He’s half boy and half dog. Yogi just doesn’t get that he isn’t ideal lap dog size. (that’s Bubs underneath him by the way)

Book Review

Crush It!: Why NOW Is the Time to Cash In on Your Passion – I first saw Gary Vaynerchuk at FOWA 09 Miami, this hyper dude from Jersey that has built a wine empire employing social media shook the crowd with his very honest and passionate talk about his approach to life, wine, and most importantly, business. Gary V woke me up in a big way that afternoon. I was ready to kick ass and change shit after hearing him talk, but my job fell apart and I channeled all that power right into my web design business. And it’s working. Gary and I are fairly close in terms of wearing hearts on our sleeves and being from New Jersey (technically he’s from Belarus and I’m from South Florida, but let’s not split hairs). But the one thing I really identify the most with Gary V is the concept of if you do what you love, it’s impossible to fail.

Ok, now the book… well, Gary’s presentation is tough to top and this book mostly does a good job of giving you the “Gary V experience”, but I think the problem with Gary V in book-format is you don’t get the pacing back and forth on stage, the thick North Jersey accent, the why-is-that-guy-wearing-such-a-big-fucking watchband?… you miss out on a little of what makes Gary special, his passion. Don’t get me wrong, the book is great, the message is clarion clear and I will recommend it to every small business owner I know (and more importantly, every guy humping a miserable cubicle not doing what they love). But what’s missing is something you can only get from watching Gary’s videoblogs or seeing him in person – that gregarious passion. All that said, great book and at only 160 pages, not too big of a time commitment either.

• xkcd : Tribute to Geocities
• Hilarious Skittles Commercial

Links for my geeky homies…

• TaffyBox
• imo.im – very cool, browser based, multi-network IM client
• Social Games : How the Big Three Make Money
• Fully Functional iPhone 3GS Halloween Costume
• Be a CSS Ninja with your Font Dragr

Many of my readers come through facebook and many of my readers are facebook friends of mine and you probably wonder, “how is it that Van claims to be so busy, yet all I see from him on facebook is him playing that DAMN MAFIA WARS GAME!!! (and then you curse and raise your hands to the heavens or something)”. Well, here’s the secret… I’m not really playing the game. I’m using a Greasemonkey script called Mafia Wars Autoplayer (see screenshot below)…

So what’s the fun in that? Well, I’ve always been a bigger fan of strategy games and this is actually more enjoyable for me. I set my rules up and just let it run, checking in periodically to see if my decisions were good or not. At Georgia Tech, I took an economics class and part of our grade was a towel selling simulation game – I freakin’ loved it (and aced the class – which was a rarity for me at GT). And the other cool thing, is this allows me to code my day away while robbing, collecting hit list bounties, and pulling off heists just like Balki Bartokomous from Perfect Strangers would want me to.

Brother Lee by Citizen Cope… now, I the tab I found for this song had these somewhat hand contortion-y chords, so I made it easier by capo-ing the 1st fret…

I Love the Unknown by Eef Barzelay…

• A Hairy Question – thanks Sage
• Wrestling Fail
• Dear Lily – an open letter sung to Lily Allen
• Chernobyl Today – I had a really good co-worker friend from the Ukraine and he lived near the reactor during the disaster, was really interesting to hear his perspective.
• Toy Story 2 – Toy Saw
• Craigslist Ad of the Day – free TV due to a broken hearted/pee’d upon girlfriend

Links for my geeky homies…

• How to get FireBug-like tools in Safari (for Mac) – this was really handy when trying to work with the Uize ImagePort component for the Hope for Humanity Literacy in El Salvador website.