Tomorrow, April 6, 2011 from 9am to 10am, I’ll be discussing blogging with Brian Hornback (Twitter: @brianhornback), Ed Brantley and Bob Thomas on WNOX‘s 100.3 The Ed & Bob Show (listen live online). You can interact with Ed and Bob on Facebook and Twitter. I suspect you can call in with questions or feel free to use twitter to send messages to @djuggler or post in comments here. This will be a blast!
Category: Of Interest
Those miscellaneous things that just must be published.
My April/May 2011 Juggling Performances
This is my upcoming performance schedule.
- April 15 11:15-11:30 and noon-12:15 – UT’s International Festival on the UC Plaza. Fire will be allowed.
- April 15 3:00-3:30 Dogwood Art’s festival children’s stage near Krutch Park downtown – Fire will be allowed.
- April 16 5:00-8:30 Zoo-to-do juggling at the Knoxville Zoo. No fire. LED show if darkness comes soon enough.
- April 17 4:00-4:30 Dogwood Art’s festival children’s stage near Krutch Park downtown – Fire will be allowed.
- April 30 time tbd (event is 8-5) Dogwood Art’s Chalk Wallk walk-around juggling in Market Square and Krutch Park – details still being worked out. Probably a G to PG-13 rated crowd since this will be atmospheric/walk-around the performances will be shorter more adhoc depending on what crowd gathers to watch. Fire will be based upon each location that is density of the crowd, nearness to flammables, etc. You know.. the standard safety considerations.
- May 6 5-8:30 Dreamnight at the Zoo with Children’s Hospital – the event is for children with severe ongoing medical concerns and terminal illness. – No fire. LED equipment if darkness comes soon enough.
- May 7 10-11:30 (probably more like 10:45-11:30 – event is 10am-2pm and the only slot taken is 11:30-noon when Michael Messing performs magic). The event is Children’s Mental Health Week sponsored by TN Voices for Children and will be near Krutch Park.
If you are interested in joining me on any of these endeavors, just let me know. Obviously most of the events are G-rated but I think we can have a little more fun with the UT students. Note: At this point, none of the performances are likely to be amp’d ie. no microphones or PAs. I currently do not have a passing partner for any of these events. If you want to pass with me or have some solo time at one of these events, please let me know. Don’t sell your skills short. If you learn to pass clubs Monday night, you’re already good enough! Performances are much less about perfect juggling and far more about audience engagement.
Juggle til you drop!
NASA Plays God
I learn something new every day. Today I learned how to make my neighbors move.
The vicarious busker
In the middle of 1993, I decided to spend three months in the dance studios of the upper floors of Knoxville’s Candy Factory practicing my dance, pantomime, comedy and choreographing my juggling routines in preparation to hike Europe while living off the rewards of my busking. I had successfully busked the corner of Jackson Avenue and Central on the corner of Manhattan’s for 12 weeks every Friday and Saturday night making at least $50 a night sometimes working as little as two hours which was better than the tips I made on a full shift waiting tables at Shoney’s plus someone usually bought me a beer or two. My "success" in Knoxville along with the encouragement of a friend who had eight years experience juggling for money (2 on the streets, 6 on the cruise line/college circuits) left me confident that I would eat well, pay my bills, and stay in nice hotels and if that didn’t work out my friend had advised me on how to sleep under a bush without getting arrested or having equipment stolen.
By the end of 1993, I was making $13000 a year working 70 hours a week with 4 other smelly guys in a tiny, cramped motel room which had been converted to a software development office with desks made out of doors on filing cabinets. The shower doubled as storage and a sound room for recording audio. Another room was reserved for artists, one for customer service, and two for packaging and shipping.
My European ship sailed and I now live vicariously through the videos of buskers such as Street Show Keith.
Street Show Keith from StopDropAndRoll Inc. on Vimeo.
R.I.P. MyBlogLog
In case you haven’t heard, Yahoo (in true Yahoo form), is shutting down MyBlogLog. The official email arrived today:
Dear MyBlogLog Customer,
You have been identified as a customer of Yahoo! MyBlogLog. We will officially discontinue Yahoo! MyBlogLog effective May 24, 2011. Your agreement with Yahoo!, to the extent that it applies to the Yahoo! MyBlogLog, will terminate on May 24, 2011.
After May 24, 2011 your credit card will no longer be charged for premium services on MyBlogLog. We will refund you the unused portion of your subscription, if any. The refund will appear as a credit via the billing method we have on file for you. To make sure that your billing information is correct and up to date, visit https://billing.yahoo.com.
Questions?
If you have questions about these changes, please visit the Yahoo! MyBlogLog help pages.We thank you for being a customer on Yahoo! MyBlogLog.
Sincerely,
The Yahoo! My BlogLog Team
Yahoo suggests switching to Pulse.
MyBlogLog will no longer be in service from 24 May 2011. We recommend Yahoo! Pulse as a service for you to see all your social updates from your favorite networks in one place.
With Yahoo! Pulse, you can create your own identity on Yahoo! and you can easily connect and engage with the people, content, and applications that matter to you, wherever you are on Yahoo!.
Here’s hoping that if I ever have a successful Internet company that Yahoo never buys it.
How America can jump start the real estate market
Learn to sell!
Thank you Roger Ebert!
1000 words – checking for radiation
If you aren’t following what is happening in Japan and Fukushima, you should be.
Dear Starbucks, we have an issue…
Recently, Starbucks introduced its iPhone app which allows you to associate a Starbucks gift card with the phone and a credit card with the application. When I make a purchase from Starbucks, I simply show them the QR Code (bar code) on the phone and I’m done. Plus I get bonuses like a free drink after so many uses. I can also put more money on the application with a couple of taps of the screen. Almost too easy. And I get annoyed. That’s right ANNOYED!
See, your wonderful application has made it easier than ever for me to spend money at Starbucks. I calculate my expenditure at Starbucks since installing the iPhone app has quadrupled. Where do I get annoyed? It’s your employees. You’ve made it incredibly easy, and almost fun, to make purchases at Starbucks and your employees kill it when I try to hand them my phone and they utter, "I’m sorry. I’m not allowed to touch your phone." Well yes they are. Because I have given them permission and I speak those words, "I give you permission to take my phone." In short, that means I assume liability. If they drop my phone in a sink of soapy water, it’s my fault.
Watching a barista do acrobatics out the drive through window to stretch a scanner beyond the length of its cord because they won’t take my phone in their hand is absurd. To tell me I have to come inside to use the application is counter productive. But, since this seems to be such an issue, I now avoid your drive through which means sometimes I avoid your business altogether. That’s right. You created an application that dramatically increased my business with you. But you are quickly creating an employee culture that is driving me away.
Dear Starbucks, I ask you to do something simple. Tell your staff that if I give them permission to take my phone, they can. And if you really need to cover your ass, just put a sign by the register and at the drive through window that reads "Starbucks cannot be held liable for damage to your phone if you hand it to our employees" then have your employees ask, "Do I have permission to hold your phone?" Thanks!
Update: If I accidentally leave my phone on the counter, does this policy mean that management won’t touch it? Or do they pick it up and put it in a lost and found?
The Internet has nothing left for me
I’ve now seen it all.
Btw, according to this comment, the scuba gear cost $20,000.
I’m a cat lover, and if you’ve ever seen an extended clip, you’d know that this guy? spent $20,000 on the kitty scuba gear. Now I can’t imagine burning that kind of cash on something so… silly, but he did it because Hawkeye really loves the water. I think this is more a case of a ridiculously pampered pet rather than animal abuse (though I could rescue a whole bunch of cats with $20,000…) [Source
Well there is this.
I need therapy!
In the old days, they called these Internet cams and the cost was $5 per minute, not that I’d personally know anything about that but I’ve cleaned enough "phone dialers" off client computers to acknowledge that we live in a very sexually driven society. So at $150 for an hour, this therapy is a bargain albeit probably less, um, "interactive" than the other ones.
Sometimes you nail it
I love our East Tennessee skies. And one of the reasons I haven’t upgraded to an iPhone 4 is my iPhone 3GS captures pictures like this:
Don’t steal…ask for help.
Last night I learned that someone drove through our neighborhood between 1am and 3am Sunday night/Monday morning looking in people’s cars and stealing easy to grab stuff. For instance, two neighbors both had left wallets on the dashboard and are now sans wallet. One lost a camera but other obvious grabs like checkbooks and radios were left alone.
This is the first I’ve heard of any incident like this since I moved to the house in 1997. It feels like a dry run so I’ve notified the Sheriff and put the neighborhood on a property watch. I hope the crooks don’t return. I’ve got good neighbors. Several are good ol’ boys in the neighborhood would are watching now and we do live in the county.
R.I.P. MyBlogLog
Note to self: Shall I ever own a successful web company, I will never sell to Yahoo!
Dear MyBlogLog Customer,
You have been identified as a customer of Yahoo! MyBlogLog. We will officially discontinue Yahoo! MyBlogLog effective May 24, 2011. Your agreement with Yahoo!, to the extent that it applies to the Yahoo! MyBlogLog, will terminate on May 24, 2011.
After May 24, 2011 your credit card will no longer be charged for premium services on MyBlogLog. We will refund you the unused portion of your subscription, if any. The refund will appear as a credit via the billing method we have on file for you. To make sure that your billing information is correct and up to date, visit https://billing.yahoo.com.
Questions?
If you have questions about these changes, please visit the Yahoo! MyBlogLog help pages.We thank you for being a customer on Yahoo! MyBlogLog.
Sincerely,
The Yahoo! My BlogLog Team
This should happen in every traffic jam
When the roads slow to a crawl..DANCE!
Blip!
Costco is on the radar again…
