It occurred to me that it would be a whole lot easier to think in terms of Celsius and not do the conversion at all.  So instead of having to do this conversion over and over again, I decided to look at Celsius numbers from their perspective. In order to do this, I needed to compare the two temperatures side by side.

I figured if you were to convert the following temperatures by 5 degree increments, you would get the following:

45 = 113 degF
40 = 104 degF
35 = 95 degF
30 = 86 degF
25 = 77 degF
20 = 68 degF
15 = 59 degF
10 = 50 degF
5 = 41 degF
0 = 32 degF

This is great, but this is too many numbers to think about.  Instead, I found it easier to think in terms of emotional values:

45 = Extremely Hot
40 = Very Hot
35 = Hot
30 = Warm
25 = Nice
20 = Cool
15 = Cold
10 = Very Cold
5 = Extremely Cold
0 = Too Damned Cold

As Americans, we know that 70 to 75 degrees Fahrenheit is the temperature that we feel most comfortable during the day.  It’s neither too hot, nor too cold.  It’s “Nice”.

Therefore, I decided to label the 25 degree Celsius value as this “Nice” temperature, since it is the closest to 75 degrees Fahrenheit.  All I have to do is remember that 25 is “Nice” and anything below that is cold.  Each iteration of 5 degrees Celsius lower goes from “Cool” to “Cold” to “Very Cold”, and so on. The same can be said for each iteration of 5 degrees Celsius higher, going from “Warm” to “Hot” to “Very Hot”, etc.

So it’s not too difficult after all. Just remember that 25 degress Celsius = “Nice” and you can figure out how it would feel from there. Hope this helps us Americans to think with the same mindset as our neighbors from countries that read Celsius temperature readings.

STEP 1:
The first thing you want to do before setting out on this is to get the proper tools and items.
This includes the following:

1. Large Pumpkin
2. Tiny Pumpkin
3. Washable Marker
4. Large Knife
5. Smaller Steak Knife
6. Large Spoon
7. Small Spoon

STEP 2:
Take your washable marker and draw out the face on the big pumpkin. Make sure to measure the circumfrence of the tiny pumpkin and make the the mouth that you sketch on the big pumpkin large enough to hold that size.


STEP 3:
Grab your large knife and cut a hole in the top of the large pumpkin for the cap. I like to go in a circle, but add one notch so I know which way the cap goes back on later.

STEP 4:
Take the cap off and set it to the side.

STEP 5:
Get your children involved by having them scoop out the insides. Kids love this part. Look at my daughter’s face expression, she is having a blast!

STEP 6:
Once you get all the seeds and innards out, then get your spoon and scrape out the extra stuff that clings to the side.

When you are done, your pumpkin should have a smooth inside all the way around. Nice and clean.

STEP 7:
Take out your large knife and cut a hole inside where the mouth is going to be.

STEP 8:
Get your smaller steak knife and start trimming off pieces, making the hole bigger and bigger as you go. The reason you are doing this is that you will be constantly cutting and then trying to place your tiny pumpkin into the hole so that it will fit snugly inside.

STEP 9:
When you have the hole for the mouth done and you have tested that the tiny pumpkin fits perfectly, then it’s time for the skinning of the teeth.
See where the knife is in the photo below. You want your knife to go into this area between the meat and the skin of the pumpkin. Start shoving your knife in between very carefully as shown.

Begin cutting this way, taking off little pieces of the skin, while leaving the meat of the pumpkin intact. You are basically slowly shaving off pieces of the pumpkin’s skin. This is a delicate process, so take your time. This isn’t like using a computer where you can CTRL+Z (undo) if you make a mistake, so be careful not to trim too much.

Keep skinning the rest of the teeth until you have removed all the skin covering.

STEP 10:
The next part takes patience as well. Go in and begin carving out the teeth. It shouldn’t be too difficult to do, since the texture is wet and easier to cut out than the skin was.

STEP 11:
Now follow the same techniques you just learned for the eyes. You should have the hang of it now.
Create the hole, carve it out to the lines you drew in. For the eyes, skin them like you did the teeth.

STEP 12:
Grab the tiny pumpkin and do the exact same thing as you did with the big pumpkin, except don’t cut a hole in the top. Instead, make the mouth big, so you can scoop out all the insides through the mouth.

FINAL STEP:
Take the tiny pumpkin and put it inside the big pumpkin’s mouth. If there is any pen marks from the initial sketch you made, take a wet paper towel and wipe them off.

You now have your cannibalistic pumpkin carving!

You can add a hat or maybe put some hay underneath it when you set it out for the kids coming by to trick or treat!

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial!

The other day, I was listening to one woman ask another about how to stop the graffiti in her neighborhood. It go me think just how one might go about stopping something like this. After all, don’t you basically have to catch the graffiti artist in the act to be able to tell him to stop. That’s a hard thing to do, because criminals are notorious for doing what they do when nobody is around.

Then I thought, how exactly do we stop criminals from breaking into our home? Well, obviously we have locks, but aside from that, we have alarms and stickers on our window that say we have alarms in the house.

So why not bring this sticker idea to the crime prevention of graffiti? It’s easy. All you would need to do is make a sign that says the following:

THIS AREA IS UNDER VIDEO SURVEILLANCE BY HIDDEN CAMERAS
Evidence of illegal activities will be turned over to the police for investigative purposes.

Now, this is not 100% sure to work, but at least having a sign that says that on or near the structure that is getting graffiti might act as a strong deterent.

The catch is that there really are no cameras. Just a sign. Since it says that the cameras are hidden, the graffiti artist might look, but will never find it, then they will get paranoid and leave.

If you decide to try this out, let me know. I would like to know if it works!

Tablet PC or Wacom Cintiq.

The Tablet PC Route:
The Tablet PC can be a great tool for drawing. One of the first benefits that comes to mind for tablet PCs is the portability factor. You can basically take it anywhere you want, considering that you have the battery life to keep it powered. If you want to go to the park or to the beach, then just take it along with you and start sketching the ocean views.

However, the only problem is that, as of now, the tablet PC is really lacking when it comes to pressure sensitivity. I have researched them all and the best you can find is somewhere in the ballpark of 256 to 512 levels of pressure sensitivity. If you are an artist like me, this is ok, but it’s not nearly as nice as the pressure sensitivity of the alternative Cintiq.

So let’s look at the Cintiq as an alternative.

The Cintiq Route:
The Cintiq is completely awesome. You will not find another digital drawing tool like this. The interactivity of the pen on the screen is like drawing on paper. The 1024 levels of pressure sensitivity makes it feel like you are sketching with a pencil. If the Cintiq was a Tablet PC, it would completely dominate the Tablet PC market and no competitors would stand a chance.

The problem is that this is not the case. The Wacom Cintiq is actually a monitor, so it plugs into your desktop the same way your regular monitor does. The only difference being that the Cintiq is adjustable and outfitted for you to draw on at varying angles.

The Cintiq also has a power cord, so toss any idea of portability out the window. You are not going to be able to easily set this up with a laptop and take it to the beach. It will be a nightmare of wires and carrying around a generator to power it up. Not worth the effort.

Now keep in mind, I have seen the YouTube video demonstrations of people boasting that there is not much difference between the two. That the 256 to 512 levels of pressure sensitivity of a Tablet PC is not that noticeable compared to the 1024 levels of pressure sensitivity of a Cintiq. I disagree completely. I have tested both out on multiple occasions and if you are a skilled artist, you WILL see the difference.

However, the Tablet PC is a great tool for making quick sketches that you might later transfer to your desktop PC to clean up with a Cintiq (or an Intuos if you are on a tight budget).

As for me, I have a Fujitsu T2020 Tablet PC. It has 520 levels of pressure sensitivity, so the sketching can be somewhat similar to pencil on paper. I like the portability of a Tablet PC, because I can use it to sketch in my car. My method involves sketching in drawings and then if there is what I particularly like and what to clean up, I transfer it to my desktop PC and use a Cintiq to do the finishing touches.

So the bottom line is, what is more important to you. Having a drawing tool that you can go out and make quick sketches?…or having a drawing tool that feels like you are working on paper. It all comes down to if portability is more important to you or pressure sensitivity. Once you make this decision, you can now start researching the tablet option you want. Good luck!

Of course, 200 sites sounds impressive to the inexperienced Internet user, but if you realize that they are all mostly mini-sites, then it’s really not that big of a deal. Each site takes about 1 hour to create, so in reality, 200 sites is like 200 hours worth of labor.

Ok, so now that I have my home here on this blog, I am going to use it to chronicle my progress with achieving my goal of creating the $1/day formula. I’ve researched this over the Internet for hours. I even found other blogs doing this same thing and I was always disappointed that after a month or so, they stop posting their progress reports. Perhaps it was too cumbersome to post an update. Whatever the reason, I do not intend to follow this same pattern.

I think I might fare better at keeping my progress reports updated, because I don’t follow any prescribed schedule for posting everyday. I will just post when something major has happened….a major development in my quest to create the $1/day formula.

To start this chronicle off, I should make it clear that I purchased 33 domains on October 1st, 2009. I already have a webhost reseller account, so I can create space for each of those 33 domains in seconds. The sites have all been set up and are based on keywords.

Here are the standards I used when deciding on my keywords:

Choosing Domain:

• Domain must have keywords.
• Domain can not be longer than 3 words long.
• Domain must not end in anything other than .com, .net, or .org.

Keyword Popularity:

• Free WordTracker tool shows more than 100 searches for keyword phrase.
• Keyword Discovery tool shows more than 100 searches for keyword phrase.
• Bing Xrank shows at least some activity for the keyword.
• Spacky show that Google, Overture, and Microsoft show at least 10,000 searches for the keyword.

Projected Income:

• Estimated EPC for a given keyword phrase should pay at least $1 per click.

Competition:

• Google SERPS do not show more than 50,000 pages for the keyword phrase (in quotes).

With these standards to stick by, I created an Excel spreadsheet and used it to keep track of which domains I checked out and what their results were.

As you can see from the excel spreadsheet, I indicated the standards I was looking to match in the top row. I used color coding for the cells to indicate the following:

Grey = Does not meet the standards.
Green = Meets the standards (or just barely meets the standards).
Blue = Far exceeds the standards.

I also decided to purchase a few domains that didn’t meet my standards, just to see if all this research was useless to begin with.

My goal is to find a pattern of where I can sign up domains and know with a percentage of certainty the likelihood that the domain will be an earner in the future. It’s important to keep these records or you will find yourself a year down the road with some sites bringing in money and not knowing what you did differently with those sites to make them earners.

In later parts of this $1/day site series, I will provide additional input on the layout, design, and marketing of these sites. How much of the site was original content versus duplicate EZineArticles content.

Stay tuned!

If you ask any professional artist who does their work digitally, they will tell you that their tablet is a Wacom, so if you are going to buy a tablet, get this brand. So the real question should be what type of Wacom to get.

There are two types of drawing tablets.

1. There is the kind where you draw on the tablet and you see the results on your monitor. For this type, the best tablet is the Wacom Intuos4.

2. Then there is the kind where you actually draw on the screen itself. The best for this is the Wacom Cintiq.

The reason that the tablet prices differ is mostly because of:

1. Available drawing area of the tablet.
2. Pressure sensitivity (you want to get at least 1024 levels of pressure sensitivity)
3. The quality of the brand and warranty.

So depending on your budget, here would be my choices from best to worse:

1. Wacom Cintiq 21UX
2. Wacom Cintiq 12WX
3. Wacom Intuos4
4. Wacom Intuos3
5. Bamboo

I thought about it and I don’t think I would get an Intuos2, just because they are so outdated, that I would have to get a used one and it probably wouldn’t work as well as a new Bamboo tablet.

What a bunch of crap. Throughout history we’ve been hearing this same thing. The world is coming to an end because of this or that. Does it ever happen? No.

In 1999, only 10 years ago, there were claims of the world ending. Not a single thing happened on January 1, 2000.

The fact is that if the end of the world happens as a result of some cataclysmic event, like a huge meteor smashing into Earth, then what’s the worst that could happen? Death.

How will this be any different than a cataclysmic car smashing into you during your lunch break tomorrow. Either way, your life is over. Your dead. So why waste time thinking about it?

I think I know why some people waste their time.

Self-righteousness.

These people thrive on the feeling of superiority that comes with believing something that others don’t. They are looking to be the new version of Noah, warning us about the impending flood. They are living this fantasy where they are mentally projecting themselves forward in time to a moment where they can say “I told you so”. Are these delusions of grandeur? Absolutely.

According to the Nostradamus 2012 documentary, the sun will align with the Milky Way in 2012 and this is going to throw everything out of whack…or some nonsense like that. It was something along these lines. I fell asleep twice during the film (two 5-minute power naps), so I didn’t catch it all, but I didn’t have to.

We have astronomers that study these thing. They know more than any film could ever convey in a one hour documentary. Are any of these astronomers throwing their hands in the air, running around in circles like chickens without their heads, because the world is coming to an end? No.

We have the option to believe in 21th century scientists (astronomers) OR we can believe in the cryptic translations of prophecies by Nostradamus and the Mayans. Scientists with 21st century technology for evaluating our solar system OR some 19th century french guy who wrote prophecies that were pretty much incomprehensible and could be made to mean anything.

Mark my words, nothing is going to happen on 2012. I’m so convinced that no cataclysmic event will happen on 2012 that I’m not even going to knock on wood…

…ok, I knocked on wood…but that’s only because I have a slight case of OCD.

Sure, it’s possible we could have another 9/11 type terrorist attack or a major disaster like Hurricane Katrina, but these disasters won’t be a result of the year being 2012. They will be disasters just like any other disaster we’ve had in the past.

The truth is that if the 2012 doomsday theories had any merit or credibility at all, we would be hearing about them from a lot more sources than a documentary that is interviewing the same kind of people that believe in things like healing crystals and astrology signs.

So you may be asking why I even bothered watching the film (aside from the two 5 minute naps that I took out of sheer boredom).

It’s because it was movie night and some of my family are not quite as pragmatic as myself. They believe in conspiracy theories like the Apollo moon landing being fake. Trying to convince them otherwise does no good. They will believe what they want to believe.

The same goes for theories about 2012. No point in trying to convince them of anything. It’s easier to just wait 3 years and let them find out for themselves.

Then once we get 2012 behind us, we can all start worrying about the REAL impending disaster…2027. Oh you don’t know about the year 2027? It’s the year foretold by Nostradamus when he drew a picture of crab eating this swirly looking thing.