Lots of velvet and lots of lace on the New York runways.
Monique Lhuillier
Image by Frazer Harrison / Getty Images
Monique Lhuillier
Image by Frazer Harrison / Getty Images
Monique Lhuillier
Image by Frazer Harrison / Getty Images
Image by Richard Drew / AP
Stephen Curry should do just fine in this weekend's All-Star contest, I'm thinking.
Based on three-point-contest scoring, this performance would've been a 27, which would give Curry the all-time record if it came in competition. The previous best is a 25, by Jason Kapono in 2008, and Kevin Love won last year with a 15.
Image by Ben Margot / AP
That story and more in today's CelebFeed Gossip Roundup!
Remember the fight between Drake and Chris Brown that went down at a NYC nightclub last summer? They're suing each other over it. Take it away, TMZ:
Source: Getty Images
Both Drake and Brown have filed legal docs -- obtained by TMZ -- in which they point the guilty finger at each other. It's a little technical, but each is asking the judge to pin the blame on the other.
Drake and Brown each claim they were not responsible for the fight and want the other to pay any damages in the event the model wins his suit.
Via: tmz.com
Speaking of, Rihanna and Katy Perry's best friendship is officially over now that RiRi is dating Chris Brown.
Image by Larry Busacca / Getty Images
Eve accused Britney Spears of not actually singing on her latest single "Scream and Shout" on last night's Watch What Happens Live, but her rep says that it's "absolute BS."
Image by Frazer Harrison / Getty Images
In this video obtained exclusively by BuzzFeed Animals, one baby panda tries to climb a ladder and his friend wants to help. The world is forever changed.
Once you've watched it, can we talk about that one part in the middle, and then that other part when the second panda tries to help, and then the best part at the very end? Actually, let's just talk about all of the parts!
Many thanks to Phraejai Damrongcharoen for sharing this video with BuzzFeed. The pandas were filmed at the Chengdu Research Base Of Giant Panda Breeding in Chengdu, China.
Hello experts, I have this code which works so perfect while detecting square objects from images which are downloaded from internet. However, when I am taking the image of a square object from my webcam and processing, its not turning out to be as expected. I am suspecting, the reason could be due...I wrote this story a few years ago and I just found it on my computer. I thought it would be interesting to share.
I took my seat on the plane to Norway. It was my first international flight and I was alone. Overhead there were a few advertisements written in Norwegian, and I did a double-take when I realized I was able to read them. The words were so similar to German that I understood the entire advertisement without knowing a word of Norwegian. And despite being alone, I was comforted that my German was with me.
It was around this time that I really began to see how much German I had learned so quickly. I remembered just two years ago when it had suddenly dawned on me that German was the most beautiful language in the world and that what I wanted more than anything was to be able to understand it. I remembered the day I signed up for my first German class and immediately bought Rosetta Stone, despite the fact that my mom would have given it to me as a Christmas present if I had waited another few months. It was expensive, but I couldn’t wait.
The first phrases I learned were “Guten Tag,” and “Nett, Sie kennenzulernen.” I skipped around my house saying them to each of my family members in turn, ending my greetings by saying “I know German!” Every new word I learned was beautiful and because I loved the language so much, it stuck with me far more than high school Spanish ever had.
My college German classes were my favorite classes of all, and one of the only classes I looked forward to. Things I hated in other subjects became fun- I looked forward to tests because the night before I would memorize the glossary at the end of the chapter and learn about 30 new words, about half of which would stick with me long-term.
It didn’t stop in school or in America. Instead of watching TV at night I would watch German movies subtitled in English. When I went to Thailand to teach English for two weeks, I brought a copy of Harry Potter and The Sorcerer’s Stone and one of Harry Potter und Der Stein der Weisen, and I read them along side one another. I was able to catch the differences in translations- I would read a paragraph in German, and then one in English, and think, “Aha! That’s not what that means!”
I collected my favorite German words. These were usually the long ones, or the ones with a lot of hard sounds. On my list were selbstverstaendlich (which means “it goes without saying” or “obviously”, Geschwindigkeitsbechraenkung, Abendsonnenschein, and Apoteke. I also had a blacklist of words that I never wanted to hear again- these were words that seemed like they belonged to the wrong language, and confused me with their sounds and spellings. “Tragen,” which means “to carry” in German, always made me mix up Spanish with German and start thinking in the wrong language. “Restaurant,” annoyed me because it is the same in German and English but I can’t spell it in either language. “Genau,” was my least favorite word of all because it sounded French and had no business being a part of such a rough-sounding language as German.
I spent two months in Germany- a month in Berlin and a month in Kassel- in the summer of 2010. That’s when I was able to match the German language with the German culture and see the way the “hardness” in the language was present in everyday life. I saw it everywhere, from the color and style of the buildings to the quiet demeanor of the people. I lived with a local family and visited the local playground- even this was a monument that represented the German culture. Playgrounds in America are small, safe, and padded; everything has rounded edges and is not too high above the ground. Americans are over-protective of their children. German playgrounds were massive and thrilling with enormous swings and structures towering overhead and spinning, swinging contraptions that I only ever could have dreamed of as a kid. So although the sign read, “5 years and up,” I’m sure I had more fun on that playground then any kid ever had.
I was lucky enough to be in Germany for the World Cup. And despite not being a soccer fan myself, the mood was infectious. It was like the quiet, reserved German people would come out of their hiding places during the games and become loud, rowdy mobs of excitement. In one Biergarten where I watched a game, they would burst into song after every goal. By the 4th goal I had pieced together most of the words and was able to sing along with them.
I haven’t practiced my German in a long time, but I still want to learn more- just like when I started studying German, there seems to be so much I don’t know. But now I look back on those first days, when I knew one word, two words, a sentence- and think “Wow, I really know German.” I had wanted to learn, and I had learned. Although I still have quite a long way to go if I want to become fluent, the language is no longer a mystery to me and what was once a beautiful mess of sounds has changed into a beautiful new form of communication.
Those of you who missed out last time or who want to spend this Valentine’s day with your one true love (travel!) can enter to win one of ten free copies of How To Become The Jack of All Travel: A Beginner’s Guide To Traveling The World For Free.
You need a Pinterest account to enter; just click on the link below the image to re-pin for a chance to win. Winners will be announced at noon on February 14, 2013. Follow me on Pinterest for more great giveaways and stunning travel pics!
This month marks an exciting milestone. I have finally reached (and far surpassed) the 100,000 visits-per-month mark, and I’ve passed the $1,000 per month mark! Either one would have been exciting but together they seem to open up a world of possibilities.
Here are some of the things I did this month that affected the traffic and earnings:
The objective of the giveaway was to secure more amazon reviews, which it did (and hopefully more reviews will be coming from the remainder of the winners), but a side effect of the giveaway was that it earned Escape Normal some more followers on Facebook and Pinterest.
Like I’ve said before, every Amazon review helps. I think this is true especially at the beginning when there are few reviews. I am stuck in the teens and I imagine I will need to get about 8 or so more reviews to see another spike in sales.
Have you noticed? I purchased a premium wordpress theme so I no longer have pink polka dots on the background of each page. Now everything is more sleek and profession. Kuzzah! And I didn’t even accidentally destroy any of the essential coding in the process.
The homepage setup is part of the new wordpress theme I purchased. I think I will still tweak it a bit, but I’ve tried to put my most popular and interesting posts on the homepage in a more organized way so that newcomers will be able to understand what the site is about and have a variety of interesting things to read and look at right from the get-go.
Old homepage:
New homepage:
I used to just list my email address at the bottom of the about page, but since adding a contact page I’ve seen a pretty big increase in the number of people contacting me.
To encourage guest posters! The biggest deterrent to would-be guest posters is not explaining the rules.
I’d been considering adding a Facebook comments app to encourage people to comment more, but I am afraid of accidentally deleting all of the old comments. I will look into it more, but for now the addition of the “newest comments” widget at the bottom of the site seems to be encouraging more comments and interaction.
It’s hard to tell what effect this had, but I imagine it did impact sales quite a bit, if only because I’ve been reading about bright red buttons doing just that. I found a button I liked on another popular blog and made my own version with Adobe Illustrator. I may go back later and add prices to the buttons.
Here is what the buttons look like:
I was frustrated with Barnes and Noble because they take away the largest percentage of total sale price of any of the sellers I use. Since I just added my eBook to B&N, I felt that the people purchasing it from them were people who would have previously purchased my eBook from Ejunkie, which earns me a few dollars more per sale. To remedy this, I increased the price of the eBook on B&N only. Now B&N sales earn me more per book than amazon, which I am much happier with.
And got turned down. Casale is one of many cost-per-impression advertising systems. It is different than Google adSense; Google pays the site displaying the ads (me) a few cents every time a visitor clicks on the ads. A CPI system like Casale pays per view, so nobody needs to click on the ads at all. A system like that would be a great addition to my site as the traffic increases, so I will continue to look for one that is a good fit.
Now that sales are starting to pick up and I have more numbers to work with, I think it is a good time to start keeping detailed notes about the little changes I make and the effects they have on the final income report. I’d really like to put a ballpark number on how much one amazon (or barnes and noble) review is worth, for example. I also want to experiment with Google adsense to see if placing the ads in a different position changes the earnings. I didn’t think there was much point in doing tests like these when the numbers were low, but now they are high enough that I might be able to see a small amount of change in earnings so that I can keep improving Escape Normal.
It is about the time of year when I have to start deciding where I want to spend the summer. I was looking into Costa Rica jobs and decided to look up the weather, and alas- the dry season began in December and ends before summer. I think I may like to go to Costa Rica for a few months next winter, but as for the summer- I really don’t know yet. I’m open to suggestions!
Also, I bought a harmonica. Soon I will be a harmonica pro!
Do you have an amazing travel story you want to share with the world?
Escape Normal is now welcoming guest post submissions! If you have a really unique travel story or helpful tips about how to travel on a budget, make money while traveling, or any travel-related topic, you can follow the guest post guidelines to write an article to be published on the Escape Normal blog.
Guest posting, for those of you who aren’t bloggers, is a common way for new bloggers to get their voices heard- by getting published on established sites. Guest posting creates a win-win situation; the guest poster is generally allowed a blurb about himself and a link to his own site at the bottom of his guest post article, which draws new readers back to his blog. The guest post-ee (in this case it would be Escape Normal) gets the benefit of unique and interesting blog content. Since guest-posting is such a common practice, if your post is not accepted by one site you can always submit it to another.
Ready to write? Check out the guest post guidelines before submitting your work.
I’m back down in my home-away-from-home, Alabama, for a few weeks. The town I’m staying in is pretty small and there isn’t much to do except hike. It’s getting a little too cold now for hiking (in my opinion) but on a few of the warmer days my boyfriend, who is an expert in survival techniques (check out his new blog, Survive-Prepare), taught me a few outdoorsy tricks. I’ve done some of the more basic shelter-building, rope-making, and fire-starting type stuff in the girl scouts, but it is always fun to learn something new.
I’m a huge fan of loose-leaf tea; I drink about 2 cups each day. I’ve known for a while that you can make tea from ingredients you find growing wild in nature, but I’ve never actually seen it done or learned how to do it. So today was the day! We searched for a pine tree in the forest and used a knife to cut off a small branch to bring back to the kitchen. The branches were very prickly so I could only gather a tiny bit of pine needles.
We boiled some water with the pine needles in them- it made some foggy looking green liquid. I made my boyfriend try it first. He claimed to like it, so I tried it…but I think I’ll stick to fruit and nut teas. I don’t recommend “wild pine” unless you are really desperate for tea.
I also learned that you can cut into moss to form a hollowed out space to keep food refrigerated. The moss keeps the dirt held pretty firmly in place and it is easy to carve out a cavity beneath it, stick some food in there, place the moss back on top, and nobody is the wiser.
The third thing I learned isn’t really a survival technique- actually it’s pretty much the opposite: using river rocks as spa hot rocks. It was pretty easy to make our way through the woods down to the creek which had recently flooded with rain, but a little more difficult to find a spot that wasn’t so flooded that it would be hard to gather rocks from the bottom. But we collected a bunch, took them back, cleaned them off, heated them in a pot on the stove, and voila!
A few days later we went for a hike in a really nice spot nearby. We came to a bridge over a mostly dried-out creek with some water still trickling through and I wanted to go off trail and hike down that instead. I love climbing over rocks! We went down quite a long way till we came to a drop in the rock face and sat down to look at the landscape for a while. By the time we started hiking back, it looked like it was near sunset and we decided to take the trail back.
We made a wrong turn (apparently I mistook a creek bed for a trail) but decided to continue in that direction. It soon became apparent that we were in a race against the sun, as it was getting darker and darker as we pushed through some very dense thickets to try to get back to the car. The trees and bushes and vines were so thick in some places that we had to go back to find a different way to go forward.
Eventually we heard cars on the road and followed the sounds until we made it back to a main trail that led right out of the woods and to the car.
It was only when we got home that I realized I’d lost my favorite scarf that my boyfriend had given me. So we went back the next day to search for it.
We tried to backtrack the same ridiculously winding path we’d created the night before, but it was next to impossible. We probably were off of the path about 50% of the time. My boyfriend climbed a tree to see if he could recognize where we’d been the night before, and then of course I had to climb the tree because climbing trees is awesomely fun. It’s always been one of my favorite activities, as long as there are no bugs around.
Alas, after about two hours of hiking and searching, we had to admit that the scarf was lost to the forest. (It probably didn’t help that it was a camouflage print.) Oh well. The hiking was fun. Maybe next week the weather will be nice enough to go exploring in the caves…
