View on the World

*NOTE : I managed to fix the broken embedded link and also the link to the direct site … Enjoy.

Now, I love Top Gear and have for many many years.

Anyone that watches the show knows that Jeremy Clarkson is a big boofhead that doesn’t take anything seriously. They will also know that he’s funny and opinionated.

The big fuss over his recent Lorry driver comments have caused quite a stir and at least one flash game where you get to run him over.

The original story is here

Personally I don’t care about the comments and think that people are far too easily offended these days. People are quick to assume that OTHER people will be offended and leap to be offended themselves so they can be early on the band wagon.

Bad Taste? Certainly. Sackable? I hardly think so.

Cheers,
Shane

Play it below or if that doesn’t work try it HERE

While browsing www.news.com.au this morning for my usual dose of news from home, I came across an interesting article that was too good not to follow up on.

From James Gunn and his brothers, that brought you Disaster Movie comes a new web movie series for lovers of Porn. Ok so where I say lovers, I mean those of us who love the cheesiness of porn. The crappy music, bad lighting, awful acting and generally pornness of Adult Movies. ( Yes I did just make up that word )

They are taking movie/ TV actors and pairing them with well known Adult Stars and making short movies without the sex. You get all the cheese, hold the nudity, with heaping’s of plot twists and comedy.

The first webisode is online now and you can view it HERE, it features Aria Giovani from Andrew Blake movie fame and Nathan Fillion from Firefly and Desperate Housewives fame. The webisode is called "Nailing Your Wife" and the "Plot" revolves around a typical porn story of a housewife coming home to meet her husband only to find him not home and a handsome handyman working up a sweat. You’ll have to watch it as I wouldn’t want to spoil the surprise.

I enjoyed it immensely and laughed out right a few times. There is also a series of interviews with the director and Aria Giovani that were fun and talked about how the series came about and what’s to come.

It sounds like they have several more already in the can and I’m looking forward to seeing them as they’re released.

I have been extremely busy for the last two years and have sadly neglected the Affiliate Marketing side of the business. What was a thriving 4 figure a month income has dwindled to barely covering costs. This can happen for a number of reason over time. Escalating competition driving up the PPC cost to the point that a campaign is no longer profitable, merchants switching Affiliate Sites or shutting down Affiliate Sales and many varied other reasons.

The contract I’m currently working is coming to a close and I’m going to have the time to get things back up and rocking. I have a lot of experience in Affiliate Marketing and am not worried that I can again achieve Super Affiliate status.

Adwords PPC is a tricky beast and if you aren’t careful it can bite you hard. For this reason
I’m treating it very much like fire. Very very useful but wild at heart and able to burn up swaths of cash if not watched carefully. It was this tricky nature of the beast that prompted me to write Internet Marketers Companion in the first place. I’m still working on IMC and look forward to the next release which will retrieve an emailed google adwords report file and pump the data in.

I’m not sure whether to call Internet Marketers Companion a success or failure. In some ways I think it’s a success. I planned it out and completed the project and got it to market. In other ways I think of it as a failure. I’m not sure people understood how powerful it is, and because of that couldn’t get their heads around it’s worth. On the other hand it requires a lot of fiddling to get reports and put the data in. It does a great job of it’s primary function though, to cut the time it takes to get useful stats. Internet Marketers Companion is still so much easier than hand adding data to spreadsheets and as the data is all in hand it is easy to add extra reports. I would have loved more of a take up and at the current low price point and full featured demo would still love that, if only for the feedback extra eyes can add in helping make things run better. The initial learning curve is quite steep and that is daunting. I also believe that a lot of marketers don’t keep the stats like I wanted and would benefit from doing so. While it didn’t sell great numbers, I find myself enjoying using it and will continue to improve IMC if only for use in my own business.

Back to the story. In thinking of Adwords PPC as a fire that has died down, you need to apply similar tactics to bring it back roaring to life. Sure you could throw gasoline of the fire and have things flare up but you could also get badly burned by that. Better to get down close and gently blow on the embers to stir them back to life. Take a slow, careful approach and watch things carefully. With a little attention and tender loving care the embers will burn brighter and start flaming again.

I have already brought a couple of long forgotten campaigns back to life and am seeing sales. Once I have gone through my existing accounts to see if the merchants are still active and whether they are worth salvaging I’ll start bringing on new ones. By diligently putting stats into IMC and tracking the cost of sales, I’ll be able to keep a tight rein on costs and maximize the profits. Profits are great and I love watching sales come in. What is more important at the beginning is making sure you stop any losses from putting the fire out completely.

I use Matt Levenhagen’s Campaign Blast Method and IMC was built so that it dovetails nicely into his stop loss method of Affiliate Marketing. It’s a

great way to ensure you losses don’t run away with your profits and Internet Marketers Companion is the software that makes it easy to see at a glance the stats of what’s working and what isn’t.

Also on the cards is fine tuning the latest updates to IMC and getting that out to the currently users and putting together a database for the demo so that folks can see how the program works without having to input any data.

I’m getting excited about working with the Affiliate Marketing business again, it’s something that I love to do and the people I interact with are a class act.

What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas. For a bloody good reason!!!!

But man was it fun.

Stacey has some great details and shots of vegas.

Page AR - Vegas Baby!

It’s a pretty short hop from Page to Las Vegas, around 4 1/2 hours, so we had planned a nice sleep in around today. So of course I was wide awake at 6 am, *Sigh*. Page itself is really just a little resort town by a lake, but the surrounding countryside is breathtaking.

the City of Page is a young and vibrant community located atop a mesa in north central Arizona, overlooking dramatic vistas of Lake Powell and Glen Canyon Dam, and adjacent to the vast Navajo Nation, the country’s largest Native American tribe.

There is so much to see around Page that we feel a little guilty for snoozing the afternoon away the only day we had here. I have a feeling we may well be back with the kids in tow.

The drive from Page to Las Vegas is spectacular to begin with, you leave Page by driving over Glen Canyon Dam, which while no Hoover Dam is still very impressive. The next couple of hours are vista upon vista of breathtaking scenery. Every time the camera was put down, we’d round a bend and there would be another one.

We stopped briefly at a road side Indian store and picked up a necklace for Stacey and a hand carved Christmas ornament. From a pure geeky perspective it was interesting seeing a wireless eftpos machine in the middle of nowhere. We were in part of the Navajo Nation, the countries largest reservation.

From www.navajo.org

The Navajo Nation extends into the states of Utah , Arizona and New Mexico , covering over 27,000 square miles of unparalleled beauty. Diné Bikéyah, or Navajoland, is larger than 10 of the 50 states in America.

Back in the jeep we eventually came out of the postcard vistas onto a long, flat, straight stretch of road stretching like a runway into Nevada and then to Las Vegas. It was the kind of road you see in Cannonball Run and it made me long for a car to do it justice. The seed limit is 75 mph or around 120 kmh for the Aussies in the audience. I was driving along dreaming of being in a nice Shelby GT Mustang, vintage or current, didn’t bother me. Blasting along that road at 120 mph would have been a lot of fun.

Vegas raises from the desert like a mirage, the 100 degree temperatures creating a heat shimmer. The Stratosphere raising up similar to Centre Point Tower in Sydney Australia.

I’ve heard horror stories about driving around Las Vegas, especially around the strip. I was pleasantly surprised that things were well signed and with the help of Karen, our not so bright GPS we were in New York New York in no time. We chose to self park as the jeep has several moving parts and it can take us a little while to secure things. A good thing too, as I was busting for a toilet, my back teeth were floating. While Stacey was pulling things together I got my first taste of a Las Vegas Casino by dashing inside looking for the Men’s room. Let me spare you the details and just say that I made it … just.

Then began the disappointment that was NYNY. We weren’t a fan of the hotel and would struggle to find a reason to stay there again. The service was pretentious without the quality to back that up. It was expensive without the value and with constant construction it was just like being in the big apple. Our room was at the end of a very long, very crooked hallway ( It’s the wing that looks like a series of buildings )

On the bright side the room was nice and the spa was wonderful after so many days on the road.

I get a LOT of spam and it’s sometimes interesting to see how the trends of what finds it’s way into my inbox. Of course there is always a host of sex related spam and the notorious viagra and breast enlargement emails.

One that I’m not sure that works or not is the hundreds of notes asking to buy certain penny stocks. I’m guessing that if you buy a stock for a penny, then convince enough others to buy the same stock and it goes to two pennies then you could sell out for 100% profit. It’s highly illegal of course and there was famous case in Australia where Rene Rivkin was accused of moving the market for his own gain by using his investment newsletter.

The latest ones have been super foods ACAI and Pomegranate which have been getting a lot of press for being super foods full of anti-oxidants.

The one that has caught my eye of late is pushing the power shamanism. From wikipedia “Shamanism is a range of traditional beliefs and practices concerned with communication with the spirit world. A practitioner of shamanism is known as a shaman. There are many variations of shamanism throughout the world; following are beliefs shared by all forms of shamanism”

The Spam is pushing a book on how to get what or who you want with the power of Shamanism. While I’m a fan of American Indian history and practices an my lovely wife has Indian blood, I don’t think that a book will be able to accomplish what it’s spamming ( Funny that ).

I’ll be interested to see what the next trend in spam is going to offer. Walking on water? 30 second Abs? Pheromones?

On a tech note any admins got advice on what to add to amavis and spamassasin to help cull the amounts of Spam?

Cheers,
Shane

I have been waiting on Rock Band 2 since I first laid drum sticks on the original Rock Band.

Once RB2 was announced, ION announced the Drum Rocker, a more realistic and midi capable drum kit. I’m very much looking forward to banging on it, although as I currently have the wii I may have to wait a little longer for that one to come out.

The PS3 version should be out in the not too distant future, and is already listed on the Amazon site.

The good news is that the wait is over and you can pick up the Drum Rocker now. You can get it straight from ION but they’re charging $50 odd for shipping or you can get it HERE from Amazon with free shipping.

Bluff, UT to Page, AR via Monument Valley

04:30 is early. The only mitigating factors to waking up at 04:30 is that Monument Valley was waiting for us and that as we’d traveled west our body clocks were really telling us it was 05:30.

Why 04:30? Well dawn was set for just over 6 am and we had a 1/2 hour drive to get to the Valley. The funny thing about this morning was seeing Stacey in action. She isn’t a morning person by any stretch of the imagination. I sometimes refer to her as an early afternoon person, but not this morning. She was a dervish of activity. First out the door and shoving bags into the Jeep like a woman possessed. Today was HER day.

Why monument valley? Well my lovely wife Stacey is a photographyer. The main purpose of this whole trip was to  get Stacey to Monument Valley at dawn so we could get some great shots for our art website www.artoftheozarks.com.

Of course we’re hoping for some great shots from multiple locations but the main thrust is those couple of hours we spent running around the 17 mile loop that meanders around this most spectacular of south west sceneries.

From Monument Valley we headed towards ShipRock and while we managed to get some shots of it. We never could find the road in to get close to it. The disturbing thing about the area was that there was so much poverty there. I haven’t seen such shanty towns since my Navy days travelling South East Asia.

One side of the road had hundreds of cookie cutter prefabbed houses, while just around the corner ther were modern looking stores, shops and gas stations. Adding to the look of desolation is that we were in the desert and there was no grass to be seen. The kids were playing baseball on a sand lot, and still having a ball doing it.

We skipped off in search of Las Vegas and happened to notice a sign for the Navajo National Monument. We had time up our sleeves and it wasn’t far so we decided to check it out. It turns out that the Navajo National Monument has a couple of intact Puebloan  cliff dwellings. They were constructed 800 - 900 years ago in some alcoves deep in a canyon. You can hike down to a viewing platform that gives a great view of the alcoves. We didn’t have a great lens there to get some closeup shots but the ones that we did get show the buildings that were built so long ago. A “big eyes” mounted binoculars there shows the cliff dwellings in excellent detail. It is still amazing that the alcoves protected these building so well for so long.

After the well worth it diversion we headed into Page, Arizona. The rest of the trip in was also spectacular as the road carved it’s way though the mountains and gorgeous sandstone cliffs surrounded us on all sides. Just as the camera was put away, we’d round a curve and a new fantastic vista would have us scrambling to get the camera ready. Hopefully some of these action shots are not too bad and we can get them up for folks to see.

We had every intention in the world of going out ATV’ing, taking photos, or anything to make the most of the day but I ended up taking a “nap” and not really recovering. I needed the sleep. I will say that the Marriot in Page is the best one I’ve stayed at, it was rendered and gorgeous. I think Stacey has a photo of it up at the jeep blog.

Cheers,

Shane

As always photos can be seen at Stacey’s blog www.myfamilyjeep.com or purchased soon at www.artoftheozarks.com

Farmington NM - Bluff UT

Day 3 was on the plan as a “free” day. It was only about 4 hours from Farmington, NM to Bluff, UT. We had an idea of a couple of things to go see while in the area but thought we’d play it a little by ear and see if there is some other cool stuff to tack on.

We’d noticed on our last gas stop the day before in Aztec NM a few signs to some ruins and as that wasn’t all that far away and the home of a Starbucks, decided to give it a look.  Turns our the ruins were amazing, a Pueblo settlement some 900 years old.  The amount of ruins still standing is testament to both how well they were constructed and the care that has been taken to preserve them. It’s a shame that there isn’t more funding for the preservation of these time capsules and that more can’t be done to keep them. There are some sections that they’ve buried to help preserve them as there aren’t enough staff or the money to keep and preserve them.

From Aztec we headed to Hovenweep National Monument via Four corners. What is Four Corners I hear you ask? Well, it’s a funky little place where you can stand in four states at the same time. Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona and Utah.  We were expecting a sign on the road and a short road to a dusty monument pointing to the spot. What we found was quite different. There were 10’s of people there and a little compound.

We had to pay to get in but in general we don’t mind paying at all. The majority of the fee’s are quite low and the money goes to keeping the monuments in good nick.

Around the edges of the compound were Indian stalls selling all sorts trinkets and jewelry. I ended up getting a couple of arrow head necklaces, one a hand chipped flint and another tiger eye. We also managed to pick up some trinkets for the kids and a bump on my head. Turns out two things were true at this particular stall, the first is that the stones look much more attractive in the sun light and the second one is that the overhang of the roof is 5 ‘ 11″ (I’m 6′ 1″). Not only did I get to see the sparkles of the gold stone in the sun light, I also got to see some stars.

As there was no blood, there was no foul and we carried on.

The trip to four corners was actually a side trip a little out of the way but it was worth it. We ended up having several of those during the trip and each time we found something amazing and spectacular.

Next stop was Hovenweep National Monument. It’s more pueblan ruins, the main differnece being that they are on the edge of a canyon. It’s a self guided exploration trail that’s about 2 miles. It was pushing 100 degrees fahrenheit, but we grabbed some water and headed off. Part of the trek involves going down to the bottom of the canyon and back up the other side. Luckily for us the Ranger let us know that if we were to do the whole thing we should do that side first. Made the rest of the trip much easier.

The ruins were spectacular and in the middle of no where. It’s interesting to see how the buildings were constructed and how they both differed and were similar to the ruins in Aztec.

We enjoyed the air conditioning as we drove to Bluff, Utah,  our jump point for Monument Valley.

Stacey has some photos up at www.myfamilyjeep.com

Amarillo TX, to Farmington NM.

We managed to make quite good time. New Mexico is simply stunning, the landscape is just as I grew up with on old western movies and road runner cartoons.

I-40 was the usual crush of trucks, but the real concern was the pea soup fog we were flying through. The Texas panhandle is one of those iconic areas of the world, lauded in folklore and movies. The shame was that we couldn’t see much of it through the fog.

We stopped in Albuquerque for lunch and due to inept wait staff, who were more interested in gossiping than serving, we ended up having a very embarrassed manager comp our meal.

Through some dumb luck we ended up finding a great little Mexican place for dinner that had a live band. Great band, pity about one of the singers, the fact they repeated songs several times and too many churchy songs for our tastes.

All in all we had a great time, ate some good food, drank some fine local sparkling wines and enjoyed a live band.

Rumors that I was asked to sit in with the band are entirely true. I did manage to have a quick play, and a good chat with a few of the band members at the end of the gig.  We shot the breeze a while and noodled around while the rest of the guys packed up their gear. I got to bash out a couple of tunes on a nice Fender Fat Strat. It was the guitarists backup guitar, but much more to my taste than his main axe, a Gibson 335.