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

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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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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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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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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