Underground Inspiration – Apparently, “We” Do Change Lives

Foreword:  This is a runner-up to one of my favorite posts for 2010.   I just know it. It is a bit long, but for good reason. Please read on and be inspired. – Versatile

Revisions:

2-18-10: Initial release.

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There is so much I want to write about that it was difficult to write on this topic today, but I just had to. Within the last 24 hours, I have witnessed great feats of inspiration.

Last night during the Olympics, Skier Lindsey Vonn and Snowboarder Shaun White just DOMINATED their events. It was clear they were in the zone and the best at the sport. Starcraft 2 Beta officially started yesterday, and gamers around the world are waiting excitedly for their chance of obtaining a beta key for Starcraft 2.  I just came back from my 5 day Atlanta trip and there were some insights on life I wanted to write about.  However, all of this I have to stop thinking about it because something else has been eating away at my mind the whole afternoon and into the night.

Today, I have what is possibly the best story of inspiration ever and I want to share with you what I know so far. Of course, it wouldn’t do me justice if I told this story alone, so Chyea (or Mark) when you see this, please write your own personal article or leave a comment and I will add it to this article.

Underground Wallpaper Youtube Experiment – January Edition

CONTEST ENDS MIDNIGHT (GMT -6) ON 1/9/2010

POLL ENDS MIDNIGHT (GMT -6) ON 1/15/2010

FINAL VIDEO TO BE RELEASED THE FOLLOWING WEEK

Revisions:

1-4-09: Initial Edition.

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I just thought of this idea today as I was eating dinner and chatting with my youtube partner over MSN (funny how the best ideas come out of IM chatting). Anyway, we were talking about videos and ideas and I just came up with an idea so great I just had to write about it.

So if you haven’t known, I have a new youtube account, and I am working with a fellow youtube friend who has similar interests as I do. We teamed up, and the new account is gamedexterity. You can see the work I have done on my part here.

In every single video that I do, I always change the wallpaper. Why? I figured a new video needs a new wallpaper to keep things interesting and spice things up. Now sometimes the wallpapers are related to the subject of the video, and sometimes the wallpaper has nothing to do with the video subject material at all.

Most of the time I like to do wallpapers in these categories: gaming, movies, abstract art, vector art, and misc “provocative” wallpapers. I can’t really explain what provocative is, because it will destroy the mystery of my taste. Let’s just say it makes you go “OMG, I can’t believe he has that kind of wallpaper!” 🙂

So with 2010 here, it is natural (just like every year) to start new ideas and trends. I bring to you the new Underground Wallpaper Youtube Experiment.

What is this experiment?

This is how it works, because I love community involvement. The last contest with the Underground banner was a blast, and if this experiment is successful, I will run this contest once a month!

Contest Rules:

1) Users are to leave a comment to this blog article with a link to a wallpaper. Wallpaper preferred resolution is 1280×720. Please get me a link to the closest resoultion as possible.

2) Images are not to be pornographic. Please use discretion. Your video will be observed by kids, teenagers, parents, adults, young, old, male and female.

3) Only one image submitted per unique commenter user name.   Therefore, pick your BEST and FAVORITE wallpaper choice.  If you can’t make up your mind, list all your wallpapers and I will PICK one wallpaper that I like and put it into the poll.

3)  The contest will run for 5 days. This contents ends at midnight on Saturday, January 9th (GMT -6).

4)  After contest is over, I will run a poll for all submitted images. Poll will run the following week, to end at midnight on Friday of that week (GMT -6).

The winning wallpaper will go into my next video.  The wallpaper may be related to the subject theme of the next video, or it may not even relate. This is OK. I am just interested as to how this will turn out.

Example:

This wallpaper won the contest:

The video I just happened to be talking about is how to maintain and extend the life of your hard drive. Turtles and hard drives have NOTHING in common, but that is OK.

Why do this contest?

1. It’s fun.
2. Brings community involvement. Anybody can participate.
3. The winner will have the joy of seeing THEIR submitted wallpaper featured in a video. Is that not cool?
4. I love bringing joy to people. The video helps the general youtube audience, and the wallpaper is just an indirect way of me saying Thank You for all the readers of this blog.

Do you like this idea? Think the rules needs to be changed a little? Let me know! Time is wasting! Let’s see those wallpapers!

Secret Project Revealed #2

As you guys know, the Underground Blog is always bustling with activity.  We may not look like much when there are thousands of blogs on the Internet, but whatever.  I know we have an audience, and real people are being helped by real people.

The first secret project was revealed several months ago, and the result of that was the birth of our sister blog, “Welcome to the Other Underground.”  If you haven’t seen it, you can go to http://tug.cjb.net

On that site, we have articles on topics that may not be worthy to post here on wordpress.com in fear of another suspension or worse.  I cannot risk that anymore, hence the sister blog.

Now what is secret project #2? Right now it has no release date.  It was just an idea that has been stirring around in my head for the past couple weeks and now that I am starting to have some more free time (wait, what free time? – see newsletter 2), and it will be a committed effort to get it done, when I feel it is done.

What am I talking about?  I am seriously thinking of writing an e-book and when its done to have it released here on the blog for free.

What’s an E-book?

An e-book is basically a book converted to PDF form.  It has a title page, table of contents, chapters, sections, etc.  Pretty much everything you expect from a book.

What will it be about?

I don’t have exact details yet.  In short, I will be taking all the top hitter articles and putting them into the book.  The funny part is there has been times when I wanted to learn or remember something, and instead of searching google, I just search the blog for the answer!  When you get to that point, I think you have something gold here.

This blog in short is almost like my technical diary of knowledge.  But I felt like I needed to go the next step, so here we are at with the e-book idea.

I will most likely have stuff related to console modding, various PC tips, and maybe, just maybe, exclusive underground content that is not on the blog.  Perhaps one of the tips from the newsletter will be in the book, you never know.  Also, I maybe have specific articles on gaming to play online, as well as life tips?  The role model for this is Lifehacker’s “Upgrade Your Life”, and I wanted to do something like that too, but for underground purposes.

Will I accept contributions?

Of course! If you want to do monetary donations, I’m down with that but seriously that is not necessary.  If you want to submit an article into the book, by all means you can.  Just email me and I will have your name with your article fit into the book.

Right now I have Voltaire on board to be co-author, so we will be collaborating and making sure the content is just right.

The book will most likely be volume 1, and over the course of time as we get more tips, I’ll make a new series.  We shall see once I get to that point.

Graphics Designer Needed

The old saying goes “You can’t judge a book by its cover”.  True.  In creating the new underground E-Book, I want a flashy “book cover”.  With that said, if you are a pro in photoshop, or have a friend that is one, let me know.

I don’t have any ideas on what the cover art should look like, but maybe we can throw ideas around and see what sticks.

Release Date?

It’s too early to tell when it will be release.  The goal is sometime in 2009, but when exactly I don’t know.  It depends on how hard I work at it and how the community contributes.  What I do plan to do is have an update maybe once or twice a month, either here on the blog or perhaps the newsletter to internally motivate myself to keep the project alive.

I’m sure with your anxious support, this will not be difficult at all. :-0

If anything, at the end of this project, I will have an offline book in my possession that I can refer to for years to come.  It is similar to like school or at work.  You write your notes on a bunch of sticky notes, and over time you forget or lose them.   By putting everything into one place or document, you have all your important notes at your fingertips.

Sounds interesting?  Want in on the fun?  Let me know!!!

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Demonoid – Help Improve The Underground Process

The post that gives me the most trouble here on the Underground is everyone asking for an invite code.  Almost every frickin’ day someone comes along and asks, “Hey, can you give me an invite?”

Or “How about me too?” After a while, the google spreadsheet was born.  In the beginning, I had faith that people had good will and would enter in their names and be done with it.

This worked well, except I quickly realized I had no control.  Were there spam bots?  How did I know people weren’t just typing in a bunch of fake email address or what?  Hence, I decided that I had to control the spreadsheet myself.  By having people enter in their requests through the comments, I am able to update the spreadsheet.

How does the Versatile1 system work with invites?

I will tell you how it currently works and what is the process:

1)  E-mail people the “test” email.  What I do here is I have a pre-written script that I just copy and paste to people.  It has very specific instructions in there, and I tell people to respond to me as soon as possible.  The e-mail contact is then added to a temporary demonid category list.

2) If people respond, I send them invite.  If people don’t respond within a week, I go online to the google spreadsheet and mark them as “EPIC FAIL ACCOUNTS”.

3)  For those people who I sent an invite, I ask them if it works.  If it does, I add them to the official “Demonoid” category mailing list.

4)  Once or twice a month I send out a mass email to the “Demonoid” mailing list asking for invites.  It works in a sense I get a crapload of invites.  Then I start the circle all over again and sending test emails.  If not enough people respond, I have a bunch of expired codes.  That is no good!

So now the new method is on the master e-mail list, I ask that people who can generate codes respond to me, but don’t send me any codes yet.  I will collect a pool of active participants, and ask them to send me invites one by one.

This way I can distribute invite codes on demand, whithout having to get stuck in a situation where I have more codes on the verge of expiration than participants.

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The point of this post is to get feedback from you guys.  What do you think is a better method of doing this?  Any thoughts?  For now the system works fine.  I’m cleaning up my mass e-mail list and adding flair to my test email.  If there is anything else I should be considering, let me know.

THIS POST IS NOT MEANT FOR COMMENTS ASKING FOR DEMONOID INVITES.  GO TO THE OTHER BLOG LINK FOR DEMONOID INVITES, GEEZ.

https://versatile1.wordpress.com/2008/05/25/demonoid-free-invites-underground-trading-circle/