Archive for April 21st, 2008

Coming out of my shell

Monday, April 21st, 2008

Recently, I posted a very embarrassing story that involved a candle. Here is the full text of that story.

Over the years as this story has spread from my small group of friends to a wider group of friends to the internet and now to video, I find it less and less embarrassing each time. Initially, I was beet red over it.

By “coming out of my shell” I’ve opened myself up to share an embarrassing, yet very funny, story with the world.

Next time you get a chance, come out of your shell and give Gulf oysters a try.


Fingerprint expert

Monday, April 21st, 2008

General Mills has a new promotion with their current boxes of Cinnamon Toast Crunch. Each piece of cereal has a fingerprint pattern on it, while the box gives you a fingerprint, and multiple suspect fingerprints to match it to.

I just wish that they would have talked to a fingerprint expert before printing up millions of boxes and billions of pieces of cereal. Most of the information on the box is correct, but there are some facts that they have listed that are incorrect or, at best, only partially correct.

But hey, if it sells more cereal, you cares.

Email Marketing Application

Monday, April 21st, 2008

When marketing your blog, the most important thing, by far, is to reach the greatest number of people. Actually, let’s make that the second most important thing. The most important is to have the greatest number of people read your blog. Reaching a lot of people is important, generating hits and clicks is important, but when people start actually reading your blog, then it can take off into another level with readers recommending your blog to other readers and then people actually returning to your site on a regular basis because they care what you have to say, or write as the case may be.

Zookoda lets you send a summary of everything that you’ve been writing directly into the email inbox of your visitors. The convenience of getting this material in a form that they check everyday will definitely increase the number of readers that your site is getting. You can’t substitute this kind of boost to readers.

The program also allows for complete customization of the email that you send out to your visitors. Making the email into an eye-catching newsletter can get a lot of attention from readers that otherwise may just hit the delete key when your blog entries show up in their inbox.

But the best feature of Zookoda, by far, is the price. This program is completely free. There is no drawback from using this program to start boosting the number of visitors that you get to your site, but more importantly, the number of readers that keep coming back to your site to see what new content you’ve got today.
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Rock Band rocks

Monday, April 21st, 2008

While Guitar Hero broke new ground in what a video game could be, Rock Band takes things a bit further. Guitar Hero remains one of my favorite games because of the fun and the challenge of playing cool songs on the guitar. However, no matter how much fun it is, it’s still only a toy guitar and is a poor substitute for actually playing a guitar.

Rock Band’s introduction of the microphone and drum kit gives a measure of reality into this genre of video game. Even though the drum kit is a very much toned down version of a typical set of drums, the player is still playing the drums. The singer is given some latitude in pitch depending on the difficulty level but is still singing the song.

The only drawback of the game is the wireless guitar. The strum bar is loose and difficult to play, the neck is too thin and painful to hold. The buttons are at the same level as the rest of the fret board, making them difficult to distinguish from each other just by touch. The gravity switch is difficult to activate when you lift the neck of the guitar and yet sometimes activates at the slightest movement at an unwanted time.

Thankfully, I can just keep using my Guitar Hero guitar on this game.