If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

Several things. Inspired by this post over at wifeadvice.com I decided to write up a post about what I am thankful for in my marriage. It’s a little late for Thanksgiving but I still like the idea.

I am thankful that I have someone to:

1. Keep the bed warm on those cold nights.
2. Bring me lunch while I’m at work.
3. Scratch my back when I can’t reach it.
4. Help me do the chores.
5. Take care of me when I’m ill.
6. Keep me in  line when I’m being a jerk.
7. Navigate when I get lost (which happens often).
8. Joke around with.
9. Talk to about anything.
10. Serve as my personal memory (because my memory really is terrible, I rely on my wife in this role).
11. Make me laugh.
12. Share my dreams with.
13. Make fun of people with (yep, we do that pretty often… there is no shortage of morons out there. It’s pretty fun to point them out… and have a laugh at their expense).
14. There’s more, I’m sure… but I would have to ask my wife because I’ve forgotten them. :P

Yeah, our relationship isn’t perfect, we fight from time to time, and we really are two different people… but it’s fun most of the time. Our biggest problem is that we don’t get to spend enough time with each other. I am thankful for the time we do get to spend together though.

I liked this little exercise, I would certainly encourage anyone who is married or even dating to sit down and make just such a list. Even if it is funny and joking around. It’s worth a try anyhow.

Type to you later,
~Nathaniel

Recent studies performed by several independent researching companies have concluded Read the rest of this entry »

An ongoing theme/ability in my dreams is actually the ability to create swords from my own body. I’ll outline a few of the dreams (in chronological order) that illustrate this ability.

Read the rest of this entry »

I just launched a new website called Free Traffic Works. It offers and amazingly simple strategy for building traffic through all completely free services. Also, for every member who joins it gives them their own FREE ad page where they can display their affiliate links to the free services that we sponsor.

I really have big hopes for this site. I know it has great potential as a downline builder and that’s show I’m going to market it. It isn’t receiving much traffic yet, but I expect it to start building up fairly soon. I do want to add more features to it as I go which include but are not limited to:

1. The ability to submit new free traffic sites for people to advertise.
2. The ability of members to rank these free services and only display the top ranking services on the ad page.
3. An online community devoted completely to helping others gain traffic for free.
4. Add revenue generating affiliate ads that can turn members’ FTW ad pages into sales pages as well.
5. Add a linkback section that displays links back to members’ sites to help them with search engine ranking.

I think I’m having way too much fun creating new websites. I’m serious, it’s like a sickness. I’ve created 3 new websites in the last 3 months! Hopefully, these sites will keep me too busy to create any more for a while… although there is that one that I have been thinking about starting… a community site for local DFW Art Institute Online students who want to create games in order to include them in their resumes when applying to local game production companies… but I think I’ll put that one off until I’m actually able to create a game worth playing.

Seriously, web authoring is addictive! I guess I just need to work on generating content for these sites for now. I can create new projects later… let these grow a bit.

Another little bit of advice for college goers. Veggies will keep your brains alive! I am a big carnevore. I just love meat. I eat large amounts of meat at every meal. Protein keeps me from becoming anemic and it settles my stomach. Now, meat is good for you but you also need veggies. Yeah, I know, that green stuff. Trust me, it can be good. In fact, I have noticed that if I do not eat my veggies that there is a marked decline in my mental state. That is to say, that I am more stupid when I’m not eating my veggies. I have noticed simple things like the fact that my vocabulary will increase after eating plenty of veggies in comparison to eating none at all. I just recently noticed that I was having problems coding pieces of my new online community website only to figure out that a few simple misspellings where the culprit (which I only noticed several hours after eating a large salad… when the previous few days where mostly burgers, bacon, and pizza… yes those are the three main staples of my diet).

Now, I know that fat is good for your brain, or rather the right kind of fat… mostly the kind found in fish. However, there are plenty of vitamins and minerals found in plants that we need too. Perhaps these vitamins are the reason for my mental incline after consuming veggies. Who knows. All I know is that if you don’t eat your veggies, your brain will suffer.

On another note, for general health, eat a ton of garlic. No one will like you… because your breath will stink… but your body will love you for it. Whenever I start to feel the slightest bit ill, I start eating copious amounts of garlic. The good thing is that I usually don’t get sick because of this… the downside is that my wife won’t kiss me when I smell like garlic. My only consolation is that she wouldn’t kiss me if I where sick either, so it’s not like I’m missing out on anything. Garlic is actually a pureative, and an antibiotic. It kills germs. If you’re spiritual, it also wards off evil spirits (which isn’t to say that it won’t ward off evil spirits if you aren’t spiritual). Garlic is just plain good for you because its so bad for almost everything else. I suppose it helps that I like garlic, huh? It’s great for knocking out a cold or the flu. But works best if you start eating it in large amounts right after your first symptoms.

If you don’t like garlic, cinnamon also helps… although it’s not as strong as garlic and tends to have adverse effects if consumed in large amounts.

Figured that was worth knowing, and certainly worth sharing,
Type to you later,
~Nathaniel

I just found a cool article about some crazy transgenic mice. These mice have been engineered to have their neurons display random amounts of certain pigments. The end result is what is called the “Brainbow” mouse. The images of these mouse brains captured are not only stunningly beautiful, but also reveal a great deal about how nerves interact. I must admit, the images produced are much cooler than any abstract artist I’ve ever seen.

With the creation of such transgenic animals it really makes me wonder about the connection between art and science. Obviously, science is producing greater technology every day. With this technology, we (artists) are able to create new, and perhaps better, forms of art. In this case, the reason behind the creation of this transgenic mouse was purely scientific but managed to create something very artistic.

It really is fascinating to see such a progression. I know that 100 years ago, computer generated art wasn’t even an option, let alone an idea. Now, a great deal of art is digital. I have always argued that our bodies are works of art created by nature. Nature itself is one large work of art, and a beautiful one at that. Now we’re taking control of nature and creating new and exciting pieces from it. I can’t wait to see what new technology will lead to the next big thing in art.

Type to you later,
~Nathaniel

I’ve just started up a new online community at http://www.commentexchange.org

It is dedicated to increasing the quantity and quality of comments on Elfwood and Deviantart galleries. If demand exists for it, I will extend the use to blogs as well.

It’s actually a very unique and powerful idea. I took what I know about traffic exchanges and created an online community that helps get amateur artists what they need the most, comments and critiques. It’s a powerufl traffic generating tool. If I extend it for use on blogs as well… it will really open things up.

For now there are no ads or anything. If the traffic is substantial I may add some adsense and/or banners to either make me some money or drive traffic back to my other sites. For now though, completely ad free.

If you’re an Elfwood or Deviantart artist, check it out. I don’t think you’ll be disappointed. If I extend this for use on blogs, i’ll let everyone know.

Type to you later,
~Nathaniel

I’m finally done with my advanced animation final. It took quite a bit of time and energy but I think I managed to do it fairly well. This is what those pesky fairies get for trying to wake up sleepy children in the middle of the night.

The modeling and animation was all done in 3DS Max and the editing was done in Adobe Aftereffects. Special thanks to my lovely wife for lending her voice to both characters in the scene and sounddogs.com for the royalty free twinkling magic noise in the background.

http://www.childsplaycharity.org/

This amazing charity is devoted to providing games and consoles to children in hospitals. Games have been shown to not only make the kids happier but to make them healthier, increase their self esteem, and even increase their recovery rate. Games can give these kids the fun that they need without exposing them to situations that could worsen their conditions. In many cases, children are limited in their mobility and playing games makes them feel better about themselves, makes them feel more capable.

I don’t support any charities really. I just never have the money. But this one, I think I can spare a little bit. If you’re a gamer, or you just like kids, at least give it a look. If you aren’t able to make a donation, please, pass the word around and get this charity some much needed publicity.

Type to you later,
~Nathaniel

Check this out:

Now, she goes into a little side rant about cigarrette ads and smoking that I don’t really agree with. But the most important message is fairly clear. Now, nicotene is an appetite suppressor… but I certainly wouldn’t suggest anyone smoke to loose weight.

To see my opinion on the matter of the idea of “thin=attractive” check out this article.

This isn’t so much a rant, as it is a simple statement… but I’ll put it under rants because well… this is my site and I can do whatever I want with it. so :P

Type to you later,
~Nathaniel

Alright, we all know that having your own RSS feed is great for building traffic. What could be better than automatically letting your subscribers know that you’ve got something new? But I just found out quite another interesting use for them. They’re great to subscribe to in order to find interesting articles to comment on. These comments, in turn, end up driving traffic back to your site.

I’m sure you all know by now that I am really insistant that commenting creates traffic. It just does. You leave comments on other people’s blog and they (and often their readers) will come and check you out. If you leave something particularly useful/interesting that is. In the mean time, you’re building links back to your site which drastically improves search engine ranking.

I’m currently using Mozilla Firefox, which I adore by the way, and a plugin that scrolls my RSS feeds randomly across the bottom of the browser. This way, I can easily find interesting articles from the… many blogs that I subscribe to. From there I am able to comment the heck out of these very deserving bloggers and… in the process I get links back to my site and possibly get a few people interested in following those links.

Now, that being said, I do not comment simply to get traffic. The real reason is that I’m just bored out of my mind… and it takes up some of my time. I figure, if I’m going to just being blowing my time surfing the net, then I might as well get out there, read some interesting articles, comment on them, and perhaps generate a little bit of traffic for myself while I’m at it.

As has been said before. If you want to be part of the internet community, get out there are participate!

A couple days ago I got an email that informed me that it was against the TOS of Google Adsense to use traffic exchanges and adsense. I was floored by this because I didn’t see anything about that stated in the TOS. I actually went back and checked! That being said, I actually agree. It doesn’t seem fair to waste someone’s ad money on a page that is being loaded in return from credit. It just makes sense. I certainly wouldn’t want to be taking anyone’s money.
Read the rest of this entry »

I have always loved Halloween. My wife and I go all out every year. this year was no exception. We laid down quite a bit of money on our costumes but it paid off. We also managed to get some clothes that we’ll use over and over again.

This is a photo that I’ve manipulated of Mary and I in our Halloween costumes. I just put us in a different background and added a glowing effect so that our dark features could still be readible. We spent a fair amount of money on these costumes. But we love the clothes and are likely to continue to wear them. Mary got most of her outfit at Hot Topic. I was suprised that they actually are one big “goth kit” store. They’re your one-stop-shop intant-goth store. I couldn’t bring myself to purchase anything from them and instead borrowed a shirt from friend and bought a leather overcoat from burlington coat factory.

As for the wings, Mary’s where purchased at Hot topic to save some time and money. Mine are made out of cardboard, 3 wire hangers, almost two rolls of black duct tape, black pantihose, elastic bands, 250 turkey feathers, 20 goose feathers, and three sets of rooster hackle (all purchsed here).