First up I got sent a link to this photo fresh from Flickr [original found here]. Why do I like it? It's a pug wearing pug slippers. Enough said.

Through the wonders of technology, I left my little Pug friend and discovered the The Amazing Magnetic Boy. Like the tag line says, "He has more than just a great personality, HE'S MAGNETIC!"

The Amazing Magnetic Boy then Magnetoman. A real life Magneto.

Ever have those moments where your cursor hovers over something and you can't decide whether to click or not? That's about the only way I can explain this Bot Fly removal video.

From Bot Fly to the Smithi Tie Protector. If you thought the Snuggy and the Snazzy Napper were awesome, then you'll probably be placing an order for one of these sooner rather than later.

Have you been keeping count? Yup, only at the fifth degree right now. So where is the sixth degree you ask? I guess it's where ever you end up once you leave this page.

These were produced by the H-57 Creative Station Advertising Agency from Milan, Italy. Having a look at their website it appears that they were also responsible for developing the 'Blade' font for the promotion of the Blade movies (I'm not a fluent Italian speaker/reader so much of the website is a mystery to me).

I have to say, when I first glanced at these images I had to take a second look before I realized what was going on here.

Source: H-57 Creative Station Advertising Agency

So... if Bud Abbott and Lou Costello were alive today, their infamous sketch, 'Who's on First?' might have turned out something
like this...

COSTELLO CALLS TO BUY A COMPUTER FROM ABBOTT

ABBOTT: Super Duper computer store. Can I help you?
       
COSTELLO: Thanks I'm setting up an office in my den and I'm thinking about buying a computer.

ABBOTT: Mac?

COSTELLO: No, the name's Lou.

ABBOTT: Your computer?

COSTELLO: I don't own a computer. I want to buy one.

ABBOTT: Mac?

COSTELLO: I told you, my name's Lou.

ABBOTT: What about Windows?

COSTELLO: Why? Will it get stuffy in here?

ABBOTT: Do you want a computer with Windows?

COSTELLO: I don't know. What will I see when I look at the windows?

ABBOTT: Wallpaper.

COSTELLO: Never mind the windows. I need a computer and software.

ABBOTT: Software for Windows?

COSTELLO: No. On the computer! I need something I can use to write proposals, track expenses and run my business. What do you have?

ABBOTT: Office.

COSTELLO: Yeah, for my office. Can you recommend anything?

ABBOTT: I just did.

I guess that's why I was surprised when I logged in to my analytics today to see that the site seems to have crashed through that ceiling. In the last 30 days Swollen Pickles has received 55,665 unique visits. I decided to go back a couple of months. As it turns out November 2009 (30,459 visits) was the last time unique visits to the site were under 40,000 for the month. Since December 2009, Swollen Pickles has been averaging over 43,000 unique visits per month.

So what have I done to cause the traffic to burst through the glass ceiling? I honestly don't know. Truth be told, I've been less that active on the blogging front over the past six months. Updates have been sporadic at best. Does this mean apathy breeds success?

What are people looking at? Well, it seems the biggest camel toe in the world is a crowd pleaser, with that page receiving 120,153 page views in the past six months. In terms of keywords, "camel toe" is still a big one, with an odd mix of other keywords also popping up in the top 10 keyword list, including the very specific "why is mommy moaning book". Disturbingly, 130 people also came here looking for an "infected penis". Maybe they were really looking for this little guy?

I'm confused. At times it seems as though the posts and pages I put little - or no - effort into are the ones that receive the most attention, whilst the posts I spend time on get all but ignored. Maybe less really is more?

Dexter by Design opens with Dexter and Rita on their honeymoon in Paris. Nothing really important happens. Dexter and Rita return home. A couple of bodies turn up on a beach. Dexter is intrigued and begins his own investigation. Soon his sister Deborah, a Miami PD Officer, is also on the case. When Deborah is stabbed by a suspect and almost killed, and Dexter's new happy family is threatened, Dexter goes into protector mode, to track down the killer and deliver his own little slice of justice.

Dexter by Design was really just that, Dexter by numbers. Where as the first two novels difficult to put down, I have to say with Dexter by Design I had more trouble picking it up that putting it down.While the TV series continues to maintain the edge that drew me in to the character initially, the books seem to have grown a little tired.

It's hard to talk about Dexter by Design without acknowledging it's predecessor, "Dexter in the Dark". My problem with Dexter in the Dark was that Lindsay attempted to explain why Dexter is what he is, and the explanation was way out of left field. You see, in the third book, Lindsay introduced 'super natural' elements to explain Dexter's nature.There was a lot of talk about demons, a cult and the suggestion that Dexter was being controlled by a demon. My problem with Dexter by Design is that it carries on as if the events of the third book never happened. It's like the third book was "all just a dream". Maybe this is Lindsay's way of saying that the third book was a mistake? Maybe it was just a dream? I don't know, either way, not addressing it at all seemed a little dodgy.

Maybe it was just me, but I found that Dexter by Design was missing a little of the twisted humor that popped up in the first two novels. One of the strengths of the first two books was discovering how Dexter observed the world around him and I found that to be missing a little in Dexter by Design.

Dexter by Design is definitely not a 'must read'. If you're a hardcore Dexter fan, you'll probably want to give it a look. If you're just a lover of good books however, stick to the first two Dexter novels and give this a miss.

I set up a 'feature' section to highlight some of the lengthier and, perhaps, more worthwhile posts. I also included a 'top 5 most popular posts' section that drags the top five posts as flagged by the Popularity Contest plugin. Perhaps it says a lot about this sites readership, but currently the top 5 posts are all camel toe related. Should I laugh or cry?

One of the bugs I'm trying to fix, but am currently a little clueless about, is incorporating the 'threaded comments' feature that is now a standard part of WordPress. From what I can tell, the threaded comments function is working, it's the styling (CSS) that is letting it down.

As part of this theme I also wanted to play around with Twitter, not because I find Twitter all that useful, but just so I could understand how to integrate it within a website. It seems like all the cool kids are incorporating Twitter into their blogs so I thought I'd have a crack at it myself and see if I could get something going that didn't rely on a plugin. As you can see, if you scroll to the footer, I got it working. My only issue with it now is that when there are long URLs in the 'tweet' is forces the tweet to break it's bounding 'speech bubble'. Not sure how to overcome this. The easy (cop out) solution would be not to post long URLs in tweets, but I'm sure there's another way...

So if you spot any bugs, have any ideas on how to fix anything that appears broken, or even just styling suggestions on how to make this whole beast look a little more aesthetically pleasing, I'd be happy to see people post them here.

This list may be contentious, heck it caused me some inner conflict, but never the less, it represents my best attempt at putting together a list of the top 5 zombie movies of all time. As with any top 'whatever' list, I'll be counting down... to number one.

Number five: Resident Evil

Ok, so it's spot in the list is debatable, but before you say anything I need to declare that I find Milla Jovovich very attractive, and therefore my opinion on this movie may be a little tainted. Resident Evil is a very very loose adaptation of the video game with Milla Jovovich starring as Alice who wakes up with amnesia, to discover that she's implicated in a zombie virus conspiracy. Off she runs in a red dress to slay many a zombie and save the world... potentially. The 'Milla Factor' allowed Resident Evil to narrowly edge out other worthy contenders to the number five spot including the rom-zom-com 'Shaun of the Dead' and body snatchers style 'Slither'. Interesting factoid, in 1999, Sony and Capcom greenlit a Resident Evil film with George A. Romero signed on as the film's director and screenplay writer.

Number four: 28 Days Later

Danny Boyle's 2002 zombie dish 28 Days Later was as much inspired by Day of the Triffids as it was Dawn of the Dead. As with a majority of zombie films it focuses on a core group of four 'survivors' struggling to come to terms with a 'zombie' apocalypse. The film opens with Jim waking from a coma in hospital, only to discover that the world he has woken up in is a lot different to the one he remembers. Bizarre medical tests, really angry chimps and lord of the flies style behaviour, 28 Days Later has something for everyone.

While 28 Days Later can take some credit for breathing new un-life into the genre, I couldn't find it a spot higher than number four in my list. It's good, don't get me wrong, it just gets a bit ordinary toward the end. The fact that the dvd release hints at a number of vastly different endings probably tells you that the makers of the film weren't 100% sure about where they wanted the film to end up. If you stop the film at the point old man Frank gets infected, then you have a cracking good zombie movie. After that, it drops off a little.

Number three: Dawn of the Dead (original)

Potentially a controversial decision, Dawn of the Dead (original) slots in at number three on my all time greatest zombie movie list. In my opinion Dawn of the Dead is the grand daddy of the zombie genre. When a mysterious plague begins reanimating the dead and humans become their food of choice a small group of four survivors (notice a theme here?) band together and find refuge in a suburban shopping mall. It's a classic for a reason. Even though the film has been around longer than I have, it still stands up well, even with it's 'B' grade feel, and DIY special effects vibe.

Thanks to Dawn of the Dead, if you took a poll of people and asked them where they'd go if there was a zombie outbreak, I reckon a good percentage would respond with "shopping mall".

Number two: Zombieland

While it's the new kid on the zombie block, it made an immediate impression on me. Zombieland is part zombie movie, part comedy and part road movie. When four survivors (wow... four survivors... that must be the optimal number with which to band together and fight a zombie horde?) find themselves drawn together on an impromptu road trip across the zombie ravaged USA. The cause of this zombie apocalypse? Mad cow disease. The main character, Columbus, lives by a distinct set of rules that he has developed in order to keep himself alive. He preaches the importance of cardio, the dangers of bathrooms and the need to always check the back seat. Zombieland even features a cameo from Bill Murray playing Bill Murray. Priceless. Zombieland is funny and educational. Most definitely worthy of the number two.

Number one: Dawn of the Dead (remake)

Remaking the George A Romero classic Dawn of the Dead was always going to be a controversial decision. Remakes generally suck and who wants to take something beautiful (a zombie film) and make it suck? Fortunately for Zack Snyder he was able to turn his hand to Dawn of the Dead and end up with a film that was every bit as good, and in my opinion, better, than the original. The 2004 Dawn of the Dead is not a direct shot for shot remake. It takes the elements that made the 1978 version such a cracker of a film and adds some new stuff. The remake abandons the 'four survivor' model so popular in the zombie genre in favor of a larger ensemble cast focused around Ana, a nurse who loses her husband to a child zombie before making her way to the local shopping mall. There she joins other survivors as the exist in the pseudo sanctuary of the mall, until the inevitable happens...

Sure the remake may cop flak for abandoning the slow and steady zombie in favor of the rabid and frenetic variety, but I like it. I challenge anyone to watch the first 10-15mins and not be drawn in.

"When there's no more room in hell, the dead will walk the earth"

Anyway, the production values on Dr Who have sky rocketed. On Monday nights episode there was a distinct lack of silver painted cricket pads, but there was a CGI shriveled up Doctor. Following the episode ABC2 screened 'the making of' the episode. One of the visual effects guys spoke about how they created the full size to shriveled up transition effect which I found kind of interesting. If I'm interpreting what he described correctly, they basically filmed the actor for three minutes or so gyrating on the ground (looking like he was having a spasm) then went back in the editing suite and remove a whole slab of frames almost at random, to give the shot a frenetic transformation vibe. If I ever get hold of a video camera again I may try to reproduce something similar in After Effects. I looked for it on YouTube with no luck. It's the sort of effect that would be at home in a home made vampire flick or industrial music video.

Here's a more sedate type of effect (not as aggressive) that uses a bit of that stop go style animation. It's cool in its own right.

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In the good old days Commission Junction were quite good to me. I was doing reasonably well with them, largely on the back of their relationship with eBay. A couple of years ago, if you wanted to earn commission from eBay referrals, your only option was to go through Commission Junction.

While Commission Junction have a large number of partners, 99.9% of my revenue with them was generated via eBay. When eBay decided it was time to fly solo, and started there own publisher program, 99.9% of the money I would have made through Commission Junction was made via eBay directly instead. So, since eBay flew the Commission Junction coup, my Commission Junction earnings have been sporadic at best. Currently I'm only partnered with Musicians Friend, which generally offers high involvement, high value, products for sale. My last commission probably occurred earlier this year, and since then it's been quiet.

Last month I logged into my dashboard and noticed that my account balance had dropped from the previous month, and the month before that. Four months ago I had $47 in my account. Today I'm down to $7. Why? Here's what I found buried in the Contact Us >> Check FAQs section of the Commission Junction site.

If your account was charged a $10 fee it is because you have not generated any commissionable transactions for a six-month period. Publishers that have less than $10 in their account or a zero balance after six-months of activity automatically have their accounts deactivated. Because publishers can sign-up for a Commission Junction account for no charge, our system carries thousands of accounts that are either duplicates or never generate any activity. This makes it necessary to remove those accounts from the system so that it can work more efficiently for publishers and advertisers that are generating revenue.

So each month I'm being charged $10 for what exactly? Extra support? Help in turning around my poor performance? I'm not sure. All I do know is that I never received any correspondence from Commission Junction to tell me they were siphoning my account. Maybe it's there way of coping with the financial crisis? Whatever it is, it leaves me less than impressed.

Now, I may not be a big user of Commission Junction at the moment, but that is not to say I wont find something I want to promote in the future. With that said though, Commission Junction make it very difficult for me to want to continue on with them in the future. If I don't generate a commission this month, my account will finally reach zero, which will see my account deactivated. Surely I can do something to avoid deactivation? Lets check their FAQs some more...

How can I prevent my account from being closed for non-activity?

Commission Junction deactivates accounts for lack of performance (dormant account policy) if they have not generated any commissionable transactions for six consecutive months. To prevent your account from being deactivated, you can make a purchase from one of your advertisers to generate a commission.

So to avoid deactivation I should generate leads... from myself? Doesn't sound 100% kosher, and there's probably sub-clauses in the individual agreements you enter into with the actual advertisers that could end up seeing you booted from their programs?

Commission Junction is one of the larger affiliate programs around, which is why I guess they figure they can get away with such a dick move. For the big publishers I'm sure none of this really matters, but perhaps Commission Junction should consider that big publishers all need to start somewhere. By raising the middle finger to the minnows of today, they may be pissing off the killer whales of tomorrow.

Once you've got that sorted, head to the beer garden outside the dwarven capital city Iron Forge. Then, drink up until your computer generated you cant walk straight anymore. Brewfest began on the 20th of September and will finish up on the 4th of October.

Besides the opportunity to get your geek drink on, Brewfest also opens up a heap of Brewfest related quests that will see you drawing your sword against the nefarious Coren Direbrew, leader of the Dark Iron dwarves. Defeat Direbrew and he drops a heaps of cool stuff at random, including some weapons and trinkets, as well as a couple of Brewfest mounts, the Great Brewfest Kodo or the Swift Brewfest Ram. Personally I'm after the Kodo, cause it looks cooler, but as of writing this, I've paid Direbrew five visits, for a total of 25 drops, and neither the Kodo or Ram have dropped once. With a couple of days left my luck might change.

I've also got four days left to complete two of the final achievements in order to take the title of Brewmaster. I have Drunken Stupor (basically getting sh!t faced and surviving a 65 yard fall) and Disturbing the Peace (While wearing 3 pieces of Brewfest clothing, get completely smashed and /dance in Dalaran) left to complete.

Not surprisingly the event has spawned a range of real world merchandise including the "Tankard O' Terror", that can hold close to 2 litres of your preferred beverage. Personally, I'm feeling more than a little include to pick up one of the groovy Brewfest t-shirts. I'm sure chicks dig dudes in World of Warcraft apparel.