BenSpark Family Adventures

In an attempt to make this site more compact and easier to navigate, without bombarding you with ads and long lists of links, I have been making some changes. The changes are taking longer than expected because of the numerous coding items that I am setting up for the site. I haven’t even thought of doing anything to the actual design look of the site, as far as color and graphic changes. Gradually I am converting all the links to drop down menus so that you don’t have to scroll as much to find your favorite sites. I’ve added a table to the top with some things like a Flatwater Bookstore Findings section, basically books and movies I think you should have because they are awesome or because I am currently reading/watching them. Then Photo-A-Day is right there on top of the screen along with the options to get the BenSpark as an RSS feed. A link to Blogroll the site and a link to my Blogshares page. This leaves the sidebar less cluttered so that you can go directly to the Wedding F.A.Q....

Things I have found around the web lately. Matt Milligan’s Strip called Lost and Found has added a new little feature called: “Reality TV Murderizes the English Language” Each installment will explore a made up word or phrase that a reality TV contestant has said that is supposed to make them appear smart but in effect makes them sound like idiots. Check out Lost and Found. The new feature is on the right hand side. Daily Dancer. Have you gone to this site yet. It is scary how many hits this guy gets for dancing each day. And he is not a good dancer. He kinda hops all around the screen. He gives my friend Joanne nightmares about prom dates of years past. New Web Comic – Theater Hopper, a web comic about movies. Pretty funny.

Or is the web a bit messed up today. I tried to go to many of my favorite sites, even this one and things are all messed up. Photo a day is screwed up and not displaying, blogshares isn’t accessible, and neither is imood. I don’t know what is up and I don’t know if it is just my connection here at the Holiday Inn. I’ll get to the bottom of it as soon as I can.

I am connected to a free service called Stat Counter that tracks how many visitors come by this site. From time to time I like to check out how many first time visitors and how many returning visitors are coming to the site. What this service also does is check out online searches and how often The BenSpark comes up on searches. It is very interesting what we get hits for. Here are some examples from today. 13:28:13 www.google.com chris cotton blues 12:02:14 search.yahoo.com robot chicken clips 12:01:50 search.yahoo.com pictures of rex quan-do from napoleon dynamite 11:29:01 search.yahoo.com robot chicken clips 10:54:03 search.yahoo.com dane cook quotes 10:43:48 search.yahoo.com dukes of hazzard movie 10:34:25 www.google.com transformers energon treadshot in stock 10:33:27 www.google.com transformers energon treadshot in stock 09:21:47 search.yahoo.com allison williams video free 09:05:02 search.yahoo.com robot chicken clips 08:53:11 search.yahoo.com robot chicken clips And these are j...

Okay I’ve just about had it with Google Adsense. I added it to the sidebar to see if anyone click on the links. People do click the links, however I am not getting any revenue from the clicks. Well sometimes I do and sometimes I do not. It is weird. Another thing that is weird is that it almost always has ads for other blogs. Like the only keyword that the ads pick up is that of blog. It is annoying. Adsense is supposed to pick up on the content of your website. This website is not about blogs! I have links for Beer, Transformers, Musicians. And all google picks out is the word blog. I am trying another experiment and adding the ads to the bottom of each post. Just some small text stuff to see if that makes a difference in the content of the ads. Since the google ads seemed to be only showing up for the first post of the page. I figured that the Amazon.com ads would work the same way, nope. Amazon.com ads ended up affixing themselves to each post. But you know what that is fine. I beli...

I have enrolled in BlogShares , a fantasy stock market game that uses blogs as companies. I am the owner of this blog on BlogShares and through that I can sell fantasy shares of the blog. As the blog grows in popularity the price of the shares will increase. To increase the shares I need more sites linking to this one and I will be linking to other blogs. I’ve created a section in the sidebar called BlogShares Sites. A randomly generated link and description will appear at the top of the section and then below that will appear some of the static links to blogs that I am linking too. Enjoy discovering these other blogs. And by clicking them you can increase the number of chips I have in my account. There are rules about appropriateness of blogs in BlogShares so if you come across something questionable, let me know.

I’ve added a Tagboard to the right side of the Blog. This is for you to leave a message to me or to another reader. Please keep it clean. I can ban IP addresses and will do so it the need arises. I’m testing this out for the month and wanted to see if it was worth adding. So pop in and leave a Tag. If you get any errors or see anything wrong please let me know.

I added an adsense by google bar on the right side near the bottom of the screen. It is supposed to take words from the blog and put links up for targeted ads. I am supposed to be able to filter out certain types of ads. If anyone notices anything that shouldn’t be on this site please let me know. Thanks.

I am reading the latest Clive Cussler Novel about Dirk Pitt called the Trojan Odyssey. In the course of the book they make mention of another book called “Where Troy Once Stood” hypothesizes that the legendary battle of Troy did not take place in Greece among Greeks but rather in England among Celts. Iman Jacob Wilkens author of “Where Troy Once Stood” dissects the Iliad and the Odyssey based upon the descriptions of places and finds that the descriptions do not match that of Greece. He also hypothesizes that Homer took the oral traditions and tales from the Celts and wrote them down but used Greeks instead of Celts as the stories characters. It is a very fascinating concept. I really love the Cussler Novels because half the time you wonder, is this real, or is this made up. I remember reading the Iliad in High School as well as college. In college I studied the Iliad in my Humanities Class and there was never a doubt about the story being about Greeks. I really want to read “Where Tro...

Yeah, I fell for the whole Save Toby thing. Check out this link to snopes.com. Well if there really was a guy doing that then I would still be as mad as my previous post. Now I just feel dumb because well I fell for it. I hardly ever get sucked into these things and go public about it. Man! That really burns me up. Snopes.

So after I ranted about Savetoby.com I thought, man, what if I made a site called Shavetoby.com. You know if I don’t get $50,000.00 by June 30, 2005 my cat Toby is gonna DIE (of embarrassment).” Someone beat me to it. I present ShaveToby.com. And that site has raised $2000.00 so far.

If you haven’t heard this yet there is a website out there called SaveToby.com. You might think that it is a site to raise money for a sick animal or person. No it is not, it is a site to keep one bunny alive by NOT EATING HIM! The owner or owners of the site and of Toby are asking for $50,000.00 or they will eat Toby on June 30, 2005. Okay, this one is from the mind of some sick bastards. I normally do not use foul language on this blog because much of my family reads this but this one makes me mad, and for a few good reasons. (so I apologize for the use of some blue language.) 1.) This is obviously a way to get money by playing on the sympathies of good people who love animals. And there are people who will donate a lot of money to see that Toby is not eaten. These guys are emotional terrorists. They are playing on the fears of animal lovers and attempting to coerce money from those people to prevent the death of Toby. This is the definition of terrorism “The unlawful use or threaten...

Take a look at the sidebar. I have removed the Lost poll, since Boone has already died this past Wednesday, (still can’t believe I called that wrong.). Instead of the Lovefest MoBlog I have made the link to a new MoBlog for the year in pictures, or rather Photo-A-Day. I will try to take and post an image each day for an entire year. And that will start tomorrow. So look for the daily images.

Here is a link to some nice photos of horses that my co-worker Joanne took on her recent trip to Lexington, KY. Joanne also keeps a blog and she takes many pictures on her trips. She is way more detailed in her descriptions of her photos. It’s like being on the trip too, which is pretty cool. She’s got some great photos from Venice as well. Joanne’s Trip to the Horse Farm. Joanne’s Blog I’ve added Joanne’s Blog link to the Blogs of note section.

Okay so I tried this religion quiz. Apparently I am best suited for is Buddhism. Interesting. I wonder how they compile the answers given. So, what religion are you best suited for, according to this quiz? Leave me a comment with your answer.   You scored as Buddhism. Your beliefs most closely resemble those of Buddhism. Do more research on Buddhism and possibly consider becoming Buddhist, if you are not already. In Buddhism, there are Four Noble Truths: (1) Life is suffering. (2) All suffering is caused by ignorance of the nature of reality and the craving, attachment, and grasping that result from such ignorance. (3) Suffering can be ended by overcoming ignorance and attachment. (4) The path to the suppression of suffering is the Noble Eightfold Path, which consists of right views, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right-mindedness, and right contemplation. These eight are usually divided into three categories that base the Buddhist fait...

Found a couple of new generators out there. Remember my post about the church sign generator, well I found a couple more. Acme License Plate Generator Acme Candy Heart Generator Acme Label Generator Windows Error Generator Tombstone Generator and of course Church Sign Generator If you make a particularly funny one of these please send it to me.

I’ve created the word webtainment to encompass all those funny and interesting things that one can find on the web to entertain oneself. One aspect of webtainment is that of the web comic. Web comics are growing in popularity through word of mouth of fans. I consider myself a fan of a few web comics and I will give you links and a synopsis of each of the web comics that round out my daily reading. First up is PVP, PVP was the first web comic I found and it is the one that I really like. Scott Kurtz has created a great cast of characters. Pictured in the image above:Skull: The naive and loveable troll that is an intern at PVP magazine. Cole Richards: The Dad of the bunch and owner and operator of PVP magazine. Robbie: Cole and Brent’s college roommate, he and Jase spend all their time drinking beer, eating pizza and playing sports video games, apparently they are supposed to review that genre for the magazine. Jase: Robbie’s pal on the couch, the quietest of the bunch but smarter than h...

Flash animation is quickly becoming more than just a way to get funny time wasting snippets to the masses. There are some really good animators out there using flash for some pretty extensive and well put together stuff. Speaking of Stuff, stuffanimation.com as two great Flash movies, One is called Dude Where’s my Lightsaber and the other is Bounty Hunter’s Talk Back. DWML is a take on Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure/Bogus Journey, Dude Where’s My Car? and Episode II of Star Wars. It is most excellent. BHTB is a behind the music style interview with the Bounty hunters of the Star Wars series. It is pretty long and has some great interviews with the Bounty Hunters and some surprise guests. Check out Flash TV for some other great and not so great Flash animations.

I found a fun flash animation site toda called Tedi Online. Tedi is a martial arts teddy bear. There are a few flash animation stories on this site. Not a lot but they are entertaining and the animation is pretty good. Check out Tedi Online.

I have found a place where you can set up your own polls for your blog. It is called BlogPolling. I’ve added a poll to this site for the TV show LOST. Apparently someone will most likely die before the season end. So who is it gonna be.. You can vote on the sidebar. After you vote you will see the results. The poll will be up until April 13, 2005 which is the date of the next Lost Episode.