“D’you know that the human head weighs 8 pounds?”
Remember that line from the movie Jerry Maguire? Remember that adorable kid who stated that line? Yup, that would be Jonathan Lipnicki, but he ain’t 5 years old any more.
Did Derek Hough Just Get Outchoreographed?
Can it be? Did 3-time mirrorball trophy winner and master choreographer Derek Hough get outchoreographed in the Dancing with the Stars Finals of Season 13? Derek is the creator of the futuristic paso doble, the psycho tango, the acoustic Argentine tango, the paso doble from the 50’s, the too erotic samba, and is the lambada gribbler. But still, it was two-time winner Cheryl Burke who had the better freestyle strategy for peaking Rob Kardashian. That slow to fast freestyle transition was more original than the hip hop freestyles we’ve seen in the recent DWTS Finals.
I thought Derek and Ricki were a shoo-in to win Season 13, but after the first night of the Finals, the lead belongs to Boy Kardashian. And don’t necessarily count JR out yet. His fierce freestyle brought him and Karina back into contention. Closest DWTS Finals I can remember.
After tonight, my nod is to Rob and Cheryl.
What’s a Photo Consent Form?
So you take professional pictures at a portrait studio, and you want to use one of these shots for a Christmas card. Can you design a card using one of these pictures and mass produce them at Costco?
Supposedly yes, if you get the release and photo consent forms from the portrait studio (by purchasing the portrait). But what does a typical consent form look like? I don’t think it’s an .ini file on a burned CD that contains the image. But that’s what we’re being told is the consent form. I’m no Microsoft Windows expert, but don’t .ini files contain configuration settings for apps? Using a text editor, the .ini file looks like a typical “innie” file with a bunch of parameters and their values.
I’ll see what happens when I take a print out of this .ini file (as instructed by the portrait studio) to Costco to authorize the release of our Christmas cards. Maybe Costco won’t even check? I’m not sure how this works, but I’ll find out soon enough.
Lanny and Wayne Are Back!
Santa’s elves, Lanny and Wayne, are back in another episode of Prep & Landing. Get ready for Prep & Landing: Naughty vs. Nice coming on December 5 when this mismatched duo are on a mission to recover stolen North Pole technology.
Keeping the Oxford Comma
No matter what, I’m continuing the use of the Oxford comma here on Pulpconnection. I never knew there was a term for this, but I’ve been an user of this serial comma forever. The Oxford comma is the last comma used in a list. For example, in this sentence:
Pulpconnection is focused on addictions, passions, and pulp.
The comma between passions and pulp is the Oxford comma. To me, that one comma helps separate each item in a list. Often times, you don’t need it, but it eliminates confusion by including it. Whatever your opinion is, I’m holding on to the Oxford comma.
New Advertisers – Lijit and Starbucks
Along with the tinkering, you, dear readers, might have noticed a few other changes. Pulpconnection is now running ads from Lijit and Starbucks.
Lijit has always had its advertisement network, but I never tapped into it until recently. They match your content with advertisers and display appropriate ads on your site. My Lijit ad is buried in the footer, but it does add some needed color pop to the gray footer area. Already, I’ve noticed ads for Nike, Tivo, and Starbucks so they’ve match my content accurately.
Along with Lijit, I also qualified to show ads from Starbucks’ online store (a member of LinkShare). If you need to buy any Starbucks coffee, equipment, cups, or gift cards, consider shopping here. 🙂
Tinkering, Always Tinkering
You know I’m always tinkering around, adding and removing things from my blog. Here are the latest changes.
JetPack to JetPack Lite to JetPack
The earlier version of JetPack was bloated and so so, so I changed to the leaner but unofficial JetPack Lite. Then in the past day, a new, more feature rich version of JetPack was released. I switched back to test the new features.
Subscribe by Email
Speaking of new features in JetPack, there’s a subscribe by email function. In the past, I’ve let FeedBurner handle that, but let’s see how JetPack fares. In the right sidebar, kinda down you’ll see the Subscribe via Email section. Provide your email address to get started. If this works, I can remove a FeedBurner plugin to specifically handle email subscriptions.
Improved Search
I never realized the built-in WordPress search function was so basic. It worked good enough or so I thought. Then I read about Relevanssi (I guess that’s supposed to sound like “relevancy”). It boosts the WP search functionality with features you assumed were already there.
The Relevanssi search index is still building so you won’t see any of the features just yet.
Breaking Dawn Breaks the Bank
From its midnight premiere, Breaking Dawn Part 1 pulled in $30M. This, however, did not eclipse the record set by Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 with $43M. Still though, expect solid ticket sales for this weekend and over the upcoming Thanksgiving break as fans flock to see Team Edward, Team Jacob, Team Bella, and even Team Alice.
Be sure to read Myong’s review of Breaking Down over on Nonstop Honolulu.
Have You Tried Starbucks’ Cup Magic?
Have you downloaded and played with Starbucks’ new mobile app, Cup Magic. Okay, so it’s really a front to inject Starbucks into the mind of users during the Holidays, but it’s a fun reminder nonetheless. The concept? Fire up the app, and point your mobile device’s camera at special items in the store or online. Once recognized, the app will augment the reality by displaying animation superimposed on the image displayed on the camera. It’ll look something like this:
It’s fun to see how companies are combining and leveraging technologies to build their brand name and inform consumers of updates.
(Sorta) Failed First Google Music Purchase
Now that Google Music is rocking, I figured I’d give its accompanying Android Market a run and buy a song. From the radio, I soundtracked Young Blood by The Naked and Famous on their album, Passive Me Aggressive You. As a quick test comparing Google, Amazon, and iTunes, I searched for “young blood passive me aggressive you” on the respective services.
Here’s what I got on Google Music. No match found.
Here’s what I got on Amazon’s MP3 Store. Entire album found with the single costing $0.99.
Here’s what I got on iTunes. Entire album found with the single costing $1.29.
What would you surmise seeing these results? I’d say Google Music fail, right? It’s the only music service that doesn’t offer this song. But… I changed my search terms on Google Music and looked for “naked famous”. And guess what shows up?
The single is actually there, hiding in plain sight. This is really strange, since Google being Google is synonymous with search. Why wasn’t this song found when searching for its title and the album name? Maybe the songs are still being indexed or something, I don’t know.
Once I found Young Blood, I easily completed the purchase and shared a listen on Google+. I downloaded the single via the web and imported into iTunes. Then I uploaded the song to my Amazon Cloud Drive.  Sadly though, this Google Music-purchased single won’t be available in iCloud without subscribing to iTunes Match.
Overall, a bit of a rough start with Google Music.  I’m pleased I eventually found the single but am confused why searches didn’t find it initially given Google’s searching strength.  Maybe the service is just being passive aggressive during launch?