Photo-A-Day #1384

Average Betty that is. I have just started getting into this great food related podcast called AverageBetty. A while back I was at Staples and I saw thing gadget called the Mi book that was basically a video viewer for Food Network recipes, a visual way to see a recipe and cook. After seeing that I thought to myself, I bet that someone had the great idea of doing a show like that as a podcast and I can download it for free on my iPod/iPod Touch. There certainly is a great show and it is called Average Betty.

The way to describe Average Betty is that it is a show with the frenetic energy of Alton Brown – the major food knowledge + great hair + edginess – measures and recipe details + sketch comedy + a cast of “Betty” Characters – long drawn out details of other shows. Betty is fast, entertaining and the food leaves you wanting more of both Betty and the food. Betty has an amazing personality on screen and plays a bunch of fun and funny characters that toss around pop culture references like a pigskin in a backyard touch football game played by overly caffeinated Chihuahuas. It is my new favorite podcast, sorry Cali and GeekBrief.tv but Betty actually tells me about stuff that won’t break the budget.

If you are upset that the videos don’t have the full recipes never fear you can go to AverageBetty.com and get the recipes for the delicious meals and snacks and desserts that Betty is cooking up. There are step by step instructions with color photos. See, save the boring instructional stuff for the written page but keep the sexy (and by that I mean the final images of the food) fun stuff for the videos.

All of these great recipes and podcasts made my BLT and Cheese from D’Angelo pale in comparison even if I did ask them to put in a little thousand island to give the meal a little kick.

I buy a ton of stuff from Amazon.com. If you do please buy through our links and help support BenSpark.com. Thank you.

Copyright (c) 2010 Blog Consultant, Photo-A-Day Photographer & Daddy Blogger - BenSpark.com - Everyday Pictures... Every... Day

My Dinner with Betty

I caught back up with all of the episodes of Geek Brief.tv. I had been so behind. One fun thing that Cali Lewis has done is created a site called iYule where you can buy and download a beautiful crackling fireplace.

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There are quite a few versions of the iYule Log.

iYule Log for standard players

iYule Log for widescreen players

iYule Log music-free edition

iYule Log for TV & computers

iYule Log, The Complete Album

Now you might be asking yourself, why sell a 30 minute podcast of a crackling fireplace and beautiful music? Well for one thing there are plenty of DVD’s and VHS tapes out there that you can use to watch a fireplace on your TV. So now with people having many different portable media players why not have a fireplace for those as well. A crackling fireplace invokes a feeling of home so why not have that feeling with you everywhere.

This project is a collaboration between Cali Lewis and her husband Neal, Geoff Smith, and Paul Colligan, they are donating money from a portion of the proceeds of sales of the iYule Log to three charities. They are some pretty cool ones too. Geoff chose the Songs of Love Foundation, a charity that provides personalized songs for chronically and terminally ill children and young adults. Paul chose LitLiberation, the largest online literacy experiment in history. Neal and Cali chose Heifer International, a non-profit that helps families in poverty by giving them valuable live animals to provide eggs, milk and farming help.

I think these are great charities and will be buying my own version of the iYule Log for my iPod.

Update: 120707 – I am home from my trip and have just purchased and downloaded the iYule Log for standard players. It can play on both my iPod and my Zune.

I buy a ton of stuff from Amazon.com. If you do please buy through our links and help support BenSpark.com. Thank you.

Copyright (c) 2010 Blog Consultant, Photo-A-Day Photographer & Daddy Blogger - BenSpark.com - Everyday Pictures... Every... Day

iYule

Want to carve some pumpkins without getting messy.

The first way I found to do this was through the Adobe PhotoShop elements Killer Tips podcast. A podcast was released on the 29th showing you how to make a carved pumpkin in PhotoShop Elements 6.0, I’m sure you can do it in other versions as well. A good podcasts to subscribe to.

The other way I found to carve a pumpkin online was through the Pop Candy blog. Here is my attempt at a carved pumpkin.

I buy a ton of stuff from Amazon.com. If you do please buy through our links and help support BenSpark.com. Thank you.

Copyright (c) 2010 Blog Consultant, Photo-A-Day Photographer & Daddy Blogger - BenSpark.com - Everyday Pictures... Every... Day

Carving Pumpkins, without the mess…

Today Allison and I headed up to New Hampshire to visit with Dan and Marcia for the weekend. We rode into work together and Allison dropped me off at work and then picked me up after she was done work. I stayed a little later than usual but got some blogging done.

Today I entered a competition for the chance to (Get paid to) Blog for a Year. I am going to campaign very hard for votes to have people help me achieve that goal. At this point I have been blogging for 4 years and the thought of getting paid to be a blogger even if it is just for one year is fantastic. It is a dream but I am working hard to get there.

On our ride up to New Hampshire I introduced Allison to some of my favorite podcasts. We listened to The Pop Candy Podcast, Mr. Manners’ Quick and Dirty Tips for a more Polite Life, Money Girl’s Quick and Dirty Tips for a Richer Life and Grammar Girl’s Tips for a Better Writing. Allison liked those as well as 60 Second Science but she felt that The Onion Radio News stole minutes of her life.

We made it to New Hampshire in good time. When we got there we hung out and chatted with Dan and Marcia and waited for Ken and Alicia to arrive with dinner. They were coming over and offered to pick up pizza. When they arrived we had dinner and sat at the table and talked.

After Dinner we played a game of Farkle. Allison bought me some sets of dice games for my birthday including a Wolf Dice Game, A Jumping Frog Dice Game, A Jolly Roger Dice Game (Pirate Themed Dice) and she also got a set of six die to play Farkle with and they have cats on them where the 1 should be.

Explaining a new game to Ken and Alicia is similar to shoveling the ocean back into itself. It is tough, unforgiving, pointless and leaves you utterly spent. But eventually they caught on and we played a couple rounds. James arrived halfway through the first round of play and he jumped right into the second round and gave us a run but Allison pulled off a whopping win over all of us.

After we played that Dan and Marcia gave us an ice cream cake for my birthday. It is on Monday and will also mark the beginning of year three of Photo-A-Day. I am very excited.

Today’s photo is of Clyde and I used the color Accent feature. Next Week I will look into another feature to highlight with the camera.

Self Portrait, Ken wanted me to blow out the electric candle. Ken is weird.

Ken and with the Cake.

I also took one picture of myself because nobody could figure out the camera, I should have used my QuikPod but it was upstairs.

It was very nice to spend an evening catching up with old friends and laughing. I may look like I am not having fun all the time but I love my friends and family no matter how much they drive me nuts. I wonder if Ken will finally read this blog.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot, check out My Bio page, I added a neat map that shows all the states I have been to. I have 7 left to go.

I buy a ton of stuff from Amazon.com. If you do please buy through our links and help support BenSpark.com. Thank you.

Copyright (c) 2010 Blog Consultant, Photo-A-Day Photographer & Daddy Blogger - BenSpark.com - Everyday Pictures... Every... Day

Photo-A-Day #728 04/06/07

Well, I was tagged by Kevin at FuelMyBlog’s Blog. I noticed that he tagged me on Twitter. Are you folks using Twitter? It is interesting for mini blogging.

About the MEME: I need to pick 7 CD’s or music tracks that I am listening to right now. 5 from CD player at home and two from the car. Here’s the deal, because I now have an iPod I hardly ever use my CD player in the car. I never really used it much to begin with but for now I listen to many podcasts. So I will mention the podcasts I am listening to as well as the music on the home CD/Alarm Clock.

Home.
1. A classical Christmas church album – (I don’t know the name)
2. Ellis Paul – Summertime 1st demo.
3. Jack Johnson – On and On
4. Mark Erelli – Hope & Other Casualties
5. Chris O’Brien – Rosa
6. The Offical LOST Podcast
7. Pop Candy Podcast

And now I tag some friends…
Allison – Sparky’s View
Mo – We’re In A Fight
Autumn – Autumn Indigo
Christine – Tales From the Ball Park

I buy a ton of stuff from Amazon.com. If you do please buy through our links and help support BenSpark.com. Thank you.

Copyright (c) 2010 Blog Consultant, Photo-A-Day Photographer & Daddy Blogger - BenSpark.com - Everyday Pictures... Every... Day

Music Related MEME…