Creepiest Cast Credits Ever

So I have 2 different film magazines with big 2008 fall movie lineups both with big photo spreads on the Hillicoat-directed adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's "The Road". I figured they might be worth something someday because both covers trumpet the November 2008 release of "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" days before Warner Brothers announced delaying the film until July 2009 in order to have a "big tent-pole release" in the summer.(does anyone else feel the urge to giggle when they hear this phrase? Or am I the only one with the brain of a 12 year old boy?)

Anyway we're approaching February and still no big promo push for what promises to be an insanely powerful film. I mean, you've got Viggo Mortenson pushing a shopping cart through a post-apocalyptic landscape! It's "Mad Max" meets Demoula's on a Saturday! What's not to love?
Well- if you check out the cast credits on IMDB, maybe the studio powers that be think it may be a little risky to release a film with character names like "Baby Eater" and "Cannibal #2" in today's economic climate. Not exactly a date movie I'm guessing.

Creepiest Cast Credits Ever

Web Trawling

It's been a busy busy busy day. Chloe's got a bad head cold and it's too cold to take her outside, but in between swiping her nose with a tissue and infusions of orange juice, I found some fun stuff today:

1) Combination birdcage and aquarium on Fazai38's blog.

2) Techcrunch wrote a good post on how to increase your Twitter following.

3) I found a pretty cool video on Youtube for a post I did on Salem Living about Lunar New Year at the PEM.

4) Web Design Depot has a great article about choosing a CMS platform that I can't wait to read as soon as tiny hands stop pulling me away from the keyboard.

Web Trawling

Blogger Tools On Mashable

Mashable has a really useful post about 25 Great Blogger Widgets. Stay tuned to see some of them showing up here soon!

Blogger Tools On Mashable

Random memory: Lupo The Butcher

Fun find of the day on Youtube. For all you Sick And Twisted fans out there.

Random memory: Lupo The Butcher

Rcterry.com launched

In the same week that Barack Obama took the Oath of Office (twice; just to be sure he knew what he was getting into), my web design company launched RCTerry.com. It's was a very timely project to be working on in two ways. It's the dawn of a new era in both national and personal politics, just like in 1961, the year when Robert Terry went to work with the Peace Corps. It's also the type of web site that just won the attention of The New York Times in this weeks Sunday Book Review.

Rcterry.com launched

"our security emanates from the justness of our cause"

Finally, someone who gets the Tony Soprano Rule Of Business. To read the full text of Obama's speech (and bookmark so one can check on how he's lived up to his word over the next 4 years) click here.

"our security emanates from the justness of our cause"

Tips For Using Adsense With A Blogger Account

1: If you have already signed up for an Adsense Publisher ID #, then you can place ads on your Blogger posts without having to go through your Google Adsense manager. (Blogger will not display code generated via your Adsense account manager.)

2: Some forms of Adsense code will only show up on individual post pages and not your home page. For example: on my blog, the horizontal banner ads show up between the posts on the home page and underneath individual posts but the sidebar ads only show up on an individual post page.

3: It's best to try and use color schemes that blend in with your blog's colors. Ads with starkly contrasting colors tend to be too jarring to the reader and makes it seem like you are trying to force them into noticing it.

4: If you get stuck on an issue with Adsense, don't get discouraged by the brevity of Google's help section. Google your issue and something is sure to pop up.

Tips For Using Adsense With A Blogger Account

"Oh...Why Do You Smell Like A Drunken Sailor..."

The NYT's Chandler Burr takes issue with the artificial strawberry notes, but you can't argue with the packaging. Tattoo has come a long way since the days when people had clandestine visits by New Hampshire tattoo artists arranged by connected friends. There are now tattoo parlors all around my neighborhood in Salem, which fits right in with the local maritime flavor.

"Oh...Why Do You Smell Like A Drunken Sailor..."

Why Blogging Was Invented

I mean really, where would the internet be without access to other folks' pastry-based misfortunes?

Cakewrecks.com

Why Blogging Was Invented

Just Like Amazon, But Cozier...

Recommended by Elge Premeau, Good Reads is like an online bookclub, without the added pressure of being responsible for the baked goods. (Users seem to have a love/hate relationship with "Twilight")

Just Like Amazon, But Cozier...

My laws, these eHow folks are friendly...

All this because I had to join in order to post a simple comment.
(boo hoo)

My laws, these eHow folks are friendly...

Smart Car Test Crash Video

-Seemingly directed from beyond by Sam Peckinpah
view video here (easy download too!)

Smart Car Test Crash Video

Are They Kidding?

So apparently, Bomoms, Boston.com's blog for moms, posted an article called "Does Facebook Make You a Bad Mom?" Talk about a great way to build comment traffic! Suggest to any mother that she may be ignoring her children for 2 seconds while she does something that doesn't revolve 100% around them and sit back and watch the she-wolf come out.

Are They Kidding?

Jennsweb's Table-Top Photo Studio

My sister-in-law gave Chloe a present in this cute little take-out gift box. Serendipitously, I needed an image of a take-out box for a project I've been working on, so I decided to try and get an image I could easily work with in Photoshop. So I grabbed Chloe's easel paper, draped one end over the speaker, positioned the desk lamp and used a sunshield for a bounce card.


There you go, instant table-top photo studio!

Jennsweb's Table-Top Photo Studio

“American designers took the Depression as a call to arms,”

Interesting article in the New York Times about how tough economic times often bring out the best in the design world. Name-checks include Russel Wright and Charles and Ray Eames.

On the nostalgia tip, my dad bought an Eames chair and ottoman like the one pictured above and I learned to walk by holding myself up on the ottoman seat which rotated with me as I staggered around. When my parents separated in the 70's the chair stayed with my mother and sister and I until 1983 when we moved. The movers picked up the chair by the arms, the ball bearings fell out of the base, and my mother just shrugged and told them to put it out on the curb for trash day. Of course, my dad asked about the chair two months later and when I told him it was gone he probably had a mental coronary.

“American designers took the Depression as a call to arms,”

File Under: Wish I'd Had This 2 Years Ago

Good article on Freelance Switch by Susan Johnston about balancing freelance work with a full time job.

Lord knows I tried for about a year. It was only after trying to take care of a hosting issue for my client with a local hosting company that only had tech support during "banker's hours" (?!), that I realized that trying to cram commuting, raising a child, having a 9 hour a day office job and trying to start my own web design business required approximately 36 hours a day instead of the allotted 24. Of course the office job was the time thief, not to mention the time (2.5 hours a day) and $$ ($250 a month) it was costing me. So I started trolling Craig's List and quickly found a job in Salem that was not only "flex-time" but also required graphic/web design skills.

After a brief "honeymoon" (pot-luck lunches! kibbitzing encouraged!), I quickly realized that the term flex-time actually meant, "you can only work the hours we can afford to pay you for" so when my husband told me that the local film industry was in full swing again, I braced myself and went into work to hand in my notice. My co-worker was currently fighting being deported back to Eastern Europe and I knew that both of us vanishing from the office would leave my boss with no one else to answer the phones but her senile, but lovable, golden retriever.

Fortunately, (depending how you look at it) she had already decided that in order to afford the salary of a trainee to replace the soon-to-be-deported tech support/salesperson, she would have to let me go and that was that. I was a (guilt-free!) freelancer again.

It's been almost a year now since that day and while there are days where my husband works 18 hours and I am left at the mercy of a tiny diva-in-training, there are other days where he takes her to some indoors playground for 6 hours followed by a 2 hour grocery-shopping trip and I am free to work with no tiny hands pulling me like the Death Star's tractor beam towards the playdough table. It's not yet the ideal home office situation where I can shut the door and be in my own little Ikea-furnished kingdom, but how many companies let you watch "Oswald" while you work?

Jennsweb fun factoid: Henry the Penguin on "Oswald" is voiced by David Lander of "Laverne and Shirley" fame.

File Under: Wish I'd Had This 2 Years Ago