAider.
 
Actually what happened is Steve posted a comment on my blog name-dropping his device as a brilliant motivational aid. I challenged him to come up with the goods and I’d review it objectionably – and to his credit he came back to me almost instantly and sent me a sample device.
 
Over a month later and it’s still sitting on my shelf screaming “use me”. Preparing for the move to Spain is taking a vast amount of my time, hence I haven't had the opportunity.
 
The basic functionality of the device is to vibrate at set intervals – intended purely as a reminder for you about a commitment you’ve made to yourself. So for example if you decided to improve your posture you would write down a statement, something like “smart successful go-getters like me keep a good posture.”
 
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Being positive, remaining upbeat and using optimism: a full discourse on positivity

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 Submitted by RagsToRich on Tue, 2010-07-06 11:51
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What actually is real positivity? How can it be useful? What are the initial dangers of trying to use positivity and why do some people warn against “sugar-coating” everything?
 
The truth is being a positive person is far more complex than it may look to be at first glance. The dogmatic advice to just “be positive” is rarely useful for more than a brief reminder or for a short boost. It isn’t just a case of seeing the cup half-full instead of half-empty.
 
Positivity has a number of sensations and emotions attached to it. It is deeper than just a rephrasing – this is why it’s unreasonable to expect to go from an energy vampire to positive and upbeat over-night. There’s a kind of enjoyable, upbeat, bright and unrelenting energy which flows with positivity.
 
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