Remember Randy Taylor and his incensed sausage complaint call?

Remember how he had a "plump little girl"? I'm pretty sure this must be her, bitching out the Drafthouse for kicking her out for texting during a movie.

Some interesting advice for artists I read today.

Steal Like An Artist
Don't wait until you know who you are to start making things
Write the book you want to read
Use your hands
Side projects and hobbies are important
The secret: do good work and put it where people can see it
Geography is no longer our master
Be nice. The world is a small town
Be boring. It's the only way to get work done
Creativity is subtraction

Details on each point at How to steal like an artist (and 9 other things nobody told me)

How the corpse of a dead hobo won World War II for the Allies

It's a little too long to post here, but Operation Mincemeat really happened and it's a pretty amazing story of World War II espionage...masterminded by no less than Ian Fleming himself.

JUST FOLLOW THE LINK!

When the Rapture Happens, What will Happen to your Pets?

Click on the link to meet the people who are going to step in and help you with your problem.

CLICK ME

Photoshop.com and Photoshop Mobile

Adobe just launched 2 new services...

Photoshop.com - A website for storing, organizing, and sharing your photos in the tradition of Picasa or Flickr. What makes it different from the rest is an uber robust web-based photo editing feature.

Sounds cool, but I've already paid for a Flickr Pro account, and my entire photography website is dependent on images called via HTML from my Flickr hosted files. I have no desire to spend at least a week changing that.

Photoshop Mobile - A free app for Android, iPhone, and WinMo that features an impressive set of photo editing options directly on the mobile device. The app also includes syncing to your Photoshop.com web acount if you have one.

Avast and AVG replaced?

Microsoft Security Essentials dropped a few months back, and Engadget, Gizmodo, and most the other bigtime tech blogs have endorsed it at the best free anti-virus.

I've been running it since switching to Windows 7, and I gotta say, it's lightweight, fast, and doesn't annoy with constant requests for attention. I hate to endorse a M$ product, but this one's genuinely good.

Available for XP (32 bit only), Vista, and 7

Illegal Downloaders Spend More on Music

The Music industry may be punishing its own core customers with crackdowns as it seems those who pirate spend more on legal music purchases than those who do not pirate.

I find this interesting since I pirate music for sampling purposes. I'll routinely pirate an album I'm curious about and listen for a week or so. If I like it, I buy it. If I don't like it, I delete it... always. Maybe offering some kind free download that only lasts a few days for customers who want to sample before purchase would be a more reasonable strategy to curb stealing and encourage buying?

Source

Google Pisses Off Every GPS Unit Producer

Google Maps Navigation (Beta) features voice guided, turn by turn GPS navigation on phones with a Google Maps app, which is to say every smart phone sold in the last 3 or 4 years.

I think Tom Tom's projected holiday sales just plummeted.

sauce

EDIT/UPDATE: Google just specified a bit. Due to some limitations of the iPhone's closed OS, the platform may see a exceptionally crippled version of this functionality or none of it at all. Android, Palm's Web OS, Blackberry, and Windows Mobile remain unaffected.

Dibbuk Box

An eBay auction leads into a supernatural mystery...LINK HERE

Bit of a wall of text on this one, but the story that unfolds has lots of creepy bits and even a "finale" of sorts. Apparently it's been optioned for a movie, too, as there's an IMDB page.

Three mostly unrelated links

FCC to ISP's... We're making Net Neutrality the law

Get Windows 7 Home Premium for $30 legally if you have a working dot edu email addy.

Encrypt your uTorrent traffic to keep private from your own ISP.

10 Great Ways to Get Better at (insert interest here)

I read this on a photography blog I read off and on. It's meant as a "10 Great Ways to Improve Your Photography" but I thought its suggestions were totally general enough to apply to any passion, pursuit, hobby, or casual interest whether it be artistic or not.

1. Know what you want to photograph. Make a decision on what’s important to YOU – not to your editors, or your girlfriend, or your teacher. Decide what’s right for YOU and then stick to it and be consistent. If your work is all over the place, it’s a sure sign you haven’t settled who you are and what you want to do with your photography. Until you sort that out, nobody else will be able to either.

2. Don’t give up! It’s not easy to set a goal and then stick to it, but it sure is rewarding. Half of photography is patience and perseverance. Gut it out. When it gets hard, dig in your heels and work harder. Stay an extra 10 minutes on each location. Spend an extra 15 minutes a day looking at published photos. Handle your camera as often as possible. The more effort you apply, the better the result.

3. Just relax and be yourself. You don’t have to wear a beanie cap and talk like an artist just to impress people. Unless that’s part of your real personality, shelve it. Just be yourself. This ties strongly to my first suggestion. If you’re not sure who you are, remember, you are NOT your photography. You are the person BEHIND the image. Your art should be defined by who you are rather than you being defined by your art.

4. See in yourself the things you want others to see in you. Nuff said.

5. Develop your own interests and your own style. Don’t just copy someone else. Your work will never really improve unless you stop copying other people’s ideas and start developing your own. It’s okay – great even – to be inspired by other work. Just don’t copy it. Do something new.

6. Be positive. With the emergence of online forums and the Internet photo blog, photography can become very negative. Trolls who can’t or won’t do what’s necessary to succeed really, really don’t want you to either. It would force them to come face-to-face with their failures. So ignore them. Stay upbeat. Stay positive. Stay focused on your goals not your detractors. Excise the people, places and things that are a negative influence on your life.

7. Be objective. Be open to constructive critiques of your work. Step back and get rid of your emotional attachment to your images. Analyze them as a stranger would. Check yourself – to see if you’re hitting the mark you set for yourself. Be willing to admit when you’re wrong and learn from it.

8. Care about your subjects. Tell their story as if you are going to be the last person to ever get that chance. Whether you photograph birds, people, mountains, sports, trains, insects, flowers or anything in between, remember, your images end up speaking for the subject. What are you saying? Is it careful and considerate? If you can focus on that you’ll get better.

9. Avoid quick fixes and magic pills. I know some of you wish I’d say “Buy three of these by Saturday and you’ll be a great photographer.” Sorry, if I knew what those three things were, I’d buy them for myself. I do know that photography, like anything else worth a lifetime pursuit, requires lots more than fancy gear. The pretentious guy with the multi-thousand dollar camera kit saying your gear is sub par or that real photographers only use film just needs to feel superior to somebody.

10. Keep reading my blog and increasing my adsense revenue! This is the only exception to rule nine.

You dirty, nasty, slutty, litte... servant of God?

This, from the relative that I can guarantee never went past kissing before marriage:

The most awesomely accidental and clueless sexual comment I've in a very long time. See what sexual repression does to you boys and girls?

It's not high brow...

...that's for sure, but my favorite wallpaper forum always has a gem or two if you look.

click to biggie size