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Pretty recently I wrote a post about how to do infrared photography, how it works, and why everything looks the way it does. This is another batch of pictures I have taken recently that still include the “outdoor” theme from the first batch. I have gone out and taken pictures of other things, and may post those at a later time. This batch of Infrared Pictures come from Provo Canyon.

This picture below was taken of just a tree with a blue sky. I chose to leave the blue/purple colors that Infrared pictures actually produce, since I have to convert them to a black and white gradient to get the look of the other pictures. I did do some minor editing on this one to bring the dark lines out of the tree a little.

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Devious Office Prank #1: Bookmarks

Most people in an office situation have a very tedious and routine work-flow. Pranks that disrupt this work-flow are, well just plain funny at times. This prank doesn’t require any special software, just spend some time changing some website URL’s in all of their bookmarks. Usually a co-worker has a fairly organized and structured set of bookmarks in their web browser of choice. Hopefully it is Firefox, but we won’t judge them if they use something else.

Accessing their bookmarks, change all of your co-workers URL destinations for each bookmark to remove just one letter of the .com in each URL. Make it a ‘.cm’ or ‘om’, etc. Every time they attempt to follow a bookmarked link, it will come up as “server not found”, or “error in ‘/’ application” or whatever. You can even just add stuff the to URL that shouldn’t be there such as an extra ‘t’ in the ‘http’ part of the URL.

You can take this prank a little further by switching the URL’s in their bookmarks. So that they still get to an actual website with out any errors, just the wrong website.

Machiavellian Office Prank #2: Saran-Wrapped Toilet

The toilet: feared by janitors, abused by men. When it comes to office pranks, this one isn’t just dirty in the sense that it’s a mean prank, it’s dirty as in, it makes a mess. Take a wide strip of Saran-wrap or generic brand cellophane and put a single layer around the bowl of the toilet. Lift the lid and the seat up all the way before wrapping, then put them both down. Nothing gets out, and nothing gets in. Result: An extremely ‘pissed off’ and smelly co-worker.

Aneurysm Creating Office Prank #3: Screen shot of Desktop

Hit ‘Print screen” on your co-workers computer, save the image as the desktop background. After you do this, create a folder and drag every icon on the desktop to this folder, then hide the folder however you choose. This gives the appearance that the desktop looks the exact same as normal, except the icon’s they keep trying to click on are actually just part of the background image. The start menu will keep working, so confusion can be minimal if they are a smart cookie, but choose the office ‘blond’ and hopefully after a few help-desk calls you will have had your giggles.

The Evil Office Prank #4: White on White text/links/background

I had this one pulled on my by one sneaky co-worker. When you look at your computer desktop, your tool bar has a color, background has a color, and the text for everything is contrasted so you can easily read it. If that contrast changes to something like, white on white, it’s impossible to find difference between text, background icons, etc. etc.

The dirtiest part of this prank, is how nearly impossible it might be to reverse the effect. Your coworker will have a completely white screen but it will be filled with icons, folders, and every program you decided to leave running when you did this, so their frustration is going to be really high. My coworker left the ‘display settings’ folder open in the top right hand corner so it would be easy to change back. Well, it was supposed to be easy to change back. I got flustered enough that I just started clicking and dragging and moved everything. Luckily he was smart enough to find a way to change things back, let’s hope you are too.

The OCD Killer OfficePrank #5: Calendar Events

This may not be the most destructive prank in the world, but it has its place in office pranks. Many people live at their desk from 8-5. They might have a scheduling routine or work-flow that they depend on so much, you might consider if they are O.C.D. If they are O.C.D., then making these changes will be even funnier. Change their scheduled calendar events. On either the desktop calendar, wall calender, or Outlook Calendar. Add important meetings with high-ranking people in the company or just add worthless teasing reminders. Go crazy with the reminders, or make just a few so as to make the few they have seem that much more believable.

Throw off their routine just a little with lunch break 20 minutes early, or if you suspect they have odd secrets, call them out on it by posting a calendar event to ‘Pay off pimp at 4th and Main St.’ It is like moving their tediously placed pencils or tilting a picture on the wall. Go through a stack of papers and lightly tear the whole stack in just a corner.

Work Disturbing Office Prank #6: Muscle Memory Retraining and Keyboard Tweaking

The keyboard is something that most people don’t need to look at anymore to type, but they do anyway. How weird would it be to not see “QWERTY” in the top left anymore, but actually have a message from the prank puller; “ZESTY”, “GOATBUM”, or whatever you can think of. Surprisingly most keyboards only require just a little bit of pressure to pop off a few keys. Arrange them however you like. Possibly just switch two commonly used ones like “A” and “E”. Spend a few minutes to think of something that would really get to the keyboard user.

Got a favorite office prank?

Leave a comment with your favorite office prank, or suggestions of a joke you are too chicken to pull yourself.

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In-N-Out is officially suing a Utah fast food restaurant. Some people teased me when I said I was sure In-N-Out knew about the rip-off chain located in American Fork, UT. KSL outlines that apparently some confused In-N-Out loyalists e-mailed In-N-Out Corporate, asking if they had opened up new store under a different name. To settle some of the rumors I have heard, In-N-Out didn’t actually secretly own Chadders, and Steve Martin isn’t Mormon.

Sure enough, In-N-Out apparently knew about it and has been building a case which has finally been served to the owners of Chadders. As too close of a rip off, Chadders has a “Trademark Infringement” lawsuit to fight now. I am not going to lie; they really did look a lot like In-N-Out, and the food was pretty close. When I asked for an Animal Style Hamburger, the employee told me to ask for a Stubby Style or something, but when my friend asked for it, the other teeny-bopper-bubble-gummer employee merely said, ’sure’.

Though the owner assured many people that he had done his homework with his lawyers before opening to the public, apparently even they might have missed something, or at least weren’t counting on In-N-Out corporate to be so aggressive. Personally I wish they could keep it open, and I hope the lawsuit doesn’t shut them down. It’s nice having a In-N-Out trademark-brand-ripping hamburger joint so close.

This lawsuit could take anywhere from 2 months to 2 years. Legally Chadder’s can operate that entire time until the ruling is given, with the possible ‘cease and desist’ which would have an accompanying date. So during that time, maybe we can eat there just a little more often until our desires overpower us enough to drive to St. George.

In-N-Out has not made anything official, but they are possibly going to make the smart move to build a commissary in Las Vegas. They won’t build an In-N-Out restaurant 500 miles away from a commissary apparently, so putting one in Vegas opens up quite a few more possible In-N-Out locations. That would at least open up Utah and Arizona to the restaurant chain (non-franchised chain that is). Which seems to be an obvious move if they want to push towards the east. I have no doubt that they would do extremely well in Utah, not just in St. George, but also in Provo, Draper, and West Jordan.

Here is the official address for Chaders Restaurant.
Chadders:
599 West Pacific Drive
American Fork, UT 84003
801-763-0770

Other Links for this Story:

Fox News

Salt Lake Tribune

YouTube Video

Chadders Update: Post Lawsuit:

On 6-27-07, I went to lunch with a few of my co-workers to Chadders. They seem to want to work with In-N-Out and have made some changes around the restaurant. No more red strip on the tables, no more red boards around the windows (blue), all employee aprons are blue, and they have replaced the menu design both inside the store and in the drive through. It really does a good job of helping the store not appear as much as an In-N-Out. As you can see by some of the comments that have been made since the original post, there is a strong following of people wanting Chadders to remain open, and it’s pretty clear a lot of people are pretty confused about what the lawsuit is really about. Hopefully most rumors will be settled soon enough.

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Shepizzle is a new internet source for learning about new or recently discovered Indie musicians. Here you will have an online music review site to find out who’s who and what’s what. As an Indie Music Review Website, SHEPIZZLE provides you with a variety of authors/reviewers with a diverse range of different musical preferences, like any good Indie-music review website should. Be serious, people don’t want a single emo-pain-inflicting-fast-food-worker to be a trusting source for a variety of underground music, a variety works. Even the emo kids get sick of and tired of My Chemical Romance an feel the urge to stop cutting themselves and possibly even move their black hair to see out of both eyes for a little while, let’s just hope they don’t turn to Jack Johnson in the emo off-season.

Shepizzle is turning to multiple people who actually have different musical preferences from one another, and who each look for new Indie music in different places. Result? You get exposure to a wider range of music and you get an increase in the chances of finding something you like and had never heard of before. New bands and musicians are being spotlighted and reviewed all the time, and your suggestions of musicians that Shepizzle should review are more than welcome. Even you can take part in sharing new Indie Music around the internet. Oh yeah, don’t do drugs.

Website location: http://shepizzle.com

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Infrared Photography is something my friend Sam introduced me to for the first time around a year ago. It involves blocking the standard spectrum of visible light when a photograph is taken, and only allowing IR light to be captured (near-infrared to be specific instead of far-infrared). Most digital camera’s have IR blockers in them in one way or another, so the camera I used was modified by two friends of mine. The IR blocker was removed, and a few layers of exposed and developed camera film were inserted in place of the IR blocker. (exposed film won’t let visible light pass through.) What makes Infrared photography so unique and attractive has partly to do with the fact that plants absorb and reflect Infrared light in a very different way than they do with visible light.

Broken down just a little more with an example; when light from the sun (or a light bulb) hits my blue t-shirt, all light in the visible spectrum is absorbed by the shirt except blue. The blue part of the light spectrum is reflected, and is the color we end up seeing. Black shirts absorb all colors in the spectrum, and white shirts will reflect all of them (like snow will also do). We can’t see Infrared light, but it still has materials and objects that will reflect or absorb it in a variety of different ways. Foliage (tree leaves and grass) reflect IR light when generally they absorb all light colors but green. A clear blue sky with nothing to absorb or reflect IR light will appear black or very dark, unless it has clouds which don’t absorb IR.

For more information on Infrared Photography and it’s amazing uses, history, and a much more technical explanation of how it all works, Wikipedia has an excellent Infrared Photography article.

Here a few shots from the first batch of IR pictures I took on my lunch break this recent friday.

These Infrared shots were taken at the Scera Park in Orem, UT on June 8th, 2007. The sky was clear blue, the tree’s were green and full, and the grass was just recently cut.

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As you should be able to tell by my recent posts, I went on a road trip. On longer trips, it can be a strain to fork out cash for a hotel every night. A friend of mine recently left on a one month trip around Europe, which could have ended up being extremely expensive even staying in a hostel for 30 evenings in a row. He turned to the internet and used Couch Surfing to find people who would let him borrow their couch in the various countries and cities he would be staying in.

The concept for Couch Surfing is that you research an area you will be in, find people willing let strangers sleep on their couches (that also have good reviews from past surfers), and e-mail them a request. If they are socially able to let you stay with them, and check to see your reviews as a guest during other couch surfing experiences they reply with a request accepted or possible denied (maybe you peed the couch).

I don’t know a ton about couch surfing, because I just had my first experience using it a few days ago.

Kind of last minute, we e-mailed someone in down town San Francisco a request for 3 people to stay with him. He confirmed that it would be OK and provided us with an address. We were a little apprehensive about it since we were couch surfing virgins and weren’t sure what to expect. It was not some weirdo who’s apartment had a strange indescribable smell and was located disturbingly close to some busy train tracks. We met our host outside and found him to be seemingly normal and friendly. His past user reviews spoke highly of him, and we left with the same attitude. We had a free place to stay for the night, with a host who was just willing to share his living room with some people in need.

Though I rarely find myself in a situation where I don’t know where I will be sleeping, I actually left my recent trip with the feeling that I would be comfortable using www.couchsurfing.org again if I need to and would recommend it to others. As I gain more experiences form couch surfing, I will try to come back and leave updates. Possible I may or may not still recommend it. Hopefully I continue to have good experiences, and you will too if you give it a try.

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Click on the smaller image below to open up the larger image, or click on a preferred wallpaper size. I recently took photography on as a hobby, and decided to start taking pictures of my motorcycle. This was taken in the backyard of my old living residence in Springville, UT. The actual full size pictures have a better looking photo shopped license plate replacement. If you like this Honda VTX Wallpaper, please leave a comment and let me know.

The link from this image leads to a 1200 x 800 version.

2007 Honda VTX 1300c Wallpaper 1024 x 768

If you would like this in another size, please leave a comment and request it.

The motorcycle featured in this picture is my personal bike, where I have written a Honda 1300 VTX User Review on recently. I think the bike is really well rounded, super sexy looking, and is a ton of fun to drive; things you couldn’t get for this price anywhere else.

Since buying this bike I have started collecting minor scratches on the chrome parts, especially the exhaust. After learning how to repair these scratches, I wrote a tutorial on How To Remove Scratches From Chrome Exhaust.

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Quite often I find myself at a point in life where I am unchanging in how I think and act. I don’t utilize my experiences in life as much as I should sometimes. I could definitely expand my comprehension. I just plain fail to realize how much I could be growing mentally if I would allow myself to. During the last few months I have been expelling this desire to change and grow, which has built up over the course of a year (possibly a few years) of dealing with the problems of life, pains of physical problems, and just generally still being kind of stagnate despite changing my scenery and social life.

With the many different attempts I am making in different areas, I have been trying to get a feel for what would help me change and what things I can do to improve my situation. Specifically referencing the “how I think” part of this whole equation I have been utilizing a few different sources for the motivation to improve and expand how I think and act.

Sometime last year my friend Sam and a few others showed me the series of Ted Talks that highlights speeches at a conference in Monterey, California by guest speakers who are invited to talk about “ideas worth spreading”. If you haven’t heard of ted.com and what they do, you are in for a treat. You are as long as you are in to expanding the way you think and seeing what some of the worlds brightest people have to say.

They are very good at choosing who they ask to speak usually. People who know their fields well, or have made an impact because they dared to do something no one else would. There are people with different kinds of wisdom who want to share it with the world, and are good at it. They discuss everything from art, music, global issues and human desire to physics, genetics, technology and even spirituality.

I wouldn’t say I have enjoyed ALL of these speeches, but I really appreciate TED and the effort they have put into organizing all that TED has become. The speakers come in a huge variety of people from Bill Clinton to Ze Frank, Bono to Tony Robbins.

Found below, I have embedded one of my favorite speeches from the TED Talks line of free videos, which is from Sir Ken Robinson.

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After going to high school in Sacramento and serving my mission in Los Angeles, I was less than excited to move to Idaho while being single and in my mid 20’s. Despite living in Idaho as a kid, I was scared that my social life was going to be absolutely non-existent and that everyone in Idaho would drive me crazy. I had some confused judgments on the area, and basically feared the worst: Potato eatin’ farmers kids everywhere whose idea of fun was moving irrigation pipes.

My parents live about 25 minutes west of Boise Idaho now, and I lived with them for 8 months before my mission, and an additional combined 18 months after my mission. I was really surprised to find so many people that weren’t actually from Boise. There were lots of transplants like we were. Many of which were from California same as us, in addition to a vastly varied population that came from many other parts of the United States.

When I attended Boise State I started seeing more of the social scenes in the area in addition to meeting a great deal of cool people. Yes, I admit that meeting many of the people I did out here surprised me at first. I worked as an installer for custom home theaters in an extremely nice part of Boise called Eagle which is actually absolutely nicer than anything I have seen in UT. This combined with my mother working in real estate all at the same time when Idaho had it’s single largest growth period ever I got to see some amazing changes happen in the Boise area and meet some great people.

Though many of the locals have always feared the growth, and hated the “Californians stealing all their land” Boise/Eagle and Nampa have really improved quite a bit over the last few years. Aside from having a good solid variety of quality restaurants, independent movie theaters, art festivals (jazz festival and a Shakespeare Festival included) as well as large University which has also had some amazing growth. Boise has the largest Basque community in the United States. The Big Easy concert house has had almost every band and musician come through that I have wanted to see and they always sell out, the whole green-belt around the Boise River has been improved time and time again. Urban Outfitters ven built a store here before they built one in UT (to many people that means nothing, to me though it’s a pretty big deal).

Since moving to UT, I have seen an unusually high number of people that I really have no desire to meet or get to know. I am lucky to already be friends with some of the coolest people in the state anyway, but maybe you will agree or disagree that all over UT county at least there are quite a high concentration of “Bro’s” we call them, and “hair school” girls. The term “hair school girls” can also apply to students at BYU or UVSC and doesn’t mean necessarily that they actually go to hair school, it’s more of a train of thought and character label.

Boise on the other hand actually has a large number of locals and transplants who are genuinely interesting and diverse people. They are not obsessed with telling everyone they play the guitar even though they don’t (pretty much every other single guy in UT county), and they most definitely don’t have a large population of guys who fake tan and wear pink popped collared polo’s. A lot of people here are approachable and friendly, and usually end up being people I want to be friends with. With a growing culture of it’s own in recent years, the people and activities here are growing more attention than most would imagine. There really are very few farmers in the area anymore. A few of the companies that have their headquarters in Boise are Micron, HP Printer division, Washington Group International, Albertsons, WinCo, and Simplot.

Just a 10 minute drive from down town is Bogus Basin Ski Resort. A few hours to the north there is the prestigious Tamarack Ski Resort. In the valley there are two accessible reservoirs which I have enjoyed wake boarding and boating on. If you like watching insanely crazy football games, Boise States last 3 seasons have been jaw-dropping from start to finish.

This image from Wikipedia’s article on Boise, the city is called “The City Of Tree’s” which I made fun of at first because I thought Sacramento would probably fit the name better, but actually Boise really does have a large quantity of beautiful tree’s which set’s the city apart from the surrounding dry sage brush and farm land areas.

In 2006, Forbes named Boise as #4 on their “Best Places to Own a Business”. National Geographic did one of the best articles I have read about Boise, naming it one of the last great cities in the west and the premier pace to live for outdoor activities and lifestyle..

I enjoyed my time at Boise State, and always enjoy my visits here. I may not move back here ever again, but props to you Boise. Maybe people will stop assuming no one in Idaho has indoor plumbing, and stop wondering if everyone eats potatoes for every meal.

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I know my blog has had a few, limited posts which really have only done moderately well on Google organic searches. Usually when I notice a group of terms from a specific article that bring traffic to my website from Google, I usually do some link building online to that post anchored (meaning “anchor text” devin) with related terms to the traffic I get for that post.

I know my website is still a relatively new blog with just some basic traffic on random things. Nothing to really get any attention, except for recently. For the first time this Easter I have started climbing into some decent visitor numbers. Apparently there was a large quantity of people searching for Bunny Cake. Easter is here officially, and for possibly just a few days, the main bulk of visitors being referred to my blog was strictly for a term I never thought I would even get one visitor for. The Bunny Cake post.

My top 4 referring terms from Google have been dominated by “Bunny Cake”.

I am not sure if I should be embarrassed that Google has made my blog more popular online with people who are looking for make a small edible rabbits than anything else I have written about. Or if I should just appreciate the traffic and feel good that my SEO work is slightly successful. It’s seasonal and temporary traffic I realize. I doubt I will get so many people every day continuously in the future for the term “bunny cake” now that Easter is over.

It does go to show that finding the right niche online, and doing some classic SEO work is actually successful on getting people to read my stuff, regardless of how random the term’s are compared to what I have written about.

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