I think I receive the majority of these emails from my mom.  She tends to pass along these pearls of wisdom, probably with the intent of somehow making life better for me.  This means, it came as no surprise to find one in my inbox last Monday.  This time it was WD-40.  As I skimmed through the anecdote, history and uses, I paused for a moment at use number 7.  "Removes lipstick stains."  Interesting, yet doubtful.  Then, 35 uses later, I hit number 42.  "If you've washed and dried a tube of lipstick with a load of laundry, saturate the lipstick spots and presto!  Lipstick is gone!  Could this be true? Did it really say that all the work clothes I spoiled early in my marriage to my husband could have been miraculously saved?  Could WD-40 really remove my beloved Chanel Ingenue from his Kenneth Cole slacks?  THIS would have been good to know seven years ago!  Still, I am a lipstick girl to the core, so my daughters, not surprisingly, have found and used my lipsticks on things other than their lips.  The latest being Zoe and a tube of Crazed on the bedroom floor's carpet.  When I saw it, it pained me because I have thrown out dozens of clothes with the notion that NOTHING would ever get those stubborn stains out.  Since we are renters I figured we would have to go through great lengths to remove it in order to get our deposit back.  In fact, a few months back when I had the carpets cleaned I asked the guy about the stain and he said he would try his best but that if I really wanted him to remove it it would be an additional forty bucks!  Um...  No thanks!

All that to say, I read number 47 and thought, hey, we have a small can of WD-40, WHY NOT TRY???   I dug into my husband's tool box and retrieved the pint ounce sized can and gave it a go.  I sprayed it generously on the stain and waited.  After about five minutes I got a clean dry rag and blotted the stain.  It definitely brought out some of the lipstick but I wasn't satisfied.  So I SCRUBBED.  I know, I know, you are never supposed to scrub but I did it...  and guess what?  After about thirty seconds of scrubbing, the stain was completely GONE!  GONE I SAY!!!  Seriously, there is not even an inkling of lipstick anywhere!  In fact, I dare any forensic pathologist to come to my house and try to prove that we had an "unfortunate lipstick accident" in my bedroom.  Okay, I don"t really dare you, but still.  It's gone!  I am so excited about this newfound remedy that I just had to share.  I mean, color me impressed!  WD-40 to remove lipstick?  Who would've thunk it??  Now to dig out those few items of clothing (of mine!) that I stowed away in hopes that one day we would find a cure!  Hello, Betsey Johnson pants!!!  Anyway, just another wonderful tidbit I had to share.

Oh, and I went to Snopes and apparently the makers of WD-40 don't exactly endorse the fact that their "secret potion" removes lipstick but I tell you, IT DOES! I wish I had taken before and after pictures (darn camera!) so you could see for yourselves.  Maybe I will with the pants... but still I'm a believer, so if you are in the habit of leaving your lipstick in your pocket and ruuning it through the laundry....  then please, do me a favor and pick yourself up a can of WD-40.  OH, and just a note to that carpet dude...  I'll go ahead and pass on that "special $40 treatment"!

BIG MILK on Vimeo

In other news, I've had a major breakthrough with my ideas for the sequel to RoB. Trust me, it'll be genius. But also very different. I can't wait to write it!

Finally, my throat hurts, and I can't talk properly. Too much shouting.

So this is what I'm gonna do. I'll every so often I post a doodle. Here's the first:

One of the main reasons for this is NuArt. NuArt is an annual alternative art festival which is bolted on to the increasingly popular NuMusic festival which hits the city every year.

NuArt spotlights stencil and street art, pulling in international renowned stencil artists, inviting them to paint the walls black, blue and multicolour with their stencils, designs and major work of graffiti art. The hub of all this activity is the very cool Tou Senter down by Storhaug, walking distance from the centre of the city.

Once an old run-down brewery/factory, it's still a er... run-down brewery/factory but has been claimed by the artists, making it the place to go for new and exciting exhibitions, cosy concerts, dodgy performance art and their famous Sunday brunches (known as "the English Breakfast club").

Needless to say, NuArt is fantastic and its roots have spread out to city walls. Below is a selection of some of the best offerings from this year.

What a lovely view: This highlights one of the reasons I love stencil art - it's humour. Ok I'm gonna get polysyllabic here but it's the paradoxical nature that appeals.

But then again there's the other aspect which makes street art so attractive. The social commentary. This image above is a perfect example of the role of art to make you think. These are two great pieces which you can't ignore.

The setting of the exhibition also played a big part. I mentioned earlier it was held in an old factory. Even though a lot of these pieces featured on the outside walls, the best pieces were buried inside. Basically they were featured in parallel corridors within a dank, unused part of the factory, most of which was in darkness. So to get from one exhibit to another you walked through shadows, heading towards the next dim set of lights, which considering the kind of world street art normally inhabits was an enigmatic touch.

Here we have a colourful exhibit from DotMasters from the UK. Imagine this, you've just walked along a dusty dark corridor away from the light of the last exhibition and rounding the corner only to be confronted to this assault of reds, and oranges and light! The pieces in this picture are all pixelated, something you can't appreciate until you stand up close.

And so we come back to frivolity. Saucy pope here was one of the first pieces you see when you enter these little dark catacombs. No social comment here just taking the piss out of the pope, or was it Marilyn Munroe. Actually that's another thing i like about stencil art - anyone can do it, it's so accessible. These days all you need is a link to the internet and some kind of imaging program like photoshop. What makes the best stencil art so good though is it's visual impact. Sure you can tell someone you saw a picture of the pope in Marilyn Monroe's dress but nothing does it better than actually seeing it. Right?

This one's a pearler and the photo captures some of the elements, I'll try and describe it. You enter this corridor and you so at the end this picture of a man with a trident and dressed in some kind steampunk-inspired regalia. But what is only hinted in this picture are that there are at least a dozen cutout sheep flanking him (if you look closely you can see the shadow of one of them).

To end I'll post this last picture of two time-honoured heroes down on their luck - batman and robin, pasted on a wall as rusty and delapidated as they are wornout and tired. Overall it was a great exhibition and certainly one of the reasons why Stavanger is a little gem when it comes to unorthodox but approachable art. The pictures featured here are only a selection and a future post will show even more.

www.technolawyer.com

Ever feel like your online marketing time and money is going straight out the window? I've spent thousands on web-based marketing over the years, only to come to a few basic but inescapable conslucions. So why make the same mistakes I did? In this feature for TechnoLawyer I tell you how to get the biggest bang for your buck and compare the big 4 online marketing tools for lawyers to separate hype from fact

• directories
• search engines
• match-makers
• blogs

Which of these marketing staples is worth the effort and which one is a wast of precious dollars? Read this excerpt then download the article to find out.  Of course if you think I'm all wet let me know. Hey, I've been wrong before ...

The mere mention of online marketing makes solo and small firm practitioners cringe — and you can’t blame them. Besides being famously overworked, over-regulated, and underpaid, small firm and sole practitioners are easy picking for marketing “consultants” that promise more than they deliver. It’s no surprise that most of them think of online marketing the way they do Yellow Pages ads, but see the risks as much higher. Oh, and did I mention the breathtaking inconsistency in state rules about advertising? Good luck getting any guidance on that point. But don’t take my word for it. Let’s take real-life examples from a mid-sized firm and the a group of solos at the bar association.

Read the rest of the piece here, or download your PDF copy.

Happy reading!

Edibleapple is reporting that Kevin Rose has been making more predictions. This time it is about the new MacBooks containing a Blu-Ray drive.
Sounds good but I have heard this rumor a few times before and it never panned out.

" Kevin Rose enlightened us with yet another juicy rumor.  He claimed that the new and yet to be announced MacBooks will support Blu-Ray drives. Rose, however, did qualify his prediction by saying that his source for the Blue-Ray rumor was not nearly as good as his source for the iPod nano and iTunes updates.

On Tuesday, all our questions will be answered: $800 MacBooks? Blu-Ray? One piece of aluminum construction? we'll see.....

(Read full article HERE)

Im just here to tell you that the Anniversary on club penguin is coming on the 24th! The same day the toys are coming out!

It will end on the 26th so this time we have the whole weekend!

Also more places will be decoratated! Instead of just the coffee shop it will be the whole town!

Also on the same day the year book will be out for the latest year!!!!!!

Guys i also think im going to put the Games Page down cause i just couldnt get it right.

Also ive just seen the i have 850 hits!!!!!! its a pretty big number for me!

Well i will tell you more when i hear more

Soccerfan8 :D / Happy Early Halloween / Happy Early 3rd Birthday CP!

Here are a few iPhone candid photos (in no particular order)...

Brandon Coker - trapped under the LED cylinder, center stage

Backstage - Lanny Donoho, Candi Pearson Shelton, Chrystina Fincher, Mandy Miller

Matt Adkins, Danny Grady, Ryan Stuart

Jason Hoard, Ashley Appling, Kristian Stanfill, Eddie Kirkland, Some Dude, Heath Baltzglier, Brandon Coker

Jayce Fincher, The Guy That Wrote "The Shack", Pat Malone, Todd Fields talking to "The Shack" guy

On Stage...

The "Pop and Lock" guy from So You Think You Can Dance

View from Front of House

Eddie Kirkland and Bethany Olds doing "Lift High"

- this was a special moment. Just the two of them on stage, and the crowd singing drowned them out! THAT was powerful!!

It's tough to see, but there's an elephant and a donkey back there..

Stay tuned for my favorite photo....

- - - - -

If you aren't already, do follow me on Twitter.
So for all the Twitteratti / Tweeple / Tweeps out there, here's my list of top 10 tools / plugins (in no particular order) for Twitter to enhance your Tweeting experience.

Tweetdeck

Tweetdeck takes all the information from Twitter and helps you manage the information overload by grouping them into managable pieces or based on your interests.

Twitturly

Tracks Top URLs which are talked about on Twitter. Extremely useful service and helps you find the most interestsing and latest information on the web.

Twitter Patterns

Helps you give your twitter page some style! They have some really cool designs, check it out.

Twitterfeed

Very useful app, which automatically tweets whenever you publish a post on your blog. Helps you get some link love!

Easy Tweets

A handy tool for online and digital marketers who wish to leverage the advantages of social media and microblogging. Easy Tweets enables you to switch between multiple Twitter accounts, track follower, replies etc all from one dashboard.

Hashtags

Hashtags enable you to track and follow conversations on Twitter. Follow @hashtags on Twitter and the service will index your tweets. Then add a #tagname to your tweet and this can be instantly looked up or searched.

Quotably

This service lets you follow a user's conversations in a threaded manner, showing you all the various people the given user has had a conversation with. Interesting tool, especially when you trying to find out what others are saying about your brand/service.

Plodt

Power Twitter

Twitter Keys

Twitter keys is a fun tool for Twitter which enables you to use UTF8 symbols in your tweets.  Once downloaded, this appears as a floating window, so all you need to do is to choose your symbol, copy n paste. So come on, get creative in your tweets using these symbols.

One special feature

Vakow

Vakow is an India focussed service which lets you post to Twitter as an SMS. Very useful and probably the cheapest way to pot to Twitter via mobile in India.

Let me know what you like and what tool you use.

my favourite is mellifluous

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/7659954.stm

Hay mucho. Diseñadores, marcas, publicidades, publicistas, agencias, editores, productores, modelos, un gran mundo detrás de la industria.

Bueno y malo. Como siempre, como todo, como en todas partes.

Algo (de lo mucho) que en estos últimos tiempos me gustó:

Una de las últimas gráficas de Abercrombie. Simple, sencilla, en mi adorado black & white y efectiva (al menos para mi). Todavía no sé si quedarme con los abdominales de él o con la cola (culo, nalgas, gluteos, como mejor se entienda, de ella). Ah sí, los jeans muy lindos todos los modelos :)

El ya clásico Levi's. Tuve mi primer jean Levi's (creo que en esa época eran totalmente importados) a los 7 años más o menos. Era la marca que usaban mis hermanos mayores y yo apenas podía creer mi mini versión!

Su última campaña, que con el nombre ya lo dice todo, "Live Unbuttoned" y el último video es muy "sugerente" bueno.

Y por último les dejo una joyita compuesta por tres elementos, el primero el comercial de Gucci y su perfume Gucci by Gucci. La segunda, el comercial dirigido -ni más ni menos- por el director de cine David Lynch . Y la tercera, la música. Heart of glass de Blondie. Qué más se puede pedir?

Ah, sí...buen fin de semana largo para los que vivan de este lado del charco.

November 6-7, 2008, The Annie Oakley Shooters of Atlanta, Georgia, will host the 5th Annie Oakley Tournament.

More at link:

http://gardenandgun.com/live/events-9

Almost any major world language is available. I don't mean just French, Spanish, English, German, etc... you can choose from Mandarin Chinese, Russian, Hindi, Portuguese, Icelandic and others.

The site can be reached here (it will open in a new window).

If there's ever been a language you've always wanted to learn, this is a great tool for the job. (I'm already on Spanish 102!) Check it out!