photo by Paul Albertella

Yep, I couldn’t think of a better title. Today is a perfect excuse to have a go at making pancakes, the chance for students to work together perfecting the art of making and tossing pancakes. It is probable one of the best opportunities to get flat/house mates together for a fun cost effective meal!

Lets face it, this could be one of the cheapest meals you make all year, although it does depend on what topping takes your fancy!

Firstly, don’t bother with ready made pancake mixes, it is easy enough to make your own mix.

Here’s the recipe I use:

Ingredients.

110g/3.9oz Plain Flour

2 Eggs

275ml/9.6fl oz Whole Milk

Butter

Method.

1. Sieve flour into mixing bowl.
2. Make a well in the flour and break the 2 eggs into well, whisk in eggs to make ‘dough’ like.
3. Then slowly add milk whilst whisking, fork is suitable, although hard work!
4. Melt a little butter into frying pan and add enough mix to cover bottom of pan.
5. Turnover pancake once cooked on one side, or toss if you are skilled enough!
6. Was cooked on both sides and serve with your favorite topping.

The recipe I use makes about 12ish depending on the size of frying pan used. You could also use water instead of totally milk, it’s just my preference.

The topping is upto you, I usually go for lemon juice and sugar, golden syrup or ‘Thunder & Lightning’, a Cornish topping with Cornish clotted cream and golden syrup drizzled on top. Although I’m sure there are plenty of delicious alternatives, maybe you can suggest some of your favourites for readers and me to try!

Hope you enjoyed your pancakes!Martyn.

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photo by Mel B.

Exchanging links, can and is one of the best ways to get a new blog (or website) off the ground.

Potential visitors are highly unlikely to accidentally stumble on to your site unless they are led there from a link. But gaining those initial links can be difficult, top bloggers are not going to link to you, unless you have stunning content. So gaining traffic sources to a new blog will need a proactive attitude.

But who to exchange with and why? Well the general rule is, for bloggers targeting a certain niche, will need to get bloggers from within their niche to link to them. This is mainly because Uncle Google wants you to do this as links from similar sites help Googles crawlers as well as tells Google that your site is important to that niche. In other words it’s like a recommendation to them. Whereas links from sites that are not similar or beneficial to visitors gets marked down by Google.

You may now be wondering why I’m writing this, well I’m looking to exchange links with other bloggers who think that they have content that may be interesting/beneficial to my readers. I’m still new around the blogosphere so exchanging links seems a natural way to make those so important initial connections.

So if your interested I’m going to be actively seeking 5 link exchanges with blogs that are either ‘student’ or ‘make money’ related over the coming two weeks.

If your interested, drop me an email with a link to your blog, see the contact page to find out how.

I can’t guarantee I will take up everyone who asks, but I look forward to any offers.

Cheers,

Martyn

photo by Albertas Agejevas

Facebook has a large following, especially amongst students. It is a great social network that allows you to communicate quickly by typing messages on each others ‘wall’, but what if you wanted to talk to someone instead of having to wait for a reply.

Well I discussed previously how you can save money by using Skype, but that still didn’t allow you to make free calls to a landline. But what if you are living in your own/rented house. How can you let your friends call you for free?

But now there is a way from a company called Truphone. In which their Facebook app ‘Call Me’ button, places a button on your Facebook profile allowing people to phone your landline for free, from their computer (with microphone and headphones).

Sounds to good to be true, but there are couple of drawbacks to the system, firstly you are limited to the number of minutes you can phone someone for, at present this is 25 mins for those without the Facebook app and 2.5 hours for those with, per month.

Secondly there is a risk to your privacy, especially if your profile is visible to other users in your network, e.g. the girl with the pretty picture, may find she gets some calls from guys, that she rather didn’t get. Also even if your profile is only available to friends, the ‘prank’ / drunk call is still a possibility.

The drawbacks aside, it has the potential to be a very useful way of keeping up with the latest gossip, or to just get/pass on information. As long as it remains free it has my initial backing.

Martyn