What Kind of Dad would I be if I didn't brag about my kids once in a while, in a public forum? I'll start with my youngest; Levi.  At the risk of embarrassing him, he is a kid who is as modest as he is talented, and at the risk of sitting all my readers down and water boarding them with a two hour slide show of the middle school talent show, here goes:

http://levilionelleland.blogspot.com/

Check out this website I am putting together for him. Right now, it features some of his artwork. He has a bunch more that still need to be posted. We are working on that. Feel free to take any of this work as an avatar. I think the "peeps" water color makes an excellent twitter profile pic. Eventually, I'll get these set up for an easy one click transfer, but until then you'll have to figure it out.

His "Tribesman" designs are an original concept. I like the look of these. These would make a great avatar as well, or a logo for a line of clothes. His other stuff is inspired by Tim Burton. Levi is a huge fan, and knows quite a bit about Mr. Burton's work and career, He looks up to him very much. Johnny Depp is his favorite actor...Levi can do a pretty good impression of him from Pirates of the Caribbean. He does the "Why kill them when you could just let them get married and be miserable for the rest of their lives" spiel. It's a goof.

Levi is also an excellent piano player. He has some music videos on YouTube that I want to re-do and post on this blog I'm putting together for him. He has an excellent instructor that is taking full advantage of Levi's "motivated to learn and practice" disposition, and he is shaping him into one of his best students. Thanks Tim! Check out Tim Anderson's Web site:

http://www.freewebs.com/trippleforte/

Tim was recently teaching Levi about intellectual property. Levi was working at his own rendition of Ave Maria. It turns out that this "church song" has become popular with the video game crowd as it is featured in the game: Hit Man. Tim explained that he can do anything he wants with that song because it is "public domain" meaning that no one owns or controls the rights to use or perform this material.

This is important stuff to know. I have a lot to learn about it myself. For instance, the pictures you see on Levi's blog are all original. Even the ones of Jack Skellington that are not hand drawn are photos that Levi took using a model. He went online and found a really cool, professional pose-able model of Jack Skellington with interchangeable heads. It cost him over $80.00 of birthday cash.

Some of his hand drawn pictures are from Sweeney Todd and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. He did an awesome one of Keith Ledger as the Joker...Another great pic with avatar potential. The question is: Is Levi violating any copy right laws by creating and posting these? Even though he is giving them away for free? What if he made money from them, e.g. made prints and sold them, or posted them as avatars for free on his blog where he also got a little AdSense revenue.

Anyone having any knowledge on this, and willing to school us, would be greatly appreciated!Just use the comments to tell us what's what. Okay, slide show over. Now, let me show you my stamp collection!

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My Blog is a complete mess. It's embarrassing really. I wish it were never born! This kind of attitude could lead to loading a hollow point into the wheel gun, putting it to the roof of the mouth, and pulling the "delete" button. Nah, that's the easy way out! I'm going to get this cleaned up. 

My first approach will be this: From now on I'm going to compose my factoids right here, then, copy and paste them to my Factoidz.com account...Starting with this one. This post is going to be a hodge-podge. I want to talk about a few new discoveries I've made this weekend; Lizzer and Tiny. Sounds like the names of a couple Hobbits, but these are tools for blogging. Tiny comes in handy for tweeting on twitter. Twitter is a rediscovery I want to talk about in this post. First Lizzer:

Share Links and Media On-The-Fly With Lizzer « Demo Girl

A beautiful thing. Every factoider knows that while writing, searching is required. With this awesome application, you can search, find, preview and insert your links without even leaving the place you are writing. All with just a few clicks. It's seamless. You can insert photo's from flickr, videos from, where else, YouTube, and links and content from Google and Yahoo. It's easy.

How do I know that it's easy? Because I'm a bit thick between the ears when it comes to fiddling with new applications. I've only discovered this one two days ago, and already I can make it do my bidding. That's how I inserted the Lizzer Demo Girl link above. No problem. If I can get it to work in a couple trys, after watching one quick demo video, it's easy for anyone. Trust me.

Now Twitter:

from flickr

Here is a growing phenom, that I think is a huge life hack improvement to the Internet. It's a tool that helps writers and content producers in many ways, three ways that I want to mention specifically:

1) It is a very efficient, streamlined way to communicate. It seems a bit confusing at first. That's why after discovering it, I abandoned it, and now, just this weekend in fact, I rediscovered it and am now using it as the powerful tool that it is designed to be. My only words of caution: Do NOT get addicted! For many, not me, yet, it can be like crack. Twitter is a great thing, but remember, the only difference between poison and medicine is the dose. If one gets addicted, it defeats the purpose of having a way to bounce around all the vital correspondence required of a writer in cyberspace in an efficient way, and quickly get back to the novel -or the factoid.

2) It trains you, as a blogger, to convey an idea or thought in as few words as possible. Maybe this isn't a required skill set for a print writer, but here online, people read fast. Don't write slow. I know, "slowly" don't sweat my grammar, Mr. Toast (ya jerk) http://www.theblogofinnocence.com/ 

Read that post for some good advice on how to deal with the occasional jerk that poses as a writing critic with nothing constructive to offer, and doesn't realize that negative opinions are like assholes...Everybody has one, and they all stink. Keep it concealed and don't let it double for your mouth. 

3) Because for some reason it takes many more words to criticizeand condemn than to praise and support, you will find a very friendly atmosphere at Twitter. Many people who are into the same thing are all out to help and encourage each other. Same as what we're used to here at Factoidz.com. In addition to the "followers" that you have here, Twitter followers can do wonders for reading and spreading your Factoidz content. Search "Factoidz" from Twitter, and you'll find tons of people who are doing this. I've recently added myself to those ranks, and am now kicking myself for not doing it sooner. I've found quite a few of my peeps here at Factoidz on twitter by using the "find people" tool they offer...I did that all day yesterday! I'll make it easy for those of you looking for me there, here I am, let's follow each other:

http://twitter.com/kdelik

Last ingredient in this hodge podge casserole: Tiny URL 

http://www.tiny.cc/

This little tool is essential for tweeting. Because you are only allowed 140 characters to get your point across, sometimes posting a URL a.k.a. link, can eat up a huge portion of that letter count. Simply put, and as simple to figure out how to use, Tiny will shrink a link. Check it out and see what you think. If you have no luck then you must be a dink. That's my opinion, doesn't it stink?

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