The Sweet Dick Blog!

Just came across a post in my “recommended” RSS feed that got my goat. It’s by an apple fanboy who “knows a half a thing about website design“. Well, why wouldn’t he? He’s got a Mac, right?

Basically, he thinks Apple did a great job of laying out their site, and Dell and HP did a shitty job. Big surprise. I understand the point, for reals. Tech companies other than apple tend clunk things up; it’s just true. Apple’s been harping on the same goddamn site aesthetic for years though; aren’t we done jerking them off yet? Silver computer thingee on a white background. Woo woo!

Besides, HP and Dell are clearly not after the “people who want people to think they’re artistic and slick” crowd. The sites are clearly supposed to offer more choice, and I’m sorry, but when that is the case, you have to get down to business and organize shit in a way that may look boring to some.

Oh, plus, maybe try comparing apples to apples (npi). The URL at which you actually purchase your Jesus computer isn’t apple.com/imac.
It’s http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/shop_mac/family/imac?aid=AIC-NAUS-K2-CONFIGURE-IMAC-INDEX&cp=CONFIGURE-IMAC-INDEX

For all you geeks who had the extreme pleasure of growing up with a Commodore 64 in the house, this shirt is for you.

Printed on a 100% ringspun cotton ringer tee (blue with navy bands), it’s basically a screenshot of the 64′s initial boot screen that you can wear!

Oh the memories! Pick one up here. Hell, pick 5 up!

The number of people fleeing the Apple bandwagon seems to be growing with this latest iPhone debacle.

There’s no doubt that Apple has its finger on the pulse of what makes for some cool hardware. The issue most iHaters have with apple probably has more to do with the mindless fanboys who’ll line up no matter what.

Here’s a shirt for all the sane tech enthusiasts out there!

Here’s the next in a series of new shirts from Sweet-Dick.com. This one’s for the many fans of the movie “The Princess Bride”.

In this classic Rob Reiner film, André the Giant plays Fezzik, a big, dumb, lovable dude who’s told at one point that he has a gift for rhyming. I won’t comment on this actual lyrical skills. I’ll let them speak for themselves:

“No more rhyming now; I mean it!”… “Anybody want a peanut?”

It’s a cool shirt. Pick one up for you and each of your friends here.

As mentioned on the Hotcakes Podcast, and in an earlier blog post, I really, really, really, really hate what BP has done to the gulf coast. Once they’re done with their “cleanup efforts”, there is no way BP should exist as company anymore. The damage they’ve done is unmeasurable and inexcusable, and makes me angry to think about.

So, I got to thinking; wouldn’t I like to display my rage? Wouldn’t it be even better if I could do so AND contribute to the cleanup effort? Well, I give you the “Fuck You, BP” t-shirt. Yes, that’s a swear word on there, but guess what’s worse than than swear word. Unfathomable amounts of oil all over the goddamn place; THAT’S WHAT.

70% of the profits from this shirt will be donated to GreenPeace, and I feel really good knowing that the 1st official sweet-dick shirt can be something positive like this. Tell your friends!

Hi there, everyone. In the last week, I’ve added 4 new shirt designs to sweet-dick.com. These will each get their own post on the sweet-dick blog, but before I get to that, I wanted to describe what’s already in the store, and why.

Before launching the online store, I wanted to spread the word a little bit by sending some gift shirts out to various podcasts having significant audiences.  Never was I EXPECTING to get mentioned on their shows, but I must say I was hoping. Either way though, these people were deserving of some gifts for putting out such high quality free content all the time; so these had to be not just some shirts. I wanted these things to speak specifically to the people I was sending them to. Of course, setting up a print job is no small task, so I ended up printing more than I needed in hopes that I could sell a few of  ’em as well.

First, I sent this beaut‘ out to Jimmy, Matt, and Eliot at Never Not Funny. If you know the show, Jimmy Pardo’s all about being a gentleman. Not only did thank us on the show, but he also mocked the name of our site, and wore the shirt on the video!

Next, I had to thank the boys at the Totally Rad Show for getting me into Avatar the Last Airbender. I still have not seen the movie because I think it’ll make me sad to see such a GREAT animated series desecrated on the big screen. Anyway, Jeff, Dan and Alex were kind enough to give Sweet-Dick.com a great big mention at the end of one of their episodes, and I can’t thank them enough. The shirt design I did up for them referenced a very minor but recurring character in the Last Airbender series: the Cabbage Merchant.

The last set of shirts to go out were to Tom Merritt and Scott Johnson of(among many other things) the fourcast podcast which, by the way, was just added to the TWIT network! Tom and Scott received some “You’re Doing it Wrong” t-shirts, which is a reference to a quote that kept coming up in one of their episodes.

This last design didn’t go out to any podcasts. It was actually a design I made for some friends for Christmas a few years back. I had a few left over, so I popped ‘em into the store; why not?

So these were the initial designs available in the store. We’re now moving on to new designs made JUST FOR the store. Over the next few days, you’ll see some posts outlining some of the new item’s you’ll find at sweet-dick.com.

Hey, everyone.  I was recently contacted by Mary Jones of residentialwindturbines.org regarding doing a post about wind power. I’m not sure what financial stakes she has in the industry, but I support just about anything that gets us off petroleum products, so it matters not. The following is what she has to say.

It’s not necessary to be a geek to understand how wind energy works.

Wind is caused by the uneven heating of the Earth by the sun and the fact that temperatures are always trying to reach an equilibrium (heat is obviously moving to a cooler area). With the rising price of energy and the damage to the environment from standard fuels, it is starting to be equitable to harvest this renewable resource.

The advantages of wind energy are that it’s virtually free (once you buy the equipment) and there is no pollution. The disadvantages include the fact it’s not a constant source (the velocity varies and many times it is insufficient to generate electricity) and it typically requires about one acre of land.

How Wind Energy Works

The volume of power which can be found varies by wind speed. The quantity available is termed it’s power density and it is measured in watts per square meter. For this reason, the U.S. Department of Energy has separated wind energy into classes from 1 to 7. The standard wind speed for class 1 is 9.8 mph or less while the average for a class 7 is 21.1 or more. For effective power production, class 2 winds (11.5 mph average speed) are generally required.

Generally, wind speeds increase as you get higher above the Earth. That is why, the typical wind turbine is a part of a tower at least 30 feet above obstructions. There are two basic types of towers useful for residential wind power systems (free standing and guyed). Free standing towers are self supporting and are usually heavier which means they take special equipment (cranes) to erect them. Guyed towers are supported on a concrete base and anchored by wires for support. They typically are not as heavy and most manufacturer’s produce tilt down models which may be easily raised and lowered for maintenance.

The kinetic (moving energy) from the winds is harnessed by a device known as a turbine. This turbine consists of airfoils (blades) that capture the energy of the wind and use it to turn the shaft of an alternator (like you have on a car only bigger).

There are 2 basic kinds of blades (drag style and lifting style). We all have seen pictures of old-fashioned windmills with the large flat blades which are an example of the drag style of airfoil. Lifting style blades are twisted instead of flat and resemble the propellor of a small airplane.

A turbine is classified as to whether it is built to be installed with the rotor in a horizontal or vertical position and whether the wind strikes the blades or the tower first. A vertical turbine typically requires less land for it’s installation and is a much better option for the more urban areas on the planet. An upwind turbine is made for the wind to impact the airfoils before it does the tower.

These units ordinarily have a tail on the turbine which is needed to maintain the unit pointed into the wind. A downwind turbine doesn’t need a tail as the wind acting on the blades tends to maintain it oriented properly.

These turbine systems would be damaged if they were to be permitted to turn at excessive speeds. Therefore, units must have automatic over-speed governing systems. Some systems use electrical braking systems while others use mechanical type brakes.

The output electricity from the alternator is sent to a controller which conditions it for use in the home. Using residential wind power systems requires the home to either remain tied to the utility grid or store electricity in a battery for use when the wind will not blow sufficiently.

When the home is tied to the grid, the excess electricity that is created by the residential wind power system can be sold to the utility company in order to reduce or even eliminate your electric bill. During times with not enough wind, the home is supplied power from the utility company.

The expense of Wind Energy

Small residential wind power turbines can be an attractive alternative, or addition, to those people needing over 100-200 watts of power for their home, business, or remote facility. Unlike PV’s, which remain at basically the same cost per watt independent of array size, wind generators get cheaper with increasing system size. At the 50 watt size level, for example, a small residential power wind mill would cost about $8.00/watt when compared with approximately $6.00/watt for a PV module.

This is the reason, everything being equal, Photovoltaic is cheaper for very small loads. As the system size gets larger, however, this “rule-of-thumb” reverses itself.

At 300 watts the windmill costs are down to $2.50/watt, while the PV costs are still at $6.00/watt. For a 1,500 watt wind system the cost is down to $2.00/watt and at 10,000 watts the cost of a wind generator (excluding electronics) is down to $1.50/watt.

Who am i ? – Mary Jones writes for the residential wind generators web log, her personal hobby blog dedicated to guidelines to reduce CO2 and lower electricity costs using alternative power sources.

If you want to read my complete Bio: http://www.residentialwindturbines.org/about

Ok, you gazers! Many of you have said that Gwardo and myself have been far too in touch with our feminine sides lately, so here’s where we fix that.

For episode 88, we’re talking dude things. SO; tell us about all your favorite dude things! Ladies, you can take part too, of course! Just do your best to use the lizard part of your brain.

We’re going to go a little ungentlemanly on this one! We want: Your favorite dude movies, chicks you’d like to “bone”, favorite things about the ladies, manliest/most savage things you’ve done… You name it, we want to hear about it!

Email us at hotcakes@hotcakespodcast.com, call us at 339-225-3784! (“3 EZ CAKES, UG”), skype us at username teezeCrost, hit us on facebook.com/hotcakespodcast, tweet at us at /gwardo or /teezecrost.

I had to send two faxes last night. Yes, FAXES. I pay $20/year for an online faxing service so I can exchange faxes with people who are too behind in their thinking to just move the F on! I felt ridiculous through the whole experience, even using an online service, ’cause I could picture the document chugging out of some machine on the other end.

Here’s what I think of faxes: They waste paper, they’re inconvenient, they’re expensive, they’re noisy, they produce documents of a single size that always look like shit, and the machines waste a lot of space. Everyone STOP USING THEM. And if somebody asks you for one, tell them you’ll scan the thing and email a PDF. Fucking idiots. I say that very tongue in cheek, but it really is ridiculous. Like, people are paying MONTHLY FEES for this antiquated bullshit. Not to mention toner, paper, and electricity.

Ok, here’s the next thing. Stop insisting you’ll call me, or asking me to call you about some piece of business, or desired information. There’s a new technology on the block. It’s called email, moron! Are you really so hooked on being awkward on the phone that you’re willing to give up all the convenience and efficiency of an electronic message?

Here’s what’s wrong with your beloved phone call: Both parties need to free their schedules to partake; if there are more than a few pieces of info to exchange, both parties should really prepare a script or have very well trained memories; person A needs to have his/her wealth of information at his/her immediate disposal, or just “get back” to person B in a later phone call for which person B will probably be unavailable; to efficiently refer back to the newly acquired information at some point down the line, a person should probably type their hand written notes into an email anyway. There’s no good reason to make a phone call. You know that amazing piece of technology sitting on your desk? It’s a computer. It does amazing things. Get comfortable with it, or don’t bother me at all ever.

Personal conversations are what you you use the phone for (or preferably Skype or some other VOIP system). People who’s voices I want to make time for. That’s it. Fuck your “personal touch”. Dump your info and move on, and we’ll get through this a lot faster.

End of rant.

There is a new Sweet-Dick.com shirt it the works. The design is done, and should be printed before too long. I can’t unveil the design yet, but it’s got something to do with rage over the BP situation.

This will mark the first REAL sweet-dick shirt, in that it’s intended specifically to go up on the site. But I thought “why not have our 1st t-shirt be one that matters?”. I’ve been feeing such disgust over the BP oil catastrophe; here’s my chance to really lend a bit of a hand for once.

SO when the shirt goes up for sale, AT LEAST 50% of the profit will go to a charitable organization of some kind. The purpose of this post is to find out which organization that should be. I’m not up on who’s trustworthy or effective in the world of activism, so please hit me with your suggestions. Please use the comments section of this blog post to submit your suggestions so it’s easier to keep track.

The top responses will be put to a poll, then at some point after the shirts have had a chance to sell, Sweet-Dick.com will make as large a donation as possible to the one that comes out on top.

The ones on the tip of my tongue are GreenPeace and the World Wildlife Fund, but please hit me with more, or correct me if I’m wrong!

As many of you know, a month or two back I watched the entire Avatar the Last Airbender series over just a few weeks. Loved the story, loved the characters, and found the animated Nickelodeon program to be genuinely funny many times.

Next month, the M Night Shyamalan directed movie adaptation comes out, and I’m pretty excited. First, they made the excellent decision to split the story into 3 movies, as the show was split into 3 seasons. I think this is the only way to do it. And in the trailer, you can spot many important elements of the animated series. It seems like this movie may not suck!

Now, as often happens in life, I’m annoyed by some people. Racialicious, GENE LUEN YANG, and some other sites/people are starting a boycott of the movie because it contains white actors and actresses.  I posted a comment in response to some of the other comments on Racialicious, but it’s awaiting moderation and will eventually be filtered out, I’m sure. So see below if you’re curious about what I wrote.

First, let me just make some points. And just to be clear, I believe myself to be in possession of a sufficient level of white guilt, and I only dislike dicks and losers; not ethnicities. I’d like to say I love all races, but a race is not a thing to love. A person is.

-Avatar TLAB is an American series, originally aired on a US network.

-To me, the main characters look white, but in actuality they are ambiguous. I know this because the United States, China, Japan, Malaysia, etc; they just DON’T EXIST in the world of the Last Airbender.

-You can’t claim racial ownership of a character just because the show he appears in shares aesthetic qualities to an animation style originating in your country.

-The Director is a brown man. He’s fine with his casting choices, so get a life and enjoy your movie.

-You should reevaluate your level of racial tolerance if a white actor is enough to make you abandon a story you claim to love.

I plan to happily pay to see this movie. Cast whoever you want. If it’s good, I’ll be on cloud 9. If it doesn’t live up, I’ll pan it. That’s all that matters to me. By the way, head over to sweet-dick.com and buy a “My Cabbages” shirt if you’re a true fan of the show and get the reference and like to buy awesome products

You guys are so dramatic. I love all races, and HATE racial intolerance, but it’s unbelievable to me that you’d deprive yourself of a *possibly* stellar movie because you’d prefer an Asian actor.
Aang looked pretty white to me in the cartoon. Not that that even matters considering the story takes place in a world where ASIA AND NORTH AMERICA DON’T EXIST.
Settle down and pop your corn.

Hey, all you star gazers! On Hotcakes #85 we’re talking about things that don’t work. Get in touch with, and complain to us about all those things that just don’t perform the functions they’re in existence for. Especially if you paid hard earned cash-money for them!

And just to live up to our name and mission, did you find any functioning alternatives?

Email us at hotcakes@hotcakespodcast.com, call us at 339-225-3784! (“3 EZ CAKES, UG”), skype us at username teezeCrost, hit us on facebook.com/hotcakespodcast, tweet at us at /gwardo or /teezecrost.

Finally it’s here, everyone. I’d like to thank my bro for the ratchet set he got me a few Christmases ago, and Wiltron for his aid in getting the bulky part down my stairs!

For those who care, this is a Riley Hopkins 6-color, 4-station manual press. From everything I’ve read and experienced so far, Ryonet is a cracker jack company that pays close attention to customer satisfaction. And I don’t know the guy, but as you’ll see below, Riley Hopkins seems like not only a genius engineer, but also a gentleman and a sweetheart.

Now to calibrate this puppy, and learn to use my new retensionable screens! Busy, busy!

Hey, star gazers!!
For the next episode of Hotcakes(the best podcast in mainland Canada): Dudes! Any girly drinks, songs, actives you partake in quietly or proudly? Girls, any dude-like things? It’s time to share. Don’t be shy!

Email us at hotcakes@hotcakespodcast.com, call us at 339-225-3784! (“3 EZ CAKES, UG”), skype us at username teezeCrost, hit us on facebook.com/hotcakespodcast, tweet at us at /gwardo or /teezecrost.

Although there’s an official explanation on the site, I feel the need to talk it out a bit, especially after the Never Not Funny commentary on Episode 702 (which we were not offended by, and in fact very excited about, to the point of releasing LOLs).

First, let me just say that even if I wanted to change the name of the site now, it would be a lot of work, and a lot of wasted “google juice”.  Searching “sweet dick” on google, yields page 1 results for sweet-dick.com, the Sweet Dick Blog (what you’re reading now), and the Hotcakes podcast. Searching on Bing or Yahoo gets us #1 results! That’s tough to give up! Here comes the rest though…

1. It doesn’t fucking matter.
Does the word DICK really still bother people? Are we seriously not adult enough to stop pretending the scary words are going to steal our souls? I’m drawing a line in the sand. People cool enough to GET OVER IT, come over to my side. Lowbrow language is only lowbrow language when its used by lowbrow people in a lowbrow way. Dumb people will continue to sound dumb, and the cream will continue to rise to the top. With any effort whatsoever, we’ll be the latter.

2. Pretend
If the name still bothers you,  pretend it’s in reference to a thoughtful man named Richard.

3. It’s Very Meta
Sweet Dick itself symbolizes the eternal internal struggle between always travelling the route of the intellectual and occasionally giving props to a well executed dick and/or fart joke.

4. It’s Catchy
Seriously. Are you going to remember visiting www.funny-t-shirts-4u.com, or are you going to remember visiting Sweet-Dick.com?

5. It’s Fun!
A friend said it once out of the blue instead of “awesome” (or what have you), then another said it, then I said it.. People clearly like it. And I like those people! To give proper credit, the first person I ever heard say it was Sambot.

6. It’s Irrelevant!
We’re going to have really cool products. Just come to the site and buy stuff, and take a break from all the worrying!

I may add more to this list as I think of things. But you get the idea so far!

I’m really feeling movement and progress lately in terms of everything under the Rocket Science Designs umbrella! RocketScienceDesigns.com underwent a quick but slick looking refinement, Sweet-Dick.com is now accessible to the public, and the Hotcakes chalet now contains a dedicated studio!

The first set of big things that have happened in the last few weeks deal with a lot of generosity on the part of some internet friends. After receiving the t-shirt gifts we mailed them, some major podcasts VERY generously, plugged sweet-dick.com and hotcakespodcast.com on recent episodes. You can see our mention on the Totally Rad Show in the last 15 minutes of this episode. Our mention on Jimmy Pardo’s Never Not Funny is 20-30 minutes in, then again near the end of episode 702. If you get the video of the show, he actually wears the shirt the entire episode! And no, we’re not offended over what he said about our domain name (more on that in a seperate post); it was the perfect pardo commentary, and we enjoyed it a lot! We also sent some stuff to Scott Johnson and Tom Merritt, both of the Fourcast Podcast among other huge shows. These guys both have huge things happening in the world of online broadcasting right now, and to my knowledge they haven’t mentioned our site on any of their shows yet, but they have been VERY cool, friendly and responsive via email, and at the time of this writing, Tom had yet to receive his stuff. On that note, it’s very important that I emphasize that no free exposure was ever EXPECTED of any of these people, and as mind-blowing as it is to be mentioned by them, the largest privilege comes just in being in touch with them, and being given the opportunity to introduce myself and the projects I’m involved in.

The next big events have been online orders. Yes, people came to sweet-dick.com, placed orders, and those orders have shipped and are shipping. The website I built with my own hands works, it’s confirmed. It’s a great feeling, and also marks the destruction of a barrier I’ve been struggling with for years. Making those 1st online dollars. Now that I see it’s possible and that it works, I can’t see the momentum stopping.

The one negative aspect of all of this happening is that I’m watching these orders come in, and accumulating to-do items on my list, and there’s not a thing I can do about any of it for most hours of the day! As great as it is to have a dependable source of income, it’s also SO frustrating to be stuck behind the steel gate of full-time employment! This is a minor complaint though; things are looking up!

Next up: THIS WEEK, the delivery of Sweet Dick’s new printing equipment is scheduled. And once assembled and familiarized with, production of more shirts can start. It’s no secret that the shirts currently residing in the store aren’t well catered to the general public, but right away we’ll have the gear we need to make higher-quality, more detailed prints, and yes, finally Hotcakes shirts will be made available! It’s very uphill managing almost ever aspect of a business, and only having part-time hours in which to do it. These things are happening though, and goals will continue to be set and achieved.

Anyway, most of this was discussed on the most recent Hotcakes (#83) (as dry listening as it may have made), but I felt the need to write. The trend of blog post scarcity has been broken!

Hello, all. Just wanted to post a few recent points of progress.

1st, Hotcakes: A combination of a slow connection where I was publishing from over the weekend, and a faulty script I was running caused a few feed problems on the last episode. Apologies for that, and I hope everyone’s feed is now functional again.

Also, although I like the new direction the show is going in for the most part, Gwardo and I are going to shift the angle of it slightly. Rather than us picking 1 thing we like per show, and sharing it with all y’all whether you like it or not, we think a better idea is for us to each pick a few of the top “up” aspects of our weeks, and share them as topics with our listeners in hopes of spreading the enjoyment around. I’m sure star gazer Kristy would agree that there’s no reason for us to scratch the surface of topics we haven’t invested a lot of time in ;D   Anyway, We’re still “putting together breakfast and taking apart your world”; just in a lighter, more listenable way. Our full description has been re-written and can be checked out here.

2nd, Shirts: In regards to Hotcakes shirts, the design is detailed enough that I don’t want to leave it up to shabby equipment to produce. However, I’m still a few weeks away from placing my order for new printing equipment. This will allow me time to gather a bit more cash, and to make sure I don’t leave anything out of my order, which needs to travel across the border.

In the meantime, I’ve designed another simpler shirt for eventual sale on sweet-dick.com, the design for which I’ll be able to share in a few days. I’ve been trying to whip my artistic skills back into shape lately, and this video really got the ball rolling for me on the latest creation:

3rd, Blog pages simplification: If you look at the top links area of the blog, you’ll notice there’s now one catch-all description of who we are and what we do. This includes brief details about Sweet Dick, Hotcakes, and Rocket Science, without a bunch of extraneous blabber gunking it up.

Hey, star gazers! Well, Gwardo and I recorded a few episodes of Hotcakes last night, and things went well. We talked about Pizza and Wilburys who travel.

I think we’ve made a lot of nice changes to the show, but I don’t think one should stop pushing to improve, especially when they’re far from old pros. What’s everyone think of the show as it is currently. We really would value whatever input anyone has for us.

The thoughts we came away from last night’s recording with were:

1. Less fact reading. Stick to interesting discoveries and pertinent info. Then casually yack it up!
2. Be comfier. I think we’ll benefit from some pillows and  the ability to really settle in for a convo.
3. Bring the funny. We’re thinking of digging up some improv/comedy literature and trying out some comedy experiments before or during the show.

I’m sure there are many other things we could do; so again, please tell us what you like and could use less of. Thanks, folks!

Next, here’s the skinny on hotcakes shirts. I attempted to print once. Things did not cooperate. I’ve decided to ditch my ‘start out’ press in favor of something nice that will in all probability make my setups a million times less time consuming and aggravating . So the bad news is that the shirts are delayed. The good news is we’re serious and devoted enough to them get them done right for all y’all. So please stand by and listen to the show for further updates! Below are shots of the current setup and the future setup.

Peace in the middle east!