I'm using the power of the pen to located a flash designer that can help me fulfill a quirky task. See, I'm no flash designer. Not at all. I do need one to make a SWF for me, the details of which are a little odd.

Specs

We need a picture of an animated, stylized monkey in a resizable window no smaller than 100x100 and needing to scale to 500x500.

The cursor, when hovered on the SWF, should appear as a boxing glove and when the mouse button is clicked, should punch the monkey in the face from whatever logical angle relative to the mouse cursor position and the monkey. The monkey should react as appropriate, meaning if punched from the left, the monkey should absorb the blow and move to the right.

I do want to stress the animated nature of this monkey and of the interactions. We aren't looking for realism, rather sophmoric humor.

Bonus points if the monkey takes on visual damage like a black eye, bloody nose or other results of cursor violence.

This gig does pay a fee to the designer and is of low budget, ideally suited for someone who thinks this might be a fun project (or who hates monkeys). Please send me your initial thoughts with a price range and some samples.

Note: No monkeys were harmed in the making of this post

I started a blog so I could share interesting stuff I learned with others. This altruistic motive (and the thousands of adoring fans, of course) drive me to write, rewrite, edit, learn and otherwise put in work for more blogging. If there is a downside to blogging, it is comment spam.

Blog Comments themselves are wonderful outlets to continue the conversation and let others take part. Maybe some agree, maybe they disagree, maybe they have some important factual correction, Blog Comments are the blog authors way of allowing others to take part and contribute.

Blog Comment Spam is when a person or organization adds a comment to a blog article for the sole purpose of promoting some unrelated product or service. As a blog author, Blog Comment Spam on my blog feels like vandalism. Like some snot-nosed kid spray painted their name on the side of my house. In real life, if I caught the snot-nosed kid spray painting on my house, I'm turn him into a bloody-nosed kid in a New York Minute, KnowWhatIMeanVern?

I've got a number of comment spam protections on my blog and they work really well. The only thing I can do at this point to trim the spam submissions would be to block entire continents. A bit drastic, but I've definitely considered it. I mean, I know China has over a billion people, but do any of them actually read this blog?

These days, the only comment spam I actually get is promoting WoW. Apparently, people care about this video game so much they'll spend real money to get fake money so they can buy fake things for their fake character. I thought we lived in a materialistic society, but to contemplate what it means to have an entire industry around playing a video game to get fake money to sell to real people for real money so they can by fake things for their fake characters, is absolutely mind-blowing.

As an entrepreneur, I've hatched plenty of money making ventures. Had I thought about selling fake, electronic gold for real money, I'd have laughed myself out of the room. Yet, there are legions of people who troll around the Internet looking for blogs to vandalize to promote their WoW Gold.

For the record, I'll delete immediately any blog spam that happens to get through my layers of protection. So if you sell WoW gold, I recommend you get a life, a real job and get off this blog.

Mark Mandel turned me on to this flash game. I don't usually play games at all, but this one has my interest.

The way it works is you can create a character and pit your character against other characters in fights. The fights are completely automated so there is no skill involved. It is strangely entertaining though.

The character can only fight a few times per day before the character has to rest. That means as far as time wasters go, this one is minimal, only requiring 5 minutes per day or less.

Wanna try it? Jump in the ring! If you don't like it, I'll refund your money. ( LOL just kidding, it doesn't cost anything )

Through an accident, I blame the dog for this one, my entire documents folder got deleted this morning. To compound the issue, the folder was 'too big' for the wimpy Recycle Bin, so the files were permanently deleted. When I realized what had happened, I nearly went into shock.

Customer documentation, contracts, important pictures of aforementioned dog, all down the drain. I'm definitely going to have a bad day now...I thought.

After normal breathing resumed, I learned 2 things.

• System Restore does not help unrecover files
• I really should have backed up my computer

I'm calmly writing this blog post because I found Free Undelete by Recoveronix Ltd. Free Undelete will look for deleted files and directories and restore them to their former glory. Brilliantly simple to use, and priced at $0 for personal use, I am a fan for life.

Recoveronix Ltd has an entire suite of recovery products like:

• Recover Corrupted Word Document
• Repairs corrupted Excel spreadsheets (.xls, .xla).
• Repairs corrupted Outlook mailboxes (.pst). The program also supports Exchange Offline Storage Files (.ost).
• Undeletes files from Outlook mailboxes. Recovery of messages removed from Deleted Items folder is supported for most occasions, but cannot be guaranteed.
• Repairs corrupted MySQL databases (.myd, .myi).

  Supported MySQL versions: 5.x, 4.x, 3.x, 2.x and 1.x

• Repairs corrupted Photoshop drawings (.pdd, .psd).

  Supported Photoshop versions: CS, 7.x, 6.x, 5.x, 4.x and 3.x

• Repairs corrupted PDF documents (.pdf).

  Supported are all PDF versions.

Get familiar with this list. I know grad students that would give their right arm to get back a mistakenly deleted thesis.

Important!! Read This!!

If you are furiously downloading Free Undelete right now to recover files of your own, pay attention to the following tips from the FreeUndelete folks:

Proper Usage Techniques

A deleted file is essentially an area on disk designated as free and ready to accept data (such as contents of some other file). Luckily, unless the area has already been overwritten, it still holds the contents of the deleted file. Due to this fact it is possible to undelete files.

This fact also dictates the following procedure for using FreeUndelete:

1. Stop any activity on the disk you are going to undelete files from! Remember that writing to that disk can damage the contents of the deleted files. Examples of disastrous activity include: copying files to the disk, installing programs there or running programs that use the disk as their swap media.
2. Download and install FreeUndelete. Whenever possible, save the setup executable and install the program to a disk that does not hold files you need to undelete.
3. Run and use FreeUndelete.

As I've gotten older, and gotten into the habit of working more hours, I'd become somewhat used to a pain in my back. This specific pain, inflammation rather, was located just under my right shoulder blade and would surface around mid-day. As I normally work 10-12 hours a day, the back pain impacted my ability to focus and to enjoy my work fully. I ended up casting a naughty glance at my office chair (Office Depot 79$ special), thinking it could possibly be contributing to the problem. After poking around at the Herman Miller Aeron chairs, I couldn't bring myself to spend over $1,000 for a chair that might or might not help me out.

After even more research, I found a chair called Ergohuman ME7ERG Mesh High Back Chair. Since it was half the price of the Aeron and was listed on a site claiming to have "Chairs professionally selected by certified Ergonomists", I simply had to have one.

And what did you think about it?

To be blunt, this chair cleared up my back problems. Within less than a week of having it, I had less pain, better focus and was more comfortable working than I had ever been. Quite possibly, the $500 I spent has delivered the most bang for the buck of ANYTHING I have in my home office.

Where did you by it?

I bought this chair from http://www.ergonomicchairpro.com, mostly because they had an eBay special for $500 with free shipping. They offer similar deals on their website right now, so don't worry about searching around.

How long did it take to receive?

The chair showed up in a few days. Considering how large the package is, and the Free shipping, I thought it would take much longer.

How was the Installation?

Putting the chair together took me about 15 minutes. All the necessary tools were provided in the package for me. They even included some extra screws, which I kept.

How was the Quality?

This chair is seriously built. Some chairs are cheap plastic and will wear out soon. The Ergohuman ME7ERG is built with a heavy steel base and composite frame. I've used this chair every day for a year now and there is no sign of wear. It is very comfortable and adjusts in a number of manners for the best fit.

Seriously? No Back Pain?

I have not had a recurrence of the back pain at all since I've been working in this chair. Even when working in lengthy spurts of 60-80 hours, no back pain.

How much money do you get from selling these chairs?

I don't make a single nickel from selling these chairs. Frankly, at DataCurl, we do just fine providing high-quality consulting and applications to the Health and Wellness industry that we don't need to shill chairs for pennies. You don't see any ads on this blog do you?

In closing, if you have back pain from working at a computer all day long, you owe it to yourself to invest in a proper chair. Most people have vehicles that cost between $10-50k which are driven less than an hour a day. A quality work chair is used between 6-12 hours a day, so it is worth the extra money to get a quality chair designed around human beings. If you want one of these chairs, go check out Ergonomic Chair Pro and get one today.

Today on Twitter...

PeterBell Garrhh - my helicopter is broke - got to take a van to Newark

And I thought I had problems in my life...

Comment spam is annoying. Since I sit well below the A-List blogger rung, it isn't my biggest problem in the world. It is just annoying.

The super fine blogware I use has a feature for blocking IP addresses. Lately I have been updating this list with IPs from comment spammers. 90% of these IP addresses originate from China. I'm considering blocking the entire class A IP block for China. If you are a legit visitor who cares about what I write, leave me a comment and tell me how bad of an idea that is.

I'm willing to share my IP list with others. Here is the list as of May 28, 2008:

[More]

According to the BBC, Warner music is now making DRM-Free music tracks available on Amazon.com. This makes me happy because I have put off purchasing a lot of music due to the DRM debacle.

Simply put, I don't want to be arbitrarily restricted in my usage of property I've bought and paid for. Imagine the response from Warner if I tried to dictate how they can spend money I paid to them?

"Warner, Purchase a new potted plant and place it in the corporate Headquarters. You will pick the dead leaves from aforementioned plant. You will not water it twice on even numbered days...."

So cheers to Warner. May you make more money as a result of your decision.

I am pricing laptops after the Dell C640 died Monday night. I want a the new Mac hardware with Leopard on it. So far, there have been various delays and with the Dell finally going to that great /dev/null in the sky, I believe my hand is forced.

I own a very fine HP laptop and would like another. The problem being HP only offers Vista on their new hardware and I refuse to be a Vista Owner. (If you care why, listen to episodes 73-77 on the SecurityNow podcast. Very enlightening stuff.) Because of my preference, I am limited to the following Laptops:

• Vostro 1000
• Vostro 1500
• Latitude D520
• Latitude D531

As a Red-Blooded Card-Carrying Capitalist, I am offended to be limited to 4 laptop models. We live in a 'Free Market' Society. The last time I checked, there were 4 Major Laptop vendors and a smattering of lesser known/quality manufacturers. Surely one of them (preferrably HP) can offer XP on their computers.

So after swimming through the injustices and trade offs, I finally select a laptop, configure it to my satisfaction and begin selecting the support options. I normally decline support, but Dell offered a very interesting deal:

So I get Three Years Support for essentially $100? Lemme check the fine print:

So they will send me a coupon for 70$ off my next purchase. It will take 4-6 weeks after my order ships. This $70 coupon expires 120 days from "date of eligible system purchase".

I am no expert in accounting, but if there are 10 days between the date of the system purchase and 28-42 days required for arrival of said coupon, there will be somewhere between 68 - 82 days to use the coupon. Man, gotta love fine print.

So for now, I am going to put away the credit card, cancel my $1,400 order from Dell and keep it just me, the HP, the old MacBook, and my new Coaster, the Dell C640. There has to be a better way. I appreciate all advice on the topic.

If you asked, I would say I like Gmail a lot. However, I have been yelling at it lately because it is missing some vital features.

Missing Feature 1:

The ability to instantly mark a single email as read. I do not like unread email in my box. I am happy when I see 'Gmail Inbox'. I do not like 'Gmail Inbox(23)' even if I know those 23 emails are garbage. Call me neurotic if you must.

To mark email unread, you can open it, which takes much longer than I want to invest, or you can use the drop down command. The drop down command requires clicking the tiny checkbox on the left, going to the drop down box and selecting 'Mark Read'. Sometimes, I accidently select Mark Unread. Or for more fun, 'Add Star'.

Solution: Add a 'Mark Read' button

I'd be happy to trade either my 'Archive' or 'Mark Spam' button for it. I will settle for a context menu option.

Missing Feature 2:

The ability to ignore future emails in a 'conversation'.

I subscribe to quite a few mailing lists and sometimes I lose interest in a thread. I want to push a button and have all future emails in the thread marked read. This way I am not annoyed by the Unread counter, but I have the message for historical purposes when I want to search through all the mailing list posts for an answer.

Solution: Add an 'I Don't Care' button

Ideally, this would be a button on the same level as 'Archive', 'Delete' and 'Mark Spam'. I certainly would use it more frequently than either of those three. If trading buttons is offsides, I'll settle for a drop down entry.

Attention Google

Lots of people want these two features, just read the comments below! Surely you are busy with your new office suite and don't have time to enhance Gmail. You are welcome to hire me on to help you with this. For a small fee and some stock options, I am sure we can get this worked out.