1. Squeamishness Be Gone
2. Routine, Routine, Routine
3. Letting Go of Selfishness
4. The Virtue of Patience
5. Stand By Your Man(’s Best Friend)
6. Asking for Favors
7. Taking Responsibility
8. Coping with Mortality
9. Becoming the Alpha Dog

Squeamishness Be Gone

Congratulations! As a dog owner, you’ve just brought a permanent and prolific source of feces, vomit, drool, hair, anal gland leakage (you’ll see…), urine and sometimes even blood into your home. If encountering a fragrant, auburn steamer coiled on your pillow sets your overly sensitive gag reflex off, then you’ve got some manning up to do. Luckily, as a dog owner, you don’t have a choice. Grab some paper towels, roll them sleeves up and get down to “business.”

Routine, Routine, Routine

On any given Friday, it’s a bachelor’s prerogative to wake up at 8:55AM, punch in at 9:01AM, punch out at 4:59PM and have the first shot down by 5:15PM. Then, roll back in at 2 or 3 or 4 in the morning, crash on the couch and sleep like a hungover stone until 5PM. Try that with a pooch in your apartment and you’re going to have some urine stains to deal with. Now, owning a dog isn’t quite the same as basing your entire schedule around your kid’s soccer practice. But it does mean that you’re going to have to drag your ass out of bed ten minutes early to stand out in the rain with Fido while he finds a perfect spot to mark his territory every morning. And you’ll have to do it again at least two more times a day before you pass out for the night. Don’t worry, though.Sucking it up and being responsible when you least want to be is worth it. It builds character.

Read the rest on Primer Magazine.

1. Andrew Bird – Anonanimal
2. Arcade Fire – No Cars Go
3. Theresa Andersson – Birds Fly Away

Anyway, to appreciate the loop-y goodness of each of these artists, you have to see them perform these songs live. So, for your brain-melting pleasure, here are some representative samples:

Andrew Bird – Anonanimal (Live)

Andrew Bird needs no introduction. This video is from the Pitchfork “Live at Cemetery Gates” series, which is particularly fitting for a man that seems to be so deeply haunted by his own music. Watch his face and you’ll know what I mean. Watch his feet and you’ll see his awesometacular socks.

Owen Pallet – No Cars Go

This one is a semi-cover, since Owen Pallett (the artist formerly known as Final Fantasy) is kind of an emeritus member of Arcade Fire. He played the violin on the recording of No Cars Go on Neon Bible and co-wrote the string arrangements for the songs on Funeral. Entertainingly, whereas Arcade Fire has about a million members on stage at any given time, Pallett typically prefers to go it alone.

Theresa Andersson – Birds Fly Away (Live)

Hey, this one seems a bit out of place, mood-wise, and you probably couldn’t even tell that it was related just from hearing the song. But watch this video and you’ll understand why Theresa Andersson belongs on this list and many, many others (“Fancy Feet Award Recipients,” “Thanks For Smiling,” and “Top 5 Noisy Neighbors” to name a few). She’s usually a little more violin intensive, but this is my favorite song of hers and it’s even better live because of her one-woman a capella break down.

Anyway, that’s all the songs I got to cram into 15 minutes and I think that’s enough to convince you that playing barefoot isn’t just for hippies anymore. You should certainly check out the KCRW Morning Becomes Eclectic appearances of Andrew Bird, Owen Pallett and Theresa Andersson for further ocular proof of their superhuman mastery.

Main image from AndrewBird.net by Brandi Ediss

In my years of editing and writing web copy, I’ve come across plenty of articles that attempt to do this anyway. Most often, this methodology results in what I call “top heavy content.” And like a potted plant, content that carries all its weight up top always feels wobbly and imbalanced. The introduction tends to overpromise while the body underdelivers or worse, meanders, and the readers are left with an unsatisfying mess.

So, here’s what I do to avoid this. Instead of beginning on line one of the first paragraph, I start from the middle. There are three main reasons why I do this:

Beat the Block

Everyone suffers from an occasional case of writer’s block and professional writers are no exception. This is especially true of perfectionists facing the lead of an article. There’s a lot riding on those first few words so they have to be absolutely flawless. In fact, they have to be better than that – they have to be intriguing and promising enough to draw the reader in to the rest of the piece. Because of this daunting (drink!) task, many writers find themselves staring at a blinking cursor, teetering on the precipice next to a void of white space for hours, unable to produce the right words to get this article kicked off in earnest.

The thing is, though, that this time could’ve been spent out fleshing out the meat of the article. That way, instead of finally getting past the first paragraph and then only having a few moments left to bang out the main points of the article, the writer can go back and agonize over the perfect opening lines after the article is already 95 percent written.

Read more at Anthrocopy.com >>>>

1. Now Playing Plug-in

2. Lyrics Plugin

3. MGTEK dopisp

4. Last.fm Scrobbler

5. WMPKeys Plug-in

6. DFX Audio Enhancer

7. Google Talk Plug-in

Read more at 7tutorials.com.

In classic Google fashion, there is a friendly video overview of Google Goggles over at the Google Mobile Blog. For those who haven’t viewed it yet, Goggles brings picture search to Android phones in a big, big way. Here’s how it works:

• Using your Android phone, you snap a picture of a logo, a book cover, or even a storefront.
• Google Goggles identifies the object and then kicks back relevant information, whether its search results, user reviews, price comparisons or store hours.
• You can save your visual search history just like you save your regular search history via a web browser.

The examples on the website are pretty impressive. A snapshot of a certain iconic bridge in San Francisco makes Goggles instantly spit back “Golden Gate Bridge” and offer a Wikipedia entry for perusal, while a picture of a business card automatically parses out the name, phone number and email address.

Google Goggles

But what’s more exciting, and scary, are the capabilities that Google Goggles will wield once it emerges from its infancy. The exciting aspects of visual search are easy to fathom. There’s many a time words fail us when we try to come up with an effective search query. Questions like: “What species of tree did this leaf come from?”, or “What kind of pill is this?”, or “Is this rash contagious?” will be far more answerable (much in the same way Midomi revolutionized the “name that tune” conundrum).

Read the rest of this article at ReveNews.

Photo by lietus

Keep these tips in mind to make sure your vacation isn’t a waste of coin:

Be prepared.

Maybe you’ve watched too many movies, but for some reason you have it in your head that everything will unfold smoothly once you arrive. All you need to do is parachute in with a rucksack and an assured outlook on life and you’ll instantly be ushered into an affordable, comfortable hostel and bump into a shy, but quirky and cute local girl who will act as your interpreter and personal guide. That may happen if you set out on your journey without a game plan, but a more likely scenario involves you, alone, in the train station, ten minutes to closing without a euro or a clue.This can be a wee bit stressful.

Instead of dropping yourself immediately into emergency mode, where you’ll be desperate enough to pay exorbitant prices for any available taxi or bed, have some of the basics mapped out and booked before you arrive. Yes, you could ask around town until you stumble upon the best deals, but, amazingly enough, most of the legwork can be done from home, seeing as you obviously have Internet access. (Or did you get someone to print this article for you? Tree-waster.) Researching hotels at sites like hotels.com or venere.com or ricksteves.com can easily be done during your lunch break at the office, weeks or months in advance – you know, when you’re not in a foreign land, jet-lagged and lugging 80 pounds of luggage.

Do as much planning as possible ahead of time. Consider yourself a military operative with a clear objective: relax, have fun. Your mission is only to execute the orders delineated at HQ, not to cook up directives on the fly. Have a plan of attack before you touch down so you can go about the business of chilling on autopilot. Find a couple good restaurants, figure out where to change your money, find a place to stay (at least for the first few nights), read a recent guide book cover-to-cover, print off a map and a bus or train schedule before you hop a plane. Take care of the basics – once you are oriented and have a place to stash your stuff and sleeping body, then you can start winging it.

Remember: You are visiting a foreign nation, not an amusement park. You aren’t guaranteed fun if you haven’t planned for it, and no one is going to go out of their way to keep you smiling except you.

Stop being a sitcom male and ask a damn stranger for help.

Even a former Boy Scout won’t be prepared for everything. When you roll into town, straight off the boat, there is likely going to be something that throws you for a loop. Maybe something has changed since your guidebook was published or perhaps you have no freaking clue how to get into the pay toilet. Don’t sit there like a tourist consulting your guidebook in a crowded train station when you can easily reach out to any number of strangers bustling about you. Someone who lives there will have far more information than the intern that was sent by Lonely Planet to scope out Gare du Nord.

I know, I know, you’re a man and you ain’t never asked for nothing from nobody. A snow leopard could rip the arm from your socket and you wouldn’t so much ask for a band aid. But here’s the thing: being lost in a foreign country is an entirely different universe than being lost on the interstate in Ohio. You need to ask for help.

Memorize key phrases such as, “Excuse me, where is the tourist information center?” and “Where is this train headed?” and “Where is [my hotel]?” Also note that most employees in Western European countries do speak English, but they’d really prefer that you at least try to speak their language, even if all you can say in their native tongue is, “Excuse me, I am a silly monolingual American, please, do you speak English?”

And for God’s sake, don’t resort to the slow, loud-talking, wildly gesticulating attempts at communication that some hapless tourists adopt. For one, the person you are trying to speak to is merely Spanish or Italian or German, not deaf, and also, even if they can’t understand your words, they can read your tone loud and clear and if you sound annoyed and condescending, they’ll feel less obliged to help you. Locals in the know are your saviors when you are in a jam, and getting on their good side requires a dose of humility and patience.

Budget like a bean counter and then spend like a jackass.

One big problem with vacations is that they are expensive. It’s expensive to get there, and, at least recently, with the dollar in the doldrums, it’s expensive to do everything else once you arrive. Knowing this can throw a wet soggy blanket on your fun factor. If you’re the fiscally responsible spendthrift that I think you are, you are likely to feel every euro or pound that passes through your fingers and wince at the thought of spending so much per day.

Budgeting on the fly leads to one of two major hang ups: either you overspend to the point that you run out of money before you get home (”C’mon, I’m on vacation” is the argument here) or you underspend for fear of breaking the bank and miss out on a one-of-a-kind experience.

Read the rest of this article at Primer Magazine.

We know already: your boss sucks, your salary sucks, your co-workers suck, your commute sucks, your benefits suck, heck, with so much suck in the room it’s starting to feel a little bit like you suck. Loathing your job, it seems, is par for the course. But does it have to be? If it feels like you have a potential “case of the Mondays,” and are having trouble stomaching the ol’ rat race, you should consider some lessons from some actual rats.

Check this out.

Some disturbingly sadistic scientists took three rats and put them each in a little box-like container. You could almost call it a cube, or maybe even a cubicle. These three rats were walled off in their little cubes with nothing but their tails sticking out. For 21 hours, the scientists administered shocks to the rats at random intervals. All the rats received the same amount of shocks – however, one of the rats had the ability to deactivate the shocks by pressing a button. He quickly figures this out and whenever the shocks come, he starts pounding away at that little button. The other rat, meanwhile, is getting shocked off and on and has no clue what’s going on.

At the end of the study, the scientists compared the amount of “stomach lesions” (i.e. ulcers) each rat developed due to the shocks. As it turns out, although both Rat A and Rat B received the same amount of shocks, Rat B had twice as many ulcers as Rat A. (Rat C, by the way, was a control rat. He’s just chillin’ and has no ulcers.)

So, what’s the X factor? Control.

Look – everyone has to work to make a living (except, of course, the trust fund babies who live off of mommy and daddy for their entire lives – but I know none of those types read Primer). We all put in our 40+ hours a week, we all get shafted by middle management, we all get our thunder stolen from co-workers. In short, we all get the same level of shocks in our little cubicle.

But the key to escaping the pain and suffering of a workaday existence isn’t crying to your LiveJournal about being passed up for a promotion or boring your date with epic complaints about the smarmy IT guy who keeps deleting your iTunes. The only way out is to gain control over the stressors in your career. For the rat, control was given to him by his quasi-benevolent overlords. But you’re a man, not a mouse. And it’s your job to seize control. Here’s how to do it:

Change Your Outlook

Stress is a mental thing. As we learned from the rats, it’s not about how many shocks you receive, it’s how you respond to the shocks. Poor Rat B rightfully considered himself a victim, subjected to a cruel, unusual and inexplicable regimen of torture. And this is how many disgruntled workers view their situation.

This may or may not be true. If it is, you should go ahead and skip down to the last section. But chances are, it’s not. We largely focus on the frustrations surrounding our jobs and often ignore the value of our toil. Instead of loathing your cubicle as a prison, you really should be rejoicing for the freedom it grants you. The freedom to pay the rent, stay out of debt, pay off student loans, go out drinking with friends, buy an X-Box, rent movies, go on dates. All of that takes money and that’s what your job gives you. In this economy especially, you should be thankful for being privileged with a job to complain about.

In spite of how you may feel, your job is not slavery. You are, in essence, selling your time. And depending on your line of work, you are leasing your mind and body as well. This is all part of the arrangement. This is what you signed up for. From 9 to 5, you aren’t you. You are your occupation – you’re a customer service rep, a programmer, a janitor or whatever it is that you agreed to be in exchange for cash. It doesn’t matter where your loyalties lie or what your ideals are or how bored you are, because for those 8 hours a day, you are a mercenary. It’s unpleasant to think of it this way, but it may help you from feeling victimized.

With that being said, make clear divisions between work and personal life. Don’t bring your frustrations home with you. Don’t log into Outlook from your apartment. Dedicate yourself fully to your job when you’re there and dedicate yourself fully to your personal life when you’re not. Because if you let them invade your private space, then you are basically giving them more of your time and energy than you bargained for.

Think of it this way: when you’re punched in, you’re playing a role. Alexandra Levitt mentions something like this in her book, They Don’t Teach Corporate in College. She calls it a “corporate persona.” This is the professional version of yourself that only cares about doing your job and serving the company. At the end of the day, go ahead and feel free to take the mask off.

Change Your Expectations

What have you learned after five grueling years at the same job? Are the same things ticking you off? Are the same people grinding your gears? If so, then there’s something you need to understand: you can’t change people.

Read the rest of this article at Primer Magazine.

Last night, my wife and I watched “A Night to Remember” on TCM. For those who haven’t seen it, this is a starkly different take on the Titanic than you may remember from the recent James Cameron version. There’s no epic Celine Dion anthems, no naked Kate Winslett and it’s about 60 minutes shorter, too.

Of course, all the historical basics are much the same– the boat still sinks and the steerage still gets locked below the deck as the water rises (women and children and the wealthy first, apparently) – but the biggest contrast is the scope of the drama. In James Cameron’s bodice ripper version, the camera homes in on a story of singular love and the tragedy is in the fleeting romance ended by unthinkable disaster. It is a story of heroic, selfish love.

But in the 1958 film, the heroes are the officers of the White Star Line, who, in spite of certain death, keep cool heads and dutifully and selflessly work diligently to save as many lives as possible.

The officers do an admirable job of keeping the panic in check. The gentleman calmly move about the ship, relating the captains orders to place the women and children in the lifeboats “as a mere formality. Meanwhile, the outwardly unshaken men wryly comment to one another, “I take it you and I might be in the same boat later?”

Even after the captain declares “every man for himself!” and widespread panic sets in, the officers continue to implore the crowd, “Don’t panic! Have some pride in yourselves! If we can get organized, we’ll survive.”

The hero in the 1958 film is the courageous, honor-bound staff of the White Star Line, not an uppity, handsome churl who wins the heart of an icy, high-bred maiden. Likewise, the villain is not a spoiled, jilted lover he’s a man who shamelessly sneaks onto a lifeboat, abandoning hundreds of women, children and his dignity on the sinking ship. This message is clear, as the camera frames his guilt-racked visage as the ship slips into the ocean in the background.

The Sinking Ship, The Grand Applause

Okay, so what does this have to do with credit cards? Nothing, really. It has more to do with the attitudes we take towards our occupations. As Hollywood reframes our historical tragedies – Pearl Harbor, Titanic – we make them interesting to modern audiences by making them very personal stories, where love and loyalties between individuals are more important than the suffering of society as a whole. It’s no stretch to compare the current state of our economy and the financial industry to a sinking ship. And who is at the helm of the consumer finance industry? Who are the White Star Line officers to the dire situation that is the credit industry?

As far as we’ve seen in America, there are none. From the outset, it has been “every man for himself!” In fact, even after the CARD Act was made law, one hundred percent of credit cards offered online by leading bank card issuers continue to include practices that will be outlawed once the Act takes effect next year.  (Pewtrusts.org) That shows that the lenders, the bankers, the credit card issuers will do anything that they can get away with to turn a buck, simply because that’s the American way of doing business. When the government clamped down on rampant unfair lending practices, the industry responded by ratcheting up interest rates an average of 20 percent while they still could, again, according to Pew Health Group.

Where is the dignity? Where is the concern for the fellow man, woman and child? How come the lifeboats are filled with the ones who steered us into this iceberg, while the steerage is left locked beneath the deck and the engine room workers are vainly attempting to bail themselves out?

Read more at Master Your Card.

Photo by vsmoothe.

That big opportunity with that company you’ve always wanted to work for. A date with that girl from the library who you’ve been eyeing for the past year. That invitation to go to the game with your friend who had two extra front row tickets. Boons like these can easily be called lucky breaks. But whatever your good fortune brings, don’t chalk it up to chance. Believe it or not, you earned all of these seemingly random blessings. How? Thomas Jefferson (allegedly) said it best: “I’m a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it.”

Jefferson was being somewhat tongue-in-cheek with that comment, but it raises an interesting question: Which successes do we attribute to hard work and which ones to dumb luck? In answer to that question Richard Wiseman, professor of psychology and author of The Luck Factor, would explain that there is no such thing as “dumb luck.” Luck, he says, is distinct from chance because it is something that we build through our actions. In an interview with FastCompany.com, he stated:

Chance events are like winning the lottery. They’re events over which we have no control, other than buying a ticket. They don’t consistently happen to the same person. They may be formative events in people’s lives, but they’re not frequent. When people say that they consistently experience good fortune, I think that, by definition, it has to be because of something they are doing.

So what is this “something” you can do to increase your luck? After nearly a decade of study, Wiseman distilled four principles that contribute to a lucky existence:

(1) Maximize Chance Opportunities

(2) Listen to Your Lucky Hunches

(3) Expect Good Fortune and

(4) Turn Bad Luck Into Good.

Of course, these sound somewhat vague and, in the case of the last two, a bit new-age-y. But when you get into the specifics of increasing your luck, things start to make sense. Wiseman explains:

One way is to be open to new experiences. Unlucky people are stuck in routines. When they see something new, they want no part of it. Lucky people always want something new.

They’re prepared to take risks and relaxed enough to see the opportunities in the first place.

Being lucky, according to Wiseman, is mostly about creating opportunities and having the confidence to take them. He doesn’t go as far as to mention zen or any other enlightened states of mind, but he does have a point: being lucky has more to do with being open to opportunities than it does with preferential treatment from the universe.

In this way, luck is somewhat of a self-fulfilling prophecy: those who feel lucky seem to have better luck, simply by virtue of their being open to new experiences that may lead to good fortune. So what can a guy who’s looking for a new job, a new outlet for his creativity or a new female companion do to boost his luckiness? Why not try a few of Primer’s proven luck hacks:

Keep a Luck Diary

In his appearance on Wiretap with Jonathan Goldstein, Wiseman prescribed a “luck diary” in order to help unlucky folks turn around their misfortune. The idea is that unluckiness, too, is a self-fulfilling prophecy. People who feel like the cards are stacked against them are less likely to take the necessary risks that will open windows of opportunity. A luck diary puts you in the mindset to break the cycle of misfortune.

For the very pessimistic, it can be difficult to find something to feel lucky about every day – but that’s okay. You can start small. On day one, maybe you’ll consider it lucky that you got the last cannoli at the bakery. The next day maybe you’ll get lucky by getting a seat on the early bus, rather than having to wait 30 minutes to stand on the next one. The day after that, you can count yourself lucky for being the one to hold the elevator door open for the president of your company, who now knows your name and face. A month from now, you’ll find yourself in the lucky position of being top of mind when it comes to promotions.

Going through this diary after a week or so, you’ll begin to notice a more fortunate portrait of yourself being painted. Life will seem a bit more just and you’ll begin feeling better about yourself, more optimistic. You’ll feel luckier, and will feel more open to taking on new risks, exploring new opportunities and you’ll be more pleasant to be around in general. Which leads to the next point:

Read on at Primer Magazine.

“At this time, please pretend to pay attention as we go over the safety features of this plane. In case you haven’t been in an automobile since 1964, the seat belt is fastened by inserting the flat end into the buckle until it latches. If cabin pressure is lost, a yellow oxygen mask will drop from the ceiling. Affix the mask over your face and breathe normally (yeah right…you’ve seen Fight Club haven’t you?). In the case that this flight becomes a cruise, we will provide fashionable yellow life jackets. Pull the tabs to inflate automatically. For overachievers, inflate the life jacket by blowing into the tubes located on either side of the jacket.”

The FAA requires flight attendants to go through this spiel. They know that we know the routine, and we know that they know, so most of us tune it out. Most airlines have their attendants go through the motions as quickly and generically as possible, dutifully fulfilling their obligations to their captive audience. But Southwest at least takes this opportunity to entertain their passengers and lighten the mood, which is much appreciated, especially after a long delay like mine.

A quick YouTube search of “funny Southwest attendants” reveals that my experience with Southwest is not unique. Undoubtedly, this novel approach to the mundane drag of regulatory compliance was part of the staff’s training. The practice turns out to be very astute for two reasons: it gets people to listen and it makes a memorable impression.

Like flight attendants, Web writers are representatives of a company and whether drafting a sales letter, providing copy for a website, or addressing customers through a newsletter, we  speak  with the voice of the company. While the safe route is to adopt mind-numbingly innocuous corporate language – “Moving forward, our company’s vision is to add value to the paradigm that we have pioneered through our excellent service and award-winning innovation” -  in many cases, it can be more successful to connect with readers in your target audience by adopting a more relaxed tone. After all, on the Web something more interesting is always a click away, and if the medium doesn’t hook the message will never be delivered.

Read the rest of this post at ReveNews,

Image by PinkMoose.