What I’ve been up to and some final BSG thoughts

Well, it’s good to be back.  I’ve been fairly busy recently, which means I’ve been neglecting this blog.  What have I been up to?  Well, two things really:

1) I’m the webmaster for a new site that is really just getting going (I’d say it’s in beta stage, at the moment).  It’s called Lifefoc.us, and it’s a personal improvement website.  If you’re interested in achieving more success in your personal or professional lives, you may want to check this out.  Have you ever been to an Anthony Robbins type seminar?  What happens at an event like that is that you often get super charged up with their feel good messages.  You come out of them feeling like you can take on the world.  The problem, though, is that you have to leave the seminar at some point and actually take action on your own.  I believe this is why most people fail when they try and make a positive change in their life.  You want to do it, but where’s the support and encouragement?  This is what this website will be, a like minded of community of people helping each other.  I’m pretty excited about it.

Check out the website here.

2) I’m also working on a new, fitness oriented website.  I’m making progress on it, but it’s far from complete.  I’ll have more to say about this in the future.

Anyway, I just want to wrap up a few loose ends concerning Battlestar Galactica.  In an earlier post, I mentioned that Tricia Helfer had mentioned that the final episode of BSG (which they’ve already filmed) will make people want to re-watch the miniseries.  Well, I did this, but I didn’t really see anything that jumped out to me.  The only thing that I noticed (and it’s a small, most likely irrelevant detail) is that when Starbuck was replaced in the Galactica ceremonial flyby, she was replaced by a Lt. Anders.  Coincidence?  Most likely, but it’s the only thing that stood out to me that others haven’t commented on.

Another great theory I read on someone’s blog, although I can’t find it now, is that Earth is more like Heaven to the colonials.  In order to get to it, you have to die.  Starbuck had to die to see Earth, and Roslin is always close to death, which is why she has visions of it.  When Starbuck saw earth, she described it as green with trees.  That’s not quite what we saw, is it?  Remember when Roslin’s’ fellow cancer patient friend (played by Deep Space Nine’s Nana Vistor) died, and they had to cross a river to reach a verdant field?  Didn’t that seem very Earth like to you?  The final script (reportedly) reduced Edward James Olmos to tears.  Could it be that both he and Roslin die, and reach Earth together?  That sounds like a Galactica thing to do.  I guess we’ll find out in January.

A Change in Direction and Focus …

In my previous post I talked about why this blog was no longer going to be an exclusively make money online blog.  I mentioned an article from Jay at DatMoney, and Jay was kind of to post a comment.  He notes in the comment that he had a friend who changed his blog from mmo to anything he wanted to talk about, and he has met with much success.  I plan on doing the same thing.

It’s not like I no longer want to make money online, it’s simply that the focus has changed.  Rather then coming from a place of wanting to make money online first, I’m going to focus on my interests and passions first, and then try and monetize that.  You know what I mean?  Before, I think I was really putting the cart before the horse, so to speak, whereas now I think I’m coming at it from the right angle.  Take the site I set up earlier (you can read about it’s creation in the “niche inspector” category) at www.acne-solution-tips.com. The information there is actually good, but do I feel I’m really adding anything new to this topic?  Thankfully, my acne days are long behind me.  Did I have fun researching and writing the articles for this site?  I’m curious by nature, but acne isn’t one of the topics that is high on my list.  Do I want to set up another site similar to this one?  Not particularly.

So, the question is, what is my plan going forward?  Well, here’s what I’m going to be focusing on with this blog for the foreseeable future.

1. Politics / economics – I’ve always been interested in this stuff.  However, I’m really going to focus on creating little youtube video’s on various topics, aside from just writing.  I talked before in a previous post about how impressed I was with the video that was done on the declining American dollar and gold.  This is the kind of thing I’m looking at.  I think it would be a lot of fun.
2. I think I’m going to build a site all about Vancouver, where I live.  There is so much to do here, and I haven’t been to too many places since I was a child.  When you live in a great place, you typically don’t explore it that much.  You figure, well, I can do that tomorrow.  Not anymore.  I’m going to really explore this city this summer, and I’m going to create a cool website about it.  Stay tuned.
3. Health and Fitness Stuff.  I’m always interested in health and fitness, plus I have some somewhat unconventional views on the subject.
4. As far as the Make Money Online Stuff, I think I’m mostly going to quote Aaron at FullTiltBlogging.  If you’re interested in this, I suggest you go to his site and check it out.

Anyway, that’s where I’m at right now.  For the rest of the week, I’m really planning on looking into the social networks, as I can see this being very helpful going forward.

Till next time,

- Dave

Battlestar Galactica! (and a minor internet update …)

Last night I watched the 2nd episode this season of Battlestar Galactica. Is this a great show or what? Although it is a critical darling, it really deserves a wider audience than it’s gotten. I wonder if the Sci Fi channel had been doing a bit more with promotions using pictures like the above, it might have helped it get a wider audience. Who knows? Still, the retro picture above works for me J

On the other hand, maybe it’s a good thing that the show is ending now after 4 seasons. Galactica has a definite ending (finding Earth) and as the writer’s know when this is, they should be able to create some really tight shows. It won’t run the risk of what happened to “Lost” for awhile, where the various story arcs just meander all over the place.

Last nights episode was great. I loved seeing the inner workings of how the Cylons run things and how they perceive events. For example, the fact that the Cylon Raiders were basically thinking for themselves and not following orders. Further, that one of the remedy’s for this, proposed by the Dean Stockwell Cylon (His name escapes me. I’m a geek, but not an uber geek), was to basically lobotomize them. As Dean said, “I’m just the mechanic, fixing the engine” (or something like that). Do you see the irony here? He’s basically treating his own race like machines. It would seem that all pigs are not created equal in Cylon land.

The fact that the Raiders ceased their attack (in episode one) when one of the raiders realized that one of the five remaining “hidden” Cylons was on Galactica raises some interesting questions. One of them being just who built these human Cylons? How could they not know? The humans build the Cylons say 40 years ago. They then go off by themselves and get these 12 human Cylons made. However, the Cylons we see don’t know who 5 of them are. How can this be? Here’s a guess. Maybe there’s another alien race we have not even seen yet who have influenced the Cylons in some way. Perhaps these aliens created the human Cylons for some reason, but also planted the “hidden five” among the colonials. Maybe this third force has some grand plan for both races? This could also explain why the Cylons themselves don’t create more versions of themselves than just 12. They can’t do it by themselves. Moreover, this is why there so obsessed with biological reproduction to begin with.

Yikes, my mind is really wandering here. Another thought is that the fact the Cylon Raiders called off the attack upon scanning the hidden Cylon (Anders) helps us narrow down just who that 5th Cylon might be. It can’t be a pilot. So, cross Apollo and Starbuck off your list for possibly being the 5th Cylon. During any Colonial – Cylon fight, but especially during the big first attack in season one, the Cylons were always scanning the humans to shut their ships down. If they found the fifth hidden Cylon then, wouldn’t they have stopped the attack then? Just a thought.

Ok, enough about Galactica.

As far as the acne solution site goes, I registered a domain name today (www.acne-solution-tips.com) and I wrote a new article that I’ll use as the landing page for the site. Tomorrow, I should have a crude version of the website up, at least in some form. That’s it for now!

So Say We All,

- Dave

Dancing with the Stars and Killer PLR Articles

Ok, so you’re probably wondering what Dancing with the Stars has to do with Niche Inspector, PLR Articles, or web design in general. Well, the answer is … absolutely nothing. I’ll discuss PLR articles in a moment, but the fact is that it is such a dreary dull subject, I need to talk about something else to liven up this post.

On last nights results show, Adam Carolla was voted off, and I was sorry to see him go. Aside from the tragedy of losing the gorgeous Julianne Hough, Adam was funny and it was always interesting to see what this decidedly non-dancer would do with the dance he was given that night. To me, Adam came off as the class clown who always got by by doing the bare minimum. In pioneer days he probably would have been eaten by a bear before he saw 20. Today, however, he can use those same (lack of) skills to forge a successful career in showbiz. Remember, he and Jimmy Kimmel created “The Man Show”, whose main idea was to have young women in bikinis bounce on trampolines. He actually made a living by doing this. God bless America.

Please don’t think I’m bashing him, I’m not. The point I’m trying to make is that after the first show, it seemed that he was really putting in the effort. Perhaps he didn’t want to let two time champion Julianne down, or maybe he was embarrassed by how well the deaf Marlee Matlin was doing. Regardless, he was working hard and seemed to be improving. I mean, Jerry Springer stayed on way longer than he should have a few seasons back, why not Adam? Anyone who can pull off a Paso Doble Dance on a unicycle is OK in my book. Oh well … At least Shannon is still in it …

OK, away from reality TV and back to reality. I’m working on the ACNE site, and I’m trying to use PLR Articles to do it. So far I’ve modified about 6 of them, with 7 more to go. At this point I think I’m beginning to sour on using Public Label Rights articles. I know some people like them, and the ones I’m using are not bad in quality. However, they’re just so dry, and to me they come across as being inauthentic. I think I would be better off just writing my own from scratch. For my next site, I think this is what I’ll do.

Tomorrow I’m going to work on finishing off those last few PLR Articles. I’ll probably post on something else as well, just to liven things up (maybe the video I promised of my niece, we’ll see).

To Our Success,

- Dave

Betty or Veronica?

This is going to be a really small post today, with no Internet Marketing/ stuff at all. As I mentioned yesterday, Mondy was going to be a big day as my sister was having her baby, and I was going to be an Uncle again! I’m happy to report that the baby was delivered by C-section at 8:23 am Pacific Standard Time. Both mother and baby are doing well

One question her parents were still dilly dallying on was just what to name their new child. They were 99.99% sure it was going to be a girl, and the names in contention were Beth (Betty) or Veronica. The feeling was that if the baby was calm and serene, Beth would be the way to go. If, however, the baby was a bit more rambunctious, she’d be a Veronica.

So, what happened? Well, after the initial crying fit which all babies go through, my new niece was as serene as can be. Hence, her name is Beth. Here’s a picture I took of her.

Her parents can only hope that she will be this calm as the days and weeks pass (at least at night). Oh, and her full first name is Elisabeth with an “s”, as opposed to Elizabeth”. My sister does not want her to become a “Liz”, hence the need that the “s” is respected. If I can, I may post some video tomorrow, should Beth do more than just sleep. I’ll also have a more regular post on creating a Niche Website with Niche Inspector

All the best

- Dave