Justin Germino Ramblings

I like it when I can run a giveaway where the variables are very similar especially when testing a giveaway between two platforms.  So when I had another chance to giveaway a Kingston SSD drive to a Dragon Blogger fan I knew I wanted to really test PromoSimple against Punchtab which I had used the last time I gave away a Kingston SSD Drive.

Now some factors have changed, my following has grown in the past 6 months on social media so that could influence the numbers to be higher but with PromoSimple now having the refer-a-friend option which Punchtab didn’t and Punchtab removing the entry per click from refer a friend to reduce spam entries and fraud, both platforms were on a pretty even playing field.

Here was the total results of the Kingston SSD Drive Giveaways:

You can see that the Punchtab giveaway had 6605 entries and 331 unique users entering the giveaway, the low number of users to entries (an average of 19 entries per person) is because the refer-a-friend allowed someone to share a link and get entries just by others clicking on the link.  This inflated entries per user quite a bit.

in PromoSimple the total entries were 11,846 with 1,299 unique people entering, this is an average of 9 entries per person and this is significantly higher and a better ratio as you always care more about the number of entrants than the number of entries in most cases as those are new eyes for your site or sponsors and unique individuals.  It is like how Unique Visits for your site are the more important metric than pageviews, though both are important.

With the refer-a-friend plan this also officially put PromoSimple as the best giveaway platform provided you are using the Bronze plan or above.  As a free platform Punchtab still has an edge with refer-a-friend being a free option.  PromoSimple however has just too many great features and ironically I got hundreds of Pinterest followers too which is a network I have been meaning to grow just haven’t spent a lot of time on yet.

The next comparison is my Google Nexus 7 giveaway which is currently running on PromoSimple with all my previous ones being run on the Punchtab platform to compare those.  It will be even more interesting to see how that one comes out.

In the meantime, I highly recommend PromoSimple if you run giveaways and if you want to get 20% off the Bronze plan for the first 3 months just use code DragonBlogger2013

Parents have a laundry list of responsibilities. However, the greatest of those is to set a good example for your children. There are only so many things you can teach by telling, but so many more you can teach by doing.

1. Eating Healthy

Image via Flickr by Martin Cathrae

Eating healthy is a lifestyle, and an important one at that. However, you can’t simply tell your child to eat their vegetables and lean chicken while you have fast food trash in your car. When your child sees you eating healthy and taking care of your body, that sends a positive message that reinforces good lifestyle choices. Healthy eating promotes a healthy brain.

2. Use Proper Language

It’s one thing to tell your child that certain words are bad, but quite another to show them. This seems like a no-brainer, but really pay attention to your chosen language. Grammar, vocabulary, and proper ways of speaking are best enforced by parents, and listening to their mother or father speaking in slang will impart this way of speaking onto impressionable children. In the same vein, calling something ‘stupid’, someone an ‘idiot’, or other such terms while telling them they can’t is to be avoided. It sets a judgemental precedent, showing your kids that it’s okay to say those words about other people.

3. Start a Career that Helps Others

Every parent has that moment of dread when they get an invitation to go to their child’s school and talk about their job. You might think the parent who’s a pilot will show you up, but having a job that helps people and makes the world a better place goes a long way with children. There are many jobs out there that you can search for in helping people, or making a difference. One of the best places for that is browsing Reputation.com jobs, where you can find jobs in a variety of different fields that will make you and others happy, as well as providing a great example for your child.

4. Read, and Read Often

Reading is the key to a great mind and great education, but many of us can’t find the time or the interest. However this is a critical aspect of raising a child in the information age. Read with your child, and teach them to appreciate creativity. Statistics show that children who read daily have a higher capacity for and love of learning.

5. Treat Others with Respect

While similar to #2 on the surface level, treating others with respect is an element of child-rearing that some parents neglect. Gossiping insulting, and belittling others teaches a child that it is acceptable behavior. Teach your children respect and understanding, and it will be repaid in kind.

There are many other factors in setting a good example for your child to follow, but following these are a step in the right direction. You are your kid’s greatest role model and teacher, and showing is always more effective than telling.

About the Author

Randy is a freelance writer based out of Brooklyn, New York. He spends most of his time trying to stay ahead of news world with interesting and informative articles, all the while entertaining the world at night with his music and art.

Saw the movie Forks over Knives last night, well the 2nd part of it and I don’t know but maybe that combined with seeing Bicentennial Man in the same day made me really start to analyze and finally come to a decision that I need to eat better.  I wouldn’t say that I eat unhealthily but I do still have dairy (even though I am intolerant), meat and junk food in my diet.

Heart disease does scare me a little bit however, and both of my grandfathers have had either quadruple bypass surgeries and some form of heart disease.  My cholesterol levels are on the higher end of normal right now, and I need to make sure I am alive and healthy enough for my kids as long as I can be.

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The primary things for me are to finally cut out cheese and dairy and further reduce meat intake while increasing non-processed foods as replacement.  My wife plans on getting me a Nutri-Bullet for my birthday next month and I haven’t had a juicer since my one broke years back.  This is supposed to be better than a juicer as it simply processes everything without extracting the juice from the vegetables and leaving all the roughage/fiber as throwaway.  I hope it works as well as it looks, it has mixed reviews like any product so I will be testing for myself.

Meanwhile, if you haven’t seen Forks over Knives yet, it is a very interesting movie and ironically I wasn’t as concerned over kids drinking milk as much as I am after seeing this documentary.  Of course I saw Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead and the commonality of all themes is to increase fruit and vegetable consumption, reduce processed foods, fast foods and meat consumption and many health issues can be improved or reversed.

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We remember the ancient Egyptians most for the pyramids and colossal limestone structures they built. So perhaps it shouldn’t be a surprise that the ancient Egyptians were responsible for inventing several surprisingly sophisticated tools and building techniques.

Measuring Rods

Ancient Egyptians needed to use an advanced system of measurement and reliable measuring tools to construct the pyramids and other buildings for which they’re now famous. Many of these were designed in strict accordance with mathematical principles. For example, it’s clear that the ancient Egyptians used equations that closely resemble the Pythagorean theorem, and their buildings suggest a clear understanding of the fact that the corner of a triangle opposite the hypotenuse is a right angle when the triangle is in a 3-4-5 ratio.

Measuring rods like the one pictured above were used to measure units known as cubits. Examples of measuring rods have been found in several royal tombs, suggesting that they were a prized possession.

Each cubit was considered equal to seven palm widths, which were further divided into four finger widths each. In our modern system of measurement, a cubit is equal to about 52 centimetres.

Wood Tools

Wood was – and continues to be – a widely used material in Egypt, particularly in agriculture. It is both tough and pliable. Ancient Egyptian farmers did not have a European style ploughshare. Rather, theirs were made entirely from wood, as there was not much need to turn the top soil thanks to the Nile depositing nutrients with its yearly flooding. Wooden hoes, rakes and scoops have also been found in tombs and burial chambers.

Flint Tools

The ancient Egyptians use sharpened flint tools to carve hieroglyphics into limestone. When the limestone was first quarried, it would have been relatively soft, so creating the markings required little force but much finesse. Flint tools were also used to sharpen axes, adze blades, chisels and knives.

Another ancient Egyptian invention, also made of flint, is tweezers. Examples of these tweezers, as well as depictions of their use, have been found. Tweezers were used by craftsmen, as well as by ladies of the time, for plucking hairs.

Plumb Bobs

The ancient Egyptians used what we now call a plumb bob to ensure truly straight vertical lines in their architecture. They also used their version of the plumb bob in the fields of navigation, surveying and astronomy.

The Abydos Boats

The ancient Egyptians didn’t excel only at building pyramids and temples. A mile from the royal tombs in Abydos, Egypt, a team of archaeologists from the University of Pennsylvania Museum unearthed 14 boats. Although these aren’t the oldest boats discovered, they feature amazingly sophisticated woodworking techniques, including the Mortise-Tenon joint pictured below. Although this building technique was unorthodox, it allowed for the boats to be easily disassembled and put together again so that they could be transported over land.

The boat makers also used the unusual technique of “sewing” the wood together with reeds, presumably as a secondary measure for once the Mortise-Tenon joints were connected.

About the Author

This post is a contribution by Jeff, a South African writer who works for the toolmakers Hans von Der Heyde in beautiful Cape Town.

If you are someone who has wanted to take the Google Analytics IQ test to get certification from Google or work with other aspects you will find that there is a field for your Google Analytics Account ID.  This isn’t your account name and is your ID # in Google Analytics.  It is fairly easy to find and you don’t have to dig through your script code anymore to find it like the olden days.

Just sign into Google Analytics

Click on the Admin button at the top right of the Google Analytics home page.

Click on Account Settings to the left

Then you will see your Google Analytics Account ID plain as day right above your account name.  Just copy and paste this anywhere where you have to enter your Google Analytics account id and you can proceed forward in what you were working on.

Decided to see how WordPress 3.6 will take a Spotify link and turn it into an embed-able media player to see how it works.

When you want to embed a Spotify song in your WordPress blog, all you have to do is open Spotify and right click on the song you want to embed.

Then click on Copy HTTP Link

now in WordPress in the Text Editor (you can’t paste in the Visual tab as it will turn it into a hyperlink instead) you paste the URL you just copied.

WordPress will automatically convert the URL into a fully embedded Spotify player like the one you see below.

This is one of my favorite tracks right now and it happens to be a Daft Punk song from their latest album Random Access Memories and the song is the last track called Contact.  It is very techno and that is the style I most like, similar to the sound they had in the album Tron: Legacy which was a fantastic album.

Let me know what you think if you like electronica

I particularly enjoy working out to this song and others in similar style, lately I like listening to The Glitch Mob as well while working out.

Pixar is one of the most beloved and promoted production companies of all time. Children, teenagers and adults all flock to cinemas to see the newest animated masterpiece, and are seldom disappointed. Along with delivering original, entertaining and beautifully animated films, Pixar also strives to maintain a “Pixar culture”. One of the ways they achieve their culture is by carefully placing dozens of “Easter Eggs” into each and every film. While these are inside jokes for the Pixar team, they provide an exciting scavenger hunt for its loyal fans. Here are five of the best Pixar Easter Eggs to appear (however briefly) throughout the fourteen recently released Pixar films.

5. Andy’s Friends

Unlike the rest of the Easter Eggs on this list, this specific Egg is a one-off find, but it is also one of the most heartwarming Eggs that Pixar has incorporated to date. In Toy Story 3, a postcard can be seen on Andy’s bulletin board (tucked behind a college acceptance letter) from Carl and Ellie Fredrickson, the married couple that brought full-fledged adults to tears in cinemas in Up! Viewers are never told the nature of Andy’s relationship with the Fredricksons, but the placement of his postcard suggests that they were very important in his life.

4. “Buy and Large” and “Dinoco”

With each film, the Pixar universe becomes a little more developed as its own world, and the repeated use of two fictional companies strengthens this perception. “Buy and Large” is a fictional mega-company in the Pixar universe that first appeared in Wall-E as the company that sold, well, everything. It has since been seen in Up! and Toy Story 3. The oil company “Dinoco” was first spotted as a gas station in Toy Story and has been used in both Cars installments, as well as briefly in Wall-E.

3. Boo’s Toys

At the very end of Monster’s Inc., Boo gives three of her toys away to Scully before he leaves her. If viewers overlook the pain in their hearts at this scene, they can spot three Easter Eggs at once. The toys Boo gives away are: the Luxo ball, a Jessie cowgirl doll, and a Nemo clownfish toy. The Luxo ball is an identifiable Easter Egg from many Pixar shorts and features, which fans happily look for in each story. Jessie is obviously from Toy Story 2, and a nice homage to the film. The most interesting one, however, is the Nemo clownfish toy. Why? Because Finding Nemo was still two years away from being released when Monster’s Inc was released.

2. The Pizza Planet Truck

In Toy Story,audiences were first introduced to the delicious arcade/restaurant known as Pizza Planet, and subsequently introduced to the iconic Pizza Planet delivery truck. With the exception of The Incredibles, that same truck has appeared in every Pixar feature film production. Despite its easily recognizable features, the truck is one of the more difficult Easter Eggs to spot, and is therefore a particular treasure to be found by Pixar Easter Egg hunters. Where can you find it? Parked outside the trailer that appears in both A Bug’s Life and Monster’s Inc., driving over the Seine in Ratatouille, and as a wood carving in the car-less Brave.

1. A113

Perhaps the most famous of Pixar’s Easter Egg – and deservedly so. It appears in every Pixar film.  “A113” refers to a classroom at CalArts, the alma mater of John Lasseter, Brad Bird and many other Pixar team members. Although used by many alumni, Pixar and not, the code is synonymous with Pixar Easter Eggs and is eagerly sought out by Pixar enthusiasts upon new releases. Where can you find it? A license plate in Toy Story, the directive code in Wall-E, and in Roman Numerals in Brave – just to name a few.Donna is a geeky kid at heat. She works at Edictive as a network and marketing manager and loves working in creative film industry.

Yes my friends, I was attacked…assaulted by an evil desk in room 113 of the Excalibur hotel where my kids sit and used their own laptops for hours.  I merely borrowed my son’s laptop for a few minutes to check emails and maybe game a little Guild Wars 2 before bedtime with my oldest when I was truck by my attacker.

This is just an example of the luck that I have and that I am pretty much a real life Ben Stiller character, so let me set the picture for you.  Here I am sitting at my desk in my boxers and a PJ shirt (not a pretty picture) and when I am just finished with the computer the chair which is a hard legged hotel chair is too close to the desk.  As I stand up and try to slide out from between the chair and the desk, the desk has some sort of rough part on the edge of it’s circular cursed wood and a splinter fragments off of the desk and embeds through the boxers into my inner thigh.

But it gets a bit more gory than that, the splinter breaks off and now pins the boxer fabric into my thigh, so that as I pull the boxer cloth away from my thigh my skin is tugged almost like the wood splinter is barbed.  A confused expression and how the hell did I roll a 1 while getting up from my desk in a hotel room crosses my face as I go to the hotel bathroom and proceed to determine how deep the splinter is embedded, as it turns out was about 1/4" deep in the skin and I just had to find the angle it went in so I could reverse it back out the way it went in which was a bit complicated because it was hidden in the boxer fabric and got thicker so it couldn’t be pushed through the boxer fabric.

2 minutes later and more confusion and disbelief than pain, the demon dagger of the office table was removed I disinfected my wound and hoped to hell it was sterilized well enough not to get infected knowing how many people use those hotel rooms.

Other than that it was a fun vacation, though I will never stay at the Excalibur Hotel in Las Vegas again, the rooms are so old and poor quality in every way, no Wi-Fi anywhere in building, stains on walls, carpets, bed sheets, all outlets loose and wobbly, furniture all damaged and scratched….  They do try to keep it as medieval as possible for sure in there.  My wife also had a ton of breathing and allergy related problems, there was a funny smell always in the room like mold there could have been mold, not accusing but once we left the breathing symptoms went away within a few hours and started about 3 hours after arriving.

Visit the Tournament of the Kings, the show is amazing, but sleep at a different hotel is my advice.

This is just a quick test post to see how the HTML 5 player in WordPress 3.6 works and looks for myself on my own personal blog so decided to do a small recording and upload it to publish.

It works pretty well though it lacks a download file button for those who want to give the option for people to download their MP3 files, still it is nice that WordPress now put a build in MP3 player so you can add audio files.

If you do podcasting however, there is still so many advantages to use Blubrry Powerpress, SoundCloud, Libsyn or another service that can not only create feeds, and/or social communities around your audio files, but also allows you to not use your web server hosting resources to serve the files in the case of SoundCloud and Libsyn it is served from their cloud instead of consuming web hosting resources to playback the audio files.  Blubrry Powerpress has a great auto syndicate your podcasts to iTunes which works well and was tested for my Audio poetry two years ago and still is in use there.

The same for the video embed player, I prefer to have my videos on YouTube and embedded so I can leverage the social following, subscriptions…etc.

Have you used the HTML 5 player embed in WordPress 3.6 yet, and what do you think of it?

Well finally back after spending two weeks on a working vacation in CA followed by a 4 day real vacation spending time with the family at The Excalibur resort in Las Vegas.  The highlight of the trip was taking my kids to see Tournament of Kings which they really enjoyed and we were rowdy cheering for the Dragon to claim victory but alas we were defeated in the end.

The Knight of Spain with Oliver and Myself at Tournament of Kings

The kids start school again in a few days, and I am back at work in overdrive playing catchup for missing a few days, on average I get 90-115 emails per day that I have to catch up on so 3 days of PTO can be over 300+ emails I have to read, and responding to probably 60% of them.  This is just my day job emails, I get another 60-90 emails to my personal Gmail accounts related to blogging per day, but these I actually mostly caught up from on my phone, iPad while on vacation and only had some follow ups.

In general on any given day I have about 250-300 communications per day to reply to this includes emails and social media messages, replies, PM’s…etc.  I am thinking of just jacking myself into the system permanently at some point in the future.