WTF Wicko!

So I’m sitting at home tonight, a Friday night, the 2nd of January, 2009.  I’m watching what there is on television and catch the end of the Jimmy Kimmel show that actually aired on November 26, 2008.  What’s important about the dates?  Well, let me continue.  I witnessed a huge collapse of one of my rock-n-roll idols, Scott Weiland.

If you’re like me, you scroll through the late night talk shows and see who the guests are, but most importantly, you see who the musical guests are going to be.  Being a music dork like I am, it’s really all about what cool band or artist is on these shows rather than anything else they offer.  The artist that caught my eye tonight was Scott Weiland on Kimmel.  The last time I saw Weiland was on some award show where he was presenting some award and he was sooo trashed he could barely say what he had to say.  With his past of addiction with heroin, I was honestly worried about him because he’s one of my rock-n-roll heroes.

Well, Scott Weiland really disappointed me tonight.  Why?  It’s not because he was probably too fucked up to be on live television…but more because the product he was throwing out was absolute shit.  Usually, if you have a kick ass rock-n-roll voice, no matter what is thrown out, you can make it sound like naked angels falling from the heavens above (if that exists) with their naked bodies ready to be violated.  Problem was, this wasn’t happening.  The music was absolutely horrible.  I kept telling myself that the crazy looking bearded guitarist was the one to blame because he looked like a dork, but he was actually really good.  The problem was Scott Weiland and his singing.  He sounded like complete shit and I can only hope it was because he was on dope.  If he wasn’t on dope, that means he’s completely lost his skills.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m a HUGE fan of STP and Velvet Revolver…but whatever this new incarnation of Scott Weiland is, I’m not a big fan of.  Especially if all his performances are like what I watched tonight.  Hopefully tonight was a horrible performance night and he hasn’t lost it, but I would have to say that performances don’t lie when it happens twice.  Either him and the band don’t click or he just doesn’t hear it anymore.  Scott, if you happen to stumble on this post and read it, go back to what makes you comfortable.  If being high and rockin with your old bandmates make you feel best, then make it happen.  Don’t force your new thoughts on people that don’t know you as a singer.  Those guys you played with tonight seemed more into their own performances than they did the music…which probably explains why you sucked.

Happy New Year Bitches!

What’s more aggravating than chatting with someone over your favorite instant messaging platform and you can’t really show how you feel?  Like someone pisses you off and you want to tell them to “Fuck Off!”, but all the emoticons are happy or not expressive enough.

I’ve seen this from time to time but never really put much research into what it is or how it works, but I really wanted to give someone the bird, or flip them off, but I couldn’t.  Then I remembered seeing someone that used the keyboard characters, or ASCII characters to show a picture.  It’s called ASCII Art, or ASCII Pictures.

Perfect example:

…………………./´¯/)
………………..,/¯../
………………./…./
…………./´¯/’…’/´¯¯`·¸
………./’/…/…./……./¨¯\
……..(’(…´…´…. ¯~/’…’)
………\……………..’…../
……….”…\………. _.·´
…………\…………..(
…………..\………….\…

I think these things are great because they work anywhere.  You just have to copy/paste into your IM window.

For my own use, I’ll start posting them here.  Hopefully they can help someone else show their thougts.

Have you ever wondered what the point of traveling is?  Me too.  But I thought it out and think I have it all figured out.  Rather than just saying what I think, I figured I would bullet things out.  

• Get away from what you know, as life.
• To see new places that you might not have seen before.
• You enjoy planes?
• Local people are out to get you, in real life.
• You want to see porn, but you don’t want to be seen, seeing porn.
• You have an ‘out of town’ persona, so you’re cooler out of town rather than in town.
• Tobacco is good, when the significant other isn’t.
• Dale Hansen makes you naseaus.  
• Being cool means you’re not really all that cool.
• It seems like if you weren’t drunk, you’d be more in control of life as you know it?
• If you’re married, your wife understands shit.
• Shadows only exist if you’re scared.
• Sex toys aren’t quite as cool as Ron Jeremy said they were.
• That previous joke didn’t get any laughs.

If you live on the Gulf Coast or the East Coast, you probably view a Hurricane as frightening. Most other people view them more on the amazing side of things.

Hurricane Storm

It’s hard to find many places in the world where you aren’t threatened by some sort of natural disaster. Here in middle America, we have tornado’s to deal with during the spring time. West coast has to deal with earthquakes, wildfires and big storms rolling in during the winter. I don’t think much is more frightening than a big hurricane headed your way.

Think of a tornado and how destructive it can be. An extremely large tornado can be up to a mile in diameter. Now think of a hurricane and the fact a small one is HUNDREDS of miles in diameter. In a bad spring full of storms in the midwest, the biggest killer is the floods that come with the storms. A hurricane is not only a massive flood producing storm, but it basically picks up the ocean and pushes it up into the coastal cities destroying most everything in it’s path. It’s almost like a slow tsunami pouring into the coast.

I think it proves that humans aren’t really in control of the Earth.

Eyewall

Yo Pingsta, Ryze up. I Tagged a Consumating Friendster. Hi5 Zude! imeem, she did Yelp as I LinkedIn to her Facebook. But you Knol what? That Twitter pulled a Stickam in MySpace and I became Fubar. I had to either Flickr Orkut out and Biip her Badoo.

Sincerely,
Jaiku Ning Vox

More than likely, you’ve seen someone wearing a shirt, hat or something that says “I (heart) NYC”.  I used to roll my eyes thinking most people wear it because everyone else does, plus I’m a huge Dallas Cowboys fan and hate the Giants.  It wasn’t until a few years ago when I took my first trip to NYC with a few friends for a long weekend that I realized the greatness of the city that never sleeps.  Although I would still never wear one of those shirts, I think it’s safe to say that I love NYC.  WTF did I just say?

In all seriousness, if you have never visited The Big Apple and you are one that likes to try new places, do yourself a favor and put it in your schedule.  There is no way you could do everything in a long weekend trip, but in the past 4-5 years I’ve gone, I think I might have only done a few ‘tourist-type’ activities.  The city is so alive and non-stop it’s like you’re in a complete different country.  The scenery is so great:

You can see more great NYC photos over at Flickr.  It is amazing to me, coming from Dallas, TX where everything is flat and spread out, how the city is so big but in such a small area.  The mass transit is so different than where I live and the fact you don’t need a car is mind blowing.

A few of my favorite things from NYC would be:

• Curbside Gyro’s
• Hidden neighborhood bars
• Walking across the Brooklyn Bridge

A few things that aren’t so great:

• Extremely expensive
• Too many people

I’ve been making the trip around October the past 4 years with some friends.  We usually make it happen on the tail end of one of our trade shows for work, which we have one lined up for this coming October and I can’t wait.  NYC absolutely kicks ass!

If you are reading this page, you more than likely have purchased a copy of Tunebite and you’re running into a few issues or questions that you can’t seem to find the answers to. Hopefully I can answer some of the questions you have because I had to learn the hard way.

I recently bought the Radiohead “From the Basement” video album. It is 10 videos of Radiohead performing songs from their recent release, “In Rainbows”. If you are a Radiohead fan, do yourself a favor and look into the music and their videos. Anyhow, back to the point of this post, Tunebite.

The reason I bought Tunebite is because I wanted to take these iTunes videos, remove the DRM (Digital Rights Management) protection, then burn the videos to a playable DVD for use in my DVD player hooked up to my TV. iTunes likes to throw this DRM protection on all music and video files you buy from them to thwart any type of theft. Lucky for us, Tunebite is the program we need to make the media we buy a bit more user friendly .

Now you have a copy of Tunebite and you are ready to rip the DRM off. There are a few things I came across that I was unable to find any type of support on, so I figured I’d post my ‘trial by fire’ experience and hopefully it will help a few people.

• If burning videos, Tunebite will play the video inside the iTunes video player. In my situation, it placed the video in the top left hand corner of my screen and began recording. What I did not know was if you move anything over the top of the video which is being burned, whatever appears on top of the video will also appear in the ripped copy that you are creating. See, it basically records a specific region of your video display so if you put an open window or your mouse cursor in the region where it is recording, that will become part of your recording. My suggestion would be to start the ripping and leave your computer alone. Once it’s done, do what you need to do, but during the recording, go in the other room and leave your computer alone.
• Another thing that took me 2 days of back to back to back to back attempts of recording was the syncing of audio to video during recording. No matter what combination of settings I tried in Tunebite, the audio and video were not syncronizing properly. Usually the voice was a split second behind the video and it made me think the ripped copy was going to be way off.

  Quite the contrary. I finally decided to let the recording finish to see what it looked like once it was completed. Much to my surprise, even though while recording the video / audio was way off, the final ripped copy was spot on. It was at that time that I realized I don’t need to pay attention to what I’m seeing and hearing, I just need to let it finish and see how the ripped copy turns out. Probably the best bet is to start the ripping/recording, turn the volume all the way down or mute it and then walk away until it is finished. Once finished, check the file to make sure it is exactly what you needed.

• What audio and video setting should I use? There are so many different options on each audio and video, I have no idea which one to pick. Look at it this way, the higher selection you pick of each option, the better the quality should be.

  Now I must let you know the higher quality doesn’t really mean a hill of beans. If your computer is remotely slow, then the high quality isn’t really all that effective so consider doing the bare minimum. It speeds the process up and produces a web friendly file but still enough quality to play on a DVD or CD.

  In my situation, I used the audio setting of MP3 (128 kbps) and the video setting of MPEG4 (VBR Q98). The video and audio quality was perfect to play on my DVD player and stretch out to the size of my tv without distorting the picture or audio.

These 3 things were pretty important while I was trying to learn the software. I visited their support section but was unable to locate the answers I needed. Hopefully this post will help at least a few people to make it worth the time spent to type it all out.

If you have other questions or just want to let us know it helped, let me know below.

I’ve been using a Firefox plugin for a little while called Scribefire. It sits inside of your Firefox browser and when you are visiting a page that you feel is blog worthy, rather than starting up another application, downloading the files, uploading the files and logging into all other blog admin panels necessary to make the change, Scribefire does all of this for you!

I’ve been using it for a while and it wasn’t until I heard Patrick Gavin from TLA was behind it did I really get interested. Patrick has a great mind for business and because of this, I have an even stronger feeling that his new pet “Scribefire with QuickAds” is going to be a huge success.

The past year or so, about the time the 125 x 125 banner space jumped into the market as the hot new banner ad for blogs, I quickly noticed there was something missing out there that involved the banner ads and the bloggers. We have our PPC networks (Adsense, Yahoo, Adbrite), In-Content PPC networks (LinkWords, Kontera, Intellitxt), Text Link Ad Networks (LinkWorth, Text-Link-Ads, LinkExperts), Paid Blog Reviews (LinkPost, Reviewme, and Pay Per Post) and so on, but none of these new networks really tailored to the banner ad industry. I felt all of these competing services should be truncated to a simple process for the blogger so they can get the best bang for their buck with the least amount of work involved. In other words, let the networks work for YOU, the blogger. It would appear, Mr. Gavin and his crew have come up with this exact solution. I’m quite sure them boys have quite a vision on where they plan to take this thing. I’m also excited to try it out and see if it can monetize a couple blogs I author.

Speaking of their new system, it’s called QuickAds. QuickAds is an add-on to your existing Scribefire plugin. It has an extra button on the far left that shows as a $ sign. Go through and setup your blogs, then once they’re setup, you start adding ‘ad units’ to the part of the page you want them to appear. Now I haven’t personally reached that point yet, I’m waiting for a beta login from Mr. Gavin.

The great part of this from a bloggers stance is you don’t have to dig around and find the best ad network that makes you the most money. Scribefire has a unique scientific calculator that sits in Patrick’s office where he can do shorthand on the calculator to determine which ads will pay the highest per impression or click. In short, you sign up, plug in the ad units you want, save the look, and then Scribefire and P.Gavin’s scientific calculator does all the rest.

Honestly, I think it’s the best ad product to come out since LinkWorth released our array of unique linking products. If you are not using Scribefire yet, go signup and if they ask how you found them, tell them that “Doug Heil” sent you.

If you’ve had HBO at one time or another, you’ve probably enjoyed their little reality show called “Taxicab Confessions”.  The show is such a great watch.  Most reality shows today do their best to get the reality stars intoxicated and candid so it comes across as ‘great TV’ to watch.  With Taxicab Confessions, specific cabs roll around different cities and roll tape.  If it’s good and the waiver is signed at the end, instant ‘great TV’ moment!

A little example of the one I’m watching right now, the female driver picks up this punk rocker lookin’ dude with this punk rocker lookin’ chic.  They are on their way to hook up for the first time.  The catch to their story is the girl was out with her gay guy friend who is in love with the punk rocker dude.  The punk rocker dude was with his gay girl friend who is in love with the punk rocker girl.  I guess they play gay with their friends, but they’re really interested in each other and are on the way to knock it out.  During the cab ride his hands are all over her ‘areas’ and then she pulls out something of his and does a little shining.  Just shocking while in a cab and the cabbie is adjusting her mirror to watch!

The best part of the show is at the end where they roll the clips of the cabbie explaining how they have been filmed.  You can see them literally try to rewind everything they had just said or done.  My example couple mentioned above just simply told the cabbie chic they wanted to F*$K her!!

An interesting sidebar is that earlier this year we went to SXSW Interactive trade show in Austin.  One night we were out on 5th street at a party and once we were ready to head back to the hotel, we flag down a cab and all 4 of us pile in the back seat because the cabbie mysteriously had all of his clothes in the front passenger seat.  He was driving around in this white tank wife beater, black meshed driving gloves where the fingertips were cut out and weird jean shorts.  He also had this really greasy, slicked back hair and wore these huge black rimmed glasses on.

The cabbie was CRAZY!  He was speeding all over the place throwing us about, almost getting into accidents, when all the sudden I look up after thinking of Taxicab Confessions and what do I see on the roof of the car?  Pen sized video cameras!!!  One on each side.  Then two in the front for the front seat passengers.  I instantly call the guy out on it and he says, “They’re there to see if I kill you.”  :|  A silence fell upon the car as he sped around the corner.  He eventually discounted his comment as a joke and then he went flying through our hotel parking lot and coming to a screeching halt.

The girls with us get out and run away while I was fascinated with the guy and wanted to keep hanging out with him.  Probably due to a few drinks and the thought I might be on HBO!  We traded a few fun comments, then as on cue, cranked up his radio with Night Ranger’s “Sister Christian”:

You’re motoring
What’s your price for flight,
And finding Mister Right?
You’ll be all right tonight

Babe, you know you’re growing up so fast
And momma’s worrying that you won’t last to say
Let’s play…

and he drove off into the dark Austin night.  I still have no idea if they were filming for the festival, but we never signed a waiver or was told we were being taped.  Either me bringing it up killed the deal, we were not interested enough or they really were just there to see if he killed us.

So the moral of the story is, if you get in a cab and are inhibited in any way, look for cameras the size of pens on the roof.  Especially if you’re in a big city like NYC, Vegas or Los Angeles.

WTF!