Category Archives: Distractions

Lenzr Update!

Distractions, Lenzr

Time to look in at Lenzr and see all the funky prizes you can win for being a shutter fly:

First up: Best Gourmet Food: Pretty self explanatory… make yourself some KD, sprinkle some oregano on it, macro lens that puppy and whammo! Prizes! The first prize is an Eastern Ontario wine and brewery tour package plus one night accommodation at Timberhouse in Brighton, ON. The GRAND PRIZE sounds like fun: spend time with The Wine Ladies as they grab material for their wine blog by taking you on an exclusive tour. (My minder described it as a “kooky tour” but I can’t bring myself to type that). Material from the tour may be used in promotional videos or even dah ta da daah… ebook companion media. High tech, eh wot? Kindle yourself!

Second comes Everyday Tangled Web: This one I can relate to. Take a picture of your tangled anything – hair, legs, yarn, wickedness, etc. Personally I have a drawer of dead technology and with dead technology comes massive power bricks and their long tails. Gaah! I hear you say in frustration – Get to the prize! The prize comes from an office phone system company, called S.E. Telecom and they’re giving away a Plantronics Voyager (if you’re not a Blackberry addict, that’s a Bluetooth wireless headset). See what they did there? Wireless…? See? Release your inner cyborg!

Lastly, and not leastly, is Kids In Action: Take a picture of your ADD addled spawn running around in a circle, or on a jungle gym or knocking over cans at Loblaws and post it. You can get yourself a set of really clean choppers! They’re giving away an advanced teeth whitening kit and a year’s supply of dental products including an “armful” of mouthwash, toothpaste, tooth brushes, dental floss; courtesy of a Toronto dentist named Dr. Natalie Archer DDS at Sherbourne and Bloor St. I’ve heard through word of mouth that she’s pretty good. See? See what I did there??

And as a side note, they’ve revamped the voting system to include votes (Popular Votes – visitors to the site don’t have to register but their vote is counted as “1”) and Super Registered Votes (Registered members who have actually uploaded an image get the power of 10x the vote). There is some involved algorithm thingy they’ve factored in but personally this sounds like a marketing dude and a programmer just tried to fix something that might have been broken but I don’t need to see the gory details. Lenzr: if the point is to get people to register and participate, remember the “What’s in it for me?” rule. I don’t wanna know about the math behind it, just make the deal sweet and I’m in! Sandra in the comments says

A thought on scoring: why not allow voting only on the last 5 days of the month?

I’d expand that and say you can vote the entire time, but keep the results hidden until the last 5 days. That might generate some urgency and excitement. Take that as you will, Lenzr. Do you have a Facebook Fan page yet? Twitter? No? What are you doing all day?!

Kreative Meme

Distractions

This meme comes from Dyl over on Gecko Echo. Bless his heart!

1. Thank the person who nominated you for this award.

Thanks to the Queen of England who protects and watches over our Dyl.

2. Copy the award logo and place it on your blog.

Admittedly, it’s not the prettiest logo I’ve seen:

3. Link to the person who nominated you for this award.

Please go visit Dyl at his blog of thoughtfulness and comic miasma: Gecko Echo


4. Name 7 things about yourself that people might find interesting.

  1. Just for Dyl: I lived in Nottinghill Gate, Brixton and Earls Court Road.
  2. I worked for the Royal Automobile Club on Pall Mall, a members only gentleman’s club of some prestige. I worked on the front desk.
  3. I would often get calls for car repair – The RAC is England’s #2 roadside assistance service and sometimes people would call the snooty gentleman’s club by mistake.
  4. Often most of my calls would go alright until midway through, when suddenly the caller would mention my accent: “I’m talking to an American!!” I would graciously say no.
  5. Prince Edward saved my life.
  6. When I lived in England I experienced more sexual awakening than anywhere in my life, and I had been out of the closet for 6 years by then.
  7. Jafar is my favorite villain from any Disney movie.

5. Nominate 7 Kreativ Bloggers and post links to the 7 blogs you nominate.

Take any seven from my blog roll. I’m crapping out here but truth be told, I use to have two Google pages full of blogger feeds a year ago. Now it’s down to 2/3rds a page and even those are bleeding words into Twitter.

6. Someone before me forget to post rule 6

I’ll make this one up myself: I can cook. I can sew. I don’t mind cleaning a bathroom. Of course I’m married off.

7. Leave a comment on each of the blogs letting them know they have been nominated.

Again, I doubt that would matter. The third blog into my ‘Roll hasn’t been updated since Dec 07, 2009.

Regardless, thanks Dyl for thinking of me!

And The Cheese Stands Alone

Distractions, Tech

Here’s a crazy picture of what my mouse does in an average hour at work. The background was actually divided between Photoshop, web and email. Large dots = mouse stops.

Mousepath!

From Anatoli Zenkov Flickr page Small Java app available too.

Pro Tip: If you’re using Photoshop, take a screen grab of your desktop, then make the Mousepath image your top layer. Choose “Multiply” as that layer’s blending option – white background disappears.