Mixed Nuts

Spy Cam In Your Buttcrack

This one popped into my head while I was working on the Video Secret Shopping idea. I had the equipment to covertly record, so I imagined how fun it would be for people to catch others checking them out. (or cry themselves to sleep when they realized nobody is looking at them)

You’re probably smirking at this one, aren’t you? A butt camera? Really? Yes, really. You can’t honestly tell me you’re not remotely curious to know if others are checking you out behind your back. It’s like receiving positive reinforcement from someone without them knowing they’re giving it to you.

Social media has pulled back the veil on humanity to expose just how narcissistic and vain we all are, and “Exhibit A” to this charge is the countless duck face photos circulating on the internet. Admit it. You are hungry for the Instagram and Facebook likes.

The problem with the equipment I had is it was too bulky. I’m sure I could hide the recorder somehow, but as small as the camera was, it would still be a challenge to completely hide it around the back. You’d never know if someone was checking you out because they thought you were desirable, or because they saw this odd protrusion on your rear end and were wondering why you had a lumpy ass.

That still appears to be the problem. There’s plenty of wearable technology coming out, but I feel you’d need something designed specifically for jeans or pants. A flat camera with a fake rivet for the camera perhaps? Maybe something that peers through a belt loop or a tiny hole in a seam?

For all I know, all those girls I see with their phones tucked into their back pockets are already filming us. The problem with that is there’s a good chance it came into view through my peripheral and not because I was standing around scanning asses. I suppose it would still serve its purpose if they stared or looked more than once.

Someone needs to do this. I’m not interested in a selfie stick, but I’ll definitely buy an asscam. I’ve seen how flat the Raspberry Pi camera board is, so they already make them small enough. I wonder if an endoscope type camera would work better, or if that would be harder to conceal. Wearable cams just aren’t mature enough yet.

Self contained units are too big and the ones that are small enough obviously still require power, so it doesn’t matter how small of a camera you find, you will need to attach some type of external power which will bulk things back up. It would be nice when we get small one piece devices that have a camera, storage, and battery power while still being small enough to hide almost anywhere.

I guess the outlook doesn’t look good for the covert asscam for now. I think your best bet might be to go with the eyeglass camera and hang it off your back pocket, although that seems to be no different than simply using your phone with the camera peeking out.

We’ll have to wait until we see an Indiegogo campaign pop up for the asscam fundraiser. Until then, you’ll just have to wonder if that cute barista behind the counter is giving your ass a good once over as you walk out the door.

Start A Soccer Ball Company

A few days ago I asked my sister on a whim if she wanted to start a soccer ball company. To be honest, I’m really not at all enthusiastic about going down this path again to create a new soccer ball, but I mostly asked her to gauge her reaction about the idea. She immediately said sure, even though in reality she probably couldn’t find the time to juggle a soccer ball for a few minutes with her busy schedule, never mind start a company with me.

She mentioned how she remembers when I lived at home that I would get these packages from Pakistan containing patch, bladder, and full ball samples from various companies. This was an aspect I had forgotten about. I do remember doing a lot of research on construction because I didn’t want crap. I also envisioned a simple website that sold the ball alone in a few different highlight colors and nothing more.

I’ve wanted to design my own soccer ball for a long time. I came up with a name and purchased the domain name too, but I let the domain expire years ago because I had done nothing more to further this idea along. I didn’t bother trying to sell the domain because it was a company name with the “soccer” suffix so I doubt anyone would ever want to acquire it. As of the publishing of this post, the domain is still available should I ever change my mind.

I even had an idea for some of the marketing behind it. In addition to being a quality game or practice ball, I wanted to make the ball desirable and something you covet almost like a trophy. I thought of starting things off by giving balls away as an award for an outstanding game, almost like a game ball that wasn’t in the game, for a specific players performance. I figured this might be a great way to get some word of mouth advertising too.

If you hand delivered the ball/award right after a live game, or asked the coach to do so, you not only have an audience of players and spectators wondering what this award is the player is receiving, but you could later request write ups in the school and local newspapers. As a soccer fan myself, I can’t think of a better way to spread information about your soccer ball company than by actually being there, watching games, and rewarding a superior performance.

I tend to revisit this soccer ball idea when soccer is receiving more media coverage like it has during the recent 2015 Women’s World Cup. Yay USWNT! I also start crushing on these women after watching them all play, but that’s probably better suited for its own post. I’ve always liked soccer girls. I’ve been told I actually cheer louder for womens soccer than I do for my Patriots. Hey, so what! 🙂

The problem is, even though I played soccer and enjoy watching championship level matches, I’m a bit of a fair weather fan. I admit soccer isn’t always the most exciting thing to watch. It usually depends on the skill level. If we were to equate all sports to an electrocardiogram, football would be heart attack, soccer would be a faint pulse, and golf is flat-lining.

How do I consciously dive into starting a soccer ball company when I don’t eat, sleep, and live soccer? It felt a little disingenuous to try and build this kind of company while my heart might be into other projects. I suppose if I started worrying about that, then I’d never start anything, and we all know starting is what I do best.

One of these days I’ll come up with an artistic design so stunning that it will compel me to get the thing manufactured. Until that time, this one is on the back burner and it’s on to the next thing.

$10 Cash Machine Chain Letter

I called this post the $10 Cash Machine because it was the only thing online I found that remotely resembled what I remember, with some slight differences. Back when I was a kid, my mother would occasionally get these letters mailed to her from friends and family. In the letter it would start with some hype about earning money through the mail and how you can easily do the same.

The next part explained how it worked. There would be five names and addresses on the bottom of the letter. You would mail $10 to each name listed, then you would place your name in the top spot and move everyone else down a spot, dropping the last person from the list. Make copies of this new form and mail/distribute like a mad man.

The $10 Cash Machine form I found online says something about emailing a monitor for proof that you paid the people on your list, then you’d receive a marketing kit with your own flyer. That stuff wasn’t on anything I ever saw because what I saw was back before the days of the internet when nobody had email. I’m sure this so called marketing kit is simply the same form with your name inserted like I just told you, and some tips for distribution and more hype.

The idea behind this is the assumption that a bunch of people you send this to will fill your mailbox with $10 each, and also do the same by dropping your name to #2, put their name in the #1 slot, and send the flyer out to a ton more people. At each level you should make more money as there’s a lot more flyers out there with your name on it. Let’s try one for example using a fictitious 1% response rate.

You put your name and address at Level 1 and send 500 direct mail flyers out and 5 people (1%) respond by sending you $10 each.

You receive $50

Those 5 people mail out 500 direct mail flyers each for a total of 2500 flyers with your name at Level 2, and 25 people send you $10.

You receive $250

Then 25 people mail out 500 direct mail flyers each for a total of 12500 flyers with your name at Level 3, and 125 people send you $10.

You receive $1250

125 people mail out 500 direct mail flyers each for a total of 62500 flyers with your name at Level 4, and 625 people send you $10.

You receive $6250

625 people mail out 500 direct mail flyers each for a total of 312500 flyers with your name at Level 5, and 3125 people send you $10.

You receive $31250

At this point your name is dropped off the list, but not before making nearly $40000 minus your expenses of paying the initial five people, copies, envelopes, postage, etc.

What teenager wouldn’t be interested in sending letters in exchange for massive amounts of free cash? No time to figure out the math and unsustainable matrix. Time to mail letters and make money.

I didn’t just try the program. I altered it like a greedy pig. I believe I shrunk the cost to 25 cents, but doubled the levels to 10, and the payout projection was insane. You wanna know if it worked?

Ambiguity Of Starting A Blog

I would never blame anyone but myself for my failures. I realize my issue list is long. In my younger days I was always seeking that magic bullet. In recent years I have a real problem with sticking to an idea long term. I am constantly spreading myself too thin by launching into a new idea while still trying to manage forty others.

Whenever I’ve launched blogs in the past, I’ve made an honest effort to research and employ the methods mentioned by the more successful blogs out there. Maybe not all of them, but I have tried quite a few things I came across. For the most part I was trusting what I read because I enjoyed the writing of the experts and I trusted they knew more than I did. I figured if they say they employ a technique with success, and they are making decent money, it must be worth trying.

Here’s a short list of some blog building tips I’ve found that only seem to add confusion to building a new blog.

Social Media: Is it wise to build a social media following or not?

Darren Rowse from ProBlogger has an entire page dedicated to growing your blogs traffic with social media.

Jon Morrow at BoostBlogTraffic says don’t waste time on Social Media sites as his #10 of 20 lessons to go from 0 to 100K a month.

Is content king or not?

Nicholas at IncomeDiary says to Write a Ton of Posts as #9 of 10 things to do on day one.

Derek of SocialTriggers lists Creating Too Much Content as his #1 time waster.

Should I put ads on my blog?

John Chow of JohnChow is a proponent of placing blogs ads from day one and doesn’t worry about placing too many ads on his site.

Sarah Peterson at BoostBlogTraffic gives 13 reasons why blog ads are a silly monetization strategy.

Should I write long posts, or short posts?

Jim Estill in his post at CopyBlogger thinks Shorter is Better.

Marcus Sheridan at TheSalesLion believes Long Content and Blog Posts are the Future.

These four are just surface issues. There’s a ton more to consider for each one. For example, I bet we could get into a lot more detail and have a lively debate on how much should be written and how often, but imagine for a moment the new blogger trying to wade through these contradictions during their initial blog writing self education. No wonder so many people fail.

Perhaps the length of a post depends on the topic, or maybe it’s less about the content and more dependent on the intended audience. In creative writing, a novel is longer because it includes the inner thoughts and emotions of the characters, while the screenplay is the shorter version of the story that only includes what you will see on the screen. You can tell the same story two different ways, but the question is, who am I writing for besides myself?

It might also relate to where the authors strengths lie. If a blogger has the ability to weave magic with words while getting the point across and still managing to keep the readers entertained, I’d consider that a novel blogger. If you find you can get your point across completely by saying less and still leaving a lasting impression from a poignant message, you’re a screenwriting blogger.

Then there’s the post-it note type blogger like me who needs to keep things incredibly brief to avoid jumping into a different post before the previous one is even finished. I’ve started about 6 posts since I began this one and before I finished it. True story. Sad though. Hey, look, a butterfly.

A Futuristic Mail Delivery Service

I don’t know if I was even a teenager yet when I thought of this one. After watching a transaction go down at a bank drive thru with those pneumatic tubes passing the capsule back and forth, I thought it would be a fantastic idea to implement this feature at private residences. Out in suburbia, there’s a lot of homes with the mail box at the street. Imagine having one end of the tube transport at the street (your mailbox) with the other end inside your house.

I swear it wasn’t because I was a lazy kid. I was inventive and I guess I’ve always had that kind of mind. I had this all figured out in my head and was even willing to dig the trench in the yard if my Dad would let me. The thought of needing some type of machine to propel these containers was of no concern. I could make it happen with the idea alone. Funny how not much has changed since then.

I imagined how it would make people’s lives easier by saving them that daily walk to the street to get their mail. Think of how happy all those paper boys would be now that they didn’t have to walk the paper up to the front door anymore. Maybe there could be slightly larger tubes for the smaller parcels from UPS or FedEx.

Then one day I saw a major flaw in my idea when I watched as my friend scraped a dead squirrel off the street and dropped it into the library’s book return slot. Yep, that would be a problem. As long as it fit, people could send whatever they wanted in your house through the tube. Suddenly all of the nefarious ideas came to me. Someone could do the same to me with a pneumatic mail tube delivery system. They could send a skunk inside my house, or a stink bomb, or worse…fireworks or an explosive device if it were timed properly.

I began toying with the lock idea. Mail carriers have keys for apartment building mail slots, so why not for these tubes? But then, how do the other services utilize the tube without access? The post office could never manage different keys for everyone, and universal keys would be just begging for exploitation. I suppose it would be no worse than the open box on the street anyone can open at will, but it all seemed a tad incomplete.

Then I went a little overboard. First of all, I switched the destination from inside the house to right outside the house. I figured that was safer. Then I thought a keypad with different access codes for different people or services might work better. And finally, I went into full saturation mode and figured people could start installing delivery tubes just like any other utility when new houses are built. When underground utilities are installed, the tubes can be added too, which would connect to a network of tubes that terminated at a central facility such as a postal distribution plant.

My juvenile brain had a tendency to get ahead of myself just like my adult brain. Keep in mind this was before the interwebs when letters, post cards, newspapers, magazines, account statements, and bills were physically delivered to consumers instead of digitally like it is today. Snail mail like that is a dying breed, although I’d assume parcel delivery is more popular than ever with all the online shopping taking place. I think that flat screen you ordered on Amazon is still too big for capsule delivery tubes, me thinks.

OK, new direction. Shrink the capsules and tubes and change the distribution centers from mail processing centers to pharmacies. Who needs the most medication and is least mobile? The elderly! There might still be something there folks. Run with it! Just don’t forget to get the secure tubes for the Oxycodone prescription deliveries.