………………………………!!!!???!???!?!??!?!??!?!

Exactly…

so now on to more pressing matters…

Haven Meadows (dot) com…

YES go there, check it out!  See artwork like THIS:

CLICK IT!  You know you want to….

And now to more things you should click:

Both of them need to be updated but I’ve been busy!

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Sorry guys,  go check em out anyway!  Good stuff there!

While your at it, have you seen the items I have for sale for local pickup or delivery in the Austin TX area?

just go to:  http://www.assetrenew.com

Check out what is available.

I also have a new idea for a business building online stores for people.  Wanna know how it works?  Need an online store for yourself?  Then Contact Me for more info!

Ok… so what other projects do I have going on right now…

Oh yeah!  Have you heard of Liquid Media Lab?  or Waveform Lasers?

(click the links)

ok….. what else, what else…

oh yeah!  I have a new camera!

The Panasonic Lumix G1 is the world first Micro 4/3 Lens Camera.

“What does that mean Nate?”

Well, in all older SLR cameras the camera had a mirror box that would reflect what was seen through the lens up to the viewfinder so the photographer could look through and capture his image perfectly.  With the Panasonic Lumix g1 this mirror box was removed and replaced with a small lcd screen.  This allowed the SLR to become much more compact.

Now there are two companies that have adapted this new lens standard.  Olympus has been working on a micro 4/3 point and shoot while Panasonic has come out with the Lumix g1 (and also the GH1 that has the ability to shoot HD video)

So now I have this beautiful new micro 4/3 SLR camera that I can go out and take amazing photographs with as well as do professional photo shoots.

Interested in hiring a photographer? videographer?  graphic designer?  web developer?

CONTACT ME

Soft Thoughts is a place for people to find and read reviews on the best software around on the internet today.  You can browse through the FREE software reviews and find FREE solutions to your software needs.

I would also like to encourage you to register to receive FREE updates on the latest reviews as well as participate in rating and discussion of reviewed software.

Have a program you would like to see reviewed on SoftThoughts?  Have a need for a program but not sure which one to use?  Looking for a review on a program I haven’t reviewed yet?  You can recommend or request it!

More Questions?
Well then feel free to contact me and let me know!

Remember:  SoftThoughts for SoftWare

This promotion has been brought to you by my mind.

to download these apps browse to this page from your android device
application links only work on the android operating system

1. PostBot – This application gets the number 1 slot simply because I’m using it right now. It allows you to post to your wordpress blog straight from your android! It also lets you save and manage multiple blogs.

2. Task Switcher – A MUST HAVE application for the android. This program lets you switch between tasks quickly and easily. Once installed go to your settings and check Use Camera Button. Then you have easy access to your task swapping.

3. Sky Map – This application is so cool! And a great reason to take your romance interest “stargazing” at that secluded hill above the city. It connects with your GPS and phone balance sensors to determine exactly what constellations the phone is being pointed at at that time. Then you can simply pan your phone to view and pinpoint all of the symbols in the stars!

4. Twilight – As a photographer I like this application because it tells you what time the sun will rise and set each day. It also tells you dawn and dusk times. Great for making sure you catch that hour of golden light in your shoot.

5. aLastFM player – I love this application! I connect my android to my car stereo and then start up my personalized lastFM station and jam all day without commercials. The one issue I have had with the android is there is no way to charge the device while playing music. It needs a built in headset jack or a microUSB headset splitter.

6. Woot Checker – Get daily updates on deals from woot.com! This application keeps you on top of the deals as well as notifying you as soon as a new deal is released.

7. Locale – Tired of your phone ringing in the middle of an important meeting? Locale lets you set conditions for ring settings based on time, event or location. You can set it so your phone automatically silences when you walk into a movie theater or ignore calls from your boss when you get home.

8. RemoteDroid – Network your android device with your computer. Then use your keyboard to type and your touch screen as a touch pad. Requires that you have this software installed on your computer as well.

9. Tetherbot – This program requires a little bit of tweaking but it allows you to connect your phone to your computer and browse the internet through your phones connection.

10. Samuel Jackson Soundboard – There are a few soundboard apps for android including Arnold Sounds and Mr T.  Samuel Jackson is my favorite and works great for prank calling your friends on speaker phone.

Well there are a ton more cool applications for the android but these are my choices. If you have favorites you feel should have been included in the list feel free to mention them in the comments.

Featuring flying monkeys and bags of crap woot.com is your place to find the deal of the day.  Every day a new deal is featured.   They also feature deals on t-shirts and wine on ShirtWoot and WineWoot.

While your checking out the deals on woot you ought to check out the deals at

Fat Wallet

FatWallet.com is an online deal shopping website.   The forums are a great place to post deals you have found and also find deals that others have posted.  People can also leave feedback on deals.

After all that shopping I’ll bet you need to just sit back, relax and watch some funny videos on

CollegeHumor.com is a place for you to waste hours and hours of time at work when your boss isn’t looking.   They feature the best videos on the internet as well as make their own original comedy shorts.   They also have a nice collection of hilarious photos that readers have uploaded.  Great place to waste time and get a good laugh.

Now when your tired of all that wasting time watching funny videos you can go to this website and actually learn something new.

Revision3.com is an internet tv station with some really interesting shows.  PixelPerfect features Bert Monroy teaching various photoshop tips and tricks.  Hack5 is a show for network security wizards and features various tips on network security, modding, open source and various other subjects that appel to your technolust.  Scam School is a show for tricksters and riddlers that want to scam their way to a few free drinks. Thats just a taste of what Revision3 Internet Television has to offer.

Getting tired of watching internet videos?  Well then why don’t you click your way to

BeinArt.org is a place to see some of the best artist of our time.  Big names such as Brom, Andrew Gonzalez, Alex Grey and HR Giger are featured on this site.

Another great online art gallery is

Its Art Magazine is a place for digital artist to have their work published in an online magazine.  There is some really cool stuff and amazing artwork on this website.

Now that you’ve seen all that awesome digital artwork I’ll bet you wish you had the resources to create your own.  Well I’m not going to tell you how to do it but I will give you a push in the right direction.   All aboard Mates, were heading to the

Arrrggg

Well there are some cool blogs out there as well.  Although it is indisputable that mine is the GREATEST WEB BLOG EVER!  Although these other blogs are worth reading as well.

Hack a day features different hard mods, soft mods and cool stuff for the technical elite.

If you like gadgets then you need to keep an eye on Engadget.  Always featuring new and cool electronics.

One last blog worth noting is maintained by Johnny Lee.  He talks about all sorts of cool tech stuff on there and is always an interesting, innovative and informative.

Well thats all, 10 new sites for you to surf.  Hope you enjoy!

“Why switch to WordPress?”

Well I’m glad you asked, originally I was using a website called blogger to publish my blog.  I like blogger initially because it made setup easy and would FTP and automatically update pages for me when I made new postings.  The problem that arose as my postings increased in number was that the blogger category system doesn’t make much sense.  WordPress allows me to customize categories and subcategories to make the site easier to navigate for you!   WordPress is also full of useful widgets and plugins.  It lets me create a blog that is easy to navigate through my random content and very user friendly.

My blogger experience was overall quite enjoyable.  They make the template easy for you to setup and modify with very little effort.  Unfortunately the customization of blogger templates and themes was very technical.  If you have your blogger site hosted on your own domain (as I did) then you cannot install widgets!   The only way to update components of you blog was to do it manually in the code.  Being a tech savvy individual this was not too difficult for me to do but I foresee it being an issue for a less experienced individual.

WordPress is installed onto your server.  It uses PHP and SQL to maintain an updated and dynamically integrated website.  It allows you to customize just about everything you can imagine and you can also download a large variety of plugins, widgets and templates.   I found an excellent website for getting WordPress templates and downloaded several templates from there to customize later.  I also searched through the 4,000 available WordPress plugins and found the best few worth downloading.

All In 1 SEO Pack – This plugin allows you to customize and integrate your META data with your blog.  Definitely worth downloading, installing and configuring.

Buy Me A Beer – Lets you put a link at the bottom of your posts to allow people to donate money to you.  I set it up so that people can donate money to help me replace my stolen laptop.

Contact Form 7 – Lets you create forms for your website.  For example Contact Me

Events Calendar – Allows you to update an events calendar so your viewers can stay on top of upcoming events!  (coming soon!)

FM Tuner – Integrates your LastFM radio with your blog template!  (coming soon!)

Google Site Map Generator – If you don’t know what a site map is I recommend googling it.  This plugin creates one for you automatically!

Share This – Allows people to email your posts to others as well as spread the word through a number of social networking sites including MySpace, Facebook and Digg.

WordPress Reports – If you own your website and your not using Google Analytics or another traffic reporting service I HIGHLY recommend you set it up.  This plugin integrates your traffic reports with your WordPress dashboard so you can easily monitor your site traffic.

Lightbox 2.0 for WordPress – I like this plugin alot!  It makes it really easy to integrate light box with any link your using on your page simply by including this code in the tag:  rel=”lightbox”

WordPress E-Commerece – I haven’t setup this plugin or got it working yet but it definitely looks like its worth the time to figure out.

WordPress Greet Box – Lets you to configure a custom greeting box for users based on how they found your website.  Very cool plugin!

Suscribe2 – Lets readers sign up to receive email updates on new blog postings.

So over the next couple days I’ll be tweaking and updating everything to make my blog better for YOU the reader!  Stay tuned…

So take a moment to check this out!

First of all let me tell you about:
The Tree Of Life
The Tree Of Life is a rejuvenation center located in Patagonia Arizona. A place of holistic healing and spirituality. And the view from the Arizona mountains is amazing.

Next on the agenda of cool things you need to check out:
Orange Piel
Orange Piel does interior design and prints photography on wall sized screens. They have a few artists that are featured on the site but they can also print any image that is provided. They also print window screens that are really nice and look amazing when the light shines through them. They are perfect for home, office or store front.

ok now if wall sized prints wasn’t cool enough for you maybe you need to check out the 3D television by
Wazabee

They don’t have the 42″ 3D television available on their website yet but it should be available soon (starting around $4,000) They do have a 3D computer monitor that is quite impressive. Their products work with innovative lenticular technology to create the 3D effect.

I also discovered a new online digital art gallery that is worth checking out:
Its Art

Its Art magazine is a source of information and online gallery for digital art. Worth spending some time there and checking it all out.

Some more art worth checking out is my buddy Marco Valenzuela. This is his 2008 3D modeling reel. Marco is an amazing character model and is currently available for hire or freelance work.

Another project I’ll be working on this year is the
Coalessence Festival
Coalessence will be moving from Eureka Springs to Austin Texas this fall. For more information stay tuned to their website.

Well let me see… What else… I have so much cool software I have recently discovered but I think I’m going to just leave you with a my VJ promo clip.

Today I’m going to tell you 101 cool things you can do with your wii or wiimote!
Sounds like fun, right!?!

ok here goes!

1. Create a 3D virtual reality with wii head tracking by Johnny Lee
2. Setup a virtual drum kit!
3. Setup your wiimote as your computer mouse and use it to play Team Fortress 2
4. Drop a mod chip in and never pay for games again!
5. Draw on a screen with the whiteboard mod
6. Throw your remote through your $1000 plasma tv, or stick it in the wall, or throw it through a window…
7. Control your house with your wii
8. Create your own wii homebrew software
9. Ensure proper oral hygiene
10. Change your wiimote LED color
11. Make a wii laptop part 1
12. Wake a wii laptop part 2
13. Make a wii laptop part 3
14. Control 3D Studio Max models with your wiimote
15. Create an awesome lazer harp with a bad-ass wiimote mod
16. Virtual Graffiti!
17. Make fire DANCE with the wiimote
18. Turn your wiimote into a lightsaber
19. DJ up some phat beats
20. Play with an old-school nintendo duck hunt gun
21. Play your Xbox360 with the wiimote
22. Get Minority Report style hand control
23. Build a wii controlled door lock
24. Record the angle of digital photos and use that information to correct photograph perspective
25. Play lazer tag
26. Make a wiiphone
27. Make a battery powered sensor bar
28. Add an antenna to boost wiifi range
29. Catch your wife cheating
30. Play free wii flash games
31. More free wii games
32. And even more free games
33. prepare for surgery
34. Watch some video made for wii
35. More wii accessible video
36. And even more wii video
37. Stream media from your PC to your Wii
38. Get some specs on your cars performance
39. Drive your roomba around
40. Build a wii race horse
101. Build a bad-ass wii case

So yeah, that should about wrap things up, 101 cool things to do with your wii!
Hey, I never claimed to know how to count!

These 3 were all taken at the Austin Greenbelt.

This was a photoshop I did combining 2 3D photographs together.

This was a photoshop 3D edit that turned out cool.

Well thats all folks! I’m gonna blog later about all the cools stuff I saw at the Makers Faire

Alrighty then, now let me introduce to you this wonderfully powerful and very cool device called the NSLU2 (Network Storage Link USB 2 (Universal Serial Bus)) Often called a slug. Connecting him with 2x 500 GB Hard Drives gives you a Terabyte SMB (Server Message Block) Network! (with some software restrictions but were gonna fix that…)
1. NSLU2 – $44.53 at Buy.com
2. 2x 500GB USB2 Hard Drives – $89.99 each at TigerDirect.com
Total= $224.51

OK so now you have the equipment…

I probably should remind you now (since you’ve already gone and purchased everything) that when purchasing a hard drive I would recommend getting one that has fans and runs very cool as you will probably be leaving your server on all the time. This will help prevent such horrible disasters as a massive hard drive fail and you loosing all your data.

Ok so now… plug everything in and plug your NSLU2 into your home network! VOLA!
You have a shared Terabyte network storage device! all for less than $250
“But NATE! is there more???”
More??? wait, you don’t like proprietary software??? you want to install a version of Linux on this little box so you can program it to do anything!

Now here is where being a little tech savvy will go a long ways (especially if you have some knowledge of Linux) What your going to want to do now is UNLOCK your NSLU2 by installing a version of Linux on it called uNSLUng. You can then run all sorts of cool stuff from it and even host your website from it! Isn’t that cool!
I’m not going to go into the specifics of all that because everything you need to know is already found on this website:
http://www.nslu2-linux.org/