Introducing Wikipedia Brown!

Yes, it's a sad thing -- The Natural State Hawg is looking a bit abandoned these days, isn't it?

Well there's a reason for that -- the bulk of my attention has been focused on FirstArkansasNews.net since April 2010. Why? That's more of a news site than this one is and, hey, I actually make a few bucks with that one.

Besides, there's something to be said for owning your own server space and installing WordPress on it. Ah, the joy.

At any rate, one of the things we've focused on at the aforementioned site has to do with original projects. For the absolute latest project, click here to listen to Wikipedia Brown, an original bit of modern audio theater featuring some actors from the Royal Theater here in scenic Benton, Ark. Fun stuff. We hope.Maybe....

Firefox 4 -- a nice improvement

The new Firefox 4 browser is out and it's well worth a look.

Mozilla did its homework on this one, tested the heck out of it and has put forth a browser that's good enough to not only gain on the dominant Microsoft Internet Explorer, but possibly halt gains in market share made by the aggressively marketed Google Chrome and Apple Safari browsers.

Want to read all about the new Firefox browser? Sure you do! Just click here and you're on your way.

OTR serials

Yes, The Hawg is an old time radio nut.

I love those old OTR programs -- can't get enough of the things. I was born well after those had been shoved out of the way to make way for television, but that doesn't matter one whit.

I've got another site -- First Arkansas News -- that's been keeping me busy for close to a year now. Rented my own server space. Installed Wordpress. Modified the heck out of a template to suit my needs. Fun stuff.

Speaking of fun, I just started a new section over there -- click here to check out the OTR serials on it. We're talking about great stuff -- Superman, Lum and Abner, Little Orphan Annie, One Man's Family and Flash Gordon. The page will be updated often and more programs will be added regularly. Check it out and submit a request while you're over there, huh?

Music Monday - Horatio Lee Jenkins

A beautiful, beautiful Christmas song.

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Music Monday – King Uszniewicz and his Uszniewicztones!

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Good news for Lum and Abner fans...

Ah, the good old Lum and Abner show.

I used to listen to reruns of that brilliant bit of old time radio on a station that broadcast out of Hot Springs. Specifically, I listened to those with my dad in the 1970s and 1980s.

There are still a good number of us Lum and Abner fans left. A good number of them have taken up residence at the National Lum and Abner Society. That group exists, in part, to preserve the history of the aforementioned radio program and God bless them for it.

The Society, for years, published newsletters dedicated to the program and has some script books available, too. You can buy some back issues of the newsletters and some of those script books while the Society has some in inventory -- click here to figure out how to do that.

Get 'em while they're hot, kids.

Music Monday - The Marsist

For a friend who left us too soon...

Come join Music Monday and share your songs with us. Rules are simple. Leave ONLY the actual post link here and grab the code below and place it at your blog entry. You can grab this code at LadyJava's Lounge Please note these links are STRICTLY for Music Monday participants only. All others will be deleted without prejudice.

PS: Because of spamming purposes, the linky will be closed on Thursday of each week at midnight, Malaysian Time. Thank you!

Tell Me Thursday – Brenda and the truck

Tell Me Thursday is a pretty dandy idea, indeed.

The idea, see, is to come back after the famed Wordless Wednesday event and add some words (so to speak) to your post.

Yesterday, I posted a photo of my daughter, young Brenda SueCarol, behind the wheel of my new truck.

What’s the point? In addition to taking advantage of an opportunity to show off my new vehicle, I can admit that the Dodge Ram has converted me from a Toyota fan to someone who’s happy with an American vehicle. No, I never thought I’d see that happen, but there it is (you’ll find more about my renewed admiration of American auto manufacturers right here).

Oh, and this is the first brand new vehicle I’ve ever purchased. Yes, I overdid it. The truck is heavy (5,064 pounds), I can’t manage more than 22 MPG on the Interstate due to a thirsty V-8 and the thing cost too much money. Ah, but screw gas mileage – that truck is more fun than a barrel full of Brass Monkey, I can carry four adults in comfort in it and and I’m sick of four-cylinder engines, anyway (there’s no substitute for a V-8, kids).

Enjoy some more pics of my kid and my new Ram:

Wordless Wednesday: ‘I can almost touch the pedals!”

More Wordless Wednesday participants here.

The Hawg becomes a new media mogul

Yeah, that's right – my fiendish plan to take over the Internet has been launched.

Want to see the future of them Internets? Just point that browser over to FirstArkanasNews.net and gaze at the site in wonder.

I feel just like Sheriff Buford T. Justice on Smokey and the Bandit when he complained of “decorating up the whole town at a cost of $40.” I went and spent around $60 to reserve a couple of domains and host the aforementioned site for a year. I’m amazed at how cheap things are on the Internet – if that project fails, I’m out $60 and that’s not a bad deal.

So, what is that site? It’s something I came up with after watching online publications like Fort Smith’s The City Wire thrive. I visited with some other public relations guys, some freelance reporters and a newspaper (we need a content partner, right?) as I figured a bunch of us “professional” writers from around Arkansas could have a lot of fun and offer people a statewide source of news.

I told the writers I mentioned that my newest blog wouldn’t make money for at least a year so I wasn’t going to pay anyone who worked on the blog until we have some, like, revenue to share. Amazingly, a lot of those talented folks still accepted my invitation to help by submitting articles and photos.

The site is barely a day old and I’ve already learned that, well, I’ve got a lot to learn. Maintaining your own site can be a chore. Still, I figure I’m not too far away from modifying my template to my liking. After that work is done, the fun begins.

Stay tuned…

A professional kite flyer?

My wife was reading the Thursday edition of the Benton Courier when she noticed the first Benton Kite Festival had been scheduled for Saturday at the old airport.

You can read all about the festival here, by the way.

One thing that struck me about the event is that a special guest, Robert Lassond, will be there. The Courier identified him as a professional kite flyer and reported that he goes all over the country to events such as, well, the Benton Kite Festival.

I can’t help but feel more than a bit jealous. How do I get that gig? How does one turn the enjoyable pursuit of flying a kite into a career? Why did I spend all those years in school to sit in a dull, drab office day after day when I could be getting paid to fly kites?

Seriously – what could be better than that? Earning a living by skipping rocks across a pond? Getting paid to drink beer or drive expensive muscle cars? Making cash money by taste-testing cotton candy or traveling throughout the nation watching major league baseball games?

My hat’s off to that Lassond fellow. Anyone who can turn kite flying into a profession has to be living right.

Playing guitar in church? You’d better get a capo, bub.

A few weeks ago, I was invited to play my guitar regularly in my church.

I was thrilled to do so, but I learned something in a hurry – piano players just love playing in keys that are completely unnatural for guitarists.

As odd as it may seem, piano players tend to love playing in odd-ball keys such as B-flat, F-sharp and, well, just strange stuff. Guitarists, meanwhile, tend to stick to conventional keys such as A, C, D, E and G. Why? Because it’s a lot easier to grab the chords in those keys than it is in say, B-flat (unless you’re playing barre chords, but those tend to not come out real well on a 12-string guitar like the one I bring to church on Sundays).

The solution to this problem is to get a capo. Yes, they’ve been slapped with the derogatory term of “cheater” over the years, but that’s not exactly fair. A capo allows a guitarist to easily shift to those wacky keys with ease. It’s the very device that allows pianists and guitarists to get along and I use mine extensively.

Here’s an example. Yesterday, we played “The Old Rugged Cross,” which is in the key of B-flat. Rather than throwing a fit about the key, I simply slapped my capo on the guitar on the third fret and played the chords for the key of G. The pianist didn’t have to bother with transposing chords and I was able to get through the song with ease. Everyone was happy.

In case anyone's interested, I've used Kyser capos for years and have had a lot of luck with them. They last forever (the one I've got for my electric guitar is over 20 years old and still working) and are very easy to use (one-handed operation for everyone but weaklings). If you've got a 12-string guitar, you want to buy a capo specifically for one of those. A standard, common capo for a six-string is too short for that wide fretboard on a 12-string and you'll have a lot of nasty buzzing on the high "E" strings (and perhaps the "B" string, too).

By the way, I got my 12-string back in February. My wife came home with a beautiful Fender acoustic 12-string guitar that I had my eye on for a few months.

Sure, she bought that because she got tired of hearing me make racket on my electric guitar. Still, that was a pretty cool move on her part.

If you’re going to criticize Obama, get your facts straight

Here’s a scenario to ponder.

A talking head on a television network reports that there’s some language buried in the new health care legislation that will impose a 3.8 percent national tax on the sale of all new homes.

Since I’m a public relations guy in the real estate industry, I start getting calls from people who correctly point out that will absolutely kill the still recovering real estate industry. While such a move would certainly be devastating, there’s a problem here – the aforementioned talking head got her facts wrong.

What is actually buried in the healthcare legislation is a 3.8 percent tax on capital gains from the sale of homes. For individuals, that means that gains of over $250,000 (and $500,000 for couples) will be taxed 3.8 percent. In other words, most people won’t have to worry about the tax at all.

While I’m fundamentally opposed to new taxes (particularly at a time when the economy is garbage), there’s a huge difference between the tax as it was wrongly reported and the actual tax at hand. If you’re going to criticize Barack Obama, get your facts straight.

There are plenty of things coming out of Washington to get mad about these days. Why, then, do people seem to be going out of their way to make up things to criticize?

Griping about proposals that don’t exist is counterproductive – it makes Obama’s detractors look less than credible. That’s not the kind of thing we need going on now as we’ve got an opportunity to put a lot of Republicans in Congress.

What’s the best way to spoil the Republicans chances in November? Running around frightening people based on false information would do it – a dumb tactic when there are so many legitimate issues to discuss.

Hangin’ with the CEOs

My, but it’s been a long time since I updated this blog.

I’m sure that one person – heck, maybe even two – has asked, “What’s that The Hawg been up to lately?”

Well, quite a bit, actually. I’ll get into some of that later, but I figure simply pointing out that I’ve been ridiculously busy lately reveals enough details for now.

One thing that has been going on in the past few months is the my wife (the beloved Marci Kay!) and I have found a church that we really enjoy. That would be Parkview United Methodist here in Benton, Ark.

The reason I mention this right now is that I had the rare opportunity to stand up in church and give the sunrise devotional this morning. The church has a tradition of picking a layperson to give the devotional and this year, for some reason, the pastor decided to pick on me.

Oddly enough, I’m used to public speaking but I was as nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs while I was standing up there at 7 a.m. To see the devotional I came up with, just click here and give it a read.

What’s odd to me is that I’m due to speak to just about all the county tax collectors and a few people running for office on Tuesday about how to put together an effective media relations plan. That doesn’t bother me. Standing up in front of my church and talking about faith and spirituality, however, bothered me quite a bit.

Strange.

At any rate, the crowd was fairly small at 7 a.m. What was funny to me is that a slew of people showed up for the 11 a.m. service. A lady who’s in church just about every Sunday identified the crop of unfamiliar attendees as CEOs – people who show up in church on Christmas and Easter only.

That’s absolutely brilliant.

I hope everyone had a great Easter.

Music Monday - Cracker

Come join Music Monday and share your songs with us. Rules are simple. Leave ONLY the actual post link here and grab the code below and place it at your blog entry. You can grab this code at LadyJava's Lounge Please note these links are STRICTLY for Music Monday participants only. All others will be deleted without prejudice.





PS: Because of spamming purposes, the linky will be closed on Thursday of each week at midnight, Malaysian Time. Thank you!

Finding reliable game reviews online…

Yes, your old friend The Hawg has wasted many, many hours playing video games.

I started off with an Atari 2600 back when I was 12-years-old and I’ve gotten worse sense then. I’ve still got over 200 Atari games around here and, over the years, have added almost more systems to my collection than I can count.

Ah, but I’ll try. Let’s see – I’ve also got a Nintendo Entertainment System (top loader, no less!), Super Nintendo Entertainment System, Sega Genesis (with the Sega CD attachment), Nintendo Gameboy SP, Sega Game Gear, PlayStation 1, Nintendo GameCube, Sega Dreamcast, Atari Lynx, Atari 7800, Nintendo Wii, a Microsoft Xbox 360 and a couple of hardwired Pong clones.

I used to have a ColecoVision but it blew up one day (there was literally some smoke when that one gave up the ghost). I also had a Magnavox Odyssey 2 but I got rid of it because I never used and I dumped my Atari Jaguar because it was such a horrible system that looking at it literally made me angry.

Is there a point here? Well, yes. Most video games are garbage. Let’s face it – there are a few gems associated with any system but the bulk of the slop inflicted on the public sucks. Where can you go to find reliable information about games? A lot of the junk out there is pure marketing. Atari may have pioneered the practice of pretending that marketing material is actually news, but Nintendo, Sega, Sony and Microsoft have perfected the system so that most of those “official” sites on the Internet and magazine describe even the worst waste of programming on the planet as if it’s the greatest games made.

Running searches on the Internet for good reviews is often frustrating because some clever SEO techniques often route you to “official” reviews, bought-and-paid-for junk from publishers trying to act like they’re independent or junk.

Ah, but I’ve found at least three sites that offer up great, independent game reviews that can steer you away from the junk and to the good stuff. Of course, all these sites are free and feature quality content. So here’s the convenient, can’t miss list:

1. The Video Game Critic. Whenever I want to know if a game is good or not, this is the first place I visit. Why? That cat knows what he’s talking about and features bite-sized reviews that spare no punches. You can find games and hardware reviews on everything from the Atari 2600 to the Nintendo Wii over there. If you’re looking for both quality and quantity, this is the place to go.

What’s more, you’ll find some great advice for collectors. Which systems are great to collect for and which ones are not? Systems are graded along those lines and you’ll find more than a bit of history, too.

I don’t know if The Critic gets paid a dime for the great work he’s done over there, but I do hope he’s found a way to make running that site for years worthwhile. I honestly can’t say enough good things about the site.

2. Atari Age. Here’s another site worthy of a few superlatives. In addition to the sheer amount of history over there (Atari cartridge rarity, screenshots, etc.), you can also buy brand new games for a lot of classic systems there. And when I say new, I don’t mean games from 1980 that were never opened – I’m talking about games that were programmed by enthusiasts over the past few years. A lot of those games simply push the old Atari, ColecoVision, etc. to the limit and are nothing short of phenomenal.

Oh, and the forums are a blessing for those of us who love both classic and modern games. Ask a question about a game or system and you’ll likely receive an answer from someone with some expertise. The forums are very active and filled with people who are as enthusiastic about their old systems as I was about my Atari when I first got it for Christmas all those years ago.

Is that new handheld that plays Super NES carts any good? Where can I find some people to play with on Xbox Live? What are the latest Atari homebrew projects? All those questions and more can be answered through the forums.

Ah, and then there’s the news section. Find out about classic gaming conventions in your area, new publications and a whole lot more. It’s an impressive site, for sure and certain. Here’s a word of advice – don’t bash the Atari Jaguar in the forums or you’ll get jumped.

3. allgame. Yes, you do have too many press releases and there is a clear shortage of information on games for 8-bit computers, but you’ll also find a lot of screenshots, some instructions from time to time and some very in-depth reviews.

The reviews for more obscure classic games are hard to come by, but the more current ones are certainly covered. One thing I do appreciate is that looking up one game will result in suggestions for similar ones you might like. That’s a great touch and I find myself looking for reviews at allgame quite a bit.

So, there’s the list. Have fun!

Evernote – more free goodness…

Being a proud cheapskate, I love free stuff.

For that reason, I’ve hunted around for some of the best free applications available. Fortunately, things have changed a bit over the past couple of decades – truly useful applications don’t always cost money and the free stuff is often comparable to the commercial, “send me money” ones.

At any rate, I’ve been an attorney, a journalist and now I make my living as a public relations guy. Since I first started working, then, I’ve taken a lot of notes.

There’s a problem with notes – what happens if you leave your notebook at the office and need it at home? Wouldn’t it be great to be able to simply take notes on a computer and then open them wherever you’ve got Internet access?

Well, you can do that through a brilliant little application called Evernote. In addition to entering text, Evernote lets you clip images and such right off of Internet pages and paste them to the application – handy stuff if you run across some information or an image you want to save and refer back to later.

I’ve got Evernote set up on my computer at work and my two systems at home. Whenever I need a note, I just fire up the Evernote application on any of those computers and I can pull it up – Evernote syncs with automatically with all the systems running the application, so keeping up with that virtual notebook is a snap.

Furthermore, I can access my notes through the Evernote Internet site, meaning I can grab my notes wherever I have an Internet connection. How handy is that? I generally don’t bother with a notebook unless I’m out somewhere and lugging a computer around wouldn’t be practical.

Evernote has a solution for that problem, too, by the way. It runs on Android, Blackberry, iPhone, Palm and Windows Mobile (as well as on Mac and Windows computers), so it’s a portable application, too.

And, yes, it’s free. You can pay to upgrade Evernote for more storage space and such, but I haven’t come close to needing to pay for that upgrade and I’ve been using Evernote for close to a year.

It’s another great, free program that makes life easier. Give it a try.

Opera 10 – essential for netbooks

One of the great things my wife got me for Christmas is a Compaq Mini – the little system that’s made me a believer in netbooks.

I love my Compaq (a.k.a. the MicroLappy). The battery lasts four to six hours (depending on how hard I’m pushing it), the 10.2” screen is nice and clear, it’s light enough to drag anywhere and makes that laptop I use at work seem hot, heavy and almost impractical.

There is one major drawback to the netbook – that CPU is a bit slow, so I’m always interested in applications that don’t bog it down too much. I’ve been a Firefox fan for years and still am, but I’ve noticed a problem that is particularly bad when I’m surfing blogs – pages with a lot of graphics, weird scripts and etc. just slow the browser down to a crawl.

So I gave the new version of Opera a try. That’s always been a fast browser, but Opera 10 came with a feature that feels like it was just made for netbooks – turbo browsing. What is Opera Turbo? Simply put, it’s a concept that has been around for a long time – graphics are compressed significantly and that results in less CPU time and memory spent on rendering images.

Opera Turbo can be switched on and off with ease and that’s handy as there are times when those compressed graphics look terrible. Still, that feature doesn’t leave my Intel Atom processor puffing like a fat man running up a hill and I’m very glad of it.

Yes, there are some other things that are nifty about Opera. The ability to easily share files, stream music and such with friends through the Opera Unite application is very convenient. I also like the “speed dial” that allows fast access to frequently visited sites, but Google Chrome has something very similar to that so that’s not a terribly unique feature. Another feature that’s useful is visual tabs – something that allows the user to view tabs as thumbnails instead of just text.

Still, what sets Opera apart is really Opera Turbo. Opera is all about speed and the browser simply excels in that area. I still prefer Mozilla Firefox to any browser out there, but Opera is simply outstanding for use on netbooks.

And, of course, Opera 10 is absolutely free.

The best Nigeria scam yet?

Looking through that good old junk mail folder from time to time can be a hoot.

I wandered over to my junk mail folder and guess what I found? Yes, I discovered what my well be the best Nigeria scam on the planet. Click here to have a look and judge for yourself.

The brilliant thing about that particular email is that the scammer represents himself as someone who is part of an anti-fraud unit wanting to offer (get this) money to people who have fallen victims to Nigeria scams. That’s a sleazy, ballsy move, but I can’t help but admire the gumption.

Yes, the recipient of the email is identified as a victim of an implied Nigerian scam and, as compensation, there’s an ATM card with $950,000 on it just waiting to be delivered. All the victim has to do is send along $60 (and, of course, some personal information to be abused later) and the card will be sent right along.

Hey, that’s not a bad deal, right? Send in $60 and get $950,000? You just know there are some people in this world willing to take that gamble.

My latest project…

As I’ve mentioned on here a time or two, my wife and I are renegade, ne’er-do-well Baptists.

In other words, we were raised up Baptist and turned Methodist. We’re members of Parkview United Methodist Church in Benton, Ark., and have discovered that place will gladly utilize whatever skills we bring to the table.

Since I like blogging so darned much, I’ve been called on to help that church with its own blog. So I’ve started working on that and you can find it here. I’ll warn you – it’s brand new and a bit rough, but I’m sure I’ll overdo it before long.

What’s in store in the future? How about a nifty audio player where people can listen to the latest sermons from the fabulous Pastor Dee, the requisite Facebook badge, a calendar of events, a signup form for a bi-weekly digest, the church newsletter and all sorts of bells and whistles. Truth be told, I’ll probably model it a bit after the blog I put up for my employer (hey, that thing is getting 2,000 unique visitors per week and I hope the one for the church does that well).

It’s a fun project and I’m thrilled to be involved in it. Hopefully, it will help the church do some good in the world (and that’s kind of the point, isn’t it?)