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March 29, 2009
Vote for Woz tonight!
Steve Wozniak is dancing again tonight on ABC's Dancing with the Stars, and he needs your votes! Two of the dancing couples will be voted off this week, so it's imperative that you vote for Steve this week. He has certainly given us geeks a lot of happiness, it's time to repay that favor!
Tonight viewers get 11 votes, and you can cast them all for Woz if you'd like! Viewers may cast their votes via phone on Monday night during and up to 30 minutes after the "Dancing with the Stars" performance shows. AT&T subscribers may also text message their votes by texting the word "VOTE" and entering the number that corresponds to the team they want to support (standard text message rates apply). Viewers may also vote online at www.abc.com starting from the opening of each episode on the East Coast and until 12:00 Noon, ET the following day. Dancing with the Stars starts at 8PM local times.
And if you need any more encouragement to vote, here is a note from his wife Janet...
Your audience votes alone kept him on last week. He is having the time of his life & wants to continue. This week he is doing the Tango & it's a very serious dance where he twirls Karina around above his head & flips her too. Please watch & vote so my hubby can stay on and have fun.
So come on geeks, go VOTE!
Posted by Snaggy at 09:23 PM | Comments (1)
Get a tan from your computer!
Ha ha! I love this hilarious spoof video. It helps make staying indoors in front to my computer so much more bearable. :-)
Posted by Snaggy at 12:18 PM | Comments (0)
March 28, 2009
Your weekend Forum Tidbits!
Shroom's got a new toy, ... Rhonwyyn gets a server- error- service- unavailable, ... Ti's excited about Death Note Subbed, ... Azalie bumps Geeky non supermodel girl... seeks geeky non supermodel guy, ... and GrumpySteen says This will make the Mac fans cry...
Posted by Snaggy at 06:43 AM
March 26, 2009
Thursday's Forum Tidbits!
GrumpySteen says This will make the Mac fans cry... macmcseboy loves SOOOOOO tiny but oh so shiny! , ... Erbo updates us on Dancing With The Stars - Season 8, Week 3 Grummash finds Something good in the news, at last!, ... and don't miss out on the MacHEADS the Movie giveaway!
Posted by Snaggy at 12:52 AM
March 23, 2009
Monetize Twitter? No prob!
You may have seen one of our comics about monetizing Twitter... if you haven't, there's one here and a new one here. Now if you're new to Twitter (or even if you are not!) and you're wondering how this popular social-networking service can be harnessed as a business tool, then have we got a book for you. Cue up a plug for our pal Julio's book...
Julio Ojeda-Zapata's "Twitter Means Business: How Microblogging Can Help or Hurt Your Company." is the perfect primer to Twitter, and how to use it for pleasure and profit. Check out Julio's site for all the ways and formats you can pick up this book, or just run and grab it on Amazon!
Posted by Snaggy at 09:04 AM | Comments (0)
March 22, 2009
MacHEADS the movie Giveaway!
Time for another great giveaway! And this time we are giving away MACHEADS! That's right, the hilarious, insightful, wacky, documentary about the Cult of Apple is now available on DVD, and to celebrate, we're giving away a copy to a lucky Machead (or Machead wannabe)!
Giveaway is now over, but heck, join our Forums and get in on the next giveaway!
Posted by Snaggy at 09:39 AM
March 20, 2009
Forum Tidbits to savour all weekend!
Snaggy beams up They built their own Kirk chair!, ... Callipygous says Gimme , and is Looking out, ... Colonel Panic wonders Does AIG Arrogance Justify New High Tax Rates?, ... Tech Angel finds Subliminal Joy? , ... ouch, Maggs got owned! and it was macmcseboy's birthday!
Posted by Snaggy at 07:41 AM
March 16, 2009
Can't get enough of them Forum Tidbits!
HalfVast finds something So Simple?, ... Colonel Panic asks Have Republicans turned America away from God? and then gets his ribs broken, ... GrumpySteen hasn't posted a music video in quite a while... and for the Recently Single Cjad the Nord, Geek culture is my kind of culture!
Posted by Snaggy at 01:09 PM
March 13, 2009
Friday's Titillating Tidbits!
geekygoddess asks can you turn into a lesbian overnight?, ... macmcseboy is happy that for the fist time in more than a decade, ... The Famous Druid thinks Westboro Baptist Church needs to hire a proofreader, ... tweety has been working on his fairy tales, ... and be sure to check out maximile's new iPhone game LayOut!
Posted by Snaggy at 09:23 AM
March 12, 2009
You ain't seen nothing yet...!
In case you missed it, or in case you didn't and just want to watch it a million times, here is Woz's performance on Dancing with the Stars....
And if you are located in the USA, check out the hilarious skit from Jimmy Fallon's Tuesday show. It's called "Woz but not Wozniak" featuring five dancers dressed like Woz, right down the the beard, complete with pink boa. It's right after his opening dialogue. :-D
Don't forget to watch next week, and to vote! It's time us geeks give back Woz a little love!
Posted by Snaggy at 09:38 AM | Comments (0)
March 11, 2009
Some Forum Tidbits to get you through the week...
Callipygous exalts Let there be light, ... geekygoddess thinks Spring is in the air... and Time flies and all that,... Colonel Panic needs help. My Mac was Hacked?, ... TheMoMan Friggen Hates WinBlows, ... and Erbo gives the play by play for Dancing With The Stars - Season 8, Week 1.
Posted by Snaggy at 12:54 AM
March 08, 2009
Follow Woz on Twitter, and vote for him too.
Steve Wozniak's Dancing with the Stars debut is Monday night on ABC. Be sure to watch, and if you can, give him a vote or 13. He has certainly given us geeks a lot of happiness, it's time to repay that favor!
From his Facebook group page... Viewers may cast their votes for their favorite teams via phone on Monday night during and up to 30 minutes after the “Dancing with the Stars” performance shows. AT&T subscribers may also text message their votes by texting the word “VOTE” and entering the number that corresponds to the team they want to support (standard text message rates apply). Viewers may also vote online at www.abc.com starting from the opening of each episode on the East Coast and until 12:00 Noon, ET the following day.
Steve adds:"You can vote up to 13 times with your cell phone. Actually, you can only vote as many times as there are contestants, which will likely be either 11, 12 or 13 this Monday, but extra votes surely don't hurt. An iPhone app to vote for me should be in the iTunes store soon.
You can ALSO vote online up to [13] times (the first week) but you have to set up an account on ABC first. Please spread the word so that friends and fans can set up such accounts in advance and be ready to vote for me."
And you can also follow him on Twitter @stevewoz.
Posted by Snaggy at 09:38 PM | Comments (0)
March 07, 2009
Letters from Woz about his Dancing with the Stars experience
The following are excerpts from two letters from Steve Wozniak, documenting his experience at Dancing with the Stars...
I have a great partner for Dancing With The Stars, Karina Smirnoff, and I trust her very much!
Our first dance is a chacha to a country-ish song "You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet." this Monday (March 9).
You can vote up to 13 times with your cell phone. Actually, you can only vote as many times as there are contestants, which will likely be either 11, 12 or 13 this Monday, but extra votes surely don't hurt.
An iPhone app to vote for me should be in the iTunes store soon but it's not there yet.
You can ALSO vote online up to [13] times (the first week) but you have to set up an account on ABC first. Please spread the word so that friends and fans can set up such accounts in advance and be ready to vote for me.
I should post soon, on some website, video of 7,000 people in the Boston U. arena chanting "vote for Woz" after a wonderful presentation at a FIRST robotics competition.
Your support has made a huge difference in my outlook and transition from fear to enjoyment, at least so far. So thank you very much for everything. I'd like to demonstrate, by viewers and voters, that people in the entertainment businesses (including professional sports) are not the only people in this world that count. If you think that you cannot possibly dance or that you are the world's worst dancer, I'm going to show that it's not true.
Thanks, again, and best wishes to all,
Woz
p.s. I am incredibly busy and sore and under pressure so I can do very little email or phone chats. And according to my dance partner, it will get a million times worse. When I said only 2 or 3 or 4 times worse she gave me a dirty look that said I was wrong. So I said 10 times worse and she still said I was way out of the ball park.
(Woz's second and longer letter is after the jump...)
I'm living in L.A. ...
I drove down with Julie and we have been skirting all over this part of L.A. and Hollywood on Segways. One of the 3 Segways I brought down stopped working, but that's very normal for me. We glide on our Segways to any kind of shopping, dining or entertaining you can imagine, all very nearby. The elegant Grove mall is right down the street and we have visited the Apple Store (I even purchased the new Time Capsule there) and restaurants. We glide to the DWTS tailor and to the studio where we practice, which is a few miles away. It's so wonderful to show up for the exertion of dance practice and training after floating along with the self-generated breeze that you get from a Segway, using your weight and feet like lightweight skiing. One day Julie arrived after about 7 miles and her feet actually were sore.
I like to get started on training and work hard at the start, building up a major sweat, front and back. Usually I'll start practicing parts of the routines on my own, trying to catch things that my partner has pointed out and get them corrected, before we do it together. After a slight preparation, my partner Karina is usually ready. Karina likes a coffee to start the morning. When they do a Starbucks run they get me a cider, with no caramel, the drink I like. I bring bottles of diet green tea with lemon and also water to drink during practice. I sweat hard and get out of breath and exhausted and have even gulped down almost an entire bottle at one time. As much as I drink, I never have to go to the bathroom, I'm sweating so hard.
Over time, my feet, ankles, shins, knees, thighs, hips, lower back, and shoulders have gotten constantly sore. I never take baths but on the suggestion of Karina I took an Epson salt bath and it helped a lot. I don't get massages but I have one scheduled soon today, so you know how much I'm hurting.
Back to the practice, after getting ready to start with Karina she might grab me sort of privately just before the camera turns on and say "Steve...we have to have a talk." At that point she gives me talk about things I'm doing well enough for myself but that need work on to look right for the dance. With the camera rolling, she might also so instruct me, but in less of a parental correction mode, more like a nice teacher. The one approach does shock me (about things I'm doing poorly) and I listen hard and do try hard to correct them and improve them. When I learn how to improve I usually have to skirt Karina aside for a while and just practice it over and over and over, getting it mostly wrong. When I get one thing right I forget to do the other 20 things. but after enough repetition I actually learn things and learn to do them together. I know that my head can't remember the thousand things we do in a 77 second dance, but my muscles learn it and my head finally forgets.
I am so glad when I actually manage to do the right thing with my hands and not forget what my feet are supposed to do at the same time. I know that I'm not the only dancing celebrity going through this, from the little talk I've had with a couple of them, from what I hear from the dancers, producers, and directors, and from what Mark Cuban, a former contestant on this show, shares with me.
I rarely take aspirin, and even then only for the worst headaches. Sometimes I don't even take it for a headache. But I have wound up on a few occasions so far taking Alleve to reduce my pain, and I have to say that I believe it has been helpful.
In our dancing, there are two aspects, roughly like the trees and the forest. I need to run through the entire dance order to get in my head what comes after what. I can't tell you how many times I had to stop practice runs just because I got to a point and forgot what thing comes next. Then there's the work on individual parts. We'll be dancing through and Karina will be saying, as we dance, things like "stand tall", "small step", "lasso", "meow", "look at watch", "head high", "stand tall" and so forth. She's done it so many times that now I hear her saying it even when she's silent and it helps a ton, I can tell you.
My best moments are when I did something more correctly that I had been trying to get down. I can tell when it actually reached my muscle memory and will probably stay more correct from then on.
I was scared at the start but smile a lot now. Our second song, for the Quickstep, is "Oh Boy" by Buddy Holly. Anyone who knows me knows that when I hear music I like my feet start tapping, whether I'm at a concert, in a movie, driving or just standing. I love music this way and my feet want to dance so badly but I never get up to dance because I have no idea how to. Well, that Buddy Holly song is one of those. My head perks up with the biggest smile ever and my feet just start moving as fast as they can and it's the most fun ever. In our quickstep dancing, my feet are making me dance, rather than vice versa. We cover so much dance floor space so fast that it's like riding a Segway, and the dance is over too soon for me, rather than seeming so long. I feel like the luckiest person there to be able to dance to that song.
At some point in the near future, possible extended slightly due to some performers dropping out, I'll have to learn new dances pretty much in 3 days. If I make it to the semifinals I'll have to learn 2 dances in 3 days. If dancing is your thing, that's nothing and you can do it in a couple of hours, but for me, this seems so impossible that it's my biggest fear and worry right now. I hear stories of men refusing to do 2 dances and basically just standing there. I hear stories of men and women coming to tears. I hear stories of planned fake injuries. The only thankful thing is that not many of us have to reach the semifinals.
I'm enjoying this experience right now so much that I'm going to try to go all the way. If enough fans and friends vote for me, we'll find out what my physical limits are. Keep in mind that at 58 years old, I'm the oldest contender this year. Watch how fast young kids pick up dance and aerobics steps and learn video games and you'll understand what that means. One of my competitors is a 17-years old Olympic gymnastics gold medalist. I say that the others are all fingers and I'm the thumb, out of place. Of course that is also true for Steve O. of Jackass fame. I feel like an underdog and the main things I have going for me are popularity for having created such a great company, for being an outstanding engineer, for caring about kids, for being a fun and nice guy, and for my general personality. I have a lot of fans in parts of the world that normally don't show up in the demographics for entertainment like this show, and if they come out of the woodwork and watch me dance, and VOTE FOR ME, then the producers and the industry will recognize this group like never before.
Please, especially close friends, understand that I am very pressured and don't have time to answer all calls and email. Some of you have tried to call me during practice but we are so busy that I don't even bring my phones anymore. I am going to try to twitter occasionally, but hopefully I can get info like this on occasion to the related "vote-for-woz" websites that I have heard of but not had time to peruse.
best to all of you in your endeavors,
and may something this shocking never happen to most of you!,
Woz
Good luck Woz, we are rooting for you!
(and for those who haven't seen our Joy of Tech comic about this, here's the link.)
Posted by Snaggy at 12:11 PM | Comments (0)
March 05, 2009
Saturday Morning Watchmen :-)
If you've read WATCHMEN, you'll love this hilarious take on them...
Posted by Snaggy at 10:44 PM | Comments (1)
March 03, 2009
Tuesday's Tidbits!
TheMoMan's Belly Hurts (get well soon!), ... we wish Happy Birthday GMx! and Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss!, ... Snaggy hates Dollhouse, and posts One last time, for old time's sake, ... and hmmm... If Rush limbaugh is so smart...
Posted by Snaggy at 12:33 AM
March 01, 2009
Phoenix Five!
Long lost Australian space opera Phoenix Five has resurfaced, and it's a hoot. It was produced in 1969 and ran for 26 episodes in 1970. Hmmmm, there's something familiar about this series... :-D Courtesy of Fanboy.com.
Posted by Snaggy at 09:33 AM | Comments (0)