slamboard

This is an interesting coincidence…

Yesterday I posted a movie and some commentary on the ethics of manipulating photos. Now there is a viral video from diet.com talking about the same thing, but with a diet and body image slant.

I haven’t actually listened to the whole thing, as I am supposed to be working. Some of the tricks remind me of some things that I saw on the ‘Watch Us Lose’ table on the front page of Kimkins over the last year or so. Of course some of Heidi’s pictures needed nothing more complicated than a slight vertical stretch to help recreate past weight loss success.

This is great software marketing, I think.

FF3 is coming out today and Mozilla has decided to try for a World record. As I write this, 1,540,366 people has ‘pledged’ to download.

SpreadFireFox.com has a dynamic map showing the numbers for each country. The numbers in Iraq are surprisingly small. I wonder if military personnel are prohibited from downloading new browsers.

I have actually taken a course in Teaching English as a Foreign Language. I chose my title based on my experience. People who are learning English as adults generally love idioms. This post is mostly a shout out to a school with a very cool advertising campaign. I first saw this video on something called The Pop Culture Translator. This thing is a promotional tool for the Canadian College of English Language.

I hope you enjoy my lame little video portraying a person in witness protection. It is sponsored by USA Network’s new original series In Plain Sight, which premiered earlier this week.

I imagine that you can find some promo clips of the actual show on YouTube that would be more entertaining than my thing. The show stars Mary McCormack, who you may remember from West Wing. Rather than focusing on one instance of a person going into the program, this series focuses on the people who make new identities happen. Since people are usually placed in witness protection to keep them safe from violent retribution for their testimony in a court of law, the show probably has some fast paced action.

My video does not have any fast paced action.

Tom Cruise was back on an Oprah set. The audience of the taped interview has been sworn to secrecy. I suspect that some of them will anonymously blog about it before the show airs.

Tom is celebrating the 25th anniversary of the movie in which he played a minor living of the avails of (heterosexual) prostitution and occasionally dancing in tighty-whiteys.

Observant readers of my blog probably noticed that I was riding the PayPerPost bubble for the last year. It seems that the gravy boat has sailed as far as paid reviews go. I am still checking out the marketplace and on rare occasions making posts for truly compelling websites, but not nearly as often.

Today I am biting the hand that feeds me a little bit by panning a weight loss procedure that an advertiser is promoting on SocialSpark.

My gut reaction to online sales of Lipotropic Injections was very negative. When I went to check it out on Google, I saw that the Internet is littered with people selling this stuff. That is why the advertiser is looking for outside the box SEO strategies, he wants to be on top of the heap.

I had to dig pretty deep to find any non-shilling info. All that needs to be said is that there is no conclusive data suggesting that these injections are effective and that self injection without prior in person instruction from a healthcare professional is a very BAD idea.

I should mention that, as of now, no bloggers who are part of SocialSpark have written a paid review for the Lipotropic Injections selling site.

The music industry has changed a lot as the information age has come to fruition. 25 years ago, this Florida band would not be have music available to everybody on the planet free of charge on Myspace. 25 years ago, you probably would not hear about a band like Megaphone outside of their local market. I say ‘probably’ because there was always that faint hope of getting a major record deal and cashing in/selling out. The silver lining in today’s music industry is the death of the power ballad. Band’s like Megaphone are not being pressured by suits to record a sappy song that makes them feel like cutting off their own air supply. Rock on, dudes.

You can, at your own discretion, buy Megaphone music online.

I have ratcheted down my blogging frequency quite a bit as other aspects of my life and work demand more of my time and energy. I was surprised to see that my blog still ranks quite highly for the search term ‘Kimkins‘ after I have been mostly out of the loop for months.

I guess Google algorithms don’t discount you for being out of the loop.

I am considering outsourcing some of my blogs to my children for the summer, but I will probably hold on to this one because of its relative seriousness. Are there any other bloggers out there who are trying to get their kids into blogging? I have a vague memory of the Family Circus guy getting his kid to draw his daily comic. I don’t know if he really did that or if it was just a creative device design to conceal the fact that he had the shakes.

Seafood like Gulf oysters are a great way to make a low carb diet interesting. Six raw oysters add up to about 57 calories. They contain 5.9 grams of protein, 2.1 grams of fat and 3.3 grams of carbohydrate. They are also an excellent source of Zinc (76mcg), as well as Vitamin B12 (16.3mcg).

So what is stopping us from enjoying these slippery dudes on a regular basis? Well, some of us may be in the at risk groups for exposure to the food borne bacteria that is commonly in oysters. The bacteria that we are talking about is called Vibrio vulnificus and it does not make healthy people sick. However, people who suffer from conditions such as liver disease (from hepatitis, cirrhosis, alcoholism, or cancer), iron overload disease (hemochromatosis), diabetes, cancer (including lymphoma, leukemia, Hodgkin’s disease), stomach disorders or any condition that results in a weakened immune system are at risk. Go to BeOysterAware.com for more details.

If you want to minimize the risk, you have options. The easiest thing is to opt for fully cooking your oysters. If you prefer the raw experience, you can buy oysters that have been processed in such a way as to reduce the bacteria to non detectable levels. The industry has developed a few ways of doing this. Individual quick freezing works and so does a heating and cooling pasteurization method. They can also use a heat and pressure pasteurization method. I have to assume that there is a detectable difference in taste. Roughly 10% of the oysters sold in the USA are subjected to either individual quick-freezing (IQF), low heat pasteurization or heat-cool pasteurization (HCP), or high-hydrostatic pressure (HPP). I have purchased IQF seafood before and I was satisfied with the product.

If you are a homeowner who enjoys entering contests, you owe it to yourself to enter to win the $20,000 Home Makeover contest at www.triscents.com. This is a bit of a challenging contest. They want you print out an online coupon. They want you to go get the product from a local supplier. They want you to use the product in your home. Ok, here is where you have to get creative. They want you to make a video or photo and essay show and tell that explains why your home needs to get a makeover from Renuzit Tri Scents and Tanya Memme.

The more convincing your explanation and demonstration of why your home needs a makeover and why Renuzit TriScents can help, the better your chances of winning. Keep in mind that you must show your home in the video or photographs in order to be eligible. If I could, I think I would enter to win this contest.

There are a lot of boring details about making sure your video is less than 2 minutes long and all the stuff about file types and stuff. Make sure you see official rules. It would be a shame to embarass yourself on video and not be eligible because of some small detail. I don’t reside in the USA, so you don’t have to worry about my mad video making skills.