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Lucid dreaming is defined as a dream where the dreamer is aware of the fact that they are dreaming. Often, the dreamer can exert conscious control over the dream as well. If you have ever controlled your dreams before, then you may have experienced lucid dreaming.

The only prerequisite to being able to control your dreams is that you realize a few things:
1) that you realize that you are dreaming
2) that you realize that everything that occurs in this world occurs because your mind invents it
3) that you realize that you have control over this world because this world was built by your mind.

Essentially once you realize that its all in your head, you realize that you can do whatever you want. Often the only limitation is your ability to suspend your own mind’s concept of reality. For instance, we all know that walls are solid. If you run straight at a wall you brain will expect you to hit it and it will react on instinct. In the dream world, you must override that instinct in order to run through that wall.

First I’m going to start off with an anecdote, then I’ll give some tips.
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I remember back when I was going to college in Phoenix AZ that all of my friends and classmates had myspace accounts. I sat there thinking “This is some messed up fad, I can’t believe they all bought into this.” I promised myself that I would never get a myspace account.

However, I did eventually get an account simply to find an old friend (which I did). The cool thing was that I discovered how important social networking sites are for targeted traffic generation… at least for personal sites. This website is full of my artwork and opinions. Thusly, it is something that many of my friends may be interested in. Admitedly, I don’t have much of a social life and I find social networking sites like MySpace, Elftown, and Zaadz to be great ways to make friends online.

Now, that being said, don’t spam your friends. They don’t appreciate it. I post information in relevent forums and I also post bullitns/blog entries that my friends can see. That’s it. Still, it starts you off with a decent visitor base to work from.

For artists, I would definately suggest getting Elfwood and Deviantart accounts. These sites are ranked very highly in the search engines. Getting accounts with them and posting a few “teaser” pieces can only increase your traffic. However, you have to stay active. You have to get out there and comment on people’s artwork. You have to respond to comments on yours. Get out there and get involved, it’s fun and it is very rewarding.

For bloggers it is important that you visit other blogs and comment on them. Every comment you leave provides a link back to you. This is important because it not only increases search engine ranking but also, if your comment is provocative enough, will prompt people to come visit your blog. BlogRush is also useful in this capacity. Read this article to find out how.

My advice boils down to this:
Get out there and get involved. Make your presence known in the web community. At the same time, don’t spam. I happen to think Spam tastes good in person… but I hate it online. If you are an unknown on the web, your website will also remain unknown. I see far too many blogs with no comments in them. I try to make a point to try and comment on something.

An invitation to all bloggers!

If you have a blog and no comments, comment on this post here and I will be more than happy to drop you a line. Feel free to look around my site in the meantime. I’ve got ADD pretty bad, and if I could sit down long enough write out all of this stuff, you shouldn’t be too bored reading through it.

Get out there, mix it up, have some fun. That’s what this is all about anyway. Oh… and I wouldn’t mind selling a few T-shirts while I’m at it. :P

Type to you later,
~Nathaniel

Another strange dream this morning. Let me start off by saying that I have crazy abilities in my dreams. One of which is the ability to teleport/time travel. In this particular dream I was trying to get somewhere else, anywhere else. So I went into my closet. There was a door at the back of it that was supposed to lead to another room. I turned my back to it, closed my eyes, opened the door and fell backwards through it. I fell like nothing was there to stop me. I fell through the floor and tumbled through space. I eventually landed on a smooth carpeted surface, very gently I might add. I stood up and looked through the door through which I had passed, I could see the closet and the room from which I came. However, turning around I realized that I was indeed somewhere else. I had created a portal that bridged two places by this doorway.
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Alright, I’ve already laid out how traffic exchanges can help produce traffic in this article. The main problem with most traffic exchanges is that the traffic is not targeted… or it’s fake. In other words, people click on the links to see your site simply to earn credits. When their time limit is up, they’ll move on and repeat the process so that they can get more traffic. This isn’t really a problem though. You can use banner exchanges and, if you’re blogging, BlogRush to reclaim those untargeted hits and turn them into targeted hits. Now, I get a fair amount of traffic from TrafficSwarm. This traffic is somewhat targeted. If I can manage to grab their attention long enough to keep them looking around then that’s awesome. However, even if they don’t stick around I’ve got both a banner exchange through BannersGoMLM and I’ve got the BlogRush widget. This way, even the untargeted traffic has the potential to earn me some targeted traffic. I call this “reclaiming hits.” It’s a way to transform even the bad traffic into good traffic. Even then, you don’t have to be getting “bad” traffic if you follow the suggestions in this article.

The fun part is, if You’re also advertising your BannersGoMLM and BlogRush affiliate links then you can get people to sign up under you and build up your downline that can bring you even more traffic. In fact, even TrafficSwarm is set up so that you can earn credits from your downline. I know that MLM is considered shady in the eyes of most. It mostly just gets really bad PR. But that’s beside the point. All the free traffic programs I’ve chosen have MLM aspects, but they can all work fairly well without any recruiting. In other words, you can just do what you do and earn some traffic, or you can recruit some more people and earn a bit more.

Essentially what this article is about, is overcoming the shortcomings of traffic exchanges. Using this method in combination with traffic exchanges is very powerful. It’s at least worth a shot. The cool thing about banner exchanges and BlogRush is that they’re essentially “set and forget” traffic builders. You don’t really have to do anything after you’ve installed their scripts.

Hope this helps anyone interested in free traffic,
Type to you later,
~Nathaniel

I just found something funny. I was looking at my stats and I noticed that someone got to my site by searching for “We are all pink inside shirt”. I thought I was the only one with “We’re all Pink on the Inside” merchandise but as it turns out there is a gay pride ad campaign that uses a similar slogan. That doesn’t bother me one bit but I found it interesting that two people came up with similar concepts as solutions to two separate design challenges. They wanted to generate acceptance with a clever little truth about the color of our guts. I wanted to offend a few people and make them realize their vanity with a clever little truth about the color of our guts.

I do want to state that I have nothing to do with them, or the individual who came up with the slogan. My concept is legally distinct from theirs. Still, I think it’s awesome that two people would come up with something so similar and be so far removed from each other. Even if one promotes gay pride and the other seeks to offend the particularly vain skin goths!

I thought I was worth sharing.
Type to you later,
~Nathaniel

This morning, I had a rather messed up dream. Essentially we where in a plane and flying north when all of a sudden we where hit by a couple of missiles and two fighter jets swooped down on us. Somehow we had entered restricted airspace. I noticed what looked to be a missile base with a landing strip and figured we should try to land there. I remember being able to read something on one of the buildings, from the air: “CPAT” which I’m sure means nothing.
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Another installment in my “free traffic” series, I’m now going to highlight one of my favorites, TrafficSwarm.
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This is just a rigging test of a fairy I’m going to be animating. There are some issues with the way her butt behaves but since you can’t see it when the issues occur, it doesn’t really matter. It was also an assignment for my Advanced Animation class. The subject simply had to sit, come to a rest, then stand and come to a rest. I decided to add a bit of a lift off as well since I would have to be doing this for my final project anyway. I thought my fellow fantasy nuts out there might get a kick out of it. So here it is. I’ll definitely post the final project when it’s done. It should be rather humorous… but I won’t spoil it.

Type to you later,
~Nathaniel

This little known movie (at least in the circles I swim in) just happens to be one of my favorite movies. Legend features a very young Tom Cruise and Alice Playten. Also, I never would have guessed it but the antagonist is played by none other than Tim Curry! It’s hard to imagine the guy who played Dr. Frankfurter also plays one of the coolest bad guys as the Lord of Darkness… but there he is.

In any case, it’s a very old movie (1985, the year I was born), but it is awesome. It captured my imagination as a child and has held it every since. I would even go as far as to credit this movie with my interest in the fantasy world. It’s all just so romantic and cool. The costumes are awesome, the special effects are great for their time and the story line is both unique and interesting.. though I can tell that there is a TON of backstory that we’re just not getting.

If you’re into fantasy at all. Get this movie! I promise, you won’t be let down. We just recently got it on DVD. I didn’t even think it would ever come out on DVD. Before this, the only place I had ever seen it was on TV late at night. It’s a very under appreciated movie.



I’m not sure how much art I’ll be posting in this category but for now there are three images of the same piece. Drawn on my own arm, Machine Within is merely the result of my boredom, several pens, and nothing to draw on but my non-dominant hand

Many children, and even adults, are diagnosed with ADD/ADHD(Attention Deficit Disorder and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder… hereafter referred to as ADD) every year. Some would argue that there is an epidemic. While others, such as myself, debunk it as a load of bull. Yep, this rant is about the ADD excuse as I like to call it. Now, that being said, I have been diagnosed as having ADD and I have noticed odd difference between those with and those without this supposed disorder. The main difference is that stimulants and depressants work backwards on us. Most of the medications prescribed to those with ADD are actually amphetamines. I can’t imagine giving a hyper kid a stimulant would make them any easier to deal with… however, that is the case. For instance, drinking caffeine will make me lose consciousness fairly quickly whereas Benadryl will make me jittery and fidgety. So I recognize that there is a fundamental difference between those with and without this supposed disorder. Studies have actually shown that people with ADD actually have decrease levels of activity in the parts of their brain that govern impulse control. However, I don’t think it’s a disorder at all, nor do I think it’s a learning disability. However, the entire country is using it as an excuse. Students, teachers, and parents are all saying “it’s not their fault… they’ve got ADD”. It’s all garbage.
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Alright, so my traffic isn’t that great but I’ve come up with a fairly decent strategy for getting myself more exposure and visitors though the free link exchange program, BlogRush. First, lets go over how BlogRush works:
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A little 2D animation that I did a while back. It’s really jumpy and could use some more inbetweens but I think it’s half decent. That and the tree in the background looks like it’s disintegrating.

This is what you get for taunting the little guys. I would imagine the ferret runs off with that wallet and heads straight for the closest vending machine.

I figured some people might get a kick out of this, especially ferret owners.

Alright, what is up with women’s obsession with the size of their posteriors? Women now-a-days are obsessed with their weight. They’ve got it in their heads that if they don’t look like the anorexic drug addicts they see on television and in magazines that they’re not good looking. They’re torturing themselves and feeling self conscious for no good reason. Seriously, there is something wrong with this world if women think they need to starve themselves to look beautiful. It’s just not true.
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Blogging has become quite the emotional outlet for many a person. We use the relative anonymity of the net to somewhat obscure our identity and with that we become brave. Many people have come to realize that even if the blog is anonymous you should take personal responsibility for every word therein. That means, that you shouldn’t say anything on your blog that you wouldn’t say in real life.

Recently a Nintendo employee was fired for bad mouthing her boss on her personal blog. Although there was no reference to anyone’s name the company still deemed it “unprofessional”. Now, I personally believe that to be an invasion of privacy, the company whether or not someone acts unprofessional when they’re off the clock. I mean, I have a tendency to act unprofessional from time to time… especially if I’ve had a few drinks first. But I certainly wouldn’t do those things at work. At the same time, this woman did bad mouth her boss. If anyone gets caught bad mouthing their boss, anywhere, they’re going to get fired. That’s just the way it goes.

There is no shortage of people who have been fired by their employers for their personal blog or companies who have fired people because of them. A quick google search for fired blog reveals 9,560,000 results! Trust me, companies are doing it everywhere. I would urge anyone who has a blog to take personal responsibility for every word they say or type (on their blog or otherwise). That’s just being smart and responsible. I stand by everything that I say on this site. Some of my images may be unprofessional, some of my blog entries may be unprofessional, but I will not ever bad mouth my company or my boss. I could… but everyone has their gripes about their place of work. If you need someone to vent to… for the sake of your employment, talk to your friends/family/significant other… don’t post it for the world to see.

Be careful, Blog smart, Blog Responsibly,
Type to you later,
~Nathaniel