Category: My thoughts

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Early Christmas Taco Dinner

From Early Christmas Dinner

Because my Sister and her husband have plans to be with their daughter’s boyfriend’s family during the actual holiday and that weekend, we decided to have our dinner and gift giving yesterday.
As such, we made one of our favorite family style meals, tacos. Mom has that wonderful serving tray that houses 9 different bowl containers for all the yummy stuff that you might want to put on your taco. And you can’t see it in this picture, however, if you click through to the complete album, you’ll see the entire table setting.
Have to say that it was a super delicious meal and the four of us thoroughly enjoyed dining together. And that was before we opened up all of our gifts. Woo Hoo!

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Where Were You During My Ratatouille and Sirloin Experience?

Top Sirloin and Ratatouille
I decided I needed to use the makings I had bought for ratatouille, else risk losing perfectly good vegetables to the compost heap. Are you like me that way? Just despise allowing your laziness to cost you? Money. Time? Effectiveness? Yeah, I dislike it as well.
So, I made sure I had the time (i.e., all my tasks were done and submitted properly) and simply spent the afternoon in the kitchen. I’ve been making ratatouille for about 6 months now. Guessing at least a dozen times. Really!
Why so much, you ask? Mainly because I like experimenting with recipes I enjoy. Tweaking ingredients, methods, flavor profiles. Starting with the same recipe that Julia Child used on her television show, my first attempt was hatched. I enjoyed it well enough to make it again (from the same recipe) and liked it again, even more.
Then I went online searching for other recipes, finding about a gazillion, of course! There’s really a lot of different philosophies when it comes to making this pleasant peasant dish. I even found and tried a couple of times the biyaldi recipe that was the basis of the dish in the movie “[asin=B000VBJEEG]Ratatouille[/asin]”. I especially liked the addition of yellow squash in that one.
Anyway, the meal was a great thick cut Top Sirloin broiled to a juicy rare (but fully safe!) and the ratatouille served over fluffy white rice. I must admit that Mom and I were very pleased! You would have been too. Where were you? Next time! 😉

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Monetizing Video Clips the Next Ringtone Success?

paramount-insceneThis should prove to be an interesting service. As reported in the NY Times, Paramount will open a movie clip licensing service tomorrow. And tomorrow is not today, as I’ve just found out. Tried to sign up and access their site, and after submitting, nothing. Just nothing. Maybe tomorrow it will be accessible. We’ll see.

Paramount to Start Online Service to Sell Movie Clips

Paramount Pictures, looking for new ways to turn its old movies into cash, especially as DVD sales continue to decline, is creating an online video clip service that will allow users to search hundreds of feature films on a frame-by-frame basis.

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How Could Vidli.com Monetize a Video of Blue Footed Boobies?

Just a quickie post today before I get to brave the elements (and worse, holiday shoppers!) During my morning reading routine I came across this way too cute video of an actual mating dance between two Blue Footed Boobies. It is possibly the most bizarre and cutest thing I’ve seen in quite some time. Betting it will be for you as well. If you aren’t able to see the video, here’s the link to the Blue Footed Booby Mating Dance on YouTube.
[youtube oYmzdvMoUUA 500 315]
Blue Footed Boobies from the Galapagos Islands doing their famous mating dance.
Now, if plumdiggity, instead of just posting that video up on Youtube, had used Vidli.com, The Official Video Licensor, they might have been able to make some money.
I’m not sure how many views it will take, but if nearly 40,000 people are interested in the video content you create, you can bet some of them are going to be willing to pay to see it.
And this is where Vidli comes in. The company is nearing its launch and has opened up beta invitation sign ups. They are also looking for a Social Media Person to bring on board. As such they’ve concocted a unique contest for folks like me to garner support from great folks like you. If you can take 37 seconds or less and click through to sign up for a FREE Vidli.com beta invitation, you’d be doing me the HUGEST favor.
You won’t regret it. Honest. And think of all those adorable little blue footed boobies just waiting for your love and affection! 😉

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Who's Your True Blue Booby, Vidli.com?

Blue-footed Booby (Sula nebouxii)
Creative Commons License photo credit: A_E_P

Tonight after some holiday shopping to pick up materials for making some AWESOME gifts for Mom, Sister, and Niece (pics to post before too long. And don’t worry, my family doesn’t read my blogs 🙁 ), I decided to whip up a Twitter Archive.
I’d been following @Andrea_r‘s conversation about the Twitter Digest plugin and got interested in the concept of archiving my tweets so I could access them past the 7 days or so that Twitter allows you access.
A couple of days ago, Ron (@WPMUguru) posted up a fix to the Twitter Digest plugin allowing it to operate correctly on WPMU:

Andrea was looking for a Twitter digest plugin so that she could start making a permanent backup of her tweets because the twitter API only provides access to the last 3200 tweets. The plugin she asked me to look at was Twitter Digest by Tim Beck. The reason she asked me to look at it was that it the option page did not save the settings in WordPress MU.

Rock and roll! So, I decided to add a new subdmain to the BoldlyGoing.com WPMU install and hook things up. Now you if you hit MyTweets.BoldlyGoing.com you can marvel 😉 at the wonder.
Basically, there’s the WPMU subdomain with the P2 Theme running the look and feel. I’ve got Twitter Digest (v. 1.8.3b the MU enhanced version) grabbing the tweets every morning early and posting to the site.
Finally I also installed Photo Dropper so I can go back to the site every few days and add some nice visual stuff.
And that’s what drove this post, especially its title. As I continue to earn your trust and eventually your support in my pursuit of the Social Media Gig with Vidli.com I was messing over at my twitter repository site and decided to post up a test from the front page (as per P2 theme). I did a search on Flickr for blue footed boobies and found that lovely little rascal you see above.
Have to say, they are really strange, yes? But adorable nonetheless!
Hey, thanks for taking the time to check out this post. And if you are feeling rather altruistic today, why not take about 37 seconds or so and sign up for the FREE beta invite for the new video monetization service that Vidli.com will be launching early next year. I’m buying drinks for everyone that’s helped me get the gig (if, of course I get the gig!)
Seriously though, thank you for your time. You have my sincere gratitude! Have a wonderful weekend.

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What Does Holding a Camera Still for 2:48 Gets You?

How about 5,669,208 views (as of this post date)?
Uhm, that’s a lot of people viewing a really funny and entertaining video of a kid bopping around to the sights and sounds of a Beyonce video.
What might have happened if Cory’s dad had helped me out by signing up for a free beta invite from Vidli.com and taken advantage of the Official Video Licensor’s ability to help you monetize your online videos?
Over 5 1/2 MILLION views? Thinking there’s some change to be made there!
[youtube ikTxfIDYx6Q 500 315]
Cory dancing to his favourite music video. Visit Cory’s official website SingleBabies.com

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reBlog from boldlygoing.com: Boldly Going

I found this fascinating quote today:

Now that those have been created, added, and saved I am hoping the actual post link will also get posted to twitter. We shall see shortly! Check out some related stories on the web…boldlygoing.com, Boldly Going, Dec 2009

You should read the whole article.

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Amazon Affiliate Linker Plugin Test

Just testing to see if the Amazon Affiliate Linker WordPress Plugin will work on WPMU install.
Here, I’m just using the plugin to create (hopefully!) a link to the same Pro Blogger book that is used in the Club WordPress post about this plugin. [asin=0470246677]Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income[/asin].
That title “should” hopefully be an Amazon Affiliate link. We shall see!

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Dual Tuner DVRs Simply Cannot be Lived Without!

the PowerCD's current home
Creative Commons License photo credit: blakespot

Do you watch much television? Are you a bit on the technical side of the equation when it comes to the hardware associated with your home entertainment experience? Having recently come to the end of a contract with 1 of the 2 satellite television providers, I decided it was time to look into current home entertainment offerings in the marketplace.
Let me preface all by simply saying the research revealed very little in the ways of apparent differences offered by these companies. Why is that? Most likely it’s due to the fact that you don’t get to experience the entertainment until you have bought into their system. You don’t get to scroll through the menus or guides, experience the lag when changing channels, get amazed at how fast the DVR will fast forward or rewind until agreements have been made and installations completed.
By then, it may be too late. I felt there was no appreciable difference between what I had and the local cable offering. So, I investigated the other satellite company and their current deals.
In the end, they were offering the same sort of programming (sure they had a channel or 2 not available on other systems; and likely didn’t have others.) The key was the hardware: DVRs and high definition. What I took for granted was that anyone in their right state of mind would consider any option that did not include a minimum of 2 television tuners in their receiver box.
In our 4 television house, only one of the receivers ended up being a dual tuner DVR. My personal room had only a single tuner. Imagine my dismay when trying to watch a program on one channel and record on another.
NO, NO, NO!
It took several phone calls back to the company and some price wrangling, however in the end, I was provided great service and ultimately the dual tuner, HD DVR that would do at least what I had come to expect when it comes to enjoying television entertainment.

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Another test of the WP BB app

This image was cropped outside the WP BB application
This image was cropped outside the WP BB application
So am able to get this blog to connect with my Storm. And am writing in landscape mode so that is cool.
Going for the photo insert just to be greedy!
Weird that there is no visual clue as to where the inserted photo is at in the body of the post.
Okay going for the submit, now!