Kerblotto

no damn hawks at all

noreply@blogger.com (Vince) — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 23:16:00 +0000

Nobody comes here anymore, not since they stopped serving pie. Not lone men in suits, not sharp young couples. All the men wore hats, even the chef. Everyone. They used to come late. Now they don’t come at all.

3 Social Media Tricks

noreply@blogger.com (Vince) — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 21:57:00 +0000

It’s been some time since we talked. I’ve been on Mars. Hunting Osama Bin Laden. But I’ve come back to share a few cool social media tips with you. Yes, you personally. Want to step up your Facebook, Twitter and YouTube experiences? Here's how.
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1. Reface your Facebook profile. French artist Alexandre Oudin started a trend by creating a photo spread using the new Facebook profile layout.

Imagine the challenge it must have been for him, creating an original idea, followed by the painstaking trial and error process of aligning his photo to fit so perfectly.

For the rest of us, there’s http://fbcrop.com. Just upload a photo, use the tools to size up and crop out the photos, it’ll even upload them to facebook for you. All you need to do is set the big one as your profile pic.

Check out mine:

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2. Use an animated .gif for your Twitter profile. Maybe you’ve already tried and gotten the error message, "There was a problem with your picture. Was it an animated gif? Sorry we don’t support those.” LIES. The trick is the gif has to be small. Less than a megabyte and 48x48. Try it.

Get your animated gif.

Make your own from an existing image. Open your image up, make a couple changes with an image editor like mspaint, photoshop or gimp and save it as file2, make a few more changes then save it as file3, etc. Upload all three files to http://picasion.com/get-photo/ and generate an animated gif.

Or film an animated gif with your webcam. With this site you can create animated gifs with your webcam. Be warned you will have an epileptic seizure if you visit this site.

Resize it. If you're under a megabyte you can resize it to 48x48 here.

Set it as your Twitter profile pic. Now you’re ready to share your fragment of a thought alongside a three-frame animation. With me.

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3. Play Snake on YouTube. With your iPhones and your Droids, most of you are probably craving that most primordial cell phone game, Snake. Swallowing a pill for increased length is no longer just a Jimmy Johnson pitch. Snake’s back.

Go to YouTube.com .

Watch a video. Like this one.

Pause the video.

Push and hold the left arrow.

While holding the left arrow, push and hold the up arrow.

Play Snake. It ain't the Konami code, and it ain't Contra, but if you've done everything right you should be playing Snake with a decked out Facebook profile and an animated Twitter avatar.

Pittsburgh. So much more than just zombies.

noreply@blogger.com (Vince) — Sun, 04 Jul 2010 22:32:00 +0000

To my friends in the diaspora, Happy Independence Day from beautiful Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

panacea

noreply@blogger.com (Vince) — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 18:30:00 +0000

The Second Coming

noreply@blogger.com (Vince) — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 15:35:00 +0000

TURNING and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

William Butler Yeats 1919.

I don’t know why this poem is on my mind today. It’s a powerful poem, reverberating in my mind. Things fall apart; the center cannot hold. This nightmarish apocalypse built out of rough iambic pentameter haunts me. Control is hopelessly lost. God, sleeping for two-thousand years, must now be at hand. Spiritus Mundi, the mind of the world, this Sphinx, rises to life. What fresh hell is this?

Who loves Kerblotto?

noreply@blogger.com (Vince) — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 16:24:00 +0000

♥ KERBLOTTO.

Advertising with Augmented Reality

noreply@blogger.com (Vince) — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 04:30:00 +0000

Augmented Reality (AR) is a term for a live view of the physical environment whose elements are merged with, or augmented by virtual computer-generated imagery - creating a mixed reality.

A well-known example is the yellow first down line seen in NFL broadcasts. It’s not really there, but the gridiron reality is augmented by the yellow line, assisting fans in enjoying the game.

A less successful application was the NHL’s highlighted puck.

Fans preferred old-time hockey.

Topps Baseball Cards have gotten in on the fun.
Hold the card in your hand before your camera, and the display will show a three-dimensional player. Moving your hand will cause the player to change its angle. Total Immersion has also stated that the avatars will be able to do things like batting, catching, and pitching. Take a look.

The new Star Trek movie is running an augmented reality promotion.

All you need is a webcam. Download and install an application, print out the poster, and you’re sort of holding the Enterprise in your hands. Try it, it’s pretty neat. If you don’t have a webcam, check out a demo on youtube.

Brian Selzer, co-founder of Ogmento has predicts that by “2010 every blockbuster movie is going to have a mobile AR campaign tied to it.” Really? Even period pieces? Romantic comedies?

Point-of-Sale

To get someone to buy something in a store, first you’ve got to get them to pick it up. This point-of-sale product demo from Lego will get people to line up for the chance. Take the toy in the box to a video kiosk, and you’ll get a preview of what you can build hovering right over the box.

Mobile Augmented Reality
Smartphones are the tools that will bring AR to the masses. Point your camera, and you’ll see an augmented reality on your camera’s video screen.

In New Zealand, Wellington Zoo’s Close Encounters exhibition was the first mobile AR advertising campaign. Advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi brought a glimpse of the wild zoo right into the ordinarily tame medium of newspaper. In partnership with Hit Lab NZ,, software enabled mobile phone users point their phones at the printed box to see a 3D model animals that can be seen at the zoo. The ad reached 750,000 people, leading to a 32% growth in visitors at Wellington Zoo.

Your smartphone camera sees the real world that you see. Overlays can identify and provide information about what you are seeing: a picture, address, and phone number of a restaurant, its menu, its interior, user comments, and their website. For tourists and travelers these applications can serve as tour guides, identifying historic sites, points of interest and share user generated reviews.

GPS enabled phones can help you find everything, and there are plenty of brands happy to give you applications to help you find their stores.

Endless Tourism Opportunity
Imagine visiting Rome and pointing your smartphone at the ruins of the Colosseum to see it as it stood in Rome’s heyday.

Visit Gettysburg and witness Pickett’s charge, Dallas; to see the ill-fated motorcade ride, or Idaho; to watch virtual potatoes grow.

The market for AR applications on smartphones is so new that it has gone from virtually no users in 2008 to an expected 600,000 by the end of 2009, says Christine Perey, a principal at Perey Research & Consulting, who advises companies on mobile augmented reality. She predicts by 2012 there will be 150 million to 200 million users.

The wow wears off.

Once you get over the initial “wow, that’s pretty cool” factor, the apathy curve is pretty steep. Even groundbreaking communications technology becomes boring when there’s nothing interesting being said. Content is still king, where there is real value for the user, a helpful application, sustained entertainment, AR will thrive and help companies grow. Where AR is used for the sake of introducing and astounding people with AR, adding nothing of value, get your rocks off now. Burger King, I’m talking to you.

The future is limited only by our creativity. And our legal system.

Facial recognition + augmented reality = Brave New World?

Facebook Connect

noreply@blogger.com (Vince) — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 20:11:00 +0000

You dawg I heard you like facebook, so I put your facebook in my blog so you can facebook while you read my blog.

Stop Diabetes

noreply@blogger.com (Vince) — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 16:31:00 +0000

November is National Diabetes Month.

And the plan is to stop diabetes once and for all.
There's something you can do.

Share the story of how diabetes affects you. Act by becoming an advocate. Learn the risks. Give by purchasing a Stop Diabetes pin-up at your local RiteAid, and a donation will be made to the American Diabetes Association.

Put a twibbon on your twitter avatar.
Put a widget on your blog.
Do something.

Diabetes is a deadly disease that affects millions and yet, Americans still fail to take diabetes seriously. Through the movement to Stop Diabetes, the Association will elevate the sense of urgency around diabetes and educate the general public about the devastating physical, emotional and financial impact the disease takes on millions of American children and adults each and every day. In year one, our goal is to galvanize a million individuals to Share, Act, Learn and Give. Join me in making a difference today.

Visit http://stopdiabetes.com to learn how you can join the movement to Stop Diabetes.

Blog Action Day 09: Climate Change

noreply@blogger.com (Vince) — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 02:19:00 +0000

It's known to a virtual certainty that human activities such as the burning of fossil fuels are causing a buildup of CO2 and other greenhouse in the Earth's atmosphere. Increased greenhouse gas concentrations are very likely to raise the Earth's average temperature, influence precipitation and some storm patterns as well as raise sea levels.
Whether you accept the facts on climate change or not, I'd encourage you to change your light bulbs. Replace the conventional incandescent bulbs in your 5 most frequently used lights with compact flourescents.

These bulbs use 75% less energy and last 10 times longer. You'll reduce your carbon footprint while saving money on energy bills. If every household in the U.S. took this one simple action we would prevent greenhouse gases equivalent to the emissions from nearly 10 million cars.

source: epa.gov

The Bear is Back.

noreply@blogger.com (Vince) — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 14:50:00 +0000

Mullen put together some hilarious Bear videos for the Bruins. Here, Here and Here.

They are at it again with the Bear and Hall-of-Famer Cam Neely.

Pittsburgh: Day of Service

noreply@blogger.com (Vince) — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 13:22:00 +0000

When the G20 meets on September 25th in downtown Pittsburgh, heightened security, misguided protesters, street closings, media circuses, will likely all add up to a migraine clusterfudge.

But there's a great alternative, spending time beautifying our beautiful parks:

Represent Pittsburgh, and volunteer. All the cool kids are doing it.

Visit http://www.pittsburghdayofservice.com/

Black-eyed Susans

noreply@blogger.com (Vince) — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 02:43:00 +0000

Slideshow

noreply@blogger.com (Vince) — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 16:30:00 +0000

Car Free Fridays

noreply@blogger.com (Vince) — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 15:40:00 +0000

Did you notice less traffic in the Burgh today? Cleaner air? Today Car Free Fridays launched, a city-wide initiative to get people to go carless on Fridays.

The idea was a collaborative effort of BikePGH and Mullen, PAT, Whole Foods, The Sprout Fund, REI, et al to get people thinking about using alternative transportation on Fridays throughout the year.

There are so many good reasons for this initiative I decided to participate. Especially after my failed attempt to help out in the Pound for Pound Challenge. (I pledged to lose 15 pounds, so needy families would get 15 pounds of groceries. I think I gained 10 pounds. So I stole 10 pounds of food from a poor family. I didn’t want to, but a deals a deal.)

I hadn’t been on a bike in a few years after an ignominious crash that broke my collarbone and headset. But you know what they say, it’s just like…

I rode my bike to the kick-off event at Schenley Plaza, enjoyed refreshments and inspiring speeches from event coordinators. Turnout was strong and spirits were high. You just don't get this feeling of community on the parkway. REI was on the scene helping with minor repairs and a friendly fellow helped me out with a gear adjustment.

I made it in to work, with a little huffing and puffing, about a 10 mile trip. But instead of feeling tired or worn out, I feel completely energized. And enthusiastically looking forward to the ride home.

Check out the press:

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/09163/976941-100.stm

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/09157/975610-140.stm

http://pittsburgh.about.com/b/2009/06/11/car-free-fridays.htm

http://community.post-gazette.com/blogs/citywalkabout...

And more information:

http://www.carfreefridays.org

http://bike-pgh.org

http://bike-pgh.org/blog/

http://twitter.com/bikepgh

A Deep Thought

noreply@blogger.com (Vince) — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 11:20:00 +0000

The wise man can pick up a grain of sand and envision a whole universe. But the stupid man will just lay down on some seaweed and roll around in it until he's completely draped in it. Then he'll stand up and go hey, I'm Vine Man.

Jack Handey

Pound for Pound Challenge

noreply@blogger.com (Vince) — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 22:51:00 +0000

In response to public demand for less Kerblotto, I've agreed to lose 15 lbs to help feed the poor.

The Pound for Pound Challenge is tied in with the new season of Biggest Loser. General Mills has agreed to donate 10 cents to Feeding America for every pound lost - enough to provide one pound of groceries to a local food bank. Over 500,000 pounds have been pledged to date.

More Free Stencils

noreply@blogger.com (Vince) — Sun, 21 Dec 2008 02:23:00 +0000

Have these stencil designs, I created these plates, I made stencils and sprayed most of them.

Learn to be Quiet

noreply@blogger.com (Vince) — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 13:23:00 +0000

Franz Kafka

You need not do anything.
Remain sitting at your table and listen.
You need not even listen, just wait.
You need not even wait,
just learn to be quiet, still and solitary.
And the world will freely offer itself to you unmasked.
It has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.

World AIDS Day 2008

noreply@blogger.com (Vince) — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 05:02:00 +0000

(December 1 is World AIDS Day 2008)

(AIDS.gov has challenged the internet to participate in World AIDS Day by using social networks to reduce the stigma surrounding HIV/AIDS and to promote HIV testing. And Kerblotto could not ignore the call, demonstrating great humility and even greater largesse, I have dedicated a whole blog post to take part.

Michelle Samplin-Salgado, New Media Strategist at AIDS.gov issued the challenge:

STEP 1: Take a photo of yourself wearing a red ribbon.
I don’t have a red ribbon. I made a ribbon stencil and spray-painted a piece of paper red.

STEP 2: Add the photo (or badge) to your social network profiles, Twitter, and/or blog in time for World AIDS Day. Leave it up for at least one week.

STEP 3: Add your photo to the “World AIDS Day 08” Flickr group!
I had to sign up for a yahoo email account to do this. I am not sure who yahoo's email interface is designed for. Children? Apple IIGS users? Maybe the criminally insane.

STEP 4: Use your wall, status, tweets or website to encourage HIV testing. To find an HIV testing site near you (in the U.S.), send a text message with your ZIP code to “KNOWIT” (566948) or visit: http://www.hivtest.org.

STEP 5: Encourage your friends to do the same and to promote HIV testing!
Dear friends and readers: do the same.)

Now 25% Creepier!

noreply@blogger.com (Vince) — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 19:00:00 +0000

I would love to meet the artist who painted the original versions of these vintage advertisements. Or at least conduct a search of the crawlspace beneath their house. But if these weren't creepy enough to sell retail in the 1950's, maybe an infusion of creepiness can boost consumer appetites today.

Bread stays fresher with Cellophane!

This child is showing an unhealthy enthusiasm for canned pasta.

MMM... Hamface.

These were inspired by vintage advertising art. And the crazy ass montage art of Winston Smith.

New Pepsi Logo To Make Your Life Worthwhile

noreply@blogger.com (Vince) — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 22:29:00 +0000

Pepsi launched their new logo today by sending out cases of their new can to 25 of the most influential bloggers around. They overlooked Kerblotto and the thought leadership I selflessly provide to the blogosphere, the internet and the world in general.

I'll overlook this egregious oversight on the part of Pepsi marketing team and offer my candid opinion on the new logo.
Pepsi's new logo looks like the view from inside of a toilet bowl.

Pepsi paid one million dollars ($1,000,000) for this design. Coca-Cola, hasn't changed their logo since time immemorial and Coca-Cola has been rated the most valuable brand for 8 years in a row.

Autumn Song

noreply@blogger.com (Vince) — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 03:43:00 +0000

Know'st thou not at the fall of the leaf
How the heart feels a languid grief
Laid on it for a covering,
And how sleep seems a goodly thing
In Autumn at the fall of the leaf?

And how the swift beat of the brain
Falters because it is in vain,
In Autumn at the fall of the leaf
Knowest thou not? and how the chief
Of joys seems--not to suffer pain?

Know'st thou not at the fall of the leaf
How the soul feels like a dried sheaf
Bound up at length for harvesting,
And how death seems a comely thing
In Autumn at the fall of the leaf?

Dante Alighieri

noreply@blogger.com (Vince) — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 12:43:00 +0000

Today's idea

noreply@blogger.com (Vince) — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 12:09:00 +0000

So I had an idea published on idea-a-day.com, it's the idea for November 1, 2008. And it's the best idea anyone has had since tivo.