So, it has been decided. Tonight at USTREAM I held a live drawing to decide who won the Sony Cyber-shot digital camera give-away. With 365 entries to the contest from over 70 entrants the contest was, dare I say, a big deal. My three daughters aided me in the drawing. The youngest shook the bag holding all the names of those entered in the contest, my middle child picked the winner, and my eldest read the name of the winner. Who won?
The Winner:
Congratulations to Loomis2!!! Loomis entered a scant '3' times and somehow pulled out the camera.
Thanks
Thanks to all of you who entered the contest. Your participation has pretty much locked that I will be able to give away some more awesome stuff, so stay tuned--k? If you do stay tuned you will be treated to awesome videos of my adorable girls being goofy and funny, hilarious articles (I am so serious) and much, much more. Look around and check out what Joeprah is about if you are a new subscriber. Read, watch and interact. Word.
Here is a list of the folks entered in the Sony Cyber-shot give-away thus far. You are all now mortal enemies. Take a good look at this list. Find your name and make sure you are down for the correct amount of entries. For instance, if you already area subscriber of Joeprah and you weren't given credit for the 3 subscriber entries--let me know. If you disagree with the amount of entries I have you down for, let me know and I will update it. Thanks!
I am in the process of retooling my site a bit and I will be adding some new features along with some of the changes. Some exciting stuff is about to be added that will make the Joeprah experience perhaps even more mediocre than before. I am obvious stoked.
The Galleries
Loomis, a Joeprah user, came up with a fantastic suggestion. Why not allow Joeprah users the privildege of uploading their own personal photos into the new "Gallery" section of Joeprah? I thought about it, and it was such a great idea that I took action--immediately. I will be creating more galleries for any registered user to upload into, but currently there is a section for "Summer Fun I," "Family Pictures I," "Pictures of You I," and "Your Best Work I." To access the galleries to upload into them, simply click on the "My Galleries" link at the top right of the Gallery Section at Joeprah (it can be found here). Uploading should be fairly self-explanatory, but that being said I am sure some folks may need assistance. If you do have problems...enter my next update.
The Forum
I have installed a new forum component. You can go the forum either at its direct link here or by visiting the forum via Joeprah.com itself. If you have any tech questions in regards to using any of the features at Joeprah.com simply go to the forum and enter your questions there. If you are a blogger and want to show of your blog or you have questions regarding blogging, check out the section in the forum dedicated to all things blog related. If you are parent seeking an outlet to vent, or ask advice of other parents on how to deal with some parenting topics that are currently confounding you, check out the section dedicated to that. There are some social sections in the forum and I hope it takes on a life of its own. If you want any new sections or if you want to be a moderator--inquire within. Basically, go, post, and interact. It should be off-da-hook. Awesome.
In addition to all my normal robust and amazingly trivial posts, I am going to post news stories, political windfalls, and or basically anything that stirs the pot so to speak that I think my readers would be interested in adding their two cents to. I would like get folks involved so they can speak their minds, find out what other people think and more or less stay informed. To kick things off in this section I would like to see what people think about this news story (I know it is a few days old, but it is still worth exploring).
The Independence Day Contest
I have been uber swamped lately and I didn't post an update, but I wanted to let those folks still in contention know where they stand as we head down the stretch. Amazingly, there has been some changes to the leaderboard. The top three bloggers up until today are:
Kim, has made some huge strides as of late and the last few days will prove to be pivotal. Some advice; digg, stumble and otherwise promote your remaining blog posts...any sort of exposure will be key. Best of luck and I can't wait to annouce the winner. At the end of the contest, I will spread link love through the valley of blogger-dom. It will be a fantastic celebration and truly there were no losers.
Newsletter
I am about to release my July Newsletter with some exciting results on how much money I made during the month of June and how I went about doing so. Are you as anxious to find out the BuzzFuse results as I am? Word.
I am leaving for Atlanta today to participate in a video shoot. Yep, you heard that right. Me. Video shoot. I am working with Graco on a great project along with some other bloggers. The project will be off the hook, by in large due to my participation, and as soon as I have time I will post all the details of both my trip and the actually project itself.
In My Stead
Over the next couple of days I leave you in the willing and capable digits of one Pete J from MyGpsCameraPhone. Pete is a close bloggy friend of mine and I trust him like I trust myself (see not very much at all). He will continue the tradition of Joeprah by delivering mediocre content. Mediocre, which Pete will assuredly exceed, will actually be a step up, so you may be begging for Pete to stay on full-time.
Contest Winner
I didn't forget. I used my webcam this morning to tape the drawing and I used one of my daughters to choose the winner. The video wouldn't upload although I tried as hard as one man can to upload it. I feel Blip.Tv was afraid of its intrinsic awesomeness, which is understandable. Anyways, you are going to have to trust me when I say that the winner was Smoochie Frog. I will post the video someday...as long as Blip allows for amazing videos to see the light of day. As for the next contest, I will post the details either when I return on Thursday or next Monday. Stay tuned as I have some amazing stuff to give away over the course of the next few weeks. I am totally serious.
I think everyone that reads my blog is a super star to some degree. First, they have put up with how quirky it is. Slow page loading times (a thing of the past I hope, see next post) and obnoxious colors--not to mention how stuck on myself (rightly so) I am. So, if you are reading this, take a bow. Now, there are some elite Joeprah followers that not only stomach my daily diatribe, but they actually think it to be noteworthy--so noteworthy in fact, that they have deemed it acceptable to don me with awards. I would like to call these folks "Super-Dee-Duper-Stars." First, I got a really cool mention from Penny over at Cafe at the End of the Universe, then HuckDoll, this was followed by Christine at Serenity How recognizing my awesomeness, and, to top it off, not one but two awards. Now, these award givers have crazy good taste and I'm just saying, "They're right to acknowledge my smooth ways." There is this rockin' award from Rachel at A Southern Fairy Tale:
It is totally homemade and really cool because it has the tell tale pinkness of a mom blog. And not to be outdone, we have Tara from If Mommy Says Ok dropping some more hardware on ol' Joeprah:
I just wanted to say "You're Right," to everyone that took time to write about me on their blogs and for correctly noticing how insanely amazing I am. Thanks! Carry on.
In this section of Joeprah you will be whisked away to all the side splitting posts that made this site what it is. Videos, photos, articles--this stuff is just funny.
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and tell me why and you may find yourself here during the next update.
I have opinions on all things--especially products. Check out my newest section to see what owns and what doesn't--according to Joeprah.
This is a series that I owe all to my good friend Momo. She had a post the other day that reminded me of a log I was keeping of all the crazy things I have said to my kids in my short tenure as a parent. You know, parental type things like, "Get your feet out of your milk!" or "Don't ride your car on the wall!" or "Don't put your finger in your ear, who knows where that thing has been!" Anyways, instead of use my old material, I will just call upon fate to provide me with content. This shouldn't be a problem, because A) my kids routinely do stupid things, and B) I am not shy in calling them out on being thick headed. Anwyays, as fate would have it, today (the first day I was on alert) my youngest child made me say, "Don't put your french fries in your chocolate milk!" Click the photo below for the bigger version.
First, I would like to start by saying the following demo is for photoshop newbs. Second, the subsequent photo is amazing. To set this up, I have a three year old little girl that is as smart as they come and knows when and how to get into our candy dish. That is the muse for this post, a toddler with ingenuity. The video below shows you just how I edit my more basic photos (in case you wondered).
Next, here is the resulting photo. Worthy of a click if I do say so myself.
So, our family, decided to take a trip to Washington D.C. to check out the natural history museum and the national art gallery. How did we decide those two? We did what any self respecting family that loves the democratic system does--we voted. Our littlest one wanted to see rocket ships (space museum) and the oldest two wanted to see art, and they all wanted to see dinosaurs. What were the highlights? Our daughters all agreed that riding the metro (D.C.'s subway system) was by far the highlight (you know, like when you get your kids a really special gift and they play with box all day), after that the iMax on dinosaurs ranked second and finally the actual dinosaurs came in third.
We recorded the trip on both our digital camera and digital camcorder. The below pictures are clickable (remember that bosssanders ) and I would like to get everyones take on them. I used three separate adjustment layers to create the effect that you see. I am sure there are easier ways, but I basically "colorized" each photo then, using another hue saturation layer, I got all jiggy wit the color and finally I added a last layer that was close to the original and saturated and desaturated parts of the photos to make my beautiful daughters stand out in a crowd.
So, my first attempt at really trying to implement something fancy using photoshop, personally I think it looks P-H-A-T, but that's just because my girls are so dang cute. Anyways, I managed to take some other photos that were just more fun:
Just some good clean fun with team Joeprah in Washington DC. It was a ton of walking and by the time we got home we all needed to turn in early but it was totally worth it.
Not much of a post today, but here is a picture I had to share of our ham of a 2 year old daughter. Notice how you can click my pictures. See what happens when you do. Enjoy:
Kids move around a lot when they sleep. They sometimes fall out of their beds. They sometimes are sleeping on the opposite end of the bed in the middle of the night. Sometimes they are half on and half off. My toddler takes this a step further and gets out of her bed to sleep in other locales. Sometimes its the floor, sometimes its in her closet. Its like TJ Max, "Never the same place twice." Anyways, I wanted to show everyone where she wound up this time.
This time she fell asleep in her tiny, little toy chest. I like to call this "Sleeping Angel," however it almost seems like she is sleeping vampire style all up that toy chest, so I will call this "Sleeping Toddler Vampire."
If you like these movies you will love the video section.
Who is Joeprah? I am a stay at home dad to three daughters. I have an amazing wife, and under the direction and encouragement of close friends, I started this site over a year ago. You can follow me at The Examiner.com, Twitter, Stumble Upon and Cre8Buzz. Read more...
In this section
Who is Joeprah? I am a stay at home dad to three daughters. I have an amazing wife, and under the direction and encouragement of close friends, I started this site over a year ago. You can follow me at The Examiner.com, Twitter, Stumble Upon and Cre8Buzz. Read more...