Cranial Soup

New Art and a New Blog

2012-02-29T06:25:00.001-05:00

I recently redesigned and moved my old RussoGraffix art site to Blogger. From now on I'll be posting all my art releases there, instead of here.

To celebrate the occasion, I have released 6 new CC-BY licensed works for you to use.
Click the images to visit the pages and get the files.

Free Website Banner Graphic: Night Sky

Free PSP Vector: Cube of Spheres

Free PSP Vectors: Dice

Free PSP Vector: Balloons

Free Images: Gold Coins

Free PSP Vector: 4-Leaf Clovers

How to make people want to stop forwarding all those "funny" emails

2011-11-04T15:13:00.001-04:00

I used to have a bunch of friends that would forward me emails almost every day containing jokes and other crap. You know the stuff I am talking about. You have probably received a ton of it yourself over the years and know at least one person that is a compulsive forwarder of such crap. I say "used to" because they no longer send me this stuff. They don't want to. They now want to selfishly deprive me (and their other friends) of it, at least in the form of emails.

I have a reputation of building websites and blogs for little or no reason other than to temporarily amuse myself. My friends know this about me.

One day I decided to set up a blog to post all those "funny" emails that friends were sending to me, and then sent each of them a link to it, explaining that I was not going to forward the stuff they were sending to me.

I told them my intention was to make money off it by slapping ads on the blog. I then asked them to double the amount of "funny" emails they were forwarding to me if they could, because I needed more content for my new site. Most of them complied with my request and temporarily increased the number they sent out.

When they started decreasing them, I sent out emails to the slackers and politely informed them that they needed to work harder to amuse me. I started making requests for specific types of forwards. I included links to items on Amazon.com for stuff I wanted, explaining the ad revenues from my site were being put towards obtaining them. I even warned them when they sent me doubles, explaining that they needed to check my blog and send out only new material that was yet unpublished.

I sent out occasional Thank You emails with photos of myself with some "new item" I had just acquired, supposedly paid for with ad revenue earned from their "funny" emails, and encouraging them to keep up the great work. (I actually made very little from the blog, less than $1/month)

Today I receive very few of these email forwards. :-D

What I essentially did was take what some people view to be a fun activity that annoys their friends and turn it into a boring repetitive task in which they receive no pleasure from, view as work, and I receive profit when they do it.

In other words, I exploited them and let them know about it. I took the fun right out of it.

My actions made them think about what they were doing and some even decided the best use of their time would be to set up similar blogs (that nobody reads) instead of forwarding this crap to others. I exploited their selfish nature by making them think I was benefitting from their actions more than they were.

It was a brilliant bit of reverse psychology.

It started with a piece of string...

2009-12-09T10:35:00.001-05:00

Then evolved into a short elastic strap with a set of snaps at both ends. This was my solution to a problem.

What problem was that?

When my daughter was just a baby, back in the mid 80's, she kept throwing her pacifier out of the stroller and then would holler like hell, and I couldn't give it back to her to shut her up because it was now dirty. So I tied a string on it and attached it to the stroller. It didn't stop her from throwing it, but it did keep it from hitting the ground and getting dirty or lost.

But the string didn't work well for bottles, and untying knots was a real hassle, and something that couldn't stretch restricted her from being able to drink her bottle while lying down in the stroller. A string only worked well while she was sitting up.

Elastic and snaps...it was perfect. Other mothers saw what I had done and wanted one for their kids' bottles, too. I made a bunch and kept them in my purse, individually sealed in little zip-lock bags. They cost me less than $1.00 to make, and I sold them for $2.00 each.

Then a good friend of mine suggested I get a patent for it and find a company to mass produce them and make mad amounts of money on royalties.

He put me in touch with a company that supposedly specialized in helping inventors get their products patented and bringing them to market.

Word of advice: Don't deal with these companies. They will do nothing to help you. It will cost you a lot of money and you will get nowhere.

After paying $400 for a rather poorly written "market study report", they managed to talk me into paying another $5000 and entering into a 5 year contract with them, promising to contact manufacturers and pitching my idea to them, and if a company was interested, they would get them to pay the cost of patenting it in my name, and I would get a royalty on every single copy of my invention that they manufactured, regardless of whether they actually sold any.

They convinced me that it was far cheaper to let them handle it, since they had offices all over the world and could set up meetings with company executives. They said my cost in air travel alone would exceed the $5000 if I tried to do it myself, nevermind hotels, paying for expensive lunches, drinks, etc. They also said they were experienced and knew what to say, so I would have a better chance of getting a deal. And they had their own contract lawyers, specializing in royalty agreements, to protect my interests.

I fell for it, hook, line, and sinker. I took out a personal loan to cover the cost, from a financing company that turned out to be owned by them. It took me 2 years of high monthly payments to pay it off.

And what did they actually do for me? Did they contact all the big name baby product companies like Gerber or Fisher Price? No, they contacted publishers, like the one that produces Parents magazine.

They mailed out form letters to the editors of magazines targeted at the consumer that would be most interested in my product. They never contacted a single manufacturer. Those "inventors help" companies do this all the time, for any and every product idea that comes through their doors, no matter how good or bad the product idea is. The magazine editors are used to it and know it's all crap and toss every letter in the trash without ever opening them.

And they tied my hands for 5 years, preventing me from doing all the work myself, otherwise I'd still have to give them a large cut of my royalties if I succeeded in finding a company willing to manufacture it, on my own.

So I decided to wait till the contract expired. There was no way I was going to let these swindlers have another dime.

Before my 5 year wait was up, a conversation with someone made me realize that my great little invention had no hope and would cause the death of many innocent babies that had idiots for parents. The more popular my invention was, the greater the potential for it to kill, because stupid people that don't watch their kids properly and don't follow instructions, would end up using it in cribs and playpens and leaving their children unattended for hours, or using it in car seats while they were driving and unable to pay attention, resulting in strangulation deaths.

It was perfectly safe for use by parents that actually watched their kids and only used it in a stroller where they could watch what was going on.

If my invention had made it to market, I would have no control over it and no way to stop stupid people from buying it and killing their children with neglect. My product would be blamed and not the neglectful parents, and if it became a popular product the CPSC recall could have been huge, costing whatever company that produced it enormous amounts of money in recall costs and defending lawsuits, and ultimately, cost me a fortune, too.

And I would have these deaths hanging on my conscience for the rest of my life. I would never get a peaceful night's sleep ever again.

So that is why you can't buy my invention and why I never became filthy rich.

Photo credit: außerirdische sind gesund

Hey, Boss...Can I have a moment of your time?

2009-02-09T10:56:00.001-05:00

I would like the attention of all of you that are business owners, employers, office managers, anyone that is "The Boss". I had this idea and I'd like to hear your thoughts and opinions.

As some of you may know, I am the developer of Instant Boss, a time management/productivity tool for timing work/break cycles. (Windows only)

I released it to the public as donationware, making payment optional, with the amount to be decided upon by the individual user, based on what they feel my software is worth to them, and their ability to pay.

Unfortunately, this hasn't worked out too well in the last year for me. Donations are way down, to the point where I only earned $1 during the month of January, despite all of my software having had a total of over 7000 downloads.

A great many of my software users are starving students that are up to their eyeballs in student loan debt and barely able to make ends meet. They are using my software to help themselves reach their goals and make their dreams come true.

For them, my software is the push they need to get their studying done, papers written, and projects completed on time. I have had a number of PhD students tell me they could not have obtained their degree without my help. Without Instant Boss, their dissertations would never have been finished.

If I am going to keep all of my software available to the public, and continue with the donationware license model that benefits those that need it the most, I am going to have to find a creative way to fund it.

Now here is my idea and my question for you.

In its current form, Instant Boss contains a dialog that pops up at the end of your breaks and tells you to get back to work, featuring a cartoon graphic of an angry yelling boss.

What if I were to replace that graphic with an image of you (the boss), telling your employees to "get back to work!" at the end of their breaks?

Please note, I have not made up my mind if I will actually be offering this, yet. This is not a sales pitch. I am not taking any orders. I just want know if there would be an interest in this sort of thing and at the particular price I am considering. I just want your opinion.

What if I were to license this special edition, at a price of about $25? All of the employees in your company could use this special addition, for that one flat fee. You wouldn't have to pay per employee. $25 would cover all of them, current and future, in all locations in which your company may operate. (if you ever need to change the boss image, or have an additional one made for another department or division, that would be an additional $25)

Besides getting an application that encourages productivity by helping you stay focused on your purpose (work), you also get one that discourages a habit that can lead to lost productivity and increased healthcare costs for your company. Instant Boss can help prevent repetitive stress injuries (RSI) in office workers by encouraging frequent short breaks. And for those employees that are already recovering from RSI, Instant Boss can help them gradually return to full productivity, safely.

Is this worth $25 to you, your employees, and your company?

Would you willing to pay for a custom vanity edition?

Concept image, final design may differ

Rank Spanked

2008-05-19T10:03:00.004-04:00

I have had a few of those freebie .tk domain names for quite awhile pointing to a few sites of mine, that back when I started those sites, the hosting of them was quite unstable.

I acquired them so that visitors would always be able to find my sites, even if the hosting and real url changed frequently. Those sites were originally hosted on free servers or in the case of one of them, a single page on my ISP's server. I couldn't afford anything better at the time and those sites weren't created to make money, so they weren't going to pay for themselves.

Much to my surprise, the single page site hosted on my ISP's server became quite popular, quite quickly, making it to the front page of digg. This was followed by people linking to it all over the place, using the .tk domain name in their links.

I have been investing a lot of time & work into that site lately, transforming it from a single page into something much better.

Last year I discovered that the freebie .tk domain name for that site had a Google PR of 4. In light of that, I actually considered purchasing that domain name so that it would behave like a real one rather than just loading my site in a frame. Search engines would actually be able to spider the content of the site and associate it with that domain name. Visitors would be able to direct link to the pages properly and they would no longer see the .tk ad frame at the top. It would become a real domain name.

But recently I have seen the page rank drop to 1 and it no longer holds the top spot for certain search terms that it once did for a very long time. The true url of the site now holds the top spot for those search terms. Google took away with one hand and gave with the other.

But now I lost the benefit in page rank of all those one way inbound links that are all over the place, and I haven't seen a rise in actual page rank on the links that Google has replaced with the true URL's. They also are a PR1.

I am assuming that all freebie .tk domain names took a hit, but did the paid ones get hit as well? Does anyone have a paid .tk domain name that is a PR4 or higher that didn't get rank spanked this time around?

A few more new websites

2008-02-25T21:38:00.002-05:00

I decided to start that flash game site I wanted to do.I figured lots of people love flash games, and if giveawayoftheday can make money off of ads by giving away a program a day then I could probably make money by giving everyone a new flash game every day. So now I have Flash Game of the Day.

For now, I am going to focus on games where the developers give you a code and host the games for you. Once I see how it goes with that, I may move the site to it's own domain and actually host games myself.

I don't want to do that yet because I am afraid of the amount of bandwidth something like that can use and I need to make sure all my other sites don't suffer.

The other site is my App's Trapps site. I have had the domain name for awhile but never could figure out exactly what to put on it. It was Menchi's idea for the domain name. Kind of a joke, when I would drop a link in the chatroom, about it being a trap.

I wanted to put up a site with things that would 'trap' visitors into an endless need to waste time...lots of time. Yes, I know, it's rather ironic that the same person that codes desktop productivity tools to keep you from wasting time would create a site to effectively make you waste tons of time.

I used to have 'fridge magnets of doom' and a chatroom for visitors to talk to each other while they interacted with the letter board, but the site that hosted the letter board kept screwing it up and it would stop working after awhile.

I finally came to the decision to make it a site of random randomness...random pics, random links, random news, random blogs, random quotes, random stories...just random stuff where you keep getting more every time you refresh the page...and you keep refreshing because you just can't get enough.

So far I have half of my wtf folder posted...funny pics to keep you clicking for more.

I haven't finished with the page yet and I haven't put any ads on it yet, but I do have plans on doing that when it's ready for it.

There is some serious hotlinking protection added for now. I am very worried about the amount of bandwidth something like this can use if it becomes popular so this is the way it will have to be until I can see how things go.

So that now brings the total to 20 websites & blogs.

I still have a long way to go till I hit my $2000/month goal, but I am getting there, one site at a time. I am building my empire.

Now...what the hell should I do with wtfcat.com?

Lawyers Love Instant Boss!

2007-07-20T07:59:00.001-04:00

I am feeling a little stunned today.

I found out that an article in the July issue of the American Bar Association Journal, recommends one of my software applications, Instant Boss.

This is the magazine read by half of all lawyers in America. And this isn't in some small article buried somewhere in the back of the magazine that nobody is going to read. This is in their cover story...the main article.

It made #31 on their top 101 productivity tips & tricks list:

31 If you have trouble staying focused, you can make Instant Boss your digital taskmaster. You can set it to time your tasks and your breaks from those tasks, allowing it to nag you on a schedule of your choosing.

This was totally unexpected.

Now I will have to go out and find a copy, and buy it. :-D

The only criticism I really have with the article, is that the online version doesn't contain any links to the sites of most of the software mentioned. I am hoping there was a page at the end of the print edition article that contained the URL's.

Of course now I'll have to get busy working on the next version of Instant Boss, including in it all those great ideas that I have been collecting for the last year.

Read the full article.

Introducing Laggy the Snail

2007-04-23T02:25:00.001-04:00

I got an attack of creativity earlier today and this little character was the result.

I made a couple of posts on the DonationCoder forum that were from the same site. Normally, I would include a screenshot of the web page in case mouser wants to blog it.

The problem was, if he decided to blog both, the pages were similar enough that they could be mistaken as being the same image. It wouldn't look right on the blog.

One of them linked to an article about a throttled proxy for the purpose of web designers being able to see what the experience of visiting their site would be for dialup users, at various speeds.

Something about the content of that article hit close to home and made me think of all the time I was stuck on dialup with the old P1.

So I opened up Paintshop Pro and started playing around.

I took a photo of the monitor from my old P1 computer and a screenshot of Firefox from this computer, combined it with some text and drew the snail's body with my mouse.

Like magic, this little guy appeared on my screen. I think he is cute and has a lot of personality. My daughter named him Laggy.

Laggy moves at a blazing dialup speed of 33.6k. He doesn't talk, verbally. Every idea and feeling he wants to express, appears on his monitor. Read his screen and you basically read his mind.

I plan to continuing working on this idea and improving it as much as I can, although I don't think it will get much better than it is right now.

I wish I was as good of a digital artist as nudone. Maybe I will throw this idea in his direction and see if he wants to take the idea and expand on it. I think it could become something great in the hands of someone with real talent and skill. Laggy could be the perfect compliment to Cody...a sort of side kick or friend.

Google Amusements

2007-02-18T10:01:00.001-05:00

Every once in awhile, Google will provide me with something really stupid that amuses me.

My latest 2 amusements were links pointing at my own sites.

Here is an interesting Google result:

And then there is this little amusement from Gmail that just arrived in my inbox:

Yes, that really is the title of that page. I just think it's funny to see that text in link form, all by itself, with no other description. I mean, really...don't you just want to click a link in an email that looks just like that one?

Kind of reminds me of those 'don't click here' links that ends up crashing your browser when you can't resist temptation and click it. (no, there isn't anything nasty on that site...just a few time wasting amusements)

ABAP ebooks needed

2007-01-31T12:13:00.001-05:00

I run a website that is a directory of free programming ebooks. I only list books, full books...not partial books...not tutorial sites.

Everything on the site is legal. I don't list anything that wasn't intended to be made free, by either the author or publisher.

I received an email request today for ebooks on ABAP.

If anybody knows where on the web I can find some free legal ones, the help would be greatly appreciated.

Just leave a link to the site, with the title of the book, in a comment to this post.

Thanks.

DONE! My first Wiki of the Week

2006-11-17T05:45:00.000-05:00

I have made my first in a series of weekly posts at DonationCoder.com introducing people to some of the lesser known wikis on the web.

I feel really good about this and it is a lot of fun exploring the world of wikis. There is some really cool stuff out there that could use some publicity and help.

Hopefully others will enjoy the new feature and fulfill the goals I have in mind for this ongoing project.

I also hope it will attract more people to read our great blog page, which is the first & primary goal of this series.

If you want to see my first post, here it is in all its glory.

And please take a look at the main blog page while you are at it...don't miss the rest of the good stuff.

Woooooo Hooooo!

2006-08-02T06:48:00.002-04:00

Instant Boss has been featured on DownloadSquad.com!

I understand this is an accomplishment. I am not sure I deserve all the attention, but I am loving it any way. Feels really good.

I am just glad someone appreciates my work, besides me.

This has surpassed all the great feelings my original DClock gave me and seems to be potentially a bigger 'claim to fame' as my dad would put it. He thought that tiny little desktop clock, that we have all become dependant on, was going to be it for me. Well, wait till I email him links to all the Instant Boss stuff. He isn't going to believe it!

I owe my dad a lot of credit for all of this. Had he not handed me that old P1, none of this would be happening right now. I'd still be painting pictures on my fingernails as my main creative outlet and source of entertainment.

I am going to enjoy my "15 minutes in the spotlight"....enjoy it while it lasts.

Josh did a screencast for Instant Boss. I am totally impressed and amazed at those screencasts he does. He can make something simple look like WOW. That's quite a talent.

I think if he did a screencast on a common Lincoln penny, he'd raise it's value to $1, at least.

I spent a lot of time submitting Instant Boss to shareware/freeware sites today. It will be interesting to see how many downloads I get on it...and how many will actually donate.

I am pretty close to acquiring the funds needed to pay for my domain name and hosting for my site for another year, and enough to cover the cost of turning on DSL and getting a wireless router too.

If that is all I manage to accomplish, financially, with my software, that is enough to keep me very happy for a long time.

I got 3 awards for my Instant Boss page so far, but I think they hand those out to anybody that submits software to their websites. Got a adware/spyware free certification for it, too.

Donation Coder is wonderful...and so is it's creator, mouser. He is spoiling me silly with all of his attention. He has such a way of pulling people together as a team and motivating them. I love it!

I think if multi hangs out in the Donation Coder IRC channel long enough, he might just realize what is missing from his room and finally be able to take it in the right direction. I only hope he pays attention to the text on his screen and isn't just there to make me happy and ignoring the room, like he did with TSC for all those months.

DevZone really needs good leadership and to be organized & motivated. And multi is the only one that can do it, if he is actually willing to do the job. The lack of good motivating leadership is why I could never call that room home. There was always something vital missing that I craved.

At least with TSC I was able to motivate people, myself, to doing things and to come together as a group...and be close like family...even if it was only for a little while. Multi used to be able to pull people together and motivate them quite well. I don't know what happened to him. I only hope he can somehow find his magic again, before it's too late and another room dies.

New Software Release: Instant Boss

2006-07-31T06:24:00.000-04:00

I have finally finished the first version. This is based on a request made by JacobB over at the DonationCoder.com coding snack forum.

This will time your work/break cycles, reminding you when to work and when to take a break.

The defaults are 10 minutes of work, 2 minutes of break, and this is repeated 5 times for a total of 1 hour.

These values can be changed to suit your needs. The program will remember the values you used during your last session.

Start by entering in the values you desire:

The first box is for how long you want to work.

The second box is for how long you want your breaks.

The third box is for how many times you want to repeat this cycle.

Click Apply to set the new values.

Click Work to begin.

In the statusbar you can see where in your work cycle you are, followed by how long you have worked this session, followed by how long you have worked since you started using Instant Boss.

Instant Boss will tell you when it is time to take a break. You will have the choice to keep working a little longer, take your break now, or skip your break and begin next work period.

If you decide to keep working, it will count up and add this to your total work time. You can then decide when to take a break by clicking the take a break button.

If you decide to skip your break, it will begin the next word period in the cycle.

If you decide to take a break now, it will begin your break period.

At the end of your break period, you will be told to get back to work and offered a few choices.

If you decide to work, the work timer will begin.

If you decide to take a longer break, it will extend your break by 50%, and remind you again when your time is up, to get back to work.

If you click cancel, you will have to start work manually by clicking the work button again.

There is a pause button in case you are interrupted by phone calls or other things that need your attention. This can be used during both work or break periods.

The reset button...use with caution. This will stop all timers and reset everything to default values of 10-2-5 so that you may begin again. It will not reset how long you have worked today, nor the total time you have worked since you started using the Instant Boss program.

Clicking the X to close the program will result in it being minimized to the system tray. The only way to exit is through the right click menu on the tray icon. All of the button options also appear on that menu.

For power users, there are command line parameters you can use to preset the values when you run Instant Boss.

Example:"C:\Program Files\Instant Boss\InstantBoss.exe" 60 15 3
(there is a space after the last quote and a space between each number)

You can either use this from the Windows Run dialog or use it as shortcut targets. The numbers correspond with work-break-repeat, in that order. Please use only numbers, no letters.

Screenshot:

Visit Instant Boss homepage.

This is donationware. If you like it and find it useful, please consider making a donation to me to show your appreciation. Your donations is the only money I make for all of my time & effort invested in creating my software.

Donate to author of Instant Boss

Surprise, surprise!

2006-06-02T06:43:00.000-04:00

I just found out that donation credits at DonationCoder are worth more than I thought. Here I was thinking my 170 credits were worth $1.70 when they are really worth $17.00!!

WOW!!

StopWatch

2006-05-11T03:07:00.000-04:00

I have been spending a lot of time over at DonationCoder.com.

They have this great 'coding snacks' forum where visitors can request small utility programs and volunteers will create them. It's a great way to get project ideas, or kill a bit of time doing what you know you love to do...code stuff.

Someone there requested a stopwatch with a global hotkey to control it. They wanted it to either always stay on top or be able to be minimized to the system tray.

Since I had already done a stopwatch like this, all it needed was the addition of a global hotkey and the request would be filled...so that's what I did.

The hotkey is Ctrl-Shift-F9.

Hitting this will start/pause/resume, depending on the current state of the clock.
This will even work to control the stopwatch if it is minimized to the tray.

Enjoy!

Download: StopWatch

comments & suggestions welcomed