Added 2 new designs

Added 2 new maternity designs last night. I'll post the pictures up this evening.

Switching the focus of the blog..

Since the focus of my life is changing -- we're about to have a baby and maternity leave (and therefore, only one income for about 3 months) -- I've decided to change the focus of this blog. I'm currently dabbling in a number of areas where I have the potential to earn money on the web, and I'm going to document that process (and it's results) on this page, with tools and thoughts from the process along the way. It'll be an interesting way for me to keep up with it even if no one else ever reads it.

My most successful venture to date was writing an "abstract" (in this case, a 3-4 sentence summary) of an article for Brijit. The third of my submitted abstracts was accepted, slightly edited, and I was credited with $5. No, I don't suppose that's anything to write home about, but it's worth mentioning. It was deposited into my Paypal account yesterday, so that's a good thing. Few more of those and I could buy a cartoonsmart tutorial or various other things... Brijit isn't a bad deal, though reading an 8 page article (or watching an hourlong video) and then summarizing it into 3 or 4 sentences isn't really my strength. It drains me. They do pay $8 for the abstracts based on a video, though, and some of the videos are short (15 minutes, etc). All in all, not a bad deal.

Next I tried Squidoo, and made a "lens" about Kevin Spacey, and another about Call of Duty 4 (which I really do think *is* the best FPS game, ever, btw). I put a lot more effort into the Kevin Spacey one, and it shows, I think. I have a lot of ideas about new lenses on squidoo, but it's fairly time consuming and difficult to do unless you just rip the content straight from wikipedia, which I've seen in a number of places, but that's not my thing, so I'm going to pass...

The latest option, and I really think the most promising, is that I just opened a new Cafepress store where I'll be selling t-shirts with funny thoughts and pictures on them. I don't really know how well it'll all work out, but I've already sold 2 t-shirts in the less-than-a-week it's been up. I think that's a good sign. So far I've had a ton of ideas for new t-shirts (and quite possibly a second premium store) and it's enjoyable to execute the idea into a graphic (though admittedly, my graphic design skills leave something to be desired) and I've currently got more ideas than I can do. I've set out a few goals in the process:

• Purchase a premium store for a timeframe of 6 months for $35


• Sell enough gear to make back that $35 over the course of that 6 months


• Add 3-5 new designs/products a week

As far as completing those goes, I've purchased the store for 6 months, I'm currently at the $2 mark (2 sales, $1 each) and I've currently got 2 categories and 3 designs in the store. I've got 2 more designs that I'm about to upload (which will make 5 for the week, and add a third category) so I'm doing pretty good. I've also got a ton of other ideas that I'm working on -- some will be best suited to just text, others will require some drawing, others some 3D, and others still need some more fleshing out as to how best to execute them. But all in all, I'm pretty pleased with the cafepress idea. My shop will have everything from baby/maternity humor to political humor to plain ole fart jokes. While some people may not like some of it, I hope by the time I'm done there's something there that will appeal to just about everyone. While Brijit does pay at the end of the month and cafepress takes 60 days after the end of the month to process, I think cafepress is going to be a better option for me in the long term.

So... at least for the present, the focus of this blog will be on these ventures, their successes and failures, and the journey along the way.

Check out his NES Paul!

(Click here for Link)

Some wacky guy decided to hack up his NES and his guitar. And make a guitar with an Nintendo Entertainment System as the body. How cool is that?

It Lives! (and squidoo, too)

I'm at a different stage in life now, and I'm going to start blogging again. There were a lot of things I tagged to blog "when I got around to it" but I never got around to it. That's going to change.

In other news, I've discovered Squidoo and created my first "lens" on one of my favorite actors, Kevin Spacey and what I believe to be some of his best work so far.

For those of you not familiar with it, squidoo is a site that lets you create a "lens" on any subject you'd like. A lens is basically a page that you can create with a set of pre-packaged modules to help you add in things from ebay, amazon, flickr, google or whatever you'd like. It's pretty neat.

If it sounds like your kind of thing, sign up and give it a shot. It's all free. And you can get a bonus $5 when you earn your first $15 (and in all fairness, I'd get $5, too!) when you sign up through this referral link.

XBox 360 Laptop

(Click here for Link)

This is just wacky. A whole lot more than just attaching an LCD screen to an XBox 360 -- this guy got out the machining tools and everything. He has a fairly detailed walkthrough, and also sells a book on how to make your own "portable console" out of the SNES, NES, PS1 or Atari 2600. Pretty darn cool.

Color Scheme Tool

(Click here for Link)

This is a very cool tool for coming up with (matching) color schemes. Very useful if you're color-scheme challenged, as I am.

Does that make me crazy?

I was listening to Kidd Kraddick in the Morning coming back from taking my son to the sitter today... they had a segment called "Does that make me crazy" where they had people call in and tell what their habits were and then everyone would vote as to whether or not that made them crazy.

One lady had to keep cabinet doors closed... all of them... even ones that weren't hers. Next, there was a lady who bleached her feet before taking a bath. Like, spray on the bleach and clean 'em off nice before the bath. Then, the lady who cleaned her bathroom rug on Monday and wouldn't walk on it until "late Wednesday night" -- she said she always waited 2 days before using it. She said she "did the same thing with the trash" whatever that means. Wacky. Then there was the girl who had a thing about hot air balloons - she said she would have to pull over and find another way to work if she saw one. Said that a person standing in a basket, floating in the air just made her skin crawl. She said that it was really disturbing.

While I didn't listen long enough to see who "won" -- something is certainly really disturbing :-)

Daylight Savings...

It's this weekend! Saturday, October 29th, don't forget to set your clocks back an hour (you know, Fall Back and all that?)

Click here or here for more helpful public service announcements from our friends over at The Office.

Exploding Paint...

(Click here for Link)

This is just too cool. It's an advertisement for Sony Bravia LCD screens.

What do you get when you mix old, abandoned buildings, a tremendous amount of paint, and a whole bunch of explosives?

Yep, it's as cool as it sounds like it should be. :)

Midnight snack or midnight terror?

(Click here for Link)

I found an old swing song in one of my Napster playlists called "Celery Stalks at Midnight" -- I thought that was pretty funny... apparently it's spawned a book and some other stuff. Click on the title above for the lyrics to the silly song...

(btw... apparently, it's the latter)