Well the other day Google released Picasa version 3 which has a pretty sweet feature, which allows you to dump a bunch of photos into a movie… I thought this was cool but played with it, and could not get it anywhere fast enough to where I wanted. Then Graywolf told me about the timelapse setting and I was "off to the races".

It took me a few attempts to get things right, and I still think a few parts are off… mainly the beginning and end… but it is a start.

I searched around the interweb and found pretty much free public use music at Mus Open. So I added that, adjusted the frames per second in Picassa, and exported it when it was a good length.

I have roughly 21,000 other digital photos spanning from 1998 to the present, and would like to do something with all of them… so if nothing else this is a start.

You can either watch it in the right hand column or directly on youtube by following this link, or on VIMEO (recommended) with this link.

Let me know what you think.

The Country Club Steakhouse at Wynn Review

The Country Club Steakhouse - Excellent service, great appetizer, salad was blah, good wine selection, steak was over cooked, the environment was a bit noisy, and the televisions were distracting. Without the TV’s this would have been much more enjoyable experience. Had the New York strip.

I really expected more out of this place. It was the first restaurant I went to on this trip and I spent a ton of money and got a mediocre meal. I have had better steaks at places half the price. I guess part of the “charm” of this place it is at the Wynn, which if you ask me is a pretty pretentious, excessive and overpriced Casino. Maybe I am cheap, thrifty or have a better head on my shoulders… but I would not recommend wasting the money here.

Envy Steak House Review

Envy Steakhouse @ Renaissance – very nice setting, good wine selection, good salad, excellent sides, excellent steak, seemed understaffed compared to the other steakhouses I went to. Steak was cooked perfectly. 16 oz bone in fillet, which was a new treat for me. Not sure if I have ever had a bone in filet before. It allowed the steak to retain more juice and flavor, plus it was more of a reasonable size than a porterhouse.
The fries here were insanely good. I think they were fries with truffle oil on them, something like that. They were perfectly cooked, seasoned perfectly as well, and a nice crispness to them.

When I mention that it seemed under staffed, we had one waitor for a table of 12 or so. He did do a fine job handling the whole thing, but some of the nice places I have been to seem to work in teams and more or less attack a table with attentiveness. They waiter did a great job, don’t get me wrong, but for 12 people I would think maybe 2 or 3 should tag team it.

I think like any steakhouse in Vegas the prices are a bit inflated. I was quite happy with this meal, and did not have to find my way through a casino to get here. I would defiantly recommend this restaurant or hotel to anyone who is going to Las Vegas for a conference at the convention center and has no interest in gambling.

Del Frisco's Las Vegas Review

Del Frisco’s Double Eagle Steakhouse – amazing service, perfect cocktails from the bar, excellent wine list, nice atmosphere, excellent seafood (shrimp starter and crab cake), 8oz fillet. 18oz was the smallest lobster, which we all thought was ridiculous.

We had a table of maybe 9 or 10 guys head out to this place. The staff was super friendly and we had a team handle the table. They were a bit less “professional” than your normal upscale restaurant, but provided some good fun and entertainment with us. We got into some jokes and one of the guys pulled the “do you have any ketchup” routine for the excellent steaks that were served.

The cocktails at Del Frisco’s were PERFECT. The guy next to me ordered a Vodka Gimlet and they made it with fresh squeezed lime juice. It was the perfect strength. I wish I would have ordered that instead of my Makers and Ginger.

There was a huge group of hungry guys and we tried a variety of appetizers. We got a few shrimp starters which contained 3 types of shrimp. This was great. And then a few orders of crab cakes. These crab cakes were huge and had large chunks of crab in them. I would say the best crab cakes I have ever eaten.

When it came to the steak I went with fillet because I was not hungry enough to handle a porterhouse. The steak was delicious. One of the better steaks I have ever eaten.

As we were leaving we got to see the “James Bond Wine Rack” which is some crazy table that opens up into a wine cellar and then closes.

I would totally recommend Del Frisco’s to anyone needing to take a group out, or to anyone who loves a great meal and can afford this upscale restaurant.

Hugo's Cellar Review

Hugo’s Cellar – shitty casino, dark and dirty. Awesome wine selection, excellent salad cart, good bread, huge portions, great pieces of meat, lacks creamed spinach. Excellent service.

I did not know what to expect when I went to Hugos Cellar, but was not expecting much when I had to go to the old strip and through one of these dark and seedy casinos. Once you go down to the basement you are greeted by friendly staff.

The service here was great. The atmosphere was more “old school” and seedy, but still enjoyable. The prices were reasonable and the food was delicious.

The wine selection was great and there was an on staff sommelier. We had a “wine expert” at the table, and he and the sommelier discussed various things that were over my head. We ended up getting 2 or 3 excellent bottles of wine and champagne to start.

After you order the waiter comes around with this salad cart which is like a portable salad bar and makes a great salad for you right at the table. One of the people at the table was allergic to shellfish and he made sure, that nothing he touched ever touched a shrimp.

By this point of my trip I was “steaked out” and had to switch up. I switched to a prime rib. (c: The prime rib was terrific. It pretty much could have been cut with a fork, and was served with a delicious sauce and horseradish.

The highlight of this meal was when we got the bill. We all covered the organizer of this event, and had way more than enough wine. The bill was less than half of what I spent the other nights, and the food was terrific.

I would defiantly recommend Hugo’s Cellar to anyone who loves a great steak, and is will to venture out to the old strip. The bonus on this is that you can save a bunch of money, have a great meal and terrific wine, excellent service, all at a fraction of the price of one the places on the strip. You just need to be willing to compromise on the location and the atmosphere a bit.

CraftSteak Steak House @ MGM Grand Las Vegas Review

I did not go to Craft Steak on this last trip, but I did a few years ago, and was blown away by the meal. CraftSteak is a bit gimmicy in that they serve “Kobe Beef”. Due to regulations, it is not 100% real Kobe beef, but is still damn good.

I treated a friend to dinner here and we decided to get the taster menu which was amazing.

The quality of food was superb, and the variety and portions were great. I think between us we got 2 or 3 small appetizers, 3 steaks, numerous sides, and a variety of homemade ice creams for desert. There was even some in between course palette cleansers that were served.

The service here was awesome. Our waiter was this older guy who had a crazy accent. He sounded like a vampire, and was just brilliant. He saw that we were 2 younger dudes and freshed up his pitch with some funny slang words which made the meal that much better.

He said the mashed potatoes were “ridiculous” and he was not mistaken. It was like an equal mix of cream and potato and was INTENSE. They were great. The steaks were terrific. The meat is extremely tender and flavorful. The steaks seemed to have been oozing “goodness” out of them. Juice galore. We got three steak cuts, a New York Strip, a Fillet, and one other served with the tasting menu. My only regret was not getting the Steak Tartar as the suggested first course. The waiter switched to a Foie Gras since we were pussies when it came to eating raw meat.

CraftSteak IS expensive, but it is a memorable meal and will let you get in some “Kobe Beef” which will be one of the most flavorful tender cuts of meat you have ever eaten. I would go here again, and take some friends here to pop their “Kobe” cherry.

Where is your favorite steakhouse in Vegas? While you are there, you may also want to go shoot some machine guns!

I replaced my washer and dryer because those were hunks of crap, and it made this insanely loud squeaking noise. I called a repair guy, it cost me $75 to tell me it was a $900 repair on a $800 washer/dryer stack unit. Hmmmm. Anyhow so I opted for one that is pretty much the bees knees and my clothes have never been cleaner.

I was thinking I was going to need to replace my dishwasher in much the same fashion. It appeared to leave dishes, silverware, and etc just kind blah, and not really clean.

The other day my sister hooked me up with some METHOD "smarty dish" dishwasher detergent pellet things, and they fucking rule. Prior to this, I was "being green" and was using Seventh Generation Automatic Dishwashing Gel, and it was total crap. Like I mentioned before that stuff left a weird grossness on everything in the dishwasher. These METHOD things my my shit shine.

Here are some reviews of "green cleaning products" that I have used so far:

Method Smarty Dish Dishwasher Detergent: THE BEES KNEES. Makes your dishes and silverwear shine, may add life to an older dishwasher.

Seventh Generation Automatic Dishwashing Gel: The BEES Arsehole. This stuff sucks. Do not get it!

Method Tub and Tile Spray - Eucalyptus mint scent - This stuff seems to clean well, but it smells fricking awesome

Method All Surface Cleaning Spray - Cucumber - Again seems to clean well and smells awesome

So so far a big thumbs up to the Method cleaning products that are sold at Target… not sure if they are made by target… but I like them. Take my money target, make my house smell nice.

Have you used any of these products? What are your thoughts?

It is actually much older then that, as I was blogging, before there were blogs. I used to use this service that was somewhat like live journal, but even more low brow. For some reason I am thinking it was on an .ru server… they had 2 services, one was a journal/blog like system the other was a guestbook. I swore I made a backup of all of those from somewhere but I am not sure if I will ever find it.

I checked the whois, and that is showing 2000 as the registration date, but I am pretty sure I had the domain in 96 or 97. Oh the good ol days.

Anyhow after talking to rae about some new template/theme she is using on wordpress I figured it was time to give it an upgrade.

*God Science Willing*, this weekend I will have a brand spanking new look and feel to the site… with more features than ever.

PS - if you notice anything wacky on the site, please let me know so I can fix it!

I put no script back on my firefox install just so I could block Google Analytics.

It seems like 80% of the websites I go to have Analytics installed on it (even I use it on this hunk of shit site), so they are getting a massive amount of browsing data for all of us assholes who use gmail and what not… so I say balls to them. Let them track me another way… which may actually be through cookies on sites using analytics… not really sure how it works, but I would love to hear a way to block them from obtaining my browsing data completely.

I am fine with them gathering my data from their own sites, but 3rd parties I am bit paranoid about.

I saw an interesting presentation at Defcon this last week which pretty much proved that Google does not give a fuck about the well being of their users. It was done by a guy named RSNAKE, who I have never heard of (not surprising, since I am not a "hacker"), but he did one hell of a presentation. It was actually awesome.

Worth checking out his work… here is a link to one of the issues with gmodules and the exploits. And an article about how Google is ranked the worst in privacy.

It turns out RSNAKE is the equivalent of Aaron Wall / SEOBOOK, but in the Hacker/security community instead of the marketing side of things. I think the 2 of them should talk.

Anyhow it seems as Google is getting more powerful with more reach each day. Them "merging" with Yahoo on the advertising side of things is some pretty scary shit, and it will be interesting to see how that plays out. If I had to guess, there will be some heavy outside intervention to prevent that from happening.

Anyhow, I hope it does not happen, and either MSFT buys them, or Jerry Yang gets shot, and the company is run by someone who is less of an asshole.

I am hoping someone can spider the interweb and see what percent of sites are running Google Analytics, so I can properly shit myself when I see the usage data. It would be nice to scan the top 100,000 Alexa sites and see who is sharing data with the BIG G.

Anyhow, that is all. Are you scared of Google? I am!

* Actually I love you Google. You make me money day in and day out. You have the best advertising platform out there. Even though you are doing your best to make me pay more per click, I am okay with that. You deliver real users, and lots of them. Keep up the good work.

Designer Whey Review - This was probably the first protein that I have purchased, and I think it was a pretty solid choice. Designer Whey mixes really well and has a middle of the road flavor in regards to sweetness. Like I mentioned it seems to mix really well. I have used a hand blender, a plastic shake container, as well as one of those 2 AA battery powered mini whisk things and it has blended pretty "chunk free" every time.

The Flavors I have tried are just the basics, chocolate and vanilla. I was happy with both, but I prefer chocolate because I can easily mix that into coffee and it tastes great.

I have gotten Designer Whey both from the internet and retail stores. One of the good things about Designer Whey is that it is easy to get. You can buy it at many grocery stores, or pretty much any vitamin/med shop online. I have purchased it at Trader Joes, Jewel / Osco and the The Vitamin Shoppe. It comes in many sizes and I would recommend the 1 pound container to start and see if you like it. I have read that it can give you some "stomach issues" but I have never experienced such side effects. All in all I would recommend this to anyone who is looking to buy some protein.

Muscle Milk Protein Review - I purchased Vanilla Muscle Milk from Nice Muscle.com and was really happy with the shipping and price point…the product however was a bit too sweet for my liking. I tried the vanilla flavor and it is way way way too sweet. It has a really sharp sweetness to it, which overpowers the protein in my mind. On the plus side, it it REALLY fluffy in the container and mixes beautifully. I have never had a lump in my handheld plastic shaker. One thing I did notice was a touch of grittiness near the bottom of the shaken container though. Not exactly sure what this is… might be the fiber within it?

When you look at the ingredients/nutritional value, it has quite a high amount of both fat and carbs, so to me that is not an ideal protein, and I will try and use another brand as my main source. Post workout I think it would be fine, but I would never take the stuff before bed, like they recommend.

Costco Brand Premium Protein Review - I am not 100% who actually makes this protein but I thought it was pretty good. It contained a variety of protein sources, whey, milk and soy I believe. It came in a 5 lb sack, and was somewhat expensive (35$), which I think is high for Costco. I tried the chocolate, and thought the flavor was good. It was pretty sweet, but not over powering. The things I did not like were the bag it came in… it never seemed to close properly so I used a different container. The other beef I had with it, were that it seemed really hard to mix. It would chunk up pretty quickly and those chunks would never get dissolved. I tried all of my mixing methods and they all seemed to stay a little bit chunky. Other then that I would buy this again, since it tasted pretty good, and had low fat & carbs.

All the Whey - Whey Protein Isolate Review - Whey Protein Isolate just came in today, and review will be coming soon.

I have been busy, most of my time is spent working, and I have been fitting in working out.

I have been doing Russian Pullup training (pdf download), which has no increased my maximum reps for pullups… which is awesome. I did one of my circuits yesterday and whipped through the pullups much easier than before. Pushups were a week point. Squats were actually pretty strong. I have been doing dead lifts, and "thrusters" which both work the legs and ass, and obviously would help with squats.

So it looks like the next couple weeks I need to work on my pushups, keep doing pullups, and keep doing deadlifts, thrusters, squats and such.

At the end of the month I am going to Ireland for a wedding, and will not have a pullup bar, so for that week, maybe I will just hammer pecs and do chest/pushup routines. When did I become obsessed with working out/fitness?

At what point will I no longer be fat?

When I first got my pull up bar, I was lucky if I could do one or two SLOPPY pullups. I am now up to 8 clean and controlled ones.

I am still around the same capacity for pushups, but my ability to do dips has increased quite a bunch.

My legs are much stronger and trimmer then they were before and I can do full movement squats, with 60lbs w/out a problem, and then throw that into a thruster (shoulder press).

Crossfit, bartendazzzzzzz, and bodyweight culture have been very helpful! Not to mention my friend Dan who has hooked me up with some nutritional info and Ethan who got me started on the routines… Crossfit calls it Cindy.

These are the results: http://twitter.com/wertrose … just kidding, that was still in my clipboard.

I actually read these before I sent them and wrote the descriptions myself. I have not done link building for a while so it was a really good refresher course for me. Also rereading Bretts 26 steps was a good idea. He was pretty solid on those fundamentals. Much of the shit I have done over the last few years was short lived and destructive… normal high risk/high return stuff. It have been a good few years, but if I was building quality long term sites I would be in a better place today (c:

I would say that and the "link building secrets" stuck with me the most… the part on bukkake in that is brilliant, and enough to get the juices flowing (pun not intended) on new ideas.

Rae Said the Following:

1. Overview of why links matter (http://www.sugarrae.com/why-links-matter-so-simple-a-monkey-could-understand-it/)
2. Overview on how to build a quality site
   (http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum3/2010.htm )
3. Interview with 5 link “Experts”
   (http://www.sugarrae.com/five-link-development-experts-a-group-interview/)
4. Interview with 11 link “Experts”
   (http://www.sugarrae.com/11-experts-on-link-development-speak/)
5. Raes Link Building presentations from pubcon (http://www.sugarrae.com/pubcon-2007-download-the-presentations/)
6. Why cracking down on paid links is stupid/impossible (http://www.sugarrae.com/google-doesnt-know-the-face-of-evil/)
7. More demystifying of the link buying scare (http://www.sugarrae.com/why-google-shouldnt-penalize-me-for-their-incompetence)

Aaron Said to check out these:

1. SEO / Link Building for Bloggers
   (http://www.seobook.com/bloggers)
2. Link Baiting Strategies
   (http://www.seobook.com/archives/001936.shtml)
3. 101 link Building Tips
   (http://www.seobook.com/archives/001792.shtml)
4. A big list of “link building secrets” some of these are actually funny. A bunch are creative- (http://www.polepositionmarketing.com/seo-sem/link-building-secrets/index.php)
5. Overview of Trustrank
   (http://www.seobook.com/archives/000661.shtml)
6. Aaron also recommended Raes #3 and #4 from above, so you know those are quality.

Martijn recommended these links:

1. The fundamentals of Link Building
   (http://www.audettemedia.com/blog/link-building-fundamentals)
2. Why Jim enjoys building links and talks about link building VS baiting
   (http://www.jimboykin.com/expert-link-building-can-be-fun/)

Still waiting to hear back from Todd on this (:

Anyone else have any great resources to teach a person new to the industry link building basics and then on to advanced tactics?

Werty on Twitter 

Just a quick little update.

• I have been working out a ton. Reader/s, BUY yourself a pullup bar!
• I have been working a ton. Needs a vacation.
• I finally am done with taxes and stressful leftover shit from my disaster of a move.
• I bought a grill and some patio furniture (c:
• Grilling RULES.
• Living in a condo is the worst thing ever. Better than being homeless however. Also not really that bad, but lots of things that fill me with rage.
• I have gotten sick of working so much and actually turn my computer off on the weekends now
• I still enjoy drinking…some may say too much
• Macs are actually kind of cool and work pretty well, BUT make for expensive dvd players.
• It is good to hang out with friends
• Family can be very interesting
• Chicago can actually be nice, weather wise, but when it warms up the CRAZIES come out.
• oh and we have earthquakes now?