a.. Multi-Niche Features

There are quite a few different kinds of posts you’ll be able to find here:

Video Posts - a random YouTube, Google, Metacafe (, etc) video post with something unusual, funny or nifty possibly with a bit of commentary. I try to find them on less popular, un-Digg-type sites, so they’re not just the same old stuff you saw yesterday or yesteryear (though it’d be tough to guarantee that =P)

Expounding Upon News Articles - Frequently a news article will be written so poorly and fail to answer basic questions or fail to provide a picture when one was so obviously necessary — such as news of a robotic submersible tree saw that would submerge and cut trees at the bottom of man-made lakes (such as by a dam) for them to float to the surface. We were simply left to guess what it looked like. Figures! It was Triton Loggin Inc.’s Sawfish found here. Way to go, newsmedia.

Random Image Posts - Primarily with the assistance of the ever-esteemed Toothpaste For Dinner site that posts the latest how-many-ever-you-specificy pictures posted to LiveJournal blogs. The site itself being half-hours of fun, I’ve collected a backlog of “eeehhh???” type images taken out of context, or beautiful scenery taken by amateur photographers, etc. Also, I try to post the random FFFFound.com entry that I find some degree of interest in.

Unusual Product Features/Reviews - Occasionally I’ll be reading some mail-order catalog and find a really wacky product that can either be made so easily from regular household items (such as a bracelet-snapping assistant tool) or have uses that are so obscure, they well deserved being made fun of publicly.

Peculiar Project Updates - I take on quite a number of strange time-passing projects, such as building my own large backyard chessboard out of concrete tiles, making NES pixel-recreations out of Perler beads, and other such whims. Someday I plan to acquire an F/X kit to built my own Stormtrooper getup, and I’ve read those require a lot of work to complete.

Time-Pilfering Game Posts - I don’t play a terrible lot of games, but the ones I do I try to get decent scores on. I’ll post a link to the game here as well as a screenshot of my high score as proof, for the gentle readers to utterly obliterate.

Help Me - Occasionally I’ll ask for help on a particular matter. Regardless of when it was posted (years ago, even), comments are always welcome on solving the dilemma.

Birthday Tribute Video Colly - Randomly I’ll select a day and post which particular historical or celebrity birthdays occured on this particular day and post links and/or YouTube videos about them. I try to find the lesser-known folk, though, like Jpop band members and whatnot.

YouTube Video Postings - I have my own YouTube channel and typically post Xbox360-related gaming videos (Halo and Oblivion mainly) and a few random things like the Newton personal robot from SynPet in the 80s, homemade movie trailers or cartoon openers.

238 Sightings - I have this peculiar association with the number 238. I see it in random places all the time, and can’t count how many times I’ve looked at the clock completely by accident and caught this particular reading. I see it at the grocery store, on the mileage counter in the car, etc. These posts are just a few places I’ve caught it online. Creepy, indeed.

Ask Scotchy - This is my own advice column that I both ask and answer myself, except in the style spoofing if Scottie from the original Star Trek were writing it. It just uses highly random jargon, inspired partly from listening to too many episodes of Car Talk on NPR and having no clue what they’re talking about.

Clarifying Ripley - Similar to the expounding news bit, I will go searching for more details on a Ripley’s Believe It Or Not newspaper comic panel, if the mood strikes me. I am a firm believer that every single one of the comic panels are all true reports, although I can’t account for the truth of the museum pieces. I read Ripley’s, Luann, Bizarro and Zits everyday online.

Contests - Occasionally I’ll make a contest if I need help doing something, and offer a free month of advertising in exchange for the winning entry. Other times, I’ll post an online contest I find if (a) I don’t think there’s a very good chance that *I* will win it, or (b) are not personally interested in winning it. Generally if I find one that I want to win, I won’t post it ^_^;; heh

Debunking Forwards - My grandfather frequently sends me all kinds of wacky political or random virus warning emails, and I, from there, post the Snopes link disproving them, or merely offer commentary on how dumb a particular idea is.

S & M - Stands for Software and Movie Review. I’ve only got one so far, where I reviewed a movie and a bit of software in the same article, where the two were related somehow. For instance, I reviewed Cloverfield and a screen-shotting software at the same time, remarking that the CF monster was always blurring, and testing out the software (which employed a unique strategy to add better clarity to screenshots) and tried it out on the blurry monster.

Life Hacks - This category was created before I even knew there was a site already called Likehacks.com, so I just find random links that I think are pushing the envelope for creating a homemade solution that doesn’t already have a commercial equivalent in production. May also include things I never really needed but realize, whoa, that would be awesome to try.

Upcoming Concepts

Extrapolators - A variation on the word mine concept (finding as many words as you can using only the letters of a larger word). Rules: Using only the letters found in the given word, create words of four letters and up. Scoring: For each 4-letter word, you get 5 points. For each 5-letter word, you get 10 points. For each 6-letter word, you get 15 points. However, for each 7-letter word (or greater) you only get 2 points. Bonus Points: 5 point bonus for words that do not contain an S (only if the original game word contains an S) and have no repeated letters. 10 point bonus for each word that begins with a vowel, times as many words as you have more than 20 of that begin with that vowel (example: if you have 23 words that begin with A, you get 10pt x 3 = 30 bonus).

The Weekly Doublecrosser - A printable crossword-style pen-and-paper wordgame published by ablestmage that has two sets of clues for each number, but two cross-shaped crossword graphs to fill the blanks. The graphs are numbered identically, but you’re not told which clue goes to which graph, and the 2nd “1″ clue may go on the 2nd graph, while the 1st “8″ may go on the 1st graph. The clues are relatively easy to guess, to compensate for the added complication. The puzzle and its format/structure is copyrighted, but duplication is encouraged as long as credit is given. The puzzle will also later be available for newspaper/newsletter syndication, and very competitive (cheapo) market rates.

SysOp/Webmaster Interviews - A former print journalist myself, I hope to provide an interesting and unusual take on the standard Q-and-A interview with an obscure or novelty/niche website operator or maintainer. Plenty of oddball questions and challenges.

Web Tutorials - Ever wondered how you can download a movie trailer when no glaringly obvious download link is provided? These questions and more answered with ease and relatively simple and completely legal solutions (with a preference of not having to download extra software to accomplish it).

Music Irreview - A review of a music CD or other compilation of a band I’ve never heard before or even of a band I don’t particularly enjoy, based strictly on my personal preferences for music. But I like a lot of kinds.

Magazine blurbs - Carefully utilizing the Fair-Use clause, I plan to scan a bit from a magazine (giving proper credit, and linking to the magazine’s website) that seemed newsworthy. Plus, you can get a lot of magazines for free.

Cheapo-Corner - Being the Quarter Pincher as I call it (not quite a penny pincher, but I keep tabs on it better than I presume most people do), I have a few occasional deal finds that I, well.. find.. and end up actually making a few bucks off of them. Deals include book clubs that offer Buy-One-Get-3-Free offers with nothing else to buy, whereunto one may order 4 of the most expensive book and sell them on eBay for $100+ profit. How to subscribe Popular Science for the next 8 years for an exagerrated cost of $20.. Stuff like that.

AblestPage Award - A site that fits some unusual combination of spiffidom, snarkiness and randomosity that boldly warrants an honorable mention. The site, or perhaps a specific page on the site, will be reviewed and presented here with an AblestPage Award, including an image they can post on their site if they so opt.

Minor Fame Achievements - How to become gradually famous in rather insignificant ways, that could add up based on your exposure — such as how to get a letter to the editor published in a magazine (exempting 2600 which seems to publish all of them), or how to coin a word. You might get invited to Leno or something.

Random Surname Etymologies - I am quite a word nerd, and I enjoy cockneyed etymologies and not so rarely bemuse on the origin of a particular surname (especially surnames with a -CZSZ suffix), so I’ll try to identify via master googlage (which may actually be some form of rash) which region(s) the name seems to be clustered amongst and detail my findings. My personal theory about the inundation of similarly-spelled names (Smith, Smythe, Smithe, etc) is that the customs employees of pen-and-paper-age America may not have known how to spell (or perhaps the immgrants themselves) so were put on the spot to come up with how to spell it, allowing for the abnormalities).

Rectifying Bygone Kids’ Trivia - I have a couple of old trivia books for kids that have facts in them that seem just a leeeeetle bit fudged. I will use my crack investigative skills to track down experts or people claiming to experts who can verify whether said trivia is actually true. May also include confirmations of “the future will be this” type estimations from the past that should have already been accomplished by now.

Celebrity Magazine Alert - Not counting such fine print publications like Us Weekly, I hope to make some sort of semaphore-style alert about a magazine article that features a celebrity of interest. There are collecitons of articles that you can find on eBay of different celebrities, and this would be a good place to either add an article to one such collection, or for starting one such collection for later eBay sales.

Investigating Home Remedies - Is it true that, if you rub men’s shaving foam over your bathroom mirror, the mirrow won’t fog up when you take a shower? Find out in actual documented experimentation =P

There’s lots more features still to be conjured, so please visit often =DDD