New Blog

This was my first blog and while I neglected it more often than not, it was a good blog and served me well. However, it occurred to me that I was an idiot for not using one of my own domains to host my main blog.

So I have decided to get rid of my self inflicted idiocy and move my blog to http://www.kafraco.com/blog. I have tried to mimic the same basic look with the new site, but I know that it is different and since I have more control, there will be more features. I'm not exactly sure what new features, but there will be some.

So this blog will just sit dormant while the other one gets all of the good new content. Well, new content.

Maybe It's Just Me

I have a friend with an ex in prison, three children between the ages of 14 and 10 (I'm never quite sure the exact ages), a history of very dubious choices and a very sweet (but extremely malleable) personality. This friend and her children used to stop by the house five or six days out of the week. I saw them more than my daughters who live with their mother or my own siblings and their families.

Then all of a sudden they stopped coming around. And I mean sudden. One week we saw them six straight days, then we saw them once in two weeks. Weird, but expected once she received her income tax return.

What wasn't expected was that she started dating someone whose sole attribute was described as "he's wearing an ankle bracelet and she doesn't even know what he was in for."

Granted I don't know what most women look for in a man, but I would think that 'Has an electronic tether on his ankle' would NOT rank very high on the list of desired attributes.

I could be wrong, but I get the feeling that I know how this story is going to end.

I Love Money 2

My 13 year old niece is visiting as I write this blog post and she is watching TV in the living room. As I was walking back from the kitchen, I glanced at what she is watching. It looked like some sort of game show with women in bikinis jumping into a pool of mud for some reason. I shook my head and kept going.

I shouted back down the hall and asked her what she was watching. Apparently it is a show called 'I Love Money 2' and airs on VH1.

Here is a clip of the show:

VH1 TV Shows | Music Videos | Celebrity Photos | News & Gossip

Am I the only one who remembers when VH1 was the mature music television channel, unlike MTV, who only showed hair metal and hip hop videos?

Was this rude?

Telemarketer: Hello Derek, I'm calling from All-State Insurance and we have discounts in your area...

Derek: Hold on, is this about the job application I put in with you guys?

Telemarketer: Um, no...

Derek: I have nothing to say to you then. Goodbye.

[Click]

Noise I Never Made, Part Two

The second batch of notes were from the time just before Episode 100, where I was revisiting my original concept for Deliberate Noise. The original concept was scrapped due to a long running time. Episode 100 was almost three hours long. I didn't mind doing something like that as a one-off, but doing a weekly show like that would have been relationship/familial bond suicide.

The ideas that I never used were:
Anime Noise (which would have taken a look at the first episode of Gatchaman and I would have discussed some of the differences between Gatchaman and Battle Of The Planets/G-Force)

Where Are They Now Noise (which would have taken a look at some of the pop culture figures from the past and gave an update of what they were doing now. If I recall correctly, it would have been a joke like "Clara Peller, the Where's The Beef lady. She's dead")

Social Network Noise (the note next to it was "find the top social networks or new ones and keep track of what they are doing". This one has possibilities, but not for me right now)

Ubuntu Noise (which would have been a look at the Ubuntu operating system and its community)
MMA Noise (which would have been a look at the next big MMA card that was coming out at that time, I cannot remember what it is now)

TV Noise (still haven't done it yet even though it has its own forum)

Noise I Never Made, Part One

As I was going through some papers, I found two lists of show ideas. One was from the planning stages of my podcast. These notes predate the Deliberate Noise 0 show.

The ideas that I never used were:
TV Noise - I was going to talk about the pilots that were floating around the internet and I would have taken a look at the upcoming Fall TV season, but I just couldn't summon up enough motivation to do it once I started Comic Book Noise. For a while I put some TV industry news in the news section of Movie Noise, but I eventually got rid of that segment and have never gone back to the idea of a TV podcast.

Video Game Noise - I wanted to do this with my younger brother, but he quit following the video game scene as hardcore as he once did around this time. He started dating more and sold most of his games and systems. He let his gaming magazine subscriptions lapse and didn't sound like he was all that interested in doing it.

DVD Releases Noise - This was just going to be me going over what was coming out each week. It would have been similar to what Aaron Macom does with SciFiDig, only not as entertaining. This was one of the first ideas I dropped.

Music Noise - This would have been a sort of news show about what was going on in mainstream/Big Label music and not a show where I played mainstream/Big Label music. I was assembling the first show notes when I realized that I didn't care about what was going on.

All of the other original ideas saw the light of day in one form or another. Comics Noise became Comic Book Noise, Movie Noise is still going on, Story Noise morphed into Mosai Noise, Tech Noise had one subpar episode that was released as Deliberate Noise: Tech Edition before being dropped forever

No Good Affiliate Marketing Podcasts?

I was listening to an episode of Good Clean Fun where Michael Butler was talking about attending the Affiliate Marketing Summit. He gave a brief synopsis of what he thought affiliate marketing was and unlike a lot of other people, he made it sound semi-interesting. I know that a lot of people think that the dual worlds of affiliate marketing and SEO (search engine optimization) are pretty interesting, but a lot of times the people who talk about it make it seem like they are trying to sell a used car filled with a miracle cure-all that can make it rain. Not everybody, but enough for me to keep away from that whole scene.

He piqued my interest enough to make me do a search in iTunes for ‘affiliate marketing’ to see what kind of podcasts were out there.  While I know that the iTunes Store is not the best place when it comes to wanting to find anything but the most mainstream media type of podcast, it just seems to me that a lot of those marketing types would want to attach themselves to the current 800 pound gorilla.

It therefore came as a bit of a surprise to me that out of the first ten podcasts that I took a look at, I only found ONE affiliate marketing podcast that had an episode released in 2009, three had a last release date in 2008 (including one from “the greatest affiliate marketer on the planet!”), two in 2007 (and one of these was a teaser clip for a weekly podcast that still has not materialized), two in 2006, one in 2005 and one that was completely blank, which makes me wonder why it was even in the system at all.

Unfortunately for me, the one affiliate marketing podcast that I found and is still active is an interview podcast.  As a general rule I don’t listen to interview podcasts. If the interviewer is someone I would otherwise listen to (like Dave Slusher, Michael Butler or some of my comic book podcasting friends) or if the interviewee is worked into a real conversation (like the interviews on Keith and The Girl), then I will happily make an exception.

In the case of affiliate marketing/SEO, it seems to me that the main reason to talk anyone about those subjects is because they are an expert of some sort. In that case, I would rather hear that expert on their own podcast (or whatever form of new media they gravitate towards) than to hear them talk to someone else about the subject. Since most interview podcasts exist to have a new guest on every episode, I find that I usually do not make a connection with the host.  Without that connection, listening to a bunch of random people talking about a subject I know nothing about doesn’t sound very appealing to me.

If anyone knows about an affiliate marketing podcast* that is pretty good, please leave a comment.

* If you know any good ones for SEO, let me know as well. I didn’t look for one so I don’t know if I would find a similar situation to the affiliate marketing ones.

Skype Ridiculousness

I know I should keep away from Skype after the frustration of this past summer, but they have refunded a considerable amount of my money in the form of Skype Credit. However, the only thing you can do with Skype Credit is spend it on Skype stuff. And I'm not talking about some of the cool stuff in their store, like webcams or microphones, which could come in handy.

Nope, you can only buy online numbers and voice mail (which is a very handy combination if you have podcasts and want to have voice mail lines that don't go through Seattle) or you can get stuff from their Personalize section, which is ringtones and other frivolous stuff that is aimed at people other than myself.

So I came up with the idea of giving Skype Gift Certificates so that other people can buy voice mail and online numbers. That's about as altruistic as I get. Unfortunately, Skype no longer sells gift certificates. Apparently they are working to resolve the problem, but they don't actually say what the problem is.

There is speculation that in early 2008 a lot of people who had bought Gift Certificate couldn't redeem them because they had already been redeemed. There is further unconfirmed speculation that Skype suffered a security breach and some information was taken, including a bunch of voucher numbers.

Skype Customer Support recommends that buy vouchers from stores (which would defeat the purpose of me wanting to get rid of my current Skype Credit balance); OR I can sign up for their Skype for Business service, add other people to the Business Control Panel and do everything that I want to do from there (buy online numbers and voice mail or just transfer Skype Credit to them).

Unfortunately, I cannot transfer from my person account to the collective account. I would have to buy more Skype Credit and allocate it that way. Which of course, doesn't allow me to get rid of my current Skype Credit balance.

I can understand why they have this precaution in place because there would be nothing to stop a Skype terrorist from taking over an account, setting up the Business Control Panel and allocating a bunch of stuff to his cohorts. I understand that, but that doesn't mean that it isn't frustrating, especially since it appears as though the bad guys have no problem with accessing Skype security. Speculatively.

Murphy's Law

Contrary to popular belief, Murphy’s Law states: If there are two or more ways to do something, and one of those ways can result in a catastrophe, then someone can do it.

I just thought you’d like to know.