User requirements

Something tells me Lawrens and Florens will appreciate this.

Beware of forum posters!

The 2 dudes at Penny Arcade ran a game demo of Black and decided it was nonsense. But a guy thought differently and raved about it on a public forum. It would have been the usual forum trolling exchange till this turned up in the PA inbox.

Hey guys,

I interviewed for a guerilla marketing business in San Francisco that targeted web forums.

I was told that if I accepted the job, I was to have at LEAST 50 identities on as many forums as I could muster (they wanted 100 eventually), with a goal of 5 posts an hour. The posts had to be well thought out, and the idea was that I was to establish multiple identities with a history on the forums, so that when the timing was right a well written but subtly placed marketing post could be finessed in. And regular visitors would recognize the post as coming from a long time poster.

They had 12 people working there full time, and were hiring 10 more. You do the math. No wait, I'll do it for you: that's 880 posts a day (if minimum was met). However he said the better ones could do around 8 or 10 an hour. And they had different "verticals" so there was the sports guy, and the games guy, the hentai, excuse me I mean anime guy, etc.

But the most critical point was this: develop and integrate the identity. No random "HEY EB GAMES IS AWESOME BUY THIS" stuff.

Kinda spooky.

Didn't take the job. It was a fucking mill.

False profits

Came across this article about Multi-level Marketing. Author debunks the 10 myths of this legendary form of business structure that supposedly brings about financial independence and spiritual maturity. Riiiiight. MLM BS takes the cake, eats it and shoves it up the big a-hole in the sky.

Lie #1: MLM is a business offering better opportunities for making large sums of money than all other conventional business and professional models

Lie #2: Network marketing is the most popular and effective new way to bring products to market. Consumers like to buy products on a one-to-one basis in the MLM model

Lie #3: Eventually all products will be sold by MLM, a new form of marketing. Retail stores, shopping malls, catalogues and most forms of advertising will soon be rendered obsolete by MLM

Lie #4: MLM is a new way of life that offers happiness and fulfillment. It is a means to attain all the good things in life

Lie #5: MLM is a spiritual movement

Lie #6: Success in MLM is easy. Friends and relatives are the natural prospects. Those who love and support you will become your lifetime customers

Lie #7: You can do MLM in your spare time. As a business, it offers the greatest flexibility and personal freedom of time. A few hours a week can earn a significant supplemental income and may grow to a very large income making other work unnecessary

Lie #8. MLM is a positive, supportive new business that affirms the human spirit and personal freedom

Lie #9. MLM is the best option for owning your own business and attaining real economic independence

Lie #10: MLM is not a pyramid scheme because products are sold

What study does

What Jack needs

"You... You will always need something to fix."

Sarah, to her husband Jack, before she left for another man.

Baseball

Oh, such a beautiful girl... I mean sport.

This is how others see us

I found this thread in an ad forum talking about dog-walker ads.

Just so you know, dog-walker ads refer to ads done for awards sake. Sometimes, the ads are for imaginary clients. Worse times, they are for easy products or services where there is inherent drama. This is pure masturbation; It pleases only the person who created it.

Frogs

Here's an interesting article on frogs. Research shows frogs are sensitive to temperature changes in the environment. They display extreme distaste for hot climates and prove it by dying, sometimes one species at a time.

Now this runs in the face of the story of the boiling frog, which goes like this. Put a frog in a beaker of water. Boil the water under a slow flame and the frog does not jump out. This story compares frogs to people who swim in beakers and cook themselves. Or something like that. I think.

Enough about that. In America, frogs die because the temperature is rising.

Why Are These Frogs Croaking?
Massive die-offs in the American tropics are an early warning of the effects of global warming
By JEFFREY KLUGER

Hardy and plentiful as they seem, frogs are actually very frail things, with a semipermeable skin that leaves them vulnerable to even the slightest hiccup in their environment. So when entire species of brightly colored harlequin frogs started dying off in the cloud forests of Central and South America about 25 years ago, scientists suspected that something in the amphibians' ecosystems--they weren't sure what--had gone awry.

Now an international team of scientists think they've solved the mystery. Comparing changes in annual temperatures with the number of frog species spotted, they've documented for the first time a direct correlation between global warming and the extinction of about two-thirds of the 110 known species of harlequin frog.

The critters in question are favorites of scientists studying climate change. Quick and polychromatic, the frogs spend their days near stream banks, where their constant motion and vibrant hues make it easy for researchers to count them. Previous studies have shown that it's not heat alone that kills harlequins but also a pathogen--the chytrid fungus--that attacks their skin. The chytrid is actually a cool-weather organism, doing best at temperatures from 63°F to 77°F. Paradoxically, an effect of global warming is to increase cloud cover in the tropical forests, lowering daytime temperatures and making the frogs more vulnerable to fungal assault.

The most persuasive piece of evidence in the new study, led by J. Alan Pounds of the Monteverde Cloud Forest Preserve in Costa Rica and published in Nature, is a graph that shows both annual changes in average temperature and the number of frog extinctions per year on the same grid: the jagged lines track each other with eerie precision. Species die-offs follow warm years 80% of the time. With tropical air temperatures from 1975 to 2000 rising three times as fast as the 20th century average, things should only get worse.

Frogs are what scientists call an indicator species: particularly sensitive animals that are the first to go when the climate starts to change. Their extinction may increase pressure on government and industry to dial back greenhouse gases. The harlequins, after all, are only the beginning.

You know you are in love

Sure the iPod is a marvelous product, but do you have to dock it in the toilet? Just so we are clear, beneath the white exterior is an exoskeletion of electric circuitry. It's the kind of ugly you don't want to know.

Your iPod doesn't love you back. Period. And no, your iPod needs not the intimate details of your waste disposal techniques. Give it a break.

2006 part 2

A few days ago, I posted my resolutions for this year. I like to sum up my resolutions into single action sentences cos it's easy to remember. Some of my past resolutions were like that.

1. Keep promises to the best I can.

2. Be honest.

3. Go where I want to go, even if it's the road less taken.

4. Listen more, talk less.

If I want to sum up my resolutions for 2006, it would be: Follow through all my efforts.

Living in the past

One of the common sins we commit is to mistake the past for the present. Sometimes, we find the past easier to deal with. Times when we were simple, young and clueless. And the world was less complicated. So we live our present with the conditions of the past.

On the other hand, some may live in the past because it was worse than now. The times were hard, people were sharp and they cut us frequently with their words or actions. Some of the wounds never heal because we lick them constantly. We feed the bruised egos with our attention and keep them exposed.

Both are difficult to recognize and deal with.

There's a third kind. You deny emotional and physical growth among your friends. You refuse to let them outlive their childish weaknesses. You refuse to see their maturity for all its worth. When you meet a friend and you start to talk, try to focus on the topics you bring up. Is it about the past mistakes that your friend commits? That's when you are not letting the past go. It doesn't hurt you that much. But you sting your friend because you imprison him in the past.

This is also difficult to see in yourself. You are lonely in the past. You want to stick there and you need company.

2006

Today is the 8th January 2006. Here are some of the things I set myself to do in 2006.

1. Complete my portfolio and get a job by June.

2. Write 2 hours a day as practice. Believe the power of words. Post a forum comment every morning.

3. Explore comics drawing 2 hours a day. Develop a style and find a voice. Post a piece once a week.

Pizza, pineapple and a goat's anus

Our education system

I wrote this on a forum few days ago. The topic was, does our education make us a better person.

***
I feel we place too much emphasis on rewards like prize wages, loud cars and landed houses. We forget that those are rewards, not goals. They are supposed to come after you have put in the hard work to achieve your dreams.

And yes, I said dreams. The ambitions you held when you were young and ignorant. The essay you wrote in Primary School about "When I grow up, I want to be..."

Some of you see dreamers as unrealistic people. Some of you see dreamers as aliens in our society. Some of you see dreamers as folks with a missing screw in their heads.

And you must be right because you no longer dream.

Dreamers are looking for a smack of reality in their face. They don't know enough of the world, and those who know are so desperate to share their knowledge of what doesn't work.

I'm quite sure that's what Steve Jobs heard when he insisted on making PCs in his garage. IBM told him there's no market. HP told him to wake up.

It's like our education system.

It teaches our children to memorize the facts of yesterday, but doesn't teach them to learn the knowledge of tomorrow.

It teaches our children the hindsight to accept reality, but doesn't teach them the courage to change it.

It teaches our children to keep in line with the system, but doesn't teach them to keep the faith in themselves.

Our education system works too well. We see less and less dreamers everyday. A little bit more, and we'll murder them all.
***

Have you set a deadline to give up?

I got the above question quite a few times in 2005. I don't have a definite answer, and I feel uncomfortable taking the question. I would give a vague reply, something like: Not yet.

This morning, being the first day of 2006 and all, I gave it a little thought. Then I realised why I felt uneasy with the question. It was because I've never thought about it before. Why should I give myself a deadline to do something I won't do at all? I will not give up.

And to those who asked this question before, let me ask you back. Why do you think I should set a deadline to give up? Because you think I'm wasting my time on an empty dream? Because you think I don't have what it takes? Or what? Why do you think I should give up?

Maths problem

Hahaha. I really enjoyed this comic.

Happy new year folks!

And Lawrence made me drink a lot. Ass (: b)