It should be DOUBLE overhead today. I'll be back @ this spot today, and I should get some footage that's ridiculously better...I didn't have my tripod or anything like that.

[UPDATE 11/08/2009]
The waves were great today! I got some great footage and will be editing it on the plane ride home from California to Florida. :(

I'LL MISS YOU CALI FAMILY!!!
[/UPDATE 11/08/2009]

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When we started HomeGrownClone way back in 2002, our goal was to create a new type of web culture portal along the same lines of Pixelsurgeon, K10K, Design Is Kinky and the others -- but with a human cloning twist. Yeah, it's a random, but fun association and we dared to list the sites they wouldn't. We were always fans of these sites, but we were greeted with frustration when we submitted links for them to post about lesser known designer's sites (sometimes even our own). Often, our submissions were ignored...was it web snobbery, MAILER DAEMON issues, or something else? We'll never know, but HomeGrownClone was born so we could post web design and web culture news that WE felt was relevant. Fuck all the rest.

7 years later, Social Media and Web 2.0 is the new big thing...and those two terms are somewhat seemingly becoming interchangable. Web 2.0 seems to BE Social Media. Now, anyone can create a design news feed using Twitter (hell, we've got our own @ twitter.com/homegrownclone). So, out of the birth of Web 2.0 and Social Media came the idea for a new direction for HomeGrownClone. We are going to whore ourselves out to as many social media channels as we can...essentially completely changing the HGC experience for our fans (we hope, for the better). We'll still host a few fun pages, but mostly, you'll find us:

Posting The News Feed You Know And Love (@ twitter)
Blogging (here @ posterous.com)
Using Facebook (even though we do not yet know wtf to use it for when it comes to HomeGrownClone)
Sharing Our Bookmarks (@ delicious)
Listing Our Friends (@ friendfeed)
Sharing Fotofunk (@ flickr or bubbleshare.com <-- now dead or smugmug.com ... we haven't decided yet)
[edit](and as suggested by rdub) Using kontain.com for something cool...[/edit]

It will be a fun challenge to integrate all of these channels as we strive to maintain homegrownclone.com as the main point of entry. 

So, be on the lookout for HomeGrownClone v.5. We're changing with the times online because the times have changed us.

[EDIT EARLY NOVEMBER 2009]

We're being as picky as it gets when it comes to the new HGC...or perhaps it's because we tried to code it on a giant plasma TV and ended up streaming a Netflix movie (see our latest update on the main page of homegrownclone.com).

Whatever the case, we ARE still actively working on finishing up the new HGC, and it has been a lot of fun. A little progress for the random fan that happens to read this:

Our facebook page is now set up, but you won't see it yet. Bookmark http://www.facebook.com/homegrownclone/ though as we have the URL set up.

Our intro page is coded. The song of choice is by, who else, Smashing Pumpkins. However, the song won't be revealed until we launch.

All interior pages hosted @ homegrownclone.com are built in one method or another. We just need to QC them a bit more and we're working on some fun promotional videos where you will actually SEE roto & rdub's faces...or will you?

There's a lot more fun in store, and we thank you for being a fan of HGC. In the meantime, "We're all clones..."

[/EDIT EARLY NOVEMBER 2009]

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As more and more of my older family joins facebook, I wish they were also introduced to the fact that it was founded by someone at least 1/3 their age...even 8 years younger than me. Meet billionaire/entrepreneur Mark Zuckerberg (via Wikipedia):

Mark Elliot Zuckerberg (born May 14, 1984) is an American billionaire and entrepreneur best known for co-founding the popular social networking site Facebook. Zuckerberg co-founded Facebook with fellow classmates Dustin Moskovitz, Eduardo Saverin and Chris Hughes while attending Harvard. Zuckerberg serves as Facebook's CEO. He has been the subject of controversy for the origins of his business and his wealth.

more @ Wikipedia >

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Call Centers for Sex

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Who doesn't like cupcakes? I had fun today with my wife & son making these cool Halloween spider cupcakes.

Ingredients: Vanilla Cupcakes | Chocolate frosting | Chocolate Sprinkles
M & Ms Minis | Mini Marshmallows | Twizzlers Twists

Tools: Toothpicks | Scissors | Imagination

1) Bake & foil vanilla cupcakes
2) Cut Twizzlers Twists to desired length for spider's legs
3) Poke 4 holes on opposite sides of the cupcake (for the Twizzlers legs) with a toothpick
4) Put 8 Twizzlers Twists from step 2 into the holes made in step 3
5) Add desired amount of frosting then chocolate sprinkles
6) Cut 1 mini marshmallow in half and place stick them side by side into the sprinkles/frosting...these are the spider eyes
7) Add an M & M Mini to each eye (which should stick to to the middle sticky part of the mini marshmallow)
8) Enjoy the finished product -- a black spider with red legs!

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Cats and dogs can get along. Just a quick post of a sweet
recent photo of my Mom's cat (Rowdy) & dog (Hopper)
lounging by the pool. Friends for life...

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I work in in the biz. No, I don't sling Irish Car Bombs across a bar while standing in an inch of beer. I'm in the biz that creates the lovely goodness that is allowing you to read these words. I'm one of those guys that likes to right click, "view source", and get excited when a website uses a <div> instead of a <table>.  If you don't know what any of that means, it's irrelevant for reading and understanding this post. If you do understand, it will give you some immediate understanding about the topic. Once you do understand, it's a sentiment you'll likely share when talking about the browser that everyone loves to hate, Internet Explorer 6 (IE6). To know IE6 is to love to hate it...and IE6 MUST DIE!

I don't ever claim to have all the answers, but I try to learn something new about my chosen profession each day. When use a computer to access the internet, the main way we interact is via the web browser. One of the first things I learned when I chose this career is to always use the latest & greatest browser. Security updates, new features and other great enhancements are packaged with a new browser, and updates keep the browser fresh, secure and fast. Fantastic advances have been made in modern browsers like Firefox, Google Chrome, Safari...and even Internet Explorer 8. Yes, that's right, IE6 is not even almost the most recent version of Internet Explorer. When comparing IE6 to any of current browser, it's like comparing a beat up Ford Pinto to a Ferrari 599XX -- there is no comparison.

Here are some reasons to join the fight and rid the internet of IE6 (from IEDeathMarch.org & BringDownIE6.com):

• (as of September 2009) Internet Explorer 6 will be SEVEN years old on August 27th, 2008 will be NINE years old this fall. It came out a few weeks before the Twin Towers fell. It came out before the Nintendo GameCube. It came out before the first iPod.
• There is a lot you can't do in IE6.
• The hacks needed to support IE6 are increasingly viewed as excess freight. Like Netscape 4 in 2000, IE6 is perceived to be holding back the web.
• Clients pressure designers to "force" sites to work in IE6, and designers, not wanting to lose business, comply, using hacks and workarounds.
• Even standards gurus are frustrated.

I still can't believe it's nearing the end of 2009 and it's necessary to write any of this, but there's still a lot of work to be done to rid the online world of IE6. Some people replace cars every 3 to 4 years -- and that costs (a lot of) money! Web browsers are free and easy-to-upgrade. Why people choose to continue using an inherently flawed piece of shi...escuse me, software is beyond my understanding.

So, if you're reading this using IE6, there are other options:
Firefox | Google Chrome | Safari | Flock | IE8 | ...and more.

Don't take my word for it:
- http://deathtoie6.com/
- http://iedeathmarch.org/
- http://bringdownie6.com/
- http://stopie6.com/
- http://desizntech.info/2009/02/die-ie6-die-go-to-hell-already/
- http://www.incerteza.org/blog/projetos/shockingly-big-ie6-warning/
- http://37signals.blogs.com/products/2008/07/basecamp-phasin.html
- http://davidwalsh.name/6-reasons-why-ie6-must-die
- [ADDED 09/26/09] IE 6 USAGE CHART
...and the list goes on.

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In the past few months on Twitter, I've noticed more than a fair share of accounts that are set up to auto-retweet given specific content in tweets. I've given these interesting Twitterers the name of autoRTers. Let's look at a few examples:

@tweetdouche: "Douchebag spotting service." (now at the top of my list of favorites)
How I found 'em: Yesterday, I had my first conflict on Twitter with another, random Twitterer. Arguments are actually somewhat fun in 140 characters or less! To make a short story, well, shorter...I tweeted @ him/her about being ignorant for choosing to speak out against people who remember 9/11 (if you can believe that). Feel free to revisit my tweets to read through the not-so-interesting back & forth of it all. In any case, he/she tweeted about me being a douchebag (classy). That was where the fun began...I was tweetdouched with "#douche Alert: @roto"! There's more at tweetdouche.com where you'll find up-to-the-minute rankings of douchebags on Twitter -- it's funny to find "@perezhilton is the biggest douchebag on Twitter 2173x over." How can you beat humor like that? Tweetdouche is my number 1 mondo favorite autoRTer!

@VagueTweets: "A collection of weird, vague, cryptic second-person twitter messages."
How I found 'em: I sent a tweet out that was, well, vague: "You know you're old when you overuse the word snarky, snarkyness or any other known variation. NTM, it's only a word in the Urban Dictionary". All tweets can be somewhat vague, but this one was immediately retweeted by VagueTweets. Looking at the RTs on @VagueTweets, it's easy to see how they're doing this -- send out a tweet in the second person, and they find you!

@nsfw4me: "A keep-you-safe-at-work url shortener."
How I found 'em: I've sent more than my share of tweets tagged with #nsfw. @nsfw4me instantly springs into action with a quick RT asking that you use their URL shortener found at: http://nsfw4.me/. Before you can visit the nsfw tweet, you are greeted with a screen that ranks the degree of nsfw-ness from 1-10. Proceed with caution!

I'll add more as I find them, and feel free to comment and post your favorites below.

[ADDED 09/22/2009]
@TwebaListings: "Buy and Sell Your Stuff On Twitter and Social Networks"
How I found 'em: I was selling an item on eBay for the first time since joining twitter. I had heard about the power of the #ihave tag and how it's often searched by people looking to make purchases. After all, wouldn't you want to but something from me so at least you can contat me via twitter if something goes wrong? Otherwise, you're buying from compelete strangers on eBay. In any case Tweba Listings found me via the #ihave tag or perhaps via the mention of "eBay" in my tweet. Whatever the case, I love it...my newly listed auction already has over 100 views!! You can't beat that, so I'm happy to plug Tweba Listings. Check out their website at: http://tweba.com/

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I'm addicted to blip.fm. When I want to quickly listen to almost any song, I surf on over and search for a song or artist and various versions from all around the interweb are at my fingertips for the clicking. There are a ton of options when you finally choose to "blip" a song. You can tweet it, play it for yourself only and move on, add it to your personal playlist and much more. They are always adding tons of new enhancements, too. Recently, I played a John Mayer song and an unobtrusive menu popped up at the bottom of the screen to tell me he's on tour and offered a link for me to click to find out when Mayer is playing near me. Too cool!

Another great part of blip.fm is "props". From the blip.fm FAQ: "On Blip.fm props are tokens of respect that can be given from one DJ to another - say for blipping a good song or being a good DJ in general. Everyone starts with 10 credits that they can use to give props to other DJ’s. As you earn props from the community, your props will increase and so will the credits you have to give. 1 props earned = 1 credit in your bank. The number of props you’ve earned can only go up, but the credits you have goes down as you use them throughout the site."
...props are a ton of fun -- more at this blog entry.

Head on over to blip.fm and join the fun. Be sure to follow them on facebook and twitter.

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(1871 KB)
Watch on posterous

Back in the day, I LOVED "The Man Show" --

For those of you who lived under a rock during 1999 to 2004... The Man Show was a half hour show on Comedy Central created in 1999 by its two original co-hosts, Jimmy Kimmel and Adam Carolla. In 2003, Kimmel and Carolla left The Man Show and the job of hosting was passed down to comedians Joe Rogan and Doug Stanhope. Under Rogan and Stanhope, The Man Show lost a lot of its former popularity and received much lower ratings. The combination of lower ratings and protests from feminist groups proved to be too much, so The Man Show ceased production after the 2003-2004 season. (source: Wikipedia)

This skit involves a kid they used quote a bit for stunts like this. His timing is perfect, and I'm so glad I can preserve this on my blog. ENJOY!

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Funny How It Is by Dmb   (4159 KB)
Listen on posterous

Go on...have a listen. From their new album entitled "Big Whiskey and the GrooGrux King".

Update: 5/25/2009 - Dave and the band have released the Big Whiskey and the GrooGrux King track track list:

“Grux”
“Shake Me Like A Monkey”
“Funny The Way It Is”
“Lying In The Hands Of God”
“Why I Am”
“Dive In”
“Spaceman”
“Squirm”
“Alligator Pie (Cockadile)”
“Seven”
“Time Bomb”
“My Baby Blue”
“You And Me”

The "Big Whiskey" album art is here.

(Source: Rolling Stone Article)

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This is HANDS DOWN one of the most classic YouTube vids of all time. Thank you Leroy...whomever you are.

"...at least I have chicken."

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