try it out for yourself

it didnt even take that much efforthttp://matildasveningsson.com/news1.php?izshowtopic=1oyy

YOz illustrations: des roughs comme ça pour le fun!

YOz illustrations: des roughs comme ça pour le fun!

How to Draw Cartoons Online @prodigalconcepts.com

The web is full of rare gems, websites that we can consider a great find in the multitude if websites trying to get a piece of that popularity pie. As a web designer I often search the web for new skills I could include to my arsenal, and one time I was so inspired by doodle art and those awesome illustrated websites but my freehand skills are limited to just doing basic shapes and tracing. continue reading

27 Alarming Advertisements Dedicated to Earth Day | Part- 2 | chethstudios Design Magazine

If we Could quote one great person who had said "A picture is worth Thousands of Words", We're trying our little bit this Earth Day to raise some awareness. We would be very happy If a bunch of people realise the mayhem in store if we keep treating Mother Earth in the same way. Make sure you share this with others and spread the word this Earth Day. Read More About Earth Day on Wikipedia. Lets all join Hands to Make Earth a better place to Live in! Visit the original article.

Browsing the internet for some real cash - just for noobs

I enjoy browsing the internet, to me it's like going to the mall without the commute. I like to read up on the latest news about gadgets, politics, sports and entertainment, I like to read other peoples blogs just to know what goes on inside their heads. Anything that my mind finds interesting I just search for in Google. All the information I need is just a mouse click away.

I have always been a skeptic of online strategies to make money, except if it's a web design client, but there are times even that seems to be too good to be true. I'm not an expert, I'm not a marketer, I'm a web designer/blogger/photography enthusiast but if you are looking for some easy online money making machines I could name a few.

1.Google's Adsense (a bit tricky, but the pay outs good and it's stable)

2.Offering your services online (writing, graphic design, audio compositions, translations... the list goes on)

3.Affiliate programs (also tricky)

4.Kontera (I'm using this here, haven't made anything yet)

5.Paid to click (easy)

6.In-stream advertising platform (easy)

Now I would like to introduce you to the last two, "Paid to Click" and "In-stream advertising platform" because earning a few bucks shouldn't be complicated.

Let's face it investing and putting up a business is very complicated, but saving money you find on the street then put it aside in a piggy bank or a glass jar until it reaches a certain amount, that's easy right? Now imagine you find money on the street regularly everyday, nothing big but still on a regular basis, and you go out on the street everyday right? Might as well pick it up, right?

My defense mechanism about online money makers starts with.

1. Do i need to make a cashout?

2. Does the registration process seems like it's trying to collect an in-depth personal history information? (financial etc... etc...)

And last but not the least.
3. What do I have to do?

Let's start with Paid to Click.

Neobux



The only paid to click ads scheme I signed up for because someone I know who was more of a skeptic than me told me he just made $2 on this (he even has a Paypal payout screenshot to prove it), it's not much I know, and it took him 2 months to get it. I wanted to sign up for old times sake, he is a really cool guy, so I went back to my defense mechanism list.

1. Do i need to make a cash-out?

Apparently not, I don't need to buy anything to sign up.

2. Does the registration process seems like it's trying to collect an in-depth personal history information? (financial etc... etc...)

Well aside from emails to confirm your existence the rest are just a breeze of personal information. (Name, age, stuff you put when you sign up for social networking sites)

And last but not the least.

3. What do I have to do? I'm lazy, and if it's boring I wont do it.

All it takes is at least 5 mins of your time online (hmmmn, 5 minutes), who doesn't have an extra 5 mins of internet time. I'm on Facebook and I spend about 15 - 30 minutes playing Zynga's Mafia Wars. 5 minutes is all it takes? So I'm in!

It's so easy all you have to do is go to this (http://www.neobux.com/?r=xzykho) link, sign up to get started. You don't need to pay anything or buy anything just go there register and everything is self explanatory.

There are also other ways to increase your earnings aside from clicking ads every day.

You can rent referrals - that means you will pay a minimal fee of $0.75 for 3 other people to click with you for 30 days thus multiplying your daily earnings. (This is optional, it's entirely up to you)

You can get direct referrals - this are people you get to register with you and you don't need to pay them. (How you get people to register is also up to you)

So in a way the more referrals you have either direct or rented means more cash for you. So go ahead spend five minutes a day to make some easy money.

http://www.neobux.com/?r=xzykho

You can cash out with a minimum earning of $2 which is the lowest cash out amount I have seen around. And you can choose from 3 payment options, like Paypal, Alertpay or Neteller

http://www.neobux.com/?r=xzykho

Ok, now what is In-stream advertising platform?

I'm fairly new to this and I've just joined, but of course I used my defense mechs to weigh out things.

This one is actually for those who wants to make money with their Twitter accounts.

It's called Ad.ly

What is Ad.ly?

Ad.ly is an in-stream advertising platform that matches top-tier Twitter publishers with top-tier brands.

Ad.ly enables Twitter publishers to make money from the content they produce on Twitter by sending one tweet every day from advertisers that they approve. In order to ensure authenticity, every Ad.ly tweet is explicitly approved by the Twitter publisher.

They pay you $0.12 per Twit ad and they also have a referral scheme that would give you 12% of each of your referrals earnings.

Ask friends to sign up for Ad.ly using your special referral link. When someone signs up using one of your links, you will earn 12% of everything they make on Ad.ly. You can put the link in an email, tweet or anywhere you want. You can also embed one of the referral graphics anywhere you want.


Another sample of referral graphics -


Go right ahead and try this simple money making schemes, you might enjoy them and it wouldn't cost you more than 5 minutes of your internet time per day.

30 Night Time Photography Inspirations for Beginners

As a Photography newbie I find it really challenging to take photos at night, my first issue is focus. Getting a clean shot is really hard, capturing that right amount of focus on a subject when it gets dark, especially if your trying to shoot using natural light. Then my second handicap at night is exposure, since exposure requirements changes dramatically as soon as the sun goes down. So why do I even bother to shoot at night anyway? continue reading

Basic photography techniques for newbies @prodigalconcepts.com

If you have always been wondering how to approach photography that's good enough to be posted online, but you're not confident that you will get some positive comments or feedback even from your family and friends then this is a good time to start to learn about the basics. Ground level skills of a soon to be photography enthusiast and maybe well get you started on the right track of becoming a professional photographer. The possibilities are endless... continue reading

Awesome Wedding Photography Compilation

Wedding photographs are almost always set in a romantic mood, always fun, sometimes mushy and borderline boring, but sometimes we get real lucky and stumble upon exceptionally interesting ones that literally jumps out of the box and get's in your face. Like these wedding and prenup photos I compiled for you continue reading

American Choppers Got Cancelled

I've been an avid fan of the Discovery Channel reality show about building chopper bikes called "American Choppers". As a fan I even featured their builds as inspirational in my design blog www.prodigalconcepts.com. I do get into an inspired mood while watching the show, and although I feel that season 5 and 6 jumped the shark I kept watching until their last episode for the Kobalt Bike Build. It's sad to see them go but it was almost painful watching them during their last 2 seasons so I guess it's a good thing.

I wrote a post titled American Choppers (O.C.C.) because I would like to share my fancy that these guys are creative with shaping metal and customization. I'm not a mechanic, I'm a web designer, but I was able to absorb from their work the importance of customizing a site according to the clients personality and how the designer is totally responsible for the entire look. So as a designer we sometimes must know when to say "NO" to what a client wants, especially if that would have a negative effect on the overall design which in the end will have more effect on your credibility and how future employers weighs our skills before they start hiring us for a project. As a designer we should know how to steer the clients identity into the direction that would benefit both parties.

Top 20 Photography tips on Shooting Macros | Digital Photography Student

Top 20 Photography tips on Shooting Macros | Digital Photography Student

Learning the ropes of macro photography takes a lot of practice and patience. But all will be worth the agony once you get the perfect shot that you can be truly proud of. I'm just an enthusiast, I don't think I will be able turn this hobby into a full time career, but still I take the time research the topics that would help me to acquire a better image. If you have any additional information that you would like to share just leave a comment here.

Freelance - de deux

Ok, so as usual it took me a month to get back on track, well not that usual sometimes it takes me more than that... I've been having the holiday blues that I couldn't shake off and usually when this thing happens I just wait it out until something knocks it out of my system. And along came Julie & Julia the comedy-drama movie my wife and I saw the other day... It's a story about the early life of Julia Child as a struggling cook in parallel to the life of the struggling writer Julie Powell who decided to start a blog to escape the mundane day to day experiences she has at work and life as an unpublished writer. She attempts to go through Julia Child's book "Mastering the Art of French Cooking", and blogged about her daily experiences while cooking each of the 524 recipes in the span of a year.

The rest of that story will have to be on a different entry (if I ever get around to it) since this article is the second part of my previous entry that introduces my freelancing aspirations. Now that I'm back I was able to populate my personal website *slash digital playground *slash online portfolio *slash freelance H.Q. First order of business after getting the site ready for some time now was how do I pick the topics for my content? Well before I started on the endeavor of putting up my site prodigalconcepts.com I was collecting links of websites I find or stumbled upon while looking for some tutorials or inspirations and from these motley crew I started with the first topics that are now up on my site. So the next thing in line to do is decide what niche I would like to be a part of so I can concentrate on that and get my identity and web cred level up. In addition I would need to showcase some of the best works I've done and start making new ones. It would also be cool to get some interesting testimonials from my past clients and hopefully they have something nice to say about me.

So to wrap up, I need to get new articles, update my work and get it out there... well that sounds easy enough, the realization of this whole idea though would be something else entirely.

Freelance

I've decided to get my feet wet in the freelancing business sometime ago and now I'm seriously considering making a career of it. But with the economy as it is it wouldn't be wise to leave my day job just yet, still I need to get the gears rolling and start taking action.

Segue...
"Now I am the voice" I got that one from Anthony Robbins, the last event I attended from my previous employer.

First thing I needed to do is get the word out that I'm for hire.

Easier said than done... A good way to do this is send out an email blast to all the people in your address box and hope they also get the word out for you.

Second thing, I need to have my own galaxy in the vast space of the world wide web and so pRODigalconcepts.com was born, I was planning on making my own theme from a basic wordpress wireframe like the sandbox but I fell in love with the Mystique theme by digitalnature, that I stumbled upon while browsing for some design ideas and inspirations, and it's one awesome and powerful theme I have ever seen. And my other excuse is that my current schedule keeps me from breaking ground on my own design plus I believe that everything happens for a reason and stumbling on this theme is one.

So I was thinking and many experts have mentioned for people to take you seriously you need to show them what you can do, imagine posting ads online that you're for hire and the only thing you can show for it is an email address from a public email server. Even writers, or photographers have put up websites for prospective clients to look at and a place to showcase their skills and experiences.

I have a whole list to go through, but at the moment I'm stuck here because I'm having some serious connection problems and until my calendar clears up I'm going to settle in making this post a series and wait for good things to happen.

A Singapore Taxi Driver's Diary

The verdict is in, 2012 is a cinematic feast, the effects comes alive like a theme park joyride, but what it lacks is original story, I told a friend of mine how I felt about it and he said what else can you expect it's a disaster movie lah, and in a way although I was disappointed with the story, I don't feel cheated even if a few of the last scenes obviously was shot with a different film quality. Is the economy to blame, did they exceed their budget or were scenes added at the last minute?

This reminds me of the guy who writes for the blog titled A Singapore Taxi Driver's Diary his heading/blog description caught my attention:

"Probably the only taxi driver in this world with a PhD from Stanford and a proven track record of scientific accomplishments, I have been forced out of my research job at the height of my scientific career, and unable to find another one, for reasons I can only describe as something "uniquely Singapore". As a result, I am driving taxi to make a living and writing these real life stories just to make the dull job a little more interesting. I hope that these stories are interesting to you too."

Like the movie this PhD holder greatly reduced himself out of necessity but still found a way to express himself creatively, and maybe not everyone can appreciate such an effort I on the other hand finds inspiration, to know that it's not a perfect world and there's nothing we can do to make it so but enjoy the ride, because after everything is said and done it's not the good things that happens to us which defines our humanity but we take the form of the character that rises in every adversity.

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The END

Grax and I will be watching 2012 later today, from the teaser trailers it looks like another "day after tomorrow" kinda end of the world as we know it... It has been like ages since I made a post here, mainly because being in a new job on a very different culture like Singapore makes me sometimes feel like my world is ending everyday, my wife often points out that this is all because I was spoiled rotten in my last employment where I have autonomy to every decision I make work wise. Being a foreigner for hire makes it a bit difficult to negotiate certain employment perks, mainly because I need to be employed to be able to stay here, if not I will only be allowed 30 days to stay as a tourist and will not be eligible for any part time or short term jobs. But the competition is stiff and the offers aren't overflowing so you grab what you can and hope for the best.

I've also decided to put up a new web site for my budding freelancing career, I bought the domain a few months ago thinking that I will have a few weeks free time during my transition period from my first job here, but I was temporarily hired by a client of mine to whom I was freelancing with at the time and I'm still with them. My side project is moving but sluggishly and with no definite direction or estimated time of completion.



I've been working on 12 hour shifts + weekends this past couple of weeks, and the movie well see later will be my only safety line back to reality because when your working all the time for long periods there is always a tendency that you forget what life is all about, "I work to live and not the other way around..."

Hopefully it wouldn't be a bust, I love John Cusack from the teeny bopper flicks "Sure Thing", "Say Anything", to the dark films like "Identity" and "1408". Anyway I just want to be teleported to a place where work is insignificant which makes me think, it would be catastrophic when the world ends, but when it comes and it catches you behind your desk typing on the keyboard inside your cubicle that would be the tragic end of the faceless man.

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Hold on to the handrails... of Life

With or without you life goes on,

it's like a run away train blazing in it's tracks,

you need to be fit, physically, emotionally and spiritually

to catch a ride, because life doesn't stop for anyone.

When you get on the train of life it doesn't always take you to where you want to go

sometimes it just goes to places insignificant to you,

because the train is not just about you, it's a collective,

it's for everyone