I'm Going "Micro-Blogging"

I have found it difficult to keep the content on this blog up to date, and it's always been a very eclectic, scattered blog, so I am shutting it down. I've opened an account on Twitter though, and if you'd like to be kept up to date with what is happening on my sites, with my artwork and personal projects, please follow me at: http://twitter.com/bjasmine. The twitter updates on the right will continue to update but I will not be updating this blog any further. I do have two other active blogs, http://lwypg.blogspot.com and http://astrologyca.blogspot.com/ that I will continue to update.

Ross Quinn to Return to Toronto

Those of you who know me well know my friend Ross Quinn teaches an amazing class that has changed my life for the better, brought me more self-confidence and has helped me find joy after more than 20 years of clinical depression.

Ross will soon be returning to Toronto ... and I will be part of the team that works behind the scenes to make things happen. If you would like to attend the grad reunion meeting Sunday April 19th, and talk with Ross and his team about the new class, please email me and I will send you a copy of Ross and Christine Quinn's announcement. RSVP quickly as we need to know how big a room to set up.

If you are interested in learning more about these classes, I will be announcing more details here, on Facebook and on Twitter as they become available. If you would like to join a mailing list for this class or to be notified when Ross will be available in your area, please email me.

Why I'm in Love With Twitter

An online friend of mine recently asked me what the "buzz" is about Twitter, and my answer was so long, I decided to re-post it here on my blog.

When I first started out with Twitter I didn't get it either. My first thought was "Why on earth would anyone want to know what I am doing at any given moment?" The first few weeks I had my first Twitter account, I hardly used it at all. Naturally I didn't have many followers, and it mainly sat dormant.

One day I was chatting with my T-shirt/marketing maven friend @loxly and she said something that gave me the idea that I could Twitter in addition to my blogging. That appealed to me because I often have ideas that can be expressed in short bites, but I felt silly posting short items to my blogs. It took the pressure off doing daily content. One or two sentences a day I can handle! This was a big feature for me as an artist - I never have much to say about my art. I find it hard to write some long-winded treatise on the meaning behind a given piece, most times I paint or draw what comes to me, I don't have a conscious "message" in mind. So Twitter is the right length to announce a new
piece.


Then I started getting idea for my different sites, and again it was @loxly that triggered more creativity. She said (paraphrasing) that you should strive to have a Twitter account for every web page that you manage. I now have many Twitter accounts - not quite one for every web page, but for pages where I can create daily (or at least regular) content easily:

| @BJasmine | @Astrology_ca | @NiagaraSpirit | @DailyTarot| @LWYPG | @Hug_Bug | @NoBullies |

The strange part is that the @BJasmine account is the most popular, and it is the one with the least structure. I use it to announce my new artwork, new sites, t-shirt designs, but I mostly just interact with other Twitter users there. I created @Hug_Bug as kind of a social networking experiment - I wanted to be a little more cutting edge or blunt with it than I feel free to be as an artist, to get into political and social discussions with it. I also wanted a "placeholder" for following those who don't generally follow back (following too many others can get you in trouble with Twitter, they put a cap on how many followers you can have otherwise). The other accounts are (or will be) all used to generate content that I display on my sites with a Twitter Widget. I can also easily license or give permission for other webmasters to post my Twitter feeds (if you would like to display any of my Twitter feeds on your sites somewhere where you could use some free content, let me know and I'll send you the code).

Twitter has made it much easier for me to create new daily content for my sites without killing myself. With this many accounts it can take from a half hour to 2 hours a day, which I generally slip in between other projects.

It's too soon for me to say whether my Twitter sites are having a great deal of impact on my web traffic. Why do I think it's important to have a strong presence on Twitter? The critical mass, the growth of the Twitter phenomena and a rumor floating about that they plan to create a search engine based on Tweets that I think has the potential to be a serious alternative to Google someday.
The idea is a search engine that is based on easily measurable buzz. So if you want to be in a buzzing category, you'll have to be on Twitter.

Now I tweet every article, every update to my sites, I don't have to maintain a mailing list and don't have to worry about emails going bye-bye to anti-spam blacklists ... In the three or so weeks I have been playing seriously with @BJasmine I am up more than 700 followers. I got my friend Ross Quinn (@Keynote_) on it and he hardly ever Tweets, and he's beating the pants off me, he's up over 1,000! I may still do the occasional mailout, but for the most-part, I just Tweet. I have 20 names on the mailing list after beating on people to sign up for months ... in 3 weeks almost 600 followers on Twitter. At that rate of growth to heck with email.

The final reason I love it is it is just plain fun. It's a bit like the old BBS chat-room days only I don't have to be there all the time, I can come and go as I please. The conversation is still there for me when I get back and I can pick up where I left off.

Random Review: Blaze Audio Power Record

As many of you know I am a big fan of a certain nightly radio show. I have often wanted to record certain shows (for my own legal listening pleasure only of course), but I live in an area where AM radio reception is pathetic at best. My local radio station has a nice juicy live online feed, but my computer didn't seem to allow me to record direct from Internet radio. I was poking around for a solution to that problem when I stumbled across a delightful little shareware program that not only allows me to record my favorite show, but it comes with a built in timer, so I can finally get to sleep at a decent hour while the show is automatically recorded for me.

Blaze Audio Power Record records straight to MP3, saving hard drive space and time in converting. You can record from a wide range of online audio sources, and can also record to WAV or WMA. I was able to record from YouTube videos, from computer games and my applications. The purchase process and installation were smooth and simple and the program is extremely easy to use.

As for that AM Radio show that I mentioned ... I really do dearly love Coast to Coast AM ... but would someone please tell George Noory to lighten up a bit on the end of the world topics? It seems like every 3 out of 5 shows they have someone coming on to bang the drums of negativity, and half the time someone has their own pet theory about the identity of the antichrist (sigh). The latest one (and the most bizarre) postulates that Prince William is a clone of Jesus taken from the Shroud of Turin (No ... I'm afraid I am not making that up). It seems lately that the only way you get on Coast is to make a hideous apocalyptic prediction (ideally a series of them). It's sad because in many ways Coast is one of the better shows in alternative media. I don't expect every guest to be Wayne Dyer or Deepak Choprah, but it would be nice to hear from some positive people a bit more often.

Brandi’s Random Blog

Brandi’s Random Blog

I can’t make up my mind where I want to focus this blog. Like everything else in my life I have too many interests to stick to one theme, and not enough time to do proper justice to them all. So I figure if this blog doesn’t make any sense, it doesn’t matter. Most of you come in from Google searches anyway. So I’m just going random on you. I’ll throw in some random reviews, random thoughts, random articles and see what sticks. Mainly I’ll find stuff to talk about that’s somehow related to one of my web sites or the other, fair enough?

Random Review: ColdHeat

This little doo-dad used to get advertised on TV a lot. Nice idea on the surface, a soldering iron that doesn’t heat up. Expect it doesn’t heat up.

ColdHeat is a cordless soldering iron (four “AA” non-rechargeable alkaline batteries not included) that is only supposed to heat up when it touches metal or solder. The ceramic tip completes an electrical arc, heats up super-fast then cools down again super-fast so the user can’t get burned. Nice idea in theory, I am truly sick of blisters and burn marks in my workbench.

In practice the one I bought simply didn’t work. The ceramic tip is extremely delicate, mine broke the first few minutes of my poking it into the solder, which never heated up enough to melt. I know the device was supposedly functioning only because the light turned on, and I could see sparks at the tip when I touched it to the solder.

I have noticed that the company isn’t advertising on TV anymore and their web site says all their products except for a seat cushion are unavailable. The most recent press release about their soldering irons is dated 2005. You can buy them on Amazon.com … they have them in stock there. But check out the product reviews there before you buy. If you have better luck with this device than I did, please tell everyone in the comments what I did wrong (just keep it polite, no spam, thanks). I’m going back to Canadian Tire to get me a real soldering iron. I’ll just have to live with a few blisters.

Notice Your Words - Guest Blogger Danielle Daost of GlobalPsychics.com

In Your Nots?
by Guest Blogger Danielle Daost of GlobalPsychics.com

Every once in awhile I run into a client who just doesn't want to believe that anything good could happen to them. They feel so victimized by the circumstances of their lives that they now believe that can't attract anything good to them. Whether in love, career or money they feel defeated, certain that the next disappointment is just around the corner.

When we get caught up in our "nots", life can be one long disappointment.

We get what we focus on. So when we focus on what is lacking, what we are not, life affirms our belief, that is the law of attraction in action.

The trouble is that life gets in the way of noticing when we are in our nots. We get so busy with so many activities that we are distracted from recognizing what we have really been thinking and feeling - and that we've been been thinking badly about ourselves.

One of the wonderful ways to tune into what is really driving us, to notice when we are stuck in our nots, is to begin paying attention to the words we use.

Words have power, so when we notice what is coming out of our mouths, and also what thoughts are flying through our minds, we can get a sense of where we have been tripping ourselves up, where our thoughts are in conflict with our goals. Then we can start reframing the "nots" into more positive life-affirming words… words that have the power to move us forward.

If you've been feeling stuck or in something of a slump, whether in romance or in business, do yourself a favour, keep a journal of your "not" thoughts for a week, and practice changing them. For example, note the times that you look in the mirror and the words "I’m too fat" or "my hair is a mess" fly through your mind. Then grab onto those thoughts and reframe them "I am getting better and better every day, in every way", or "I have a beautiful smile".

If you are diligent in this task, by the end of the week, you will find that you have a shockingly long list of "nots". You will probably be quite surprised that your thoughts are far more negative than you realized…. and what's more important, if you found uplifting language to replace your nots, chances are you've had a number of wonderful surprises as the week progresses.

Changing your thoughts, can change your life. Noticing your nots, replacing them with "yes" words can be a life-changing exercise. It is one of the first and most important steps in getting the Law of Attraction working for you.

More on the power of words here.

Bullying harms kids' mental health

As many of you know, one of my personal causes is the bullying movement. I believe that bullying is a form of peer abuse, it is an epidemic, and we desperately need to start doing something about this scourage before we create another generation of ruined childhoods. So when an article entitled "Bullying harms kids' mental health" caught my attention, my first reaction was "Captain Obvious strikes again".

I mean ... who needs another study to prove that constant abuse isn't good for children?

"Among identical twin pairs in which one experienced bullying between the ages of 7 and 9 and the other did not, the bullied twin was significantly more likely to have symptoms of internalizing problems."

Okay. So the question becomes "What are we going to DO about it?" While we study the problem to death, children are literally dying in our school rooms. What we need is a concerted effort to address the problem.

Classes like The Virtues Project and Roots of Empathy are available and have shown some success at lowering the levels of bullying in schools, yet it seems scientists and educators still need convincing that bullying is a bad thing. Why is this? Can it be there is some greater force at work in our collective psyche than the well-being of our kids?

I have thought about this a lot, and I do believe there are forces of that sort in play. It comes down to tribal thinking. There is a pervasive and perniscious idea in our collective mind that still believes it is necessary to abuse any child who is different, to beat them into a model of conformity that suits the model of "normalcy" currently in vogue. Bullies are useful to teachers who lack the time, talent, or resources to guide children into that model.

Bullied children fit specific character patterns. There is the "fat/skinny kid", the "hyperactive kid", the "overly bright kid" and the "wounded kid", to name a few. Hyperactive and overly bright, sensitive children may face bullying not only from peers but from teachers and school administrators as well, as they are seen as a drain on school resources and are challenging for teachers to manage. They become the class "scapegoat". Children with health, weight and disability issues are also frequently abused by peers, often with the acceptance and tacit support of teachers and school administrators. It all comes down to conformity.

I don't know of any studies addressing the root causes of bullying, and while I would be glad to see that happen, I would much prefer we start to sink some money into addressing the problem where it grows. It's time we stopped tolerating peer abuse, at any age.