2010 hasn't been a particularly good year so far. No competition wins for a start - a bit disappointing considering how many I've entered recently.

Plus the weather is playing havoc with travel plans and getting to work. Can't wait for the snow to go and things to get back to normal.

I've added a little free download to the free stuff page. This is an analysis tool for your computer. It tells you, amongst other things, the make and model of the motherboard and chipset. This is useful info for anyone looking to upgrade their computer.

I'm also working on a new project in conjunction with Britcover Home Insurance. They offer really good savings on home insurance, buildings insurance and contents insurance. If you are currently paying £20 or £30 each month you could be paying £10 or £15 instead. It adds up to a big money saving over the course of a year.

I will be posting more info on this and putting up a dedicated home insurance page on the site in the coming weeks.

Another site I've been promoting is The Online Business Directory. This lists businesses across the UK in a variety of categories. If your business has a website you can list for free and drive targeted traffic to your site.

Finally I have a number of items posted on Ebay for sale currently. If you are looking for a 42" rear projection TV, 6MP Olympus digital camera, King Keg half full of beer, Reddyvac vacuum cleaner, old computer bits or a DVD recorder visit my ebay page and get bidding!

The first of my two "mystery" competition wins has arrived today and can therefore be added to my list of Competition Wins of 2009.

It is a pair of Salomon XT Wings running shoes, courtesy of the SAAB in motion website. They look absolutely fantastic and they will certainly get used as I will be starting running again soon now my gym membership has ended.

A quick search online shows them to be worth between seventy and eighty pounds. A nice win and the type of thing I could never justify buying in "real life". I would have to look for a second hand pair of running shoes on Ebay if I were paying for them myself.

Just in time for Christmas too. I might wrap them up for myself as we are having a VERY low-key Christmas this year. Than and I aren't really buying for each other and will probably only buy a couple of little bits for our son. He's still a bit too young to really understand what's going on at Christmas.

A lot of people I talk to at the moment are doing the same. For many people Christmas has lost it's magic. It's just become far too commercial and starts far too early.

As a reaction to this more and more people I meet seem to have an anti-Christmas feeling. I know I would rather be on the beach in Thailand supping a bear on Christmas day. Maybe when our son is older we will feel differently. But for this year we aren't getting involved.

Anyway if I don't post again before Christmas have a good one, whatever you are doing, and here's hoping 2010 will be a LOT better than 2009, which has been a pretty miserable year chez nous. All the best.

Well, just as I was moaning about the lack of competition prizes coming my way I receive two competition wins in three days!

As I've always said, it's a numbers game and the more comps you enter the more prizes you are going to win. However, the distribution of these prizes is not always equal, so some months you won't win any and others you will win two or three.

That's why I've been so disappointed recently as I've been managing to enter plenty of competitions but without success. But all good things come to he who waits, and I've had a couple of prize wins this week.

They are listed on my Competition Wins of 2009 page and make it look a bit better, at least numerically if not in terms of the prize value.

The State of Play goodies, a clipboard and T-shirt, received on Tuesday without any note of who sent them, and the Tanning Mousse from Cosmopolitan will both probably end up as stocking fillers at Christmas for some lucky (?) person.

I've just entered a couple of competitions with GMTV and ITV which offer considerably better prizes, and I'm hoping as it is my birthday today (40th!!!) that I will have some luck and land a big one.

I used my Visit Liverpool prize last night to spend my birthday at the Holiday Inn Express in Albert Dock. I have to say it is a lovely hotel, very much recommended, and very handy indeed for the Albert Dock area which I really like visiting.

The room was large, spotless and had views over the central "lake". It was well fitted (lovely big flat screen TV) and had everything we needed. The inclusive breakfast was good too, lots of choice and very tasty.

Anyway, I have some more celebrating to do this evening so I will end here and keep my fingers crossed for more prizes soon.

Just about ready to get the new competition up and running. I'm charging the mobile phone as I write this, although it will need charging again nearer the time of despatch.

This blog post will form part of the terms and conditions of the competition so make sure you read it carefully. Basically the prize is as sent and any problems after are down to the winner!

The phone is currently locked to the Virgin Mobile network as it is a replacement phone sent by them for one that broke. It hasn't been used by me and still has the screen protectors on.

I found an old PAYG Virgin Mobile sim in the garage and have put it in. It is however showing "Limited Service" - this may mean that you just need to put credit onto it or register it or the sim may not be working. It is up to the winner whether they try to get the phone unlocked to another network, try and get it working with Virgin (or flog it on Ebay!!).

I found the original box for the phone and inside were earphones and USB cable, both still bagged as they have not been used. The charger, CD and manuals are also included and are in excellent condition.

Although this is a "new" phone I cannot provide you with any warranty. If it breaks in a months time then it's down to the winner to fix it. My original phone lasted about 10 months so I would expect that this new one should at least last that long!

OK, those are the rules, so to enter the competition visit the competitions page and follow the link.

As promised my new money making website is now up and running. I've also added a page on my main website where you can download the free money making ebook.

Is it easy to make money online? I've been working online for a few years now and am completely self taught. I've used a mixture of books and online research to enable me to use html and asp. I've also spent a lot of time and energy learning about search engine optimisation, not that I'm an expert by any means.

All of these skills should stand me in good stead for making a go of my new money making venture. In fact I've already had my first free ebook request which I've sent out this evening.

So fingers crossed that I will soon be making money online and I will be reporting back here on this blog from time to time with my results.

For the complete novice this will obviously be a little bit harder, although the website set up is done for you and you just have to learn about promoting it.

The materials that are provided will give you a good start and should enable you to get your first sales to at least get your money back. After that it's all profit.

You need to look at it sensibly, you are unlikely to become a millionaire but could make a nice few quid or more if you get it working right for you. You will only get out of it what you are prepared to put into it.

I'm looking long term for when this site gets a few more visitors and generates its own income without me having to work too hard. At the moment it's all work with the promise of rewards in the future!

Anyway, to get started download my free ebook about making money online and see what you think. Good luck.

I already have a page dedicated to free stuff which is for permanent free offers.

Occasionally I come across time limited free offers and these will be posted on this blog.

I've received an email from the Nokia music store today offering me 5 free tracks. They can be downloaded and played on a PC so no need for a Nokia phone.

They sent me a special link to sign up, however at the bottom it stated that there are more spare accounts (for a limited time only).

Click here for 5 free music tracks.

By signing up you are also entered into a competition for Christmas shopping in New York with $1500 spending money!

The PC software downloads quickly and easily and now its just a matter of choosing my free tracks.

Keep checking back for more free offers, in particular the free money making ebook which will shortly be available online.

Well done Virgin Mobile. My replacement Samsung U600 mobile phone has arrived exactly as promised.

However, in the meantime I had borrowed a beaten up Nokia 3510i from a friend of a friend.

Whereas my Samsung could barely get a signal at my workplace, the old Nokia gets a couple of bars, meaning I can make and receive calls!

OK, so it's not got a camera or any features, but the idea of a phone is for talking and texting and the Nokia does this just fine.

Plus I'm due my upgrade with Virgin in November so only a handful of weeks to wait for my next new phone. I'm definitely choosing Nokia this time!

So I'm not putting my new Samsung phone into service, I'm saving it for next month's competition prize.

It will come with a Virgin Mobile sim card and all of the other bits I can find (charger etc.). So come back after 15th October for a chance to win it.

In the meantime look at the competitions page for this months DVD competition.

Good luck to all.

We have launched our first competition on Improve Your Future. You can find it by visiting our competitions page.

The prizes are three sets of DVDs. You can choose which one you want or try to win all three.

• Vacancy and Captivity - two thrillers (horror?) so over 18s only for entry to this prize.
• A farewell to arms and The snows of Kilimanjiro - two classics based on Ernest Hemingway novels
• Shaft and Deep blue sea (pictured) - two films starring Samuel L Jackson.

Closing date is 14th October 2009.

We will be adding regular new competitions so keep checking back. Hopefully the prizes will get better as the site expands!

If you are a business looking to promote your products and would like to sponsor a competition please contact us by email (link is on our home page). We will be happy to give you some space to get your message across in return for some great prizes for our visitors.

I got home from work last night and my wife told me about the photos she had taken that day of our son taking his first steps. When I went to look on the camera the message came up "No Picture". All of the photos had been wiped from the XD card.

Not only had we lost that days photos but also his first birthday and a weekend holiday we'd all had with family. My wife was distraught.

I don't have an XD card reader so I quickly drove down to ASDA to put it into one of their machines to see if they could see the photos (maybe it was the camera that was faulty). They couldn't see the photos either.

Next it was onto the internet to see if it was possible to recover them. Apparently so as the photos are not physically deleted from the card but overwritten with new data when more are taken. Phew.

Now all I had to do was track down the necessary software, preferably free, to recover the photos. After several downloads of software that claimed to be free but wasn't, or that just didn't work, I finally found the answer to my prayers.

A completely free program to recover photos from my XD card. The website guided me through it all step-by-step and it worked perfectly. It took around 45 minutes to recover 417 photos on the card, including all of the missing ones.

I've put the link on my free stuff page as I was so impressed. Thank you so much the people at ZAR, whoever you are, for this excellent program. You've made my wife very happy!!