Paid to Post

What I love about blogging is that I get to do something I enjoy and make a little money while writing. Pay Per Post (http://www.payperpost.com) is a service that makes it easy to do both.

I first read about Pay Per Post at Miss Snark.  Looks she heard about it from an article in Business Week.  Don’t you love how good news travels these days?

I know some people find making money in the blogosphere crass, but I I think they miss the simplicity connecting people that want to sell stuff with people that like the stuff they sell.  Pay Per Post doesn’t miss that simplicity at all, in fact, they seem to be capitalizing on it.  I signed up in a few moments–all I needed was a mature blog and a PayPal account.  The list of opportunities allows me to promote the things I am interested in and skip over the ones I am not.

I don’t need to turn this site into a store either–they don’t even want me to do that.  No blinking ads crammed into the sidebar that every savvy reader ignores and no RSS aggregator picks up anyway.

Should be fun.  Heck, I already IMed the link to a couple friends with blogs.

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Me on Alex Toth on the Loss of Innocence in Comics

Aside form the occasional political forward my Brother and I don’t communicate much via email. When I got this terse note this morning–sent to me at 3AM his time–I was taken a back. It’s not the sort of thing he and I talk about normally. But we certainly could…

>Dustin wrote:

> Subject: what do you think?
> Content: http://www.oklahoma.net/~silvrdal/tothop.html

Douglas replied:
Alex Toth died the other day: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Toth

Or maybe you knew that.

At this time, I don’t find anything personally compelling about stories of innocent-minded wonder that would pull me away from a more gritty storyline. I was a fan of Super Friends, Johnny Quest, and even Space Ghost for a time–I was much younger (heart, mind, and body) then than I am today.

I think a person’s tastes and sensibilities evolve and/or cycle with their own lives. It’s not fair to suggest that just because I have developed preferences for a bit of grim prose and dramatic black-inked artwork that I am a bad person or encouraging others to be bad people. I was full of wonder when I needed to be–now I am not.

My guess is that with my children getting interested in books and movies that I will return to a renaissance of wonderment and be able to enjoy it through their eyes in a fresh new way.

What do I think?
Not worried.

Is that what you mean?

iPod Package Redesign

This blog is not normally devoted to just passing on links.  Today I thought, "What better way to pass this funny video onto all my Mac friends and design wonks than to highlight it on my unread blog?"

Without further ado, Microsoft re-designs the iPod packaging:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=36099539665548298&q=microsoft+ipod

Thanks to fellow Coloradoan: Kathy at Creating Passionate Users

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Flogging Molly

I have been wanting to say something nice about these guys since I listened to the "Drunken Lullabies" album after I got it from my brother-in-law back at Christmas time.  But I am not much of a reviewer–I can’t really pull off anything more sophisticated than, "I like these guys.  You should buy the album too."

Maybe that’s the best review one can give.

But I think that a review is supposed to include a bit about the why of it all.  Let’s start with this gloriously badly spelled IM conversation:

Douglas (9:38 AM) – "we find ourselves in the same old mess: singing drunken lullabies"
Jim (9:39 AM) – don’t know that one
Douglas (9:39 AM) – guess what country the band that sings sthat line is from?
Jim (9:39 AM) – Zimbabwe
Douglas (9:39 AM) – dumb ass
Douglas (9:39 AM) – you didnt even try
Jim (9:39 AM)
Douglas (9:39 AM) – though excellent effort pulling a hard spell country righ out of your ass
Jim (9:40 AM)

Douglas (9:40 AM) – Ireland
Jim (9:40 AM) – ah, of course!
Douglas (9:40 AM) – "Floggy Molly"
Douglas (9:40 AM) – sory
Douglas (9:40 AM) – FLogging Molly
Douglas (9:40 AM) – from their "Drunken Lullabies" album
Douglas (9:41 AM) – its kinda folksy irish speed metal
Douglas (9:41 AM) – though I am more of a country music guy
Douglas (9:41 AM) – so I may have made up that genre
Jim (9:41 AM) – oh, sort of Irish Rovers meet U2?
Douglas (9:42 AM) – sure
Douglas (9:42 AM) – but super accenty
Douglas (9:43 AM) – "wipe the golden tear from your mother dear, and raise what’s left of the flag for me"
Douglas (9:44 AM) – sorta poetic, patriotic, and angry
Douglas (9:44 AM) – a good dance beat
Jim (9:44 AM) – ahhh, ok. like Cranberries in that sense
Douglas (9:44 AM) – um
Douglas (9:44 AM) – sure
Jim (9:44 AM) – sorta poetic, patriotic, and angry
Douglas (9:44 AM) – I am unfamiliar with the Cranberries
Douglas (9:44 AM) – dont forget how sheltered I am
Jim (9:45 AM) – oh they’re not realy making noise any more, but they had a few hits in the grunge age
Douglas (9:46 AM) – I have heard of them
Douglas (9:46 AM) – though I would have said they were Canadian
Jim (9:46 AM) – nah, Irish

I don’t know jack about the other groups Jim mentioned, I was just going along–well I do know jack about U2, but who doesn’t?

Why: fast paced, easy to understand the words despite the heavier than normal in music accent, makes me feel like if I weren’t of Austrian heritage I could have been from Ireland, so far after a ridiculous amount of repeat listening I haven’t found it getting stale.

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