Archive for May 2010

The following games will be discounted next week on Game du Jour, the first ‘one-deal-a-day’ website dedicated to indie and casual games:

Mon. May 31st: 65% off on Strimko

Tue. June 1st: 45% off on Rhianna Ford and the Da Vinci Letter

Wed. June 2nd: 45% off on Sultan’s Labyrinth: A Royal Sacrifice

Thu. June 3rd: 65% off on Farm Frenzy 3: Russian Roulette

Fri. June 4th: 65% off on Build-a-lot 4: Power Source

Sat. June 5th: 65% off on Spiderz

Sun. June 6th: 65% off on Wonderland Adventures: Mysteries of Fire Island

Photo by flickr user The U.S. Army

Thank you to all who served in the military especially those who died while serving.

Game Discount: Get 30% off any game priced at $6.99 during Memorial Day Weekend. Sign up for the Daily Game Splash Newsletter BY Saturday, May 29th for daily deals and the day’s new game. Sign up for either the PC version or Mac version. After you sign up for the newsletter, you’ll receive a coupon code to use during Memorial Day Weekend (May 29th through May 31st). Enjoy!

Brain food…

• Reclaim Facebook Privacy: Great easy to use tool to help you deal with Facebook’s privacy annoyances.
• Books for graduates setting out on that next big adventure: Great idea and list! More books… If only I can get some ideas for teachers…
• Lessons from LOST: Get a little LOST fix and some great insights for writers.
• How to write a presentation title that gets people flocking to your session: Tips applicable to writing, too!
• Copy Editing – Why It Works: What copy editing is, when you need it, who should do it and how it benefits.
• Pay day procedures from freelance journalists: Excellent advice on asking about payment, rates, invoicing and prevention. Pam provides a couple of resources for Australian residents — however, much of the advice is universal.

For fun because we’re allowed…

• Cross Panel Comics: Brilliant way to incorporate comics into a crossword. Love it! More Cross Panel Comics…
• Put Google’s Pac Man Game on Your Web Site: One of my fave Google logos ever. Think I’d like this on a tee. [Link: Alan K'necht and Barry Schwartz] Oh, and apparently, good ol’ Pac’y ate up a lot of folks’ time at work. P.S. You can still play Google Pac-Man.
• #Artwalk: Brilliant! “Global community of art makers and art lovers who get together once a month on Twitter and Facebook for a worldwide virtual art crawl.” It occurs on the last Tuesday of the month, but you can catch the goodness by searching #artwalk on Twitter.
• I’m Deaf: Rockin’ video by Sean Forbes. I rarely discover new songs or artists — Count me in as a fan.
• Star Wars Lego Chess Board: I’d love to get this for my husband and the aforementioned son who loves Star Wars Legos and likes to play chess. Alas, it’s the brainchild of a genius not associated with Lego.
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  Photo by Picasa user wastrel

  “The MLB nickname ‘Dodgers’ referenced the pedestrians who dodged the trolleys that ran through the streets of Brooklyn.” Fun Fact from Mental Floss in honor of my Dad who hailed from Brooklyn and loved dem bums AND made me a Brooklyn Dodgers fan. (Not LA. Brooklyn.) I also had a beagle named B. Dodger (pronounced “Bee Dodger”).

Get 30% off any game priced at $6.99 during Memorial Day Weekend. Sign up for the Big Fish Games Daily Game Splash Newsletter BY Saturday, May 29th to read about daily deals and the day’s new game. Sign up for either the PC version or Mac version.

After you sign up for the newsletter, you’ll receive a coupon code to use during Memorial Day Weekend (May 29th through May 31st). Enjoy!

Woot knows how to entertain us with its content. The company — located within a couple of miles from me (!!!) — sells one product per day. Every product comes with smile-inducing descriptions. Since then, the company has added Woot-Offs! (selling one product until it runs out of stock, then selling another product, repeat until it feels like stopping or servers crash when it offers the Bag of Crap), Wine Woot, Shirt Woot, Kid Woot and deals. Even its newsletter cracks me up.

Humor + Products = Impulse Purchases

And it works. I bought a couple of things that I should not have — and I take care to shop for needed items… most of the time. How can you resist a company that puts the following on its about page:

Woot.com is an online store and community that focuses on selling cool stuff cheap. It started as an employee-store slash market-testing type of place for an electronics distributor, but it’s taken on a life of its own. We anticipate profitability by 2043 – by then we should be retired; someone smarter might take over and jack up the prices. Until then, we’re still the lovable scamps we’ve always been.

I look forward to its Woot-Offs even though it could mean making poor decisions. Good news, I’ve gotten better about what I buy. In fact, I don’t think I’ve bought a Woot-Off item in the last few runs. (Woot-Off happening now and so far, I’ve been a good girl.) Its FAQ explains the flashy thingy happening:

I see some orange flashing lights on the main page – what do they mean?

No, you aren’t seeing a side effect from your allergy medication. You have found a Woot-Off, a short term frenzied mutation of our product posting procedure.

Can You Guess What 6dollarshirts Sells?

I need to hush up about Woot already. It gets enough attention and I don’t want to turn it into a spoiled brat. Besides, some other children deserve attention, too. An shipment notification email from 6dollarshirts compelled me to write this. A bit from the email:

Our amazing staff has inspected your order and even contemplated stealing it since you have such FABULOUS taste in design and color combination… <3

Our shipping specialist lit a candle and a hush fell over the crowd as she so gently packaged and so carefully placed the shipping label containing the following request from the ever-so-talented ThreadPit Crew…

Ooh, chills. There’s more…

We all had a wonderful celebration afterwards, and the whole crew marched down the street to the post office, where the entire town of Gainesville, Fl  waved “BON VOYAGE!” to your package, already on its way to you.

We also want you to practice precautions while waiting on the arrival of your order. Please keep this in mind: Strange, unexplainable things will happen when you wear our shirts. You will no longer feel the urge to rob old ladies. If you’re bald, your hair will grow back. Random members of the opposite sex will come up to you and start “grinding ‘dat [bleep]“. Most importantly, your friends and family will start laughing with you instead of at you. I hate it when that happens.

In the last newsletter, Woot bragged… err … mentioned an article by 37signal’s Jason Fried (I’ve had the pleasure of attending his presentation and meeting him in person) about awful business writing. Jason mentions Saddleback Leather and Polyface Farm, so you know where to go for more captivating content inspiration.

What other business websites charm you with its content?

Dream Chronicles was 2nd Runner-Up Best Puzzle Game of 2007. In Dream Chronicles, the lines between reality and fantasy fade away. Follow subtle clues to help Faye find her missing husband and escape from the mysterious sleeping spell that has taken over the town of Wish! Stay sharp and focused and you just may unravel this intriguing, dreamy mystery!

Read the Dream Chronicles Review.

This $2.99 Catch of the Week runs through Sunday, May 30 at 11:59pm.

Catch the PC version.

Catch the Mac version.

The following games will be discounted next week on Game du Jour, the first ‘one-deal-a-day’ website dedicated to indie and casual games:

Mon. May 24th: 45% off on Drawn: The Painted Tower – great game. See review.

Tue. May 25th: 45% off on Megaplex Madness: Summer Blockbuster

Wed. May 26th: 65% off on Deadtime Stories

Thu. May 27th: 65% off on Journalist Journey: The Eye of Odin

Fri. May 28th: 45% off on Hidden in Time: Mirror Mirror

Sat. May 29th: 65% off on Bilbo: The Four Corners of the World

Sun. May 30th: 50% off on Bejeweled Twist

I wrote about field day 2009 and what it was like in my elementary school. Now I’ve experienced two different elementary school field days. (My younger two go to separate elementary schools — by choice.) One school sets up stations all over its big, long field. The kids wear a color shirt based on the grades they’re in while 5th grade wears its class shirt. (5th grade at both schools gets unique class shirts.)

The kids have laminated cards that volunteers check off when they complete the station. They are free to roam the field from station to station. That’s the nice thing about this school’s big yard — you can see it all in front of you.

The other school has a yard that wraps around the sides and back of the school with many blind spots. Three classes from the same grade rotate from station to station together. They do activities inside and outside. This year, for the first time, the grades will wear the same color shirts.

Unlike the other school, we order a new field day tee every year. It has “Field Day” and the current year on it. (See photo for this year’s quasi-Survivor logo.) The image changes every year. Some good years and some dull years. I’d say this year’s is in-between. Best field day shirt ever: red, white and blue tie dye that I still wear. I volunteered today and worked the Speed Stacks station. Yes, lucked with an indoor assignment away from the heat.

Brain food…

• My Dialogue Sucks: Tips for Improving Dialogue in Your Novel: A wonderful collection of highlights from various articles around the web.
• 10 Marketing Resources Every App Should Provide: This is a fantastic resource for anyone involved with apps. I’m amazed how many don’t provide much. Most of us need details before we try it.
• 15 Gorgeous and Effective HTML Emails: Great examples. But reality… HTML-emails don’t look readable in all common email clients. I have found lots of funky-looking ones in Gmail, but they look fine in Thunderbird. First rule: Accept your HTML email won’t look identical in all email apps. [Link: BubbleCow]
• Five Reasons I’m Not Quitting Facebook: And I hope you won’t give up on it either.
• You’re Just Not That Into Me: the introvert’s guide to attending a conference: I have a good reason to avoid conferences — I don’t know if I can get my money’s worth considering deafness thing.

And for fun because we’re allowed…

• Awkward Family Photos: Some of the titles are winners. “Sisters of the traveling hands.”
• 15 Bizarre Prom Photos: Makes my ’80s prom photo look normal.
• Top Five Fonts You Should Never Use: Wish all the locals would watch this… not captioned, but easy to follow and still laugh.
• Recipe Look: OK, the web overflows with recipe sites. But every recipe in Recipe Look comes with adorable drawings. Got a favorite recipe, pencil and paper? Draw away and submit your recipe embellished with your art.
• The City Made of 100,000 Staples: Artist Peter Root plans another project using one million staples. And these things can fall like dominoes. He has worked with potatoes, soap and transformer laminate.
• Twitter Reacts in Horror to 2012 Olympic Mascots: Hilarious article. The new mascots make all the past mascots look like winners. Be sure to scroll through the slide show. [Link: Karen Swim]

What memories do you have of field day or other traditional school event?

I caught a published tweet where I wrote “advanced” instead of “advantage.” I resisted banging my head on the desk when I saw the error. Chalk it up to another creative homonym mistake — an easy to miss and fix mistake. Watching for these seven mistakes and fixing ‘em add power to your writing.

1. Leaning on crutch words. I write many product reviews especially for books and games. Sometimes I struggle to find a new way to say the same thing when I’ve written many reviews. I challenge myself to find other words to use to avoid making a habit out of crutch words. However, sometimes you have to use some words often because simpler is better.
2. Using series. Killing the list beefs up the writing, limits boredom and forces you to take a more creative route. Can you recall reading an article that went on with a list of over five items or phrases? Canceling the series cuts the monotony in the writing. If I need a series, I limit it to three or four items.
3. Repeating words. Repeated words isn’t the use of “apple apple” but rather using a less common word twice in a sentence or paragraph. This one is a hard one to catch because the words work fine.  This doesn’t apply to the little words like to, is and in — although, I try to avoid using “is” as much as possible.
4. Abusing empty adverbs. I learned this lesson from William Zinsser’s On Writing Well, which has stuck with me since reading it. I save these words for when I really want more emphasis. Empty adverbs: completely, really, truly and very.
5. Relying on -ly words. OK, this sounds similar to #3. Not all adverbs add stress to a sentence like the reallys and verys do. Forcing yourself to skip the -ly for something else can help you “show instead of tell.” Instead of: “She sloppily completed her homework.” Try: “Unreadable scribbles ate up the lined paper.” Not award winning, but you see the difference.
6. Slipping on homonyms. Typing one word when I’m thinking another. (For example, I typed “advanced” when I meant “advantage.”) While “advance” and “advantage” don’t sound alike, my fingers sometimes slip and type the wrong thing when the brain thinks the right one. I flinch most with this error. I fear the reader thinks I don’t know the difference between “too” and “to” and “your” and “you’re.” I do. The brain, eyes and hands do its own thing without my permission.
7. Overdoing “to be” words. This one is hard to do. Oops, I did it again. Tossing out the “is” and “was” strengthens your writing. Trying to shed “to be” feels like twisting your brain. Instead of driving yourself nuts, accept that you’ll use some. It also helps to take a break from the writing and revisit the “to be” on the next round.

How about you? Share a simple fix it writing tip or easy to miss mistake.

Pull out your clubs (and your diamonds, hearts and spades) and enjoy a round of Fairway Solitaire! This card game includes 70 unique courses in locations ranging from exotic forests to Scottish highlands. Choose your golfer and experience realistic golf commentary, hilarious wild shot cards and three fun mini-games.

If you like solitaire games — especially Golf — ya gotta have this one. I was addicted to it for months and months. Read Fairway Solitaire game review for details.

This $2.99 Catch of the Week runs through Sunday, May 23 at 11:59pm.

Catch the PC version.

Catch the Mac version.

The following games will be discounted next week on Game du Jour, the first ‘one-deal-a-day’ website dedicated to indie and casual games:

Mon. May 17th: 45% off on Flux Family Secrets: The Ripple Effect

Tue. May 18th: 65% off on Royal Envoy

Wed. May 19th: 45% off on Nightfall Mysteries: Curse of the Opera

Thu. May 20th: 45% off on Veronica Rivers: Order of Conspiracy

Fri. May 21st: 100% off on Hamlet

Sat. May 22nd: 45% off on Love and Death: Bitten

Sun. May 23rd: 65% off on Sky Kingdoms