In this video Bob and I talk about a couple of Nutrisystem videos. Of course, Bob being Bob, he just has to conjure a mental picture that I (and viewers as well I'm sure) could have easily lived without seeing.

However he's definitely right about the videos showing dramatic changes. He was only focused on the one but in the second video we find out that Larry the Cable guy dropped fifty pounds on the plan which is definitely a dramatic change. At least four bowling balls worth!

Meanwhile, Bob manages to misinterpret something I say and goes into panic thinking that I'm telling him there's going to be owls on the set which he's deathly afraid of. This leads to his very hasty exit while he steadfastly refuses to listen to my efforts to calm him down. I have to blame myself really.. I made the mistake of using the word "hooters" without thinking that to Bob that means only one thing: owls, which he's terrified of because they eat his kind for breakfast.

Technorati Tags: meal plan, good carbs, emergency exit, video review, balanced nutrition, deserts, weight loss, panic, not feeling hungry, hooters, glycemic index, bob, nutrisystem

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Post tags: balanced nutrition, bob, deserts, emergency exit, glycemic index, good carbs, hooters, meal plan, not feeling hungry, nutrisystem, panic, Video Review, weight loss

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If you're like me then probably for a long time you've used javascript to munge email addresses that you put on your websites in order to keep the spambots from being able to use them while keeping them readable and usually clickable for visitors.

All of that is changing however, thanks in large part to the fact that Google is now doing a lot more to parse javascript it finds on pages. While the javascript remains intact in cached copies of your site, When that javascript encoded email shows up in Google's results pages, it's been parsed back into the email address that the script was supposed to conceal. This means that it sheds it's cloaking faster than an obese person sheds pounds when they're taking the best fat burners they can find and exercising like mad. Thus your carefully protected email address is once again harvestable by spambots. All they need do is scour google search results for patterns that look like email addresses.

The answer is of course that it's time to change how you cloak the address. I've read that, for the time being anyway, email cloaking scripts that are contained in external .js files and used as an include have not been broken yet, although I can't help thinking that it's only a matter of time before Google & co. start processing those bits as well.

When that happens, about the only way I can think of to be able to display an email address will be to make a graphic image of it and use that instead of any code that contains the address. The problem with this is that while visitors will be able to read it, it won't be clickable or available by copy & paste. Besides that I have to wonder how long it's going to be before some enterprising young spammer decides to apply OCR to those images.

I guess time will tell.

In the meantime, I'd like to hear from readers what methods you are using to keep email addresses spam-proof and how effective you believe they are.

Technorati Tags: spam proofing methods, javascript, email, address munging, spam proofing, google, parsing scripts, decoding email addresses

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Post tags: address munging, decoding email addresses, email, google, javascript, parsing scripts, spam proofing, spam proofing methods

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If you're at all like me and most of the English speaking world, you hate telemarketer calls. They're annoying in the extreme and almost always seem to be timed for when you REALLY don't want to hear from some idiot selling something you don't want in the first place.

Well, over the last six months or so I've seen a marked increase in the number of these calls in spite of the fact that I'm on the "do not call" list. Then there's the latest craze.. robot callers that as soon as you answer the phone start up with an automated sales pitch. And of course, since it's automated, there's no way for you to talk back to them and tell 'em to stop calling you.

Another variation on this is automated calling systems being used by debt collection agencies. Many of them even have a bit in their automated spiel that says "If you are not {victim name}, please hang up. {pauses for a second} By staying on the line you are confirming that you are {victim name} ... " blah, blah, blah. What's really cute is that it'll do this even when it's obviously talking to an answering machine.

Recently I heard about a neat little tech gadget that helps with this problem called the Telezaper. I did some looking around and managed to find it on sale for $8.97 which is a great deal compared to it's normal $39.95 price tag.

This little gem plugs into the phone line between the wall jack and the phone, is battery powered so doesn't need external power. on all incoming calls it emits tones that signal to the computerized dialer that the number they called doesn't work. This causes the computer to hang up and drop your number from it's list for that calling run.

The long and short of it is that I'm seriously wanting to lay hands on one of these while the sale price is still good. Ending, or even just cutting down on the number, of these calls is something I'd really like to see happen.

Technorati Tags: telemarketers, unsolicited sales calls, unwanted calls, debt collectors

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Post tags: debt collectors, Telemarketers, unsolicited sales calls, unwanted calls

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After over a year of learning a lot of the ins and outs of video editing and visual effects I've decided that it's time to put this hard won knowledge to work. Therefore I am now offering visual effects editing services.

From several variations on teleporter and transporter effects to gunshot muzzle flashes, light saber sequences, chroma key and / or masking to replace existing backgrounds, CrazyTalk 5 standard facial animations and more.

For further details check out this blog post "Pimp Your Pic Or Video - Have Quality Special Visual Effects Added Cheaply"

Technorati Tags: transporter, muzzle flash, special effects, beaming, explosion, alter background, photo editing, lightsaber, video editing, filmmaking, home video, video editing, phaser

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Post tags: alter background, beaming, explosion, filmmaking, home video, lightsaber, muzzle flash, phaser, photo editing, special effects, transporter, video editing

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Not long ago I got a copy of CrazyTalk 5 standard from Reallusion. It's a facial animation package that allows you to animate the face in any picture. So far I've found CrazyTalk 5 very useful in several videos I've made and I'll be using it more in the future. It was absolutely worth every cent and then some. I do wish that I could have gotten the PRO version but that was beyond my budget, perhaps someday ...

Recently I got the notification that CrazyTalk 6 had been released so naturally I had to check it out. Once I got it downloaded and installed I saw one problem. I should have looked at the system requirements before doing so. It's calling for much more powerful (as in dual core 2.6ghz or better) CPU, 2gb of memory and soon. I will say that it does run on my single core 1.6ghz Sempron but that poor CPU will need to spend a couple years with the Kettlebells if it's ever going to be able to run CrazyTalk 6 very smoothly.

Setting aside the hardware requirements issue, CrazyTalk 6 is definitely a serious step up. It's now able to handle multiple actors at once (up to four I believe) and there are a lot more control options both in the model setup and in creating and executing the script.

If you've got the hardware capable of it, CrazyTalk 6 is definitely the "go to" solution for doing any kind of facial animation. I know that as soon as I can manage to upgrade my hardware I'm absolutely going to be using the daylights out of it.

Technorati Tags: facial animation, review, crazytalk, animation software, animate pictures

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Post tags: animate pictures, animation software, crazytalk, facial animation, review

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The Louisiana House has proven that it's majority is composed of fatheads. I say this because the fifteen cents per month surcharge that they want to apply to Internet access in Louisiana is without doubt, a completely fatheaded idea. I think that what needs to be done is lay in a supply of nuphedra and get the fat burned out of their heads. Maybe then they'll admit what this really is, just another excuse to tax something and use the money foolishly.

In their efforts to bull this thing through they're waving that much overused flag of "protecting the children". Don't get me wrong, there's a lot of evil people doing some very evil things to children and they need to be stopped. However I also believe that this "problem" is being blown way out of proportion. Because it's such an emotional issue it's a banner that entirely too many have used to distract attention from things that would never have been allowed to pass if they'd been aired as separate issues of their own.

This "save the children" banner is being used to distract us from a lot of things that in the end add up to severing our basic rights like freedom of speech and privacy.

Fortunately it has not yet become law and there's at least a decent chance that it won't. WWLTV.com has an AP article that quotes Rep. Austin Badon, D-New Orleans who opposes the surcharge:

While White called it a usage fee, opponents called the charge a tax on Internet access. They also have questioned whether it would violate a federal law that prohibits states from taxing Internet services and would be challenged in court.

"Today it's Internet access. Tomorrow, what's it going to be? A subscription to DirecTV?" said Rep. Austin Badon, D-New Orleans.

All I can say is that I hope and pray that saner minds prevail and this tax is defeated. If not on the Louisiana Senate floor, then in the courts when it's struck down by the courts as violating federal law.

Technorati Tags: internet surcharge, internet tax, slippery slope, federal law, louisiana house

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Post tags: federal law, internet surcharge, internet tax, louisiana house, slippery slope

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Not long ago Microsoft, in a move that proves once again that there is absolute zero surplus of brains available there, rolled out the "Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 Service Pack 1" update. Shortly afterward many users were more than a bit aggravated at the fact that it also installed, without asking I might add, a Firefox plugin called "Microsoft .NET Framework Assistant (ClickOnce) Firefox Extension".

What was so especially aggravating about this was the fact that they went out of their way to make it difficult to remove, disabling the "uninstall" button, Etc. Now, after a lot of very annoyed users have made it clear how much they didn't like something being installed into their browsers without even a "may I please?", they boys at Redmond have released an update that fixes the problem and makes it easier to uninstall the thing.

Of course, there's also the removal instructions provided recently at Annoyances.org that give clear, step by step instructions for removing the plugin that Microsoft had ZERO right to install without permission in the first place.

Either way, because that plugin essentially gives Firefox one of IE's long standing vulnerabilities, getting rid of the blasted thing is really the only sensible way to go. Now all we need to do is convince Microsoft to leave our browsers (and other software) alone.

Technorati Tags: unwanted extension, ie vulnerability, firefox extension, corporate stupidity, sneaky underhanded tactics, firefox plugin, dot net update

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Post tags: corporate stupidity, dot net update, firefox extension, firefox plugin, ie vulnerability, sneaky underhanded tactics, unwanted extension

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Lately I've been thinking that I need to do an upgrade on my game collection. That's because most of what I've got is five or more years old and let's face it, I've played 'em half to death. It's long past time for some new additions to the library so it's off to my favorite sale page to have a look at what's available these days.

The first thing I notice is a huge trend toward what I call "heavy" games. By that I mean that they're written for people with state of the art systems that have the latest graphics card and multi-core CPU's and while that's great, I'm not currently blessed with such a system (note to self, go shopping).

However, even allowing for a 1.6ghz single core 32bit cpu, only 2gb of ram and an older ATI Rage Pro graphics card there's still quite a bit of stuff available. Anyway, since I'm just shopping right now I'm leaving the system requirements out of things for now (who knows, maybe I'll get a new up-to-date-state-of-the-art-gaming-machine for my birthday).

Anyway, I was looking through some of the newer games available, titles like Grand Theft Auto 4 (which want's one hell of a lot of computer!), Crysis, Left 4 Dead and others seem to top the list of the most popular. One that I ran across this morning however is not only new, but something of a nostalgic trip down memory lane at the same time.

I'm talking about "Ghostbusters: The Video Game". Before anybody decides to blow it off, let me say that this is *NOT* one of those ultra-lameoid luzer wannabe games that came out back in the eighties with horrible 8bit graphics on mega slow processors.

*THIS* game is taking full advantage of modern 3d graphics and animation. For that matter, they even got the original cast, Dan Akroyd, Bill Murray, Harold Ramis, Ernie Hudson and Annie Potts.

What else is cool is the growing trend these days for new games to have "game trailer" videos out that let you get a look inside the game and actually see some of what it looks like before you buy it or download some monstrously huge demo version.

I can't say when I'm going to be doing more than "window shopping" for games but when I do, Ghostbusters is definitely on my list of things I want.

Technorati Tags: games, new games, ghostbusters, computer games

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Post tags: computer games, games, ghostbusters, new games

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Not long ago I wrote about creating a Linux boot disk on a USB flash drive and went through the procedure myself with a cheap flash drive I had handy. I found that while my desktop computer did recognize it as a bootable device, the boot process would only get just so far and stop with an error complaining that it couldn't find the Linux kernel.

Since then I've found out that not all flash drives are created equal. For no apparent reason some can be made into successful working boot disks and others cannot. Apparently the two that I've got both fall into the latter category.

This sent me first to the search engines to find out more and then to the sale pages to try to get another one that would work in this capacity. I found out that a lot of these devices, even when they're the same make and model can have varying success as boot devices. Exactly why this is true isn't clear to me at all.

Based on some input from users, some makes have a better record as boot devices than others and it should have been no surprise that the Kingston DataTraveler apparently has a higher success rate as a boot drive than a lot of other makes.

This shouldn't have surprised me. Kingston has been an authority in computer memory devices pretty much from their start and since one of the drives I have is a Sandisk Cruiser 1gb and the other is a generic no-name 8gb, I shouldn't expect Kingston performance out of them. So what I need to do is get myself a quality kingston unit (or three) and give it another go with that.

Then all I need to do is find a way to convince the laptop (an HP Compaq F500) to boot from the flash drive (which it CAN and has done in the past) without hanging becasue it's main hard drive is dead. Seems to me that if the hdd is dead and there's a bootable CD or USB device that it SHOULD go ahead and boot. Unfortunately this machine has other ideas. No matter what I try to boot from these days, it only gets so far and then hangs trying to access the dead primary hdd.

I know many will simply state the obvious and say "well, just replace the hdd then" and I'd do that if I could afford to. As it is, it's gonna have to wait, right now flash drives are a lot more affordable.

Technorati Tags: boot from USB, bootable flash drive, linux boot, laptop hard drive, dead hard drive, flash drive

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Post tags: boot from USB, Bootable Flash Drive, dead hard drive, flash drive, laptop hard drive, linux boot

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Ever since the hard drive (and God knows what else) died on my laptop, I've been taking some time once in a while to haunt the sale pages looking over possible replacements. The fact that there isn't any budget for this right now hasn't slowed me down one bit either since sooner or later there will be $$ for it and when the time comes I want to have a clear idea of exactly what I want in a laptop so I can get it bought and home A.S.A.P.

Under consideration this time is a Toshiba notebook computer , specifically the l355-s7907 model. The first thing that catches my eye about this one is it's keyboard. It's actually GOT a numeric keypad! This is a feature that I've thought has been sorely lacking in laptop design.

I know, there's a sorta-kinda keypad wannabe on most laptops that's accessible by way of an extra function key but it's still not the same. Especially since the number keys have to be mapped out onto the regular keyboard and that means that they're squished into a slanted arrangement that simply destroys any attempt to use the keypad the way you would on a standard desktop keyboard.. entry is slower and a lot more awkward which is why having a regular numeric keypad on laptops is something that I've wanted for a long time.

In addition to being a handy portable machine, with it's Intel Pentium Dual-Core T4200 CPU running at 2.0GHz in 3GB of ram and a 320GB Hard drive it would also serve as an extremely handy workhorse machine that would make much shorter work of doing the final rendering on videos. This would both free me up to do longer videos, I could also get away with more complicated and involved projects and special video effects.

All I'd have to do is get the project and it's source files all set up on my main desktop, then copy everything over to the laptop and do the rendering while I start work on the next project because the desktop isn't sitting there at 100% CPU usage making it impossible to get anything done at all.

Technorati Tags: netbook, noteook, laptop computer, toshiba netbook

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Post tags: laptop computer, netbook, noteook, toshiba netbook

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