Frank is Scared!

I guess I wasn’t quite done.

Even more

OK OK enough already.

More Poser

Playing with Emoticons

I love Poser. DAZ3d does great stuff with Poser characters. Here is a recent character from DAZ. The emoticon guy.

Micro Persuasion: links for 2006-08-28

Here are some great links. This guy comes up with a list every day! 

links for 2006-08-28

• American Express® RSS Feeds

  Receive up-to-date info from several different American Express services.

  (tags: finance financialservices RSS Amex)

• WikiCharts — Top 100 — 08/2006

  This tool shows the articles from the English Wikipedia that are viewed most.

  (tags: Wikipedia wikis)

• TechMan: TechTV alumni back with a vengeance as podcasters

  (tags: podcasting)

• ThinkGeek :: Yoda Plush Backpack

  I gotta get me one of these.

  (tags: starwars yoda)

• Web site chronicles N.Y. conversations – Yahoo! News

  AP profiles Overheard in New York

  (tags: blogs)

• Widgify

  A new blog on widgets! Coolio.

  (tags: widgets blogs pictureinpicturemarketing)

• Box.net/lite – Share files on facebook notes, myspace, blogs, and more

  Add a photo, song, document, video, or file into your facebook notes, myspace, or blog.

  (tags: storage photos blogs facebook box.net myspace video)

Source: Micro Persuasion: links for 2006-08-28

iSpider.pl » Gmail cryptography plugin.

Cryptography to webmail. Handy if you need private messaging. GPG is primo encryption.

FreeEnigma brings cryptography to webmail, with an ingenious set of free and open browser plug-ins that work with Yahoo, Gmail, and others. The plugins implement a version of GPG (the free/open version of Pretty Good Privacy) and scramble and de-scramble the text in your webmail before you send it and after you receive it, reducing the amount of information that webmail providers have on your communications. This is long overdue, as webmail and other hosted mail solutions are a ticking bomb, just waiting for a hacker, spook or copper to come a-knockin’, there to get a look at your private communications.

Source: iSpider.pl » Gmail cryptography plugin.

tags: cryptography, Gmail, PGP

¤º°`°ø,¸¸,Pick Me Upø¤º°`°ø¤º°`°øPut Me Down,¸¸,ø¤º°`°ø

 As a writer-wannabe…I totally relate to this post.

Write a book in a week

by Mary

This is how I went about writing a book in a week:

1. Don’t be tempted to start too soon. If you get halfway through before you’ve cooked the idea enough you’ll just have to start again anyway.
2. Don’t give yourself guilt about the time you spend doing something else while it cooks. You’re still working on it, it’s just not so obvious because you’re not generating anything visible.
3. Cancel your social life for that week. Once you’re in writing mode you’ll only be able to talk about your work anyway.
4. Plan it out. Even if you don’t stick to it, it’s easy to get bogged down in detail and you need to prompt yourself sometimes, specially when knackered.
5. Be realistic. If it’s a 60,000 word thing you’ll be pushed to complete more than a first draft and basic edit in a week.
6. Get really comfy. If you’re working at a computer you need to be really careful of your neck, or the week will be agony. I have one of those chairs that tips back into a footrest, plus lots of pillows and a side table with tea.
7. Get in lots of easy to make and eat food so you don’t have to stop thinking to cook.
8. Autopilot is best. Have a routine. Eg up at 9, start at 11am, work till 2, break, work till 5, break, work till 9, stop, bed at 11, or whatever suits you. Don’t beat yourself up if you don’t stick to it but try as best you can.
9. Stop writing 2 hours before you plan to sleep, or you’ll be editing paragraphs behind your eyelids and won’t have time to recharge.
10. Have something really nice to look forward to for when you’ve finished, that will inspire you to stick to the deadline.

Source: ¤º°`°ø,¸¸,Pick Me Upø¤º°`°ø¤º°`°øPut Me Down,¸¸,ø¤º°`°ø

NPR : Ska Cubano: A Parallel Musical Universe

Very hot, I love it. 

Ska Cubano: A Parallel Musical Universe

Enlarge

Courtesy Cumbancha

Singers Natty Bo, left, and Beny Billy of Ska Cubano help merge Jamaican ska and Cuban mambo and son.

Three from the CD

• ‘Soy Campesino’
• ‘Ay Caramba’
• ‘No Me Desesperes’

Weekend Edition Sunday, August 6, 2006 · Once upon a time, musical traditions mingled freely in the Caribbean. But after the Cuban revolution in 1959, Cuba’s music became more isolated. The band Ska Cubano creates one kind of music that might have been if the revolution had never happened.

Source: NPR : Ska Cubano: A Parallel Musical Universe

NPR : Bruce Hornsby, Mixing Pop and Improvisation

 I know I like Bruce Hornsby, give it a listen.

Bruce Hornsby, Mixing Pop and Improvisation

Enlarge

Jacques Coughlin, NPR

Grammy Award-winning singer-songwriter Bruce Hornsby and his band perform live at NPR.

• Hear a full concert of Bruce Hornsby playing solo at last May’s Gilmore International Keyboard Festival.

Songs from the Performance

• ‘The Way It Is’
• ‘White Wheel Limousine’
• ‘Halcyon Days’
• ‘King of the Hill’

Talk of the Nation, August 8, 2006 · Bruce Hornsby plays everything from bluegrass to jazz. But one thing he avoids is playing the same song, the same way, twice. He improvises on even his best-known songs like “The Way it Is,” “Mandolin Rain” and “The End of the Innocence.”

“What we really do is way more interesting, way more adventurous, and just frankly better than just being a group that just regurgitates the hits faithfully,” Hornsy says. “I was always terrible at being a Top 40 musician, playing the same arrangement just like the record every time.”

Source: NPR : Bruce Hornsby, Mixing Pop and Improvisation

NPR : ‘The Cremation of Sam McGee’

One of my favorite poems, and certainly my favorite poet. For more Robert Service go here.

‘The Cremation of Sam McGee’

by Scott Simon and Daniel Pinkwater

View Gallery

Ted Harrison

Sam and friend set off. Kids Can Press

Related NPR Stories

• May 9, 2006

  Johnny Cash Reads ‘The Cremation of Sam McGee’

Enlarge

A map of the Yukon graces the back cover. Kids Can Press

Weekend Edition Saturday, August 19, 2006 · Robert Service’s poem, “The Cremation of Sam McGee,” tells the tale of two gold miners in the Yukon and one man’s “last request.”

The poem, which was originally published in 1907, was later transformed into a children’s book with colorful illustrations by Ted Harrison, in 1986.

Now, a 20th-anniversary edition has been released by Kids Can Press, with new cover art and heavy paper stock. The tale is bookended by the following verse:

There are strange things done in the midnight sun
By the men who toil for gold;
The Arctic trails have their secret tales
That would make your blood run cold;
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
But the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge of Lake Laberge
I cremated Sam McGee.

Source: NPR : ‘The Cremation of Sam McGee’