Category Archives: Media

Hey Four Eyes!

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Cheapo online frames

Cheapo online frames

I have bad vision, REALLY bad vision. I have been wearing glasses since Kindergarden and most likely should have been wearing earlier too. When I was in the tenth grade I had to start wearing contacts because my Rx was so bad that the weight of my thick glasses caused me massive headaches after wearing them for only an hour. It wasn’t until I was in college that I could again wear glasses. It was then that the eyeglass industry had come out with ultra thin lenses for people with high a prescription. It cost a pretty penny, around $500 dollars and the frames were only $100 of that (Ralph Lauren). Every time I have gotten glasses coverage or any information on buying new glasses it would cost me equally as much if not more to get new lenses for my prescription strength.

A year ago a friend of mine bought new frames from ebay and I envied her because she just had to take them in and get lenses, nice and cheap. Me, the frames are the cheapest part of new glasses so I have stayed with the old frames and glasses for over ten years.

My Old Ralph Lauren glasses

My Old Ralph Lauren glasses

Now don’t get me wrong, I love my old glasses, they look great on me and they are really durable. The Rx hasn’t changed or anything either it is just… well the anti-glare coating has worn off and there are some scratches, in spite of the anti-scratch coating (more then ten years of use it makes sense). Then when I drove down from Canada to the US for a four month trip and left my glasses at home I felt sunk. I wear contacts often but not having glasses to break up the wearing is frustrating. A few friends of mine gave me recommendations for online eyeglass dealers and links on research and everything pointed me to the same place. “zennioptical.com” I was running low on contacts too so when I went in to get my vision checked I had the doctor give me all the information I needed to order them online. (if you do this, make sure you get the PD, your doctor will not remember) Then it came to picking frames. I know the big complaint is “I have to try the frames on to know if they are good” Well I am the same way. So with my sister’s help I tried on the various frames at my doctor’s store, we decided square frames look best on me, and rimless thin frames don’t look good. (All the frames in his store were designer and hugely expensive.) I wanted something different from my old glasses, because I figured these frames would be a nice back up pair anyway, so I picked a set that looked kinda wild. Lime green and black. I placed the order and in two weeks they were shipped to me. Not only was I able to order glasses & frames for under $70 but I was also able to get anti-glare coating, anti-scratch and a polarized sunglasses shade custom for the lenses all included. Also, the site accidentally charged my card twice (I must have hit back, refresh or something) but rather then waiting for me to catch this mistake/problem the site caught it and refunded me automatically and emailed me to let me know. Most sites would wait for you to catch that.

Clip on Shades

Clip on Shades

Yesterday the frames arrived and I was very happy with them. They were not as wild and drastic as I thought they would be, the lime green is subtle, but they look nice. They came with a hard plastic case and a microfiber cleaning cloth that matched the green frames. Now the only draw back is not getting them custom fit to my head, but having worn glasses most of my life I knew how to adjust them myself. Plus, most eyeglass places will adjust for you, I bought my old frames ten years ago and have had two other places adjust them for me. No one cares where you bought them. :)

So all in all, my opinion of ordering glasses online is a thumbs up :)

Three of the best Podcasts you’re NOT listening to

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Weather you are a podcast fan/listener or not, there is some great audio podcasts our there for you to listen to that you’re completely missing. I have decided to inform you about three very different podcast and why you should be listening to them.

The first one I want to mention is SciFi Dig which isn’t new by any means. I have been listening to this podcast since I first discovered podcasts, years and years ago before iTunes was a podcatcher. (Sorry if I lost you non podcast listeners, keep reading I will try and speak lay.) It’s a show about Sci Fi, Fantasy, Horror, Comics and everything in between. Hosted by Aaron Macom (@acmacom on twitter) and normally he does the podcast solo. He starts with some chatter about his life which is always entertaining then reads off the recently released DVD list, then he plays some listener content if he has it and then rolls into either a Babylon 5 in depth review or an X-Files review. I was never a B5 fan, I just missed it, yet after these reviews I HAD to watch and now I am a huge B5 fan, I love the show. What I like about SciFi Dig mostly is that it isn’t just a podcast it is a community, and not like any other out there on the internet. Diggers (Fans of the podcast) are encouraged to participate with more then simply feedback and forums and after listening you can’t help but get involved somehow. Now I warn you, this is not a short podcast, an hour would be a short episode, but I promise it is well worth it and you will find yourself pushing it to the top of your podcast cue each week.

The next podcast I’m going to list (I am going in my personal subscription order here) is The Weird Show, or TWS for short. Now some of my readers may remember that I ran a contest for this show, so obviously I am a fan. TWS is about weird stories and the thoughts and conversation it can spark. Hosted by Mark the Encaffeinated One (@encaf1 on twitter). Who has a voice anyone will love listening to anything he says, but then he makes you think and that is always a good thing in my book. TWS is a Parsec winning podcast that when hosting an informal meet up at DragonCon had the room packed.

The last, but far from least is the Parsec award winning PodioBook FETIDUS. What’s a PodioBook? Well remember books on tape? Also known as Audio Books? Well Podiobooks are just that only deliverd in podcast form, at your desired speed if downloading from Podiobooks.com or as soon as the episodes are live directly from the Author. FETIDUS not only is a a book with a captivating story but Author James Durham (@jamesdurham on twitter) adds more then just spoken word, with guest voices and a soundtrack he composed himself it a a truly immersible experience. What is FETIDUS? What does that mean? FETIDUS is the Foundation for the Ethical Treatment of the Innocently Damned, Undead and Supernatural, and it only gets better from there on. This is a world with Zombies among us in a most every day sense. Not hooked yet? Listen to the first episode, you will be as you follow the trail of mystery with Art Blanchard.

Links:

Healthy Recipe: Spicy Boneless Chicken Wings

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chkwingsSo you have people coming over for a game, or some sort of shindig where snacks and fatty foods are expected, but you want to watch your figure, what do you do?  Trick people into eating heathy snacks.

For the first in my series of non-healthy to healthy recipes I’m going to tell you how to make a good alternative to buffalo wings.

What you need:

  1. boneless chicken breast
  2. fiber one cereal
  3. franks red hot buffalo sauce
  4. poultry seasoning
  5. eggbeaters
  6. skim milk
  7. lite or fate free blue cheese dressing (optional)
  8. carrots and/or celery (optional)

Prepare:

Cut the chicken into strips, dunk into a mixture of eggbeaters and skim milk.
take some fiber one cereal and put it into a belnder alone, turn the blender on until the cereal is a powder, breadcrumb like texture.  Put crushed fiber one into a plastic bag, sprinkle in some poultry seasoning in the fiber one and mix it up.
place moistened chicken into bag and shake up, remove and place on a baking sheet

Cook:

bake on 350 for 15-20 minutes or until center of chicken is cooked. (varies depending on size of chicken pieces

Finishing:

put cooked chicken into a bowl and pout franks red hot sauce on it.  Mix it up till all of the chicken is coated in the sauce
put chicken on a tray with celery and/or carrots for presentation and serve with lite/low fat blue cheese (or ranch) dressing.  (I suggest avoiding the Walden Farms 0 calorie blue cheese dressing as it tastes awful, but their ranch is good)

PS: I didn’t enter quantities as this recipe can be made for 1-100 people, how ever many as you need, simply buy the right amount of chicken per person and adjust each measurement accordingly, I normally cook by eye.

TIPS:

  • Don’t tell anyone how you made the wings till after they eat it if ever.  People will make up their minds they don’t like something if they know its good for them
  • 1/2 cup of fiber one cereal uncrushed per ever 2 chicken breast should coat well
  • Add lots of carrots/celery to the presentation so you can alternate as you snack between vegies and chicken, helps with the snacky feeling that comes during get togethers.

Facebook friends vs Reality

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While driving home today there was a segment on CBC that talked about the fad of adding friends to your facebook. The man sharing his story admitted to having around 700 friends, he tried to throw a part inviting all of those friends to a local bar and was shocked when only one showed up. He realized that these facebook friends weren’t friends at all and just a myth

This made me shake my head. Facebook was never meant to be the new myspace, never meant for strangers. I would think the name facebook implies this is someone you have or have had face time with. Perhaps I’m wrong. I have three high school aged nieces who have hundreds of friends of facebook. Basically they make friends with anyone that goes to their school whether they know them or not, this seems a little dangerous to me, but they don’t see a problem.

Now I’ve been on facebook for a few years now (people complain about the new facebook software yet I’ve seen more then a few revisions of the software) it was originally presented to me as a networking site for business. Something like LinkedIn. I thought it might help with landing freelancing jobs so I was convinced. I never realized what it was until after I joined. After everyone else started joining too. I had to quick, back track and reformat my user profile. As it was, some people who I have only ever known online ended up finding out *gasps* my real name from the site. So far I have been able to keep my real name (the one that business contacts and prospective employers would be searching) away from my online name and identity. Work contacts do not need to know how I spend my off time, how often I game, how much I like cult hits, Joss Whedon shows and Star Trek. More importantly, work contacts don’t need to know the real me, they only need to know what I can do for them :)

Once I fell into the facebook thing I was often left wondering why I checked the site at all. What with the constant invitations to the werewolf applications, help my garden grow, and many others it was more a nuisance then anything else. Now though, it has finally become something I love, not for the software but from what the site gives me. Access to my family. Access to people I don’t get to see too often. Access to people who aren’t interested in blogging, podcasts, twitter or any of the other internet geeking that I enjoy.

After checking just now I have 147 friends on facebook. I admit that sounds like a lot but when you consider that around 30 of them are actually my family. I have a big immediate family and ALL of them are on facebook! Even my mother is on facebook, and that really was the turning point for me. (Everyone and your mother is on Facebook). Once my Mom started on facebook I really started to love the site. All of my siblings are on there and now all of their significant other’s are also on facebook and that’s awesome! I live almost 1000 miles away from most of my family so I don’t get to see them all the time, but thanks to facebook I am not out of their lives. I get to see the day to day stuff that happens that wouldn’t make it into a phone call, email or Christmas card. It is the same with the friends I left when I moved so far away.

Also, on facebook people from high school have started asking to be my friend (which is funny since I had no friends in high school :) and it is kinda neat to see what they have done with their lives and what they are doing. Some of them are still in the same town, some just still on the island and some have moved all over the world. It’s nice to see who had kids and who picked what career, but seriously, I don’t interact with them too often. I have just started to reconnect with people from college, and that really excites me as they were my friends and I really do want to know what they did with their lives. Of all of my college friends I would say I miss seeing each and every one of them. I love college and I loved the people I met there. Sadly there is only one person from college that I see often and if by often I mean a few times a year then yes, often. It’s really great to be able to connect with these people again, and while I would love to meet up with them again I know we will not be in each other’s daily lives in any way other then facebook, and that is good enough for me.

I have a whole bunch of people on facebook from my Role Playing community, I have known these people for years, some for 14 years. Some I have never met face to face and never spoke to on the phone, yet they still matter to me. Some I have met often, one I married :) Some are my best friends and came to my wedding. Some are my best friends but couldn’t come to my wedding. Some are in other countries, some on the other side of the world. Some are not far away at all. These people have known me as a student, starting out in my career all the way up until now. Some barely know me, others know almost all of my secrets.

Then I have the podcasting group, a bunch of people I have met through listening and contributing to podcasts. I can’t even remember how half of them ended up on my facebook. A mess of them are from Buffy Between the Lines for which I lend my voice in small roles and do some cover art. BBTL is unique since it is really a community with lots of emailing and a 24-7 skype chat that is open, I have made some good friends there. Some of which I met while going to the Scott Sigler signings for his book CONTAGIOUS. (Oh yeah, he’s one of my facebook friends too) I hope to meet more at a CON or two this spring. Some people met me at the Sigler signings or other events and asked to be friended, so I did.

Not everyone has the same access though. This is what I love about facebook, you can set your own limits. Someone wants to be your friend on facebook but you don’t really know them too well or trust them? Simple, friend them but limit their access. Some people are locked down tight, they can’t see any personal information, they can’t see anything interesting or any pictures I post, but they can see links and what I let them see. Some people just can’t see pictures I post of other people, like members of my family or my nieces and nephews. Also, if there is something I want to post, but don’t want a particular person to see it, I can block them. Almost all of my pictures are set to only allow my friends to see them, no friends of friends or anything else. Others, like the Signing party pictures, pictures of the cakes I’ve made and some bitstrips are open to everyone.

Most of my attention on facebook is with the people I know, and well I have to say of the 147 friends, I would say I know…. 100-120 of them? I don’t understand  friending someone just to friend them. Do you think having a higher number of friends will make people think you’re just that cool? Honestly, unless you are someone who needs to promote, like Scott Sigler, Mur Lafferty, Tee Morris, JC Hutchens or anyone like that, and I see you have multiple hundred friends I think you’re a spammer.