January 2022 – Digital Tundra

January 27, 2022January 28, 2022

The DUMBEST Products that Apparently Sell Like Hotcakes on the interwebs — A Continuously Curated List

I tapped into one of the internet’s most notorious motivators of SPAM ads, Clickbank, to find you the hottest-selling trash I could find. Using ClickBank’s own statistics engine, I went through all of the top sellers, to figure out what kind of crap people are pushing and why.

Clickbank is an online marketplace where the people who want to get their products out there set the terms that they are willing to pay for a sale, and the sky is the limit in terms of what companies may be willing to pay. Sometimes they are allowing for recurring revenue through subscriptions to be passed on to the sellers, creating extra motivation, driven by subscription revenue. They pay up to 70% commission to anyone who can bring customers through whatever means necessary, which can include spamming your email, spamming Facebook groups, and “influencing”. Motivated sellers foam at the mouth and set up all kinds of sleazy methods to sell more of these products than the next guy.

ClickBank offers potential sellers the opportunity to look at the average earnings per sale as well as the “gravity” (essentially popularity) of the product. Products with high gravity are actually selling out there… here’s some of the crap that is doing well.

January 17, 2022January 18, 2022

Viable Caustics Solution For Cycles Raytracer that you can TEST RIGHT NOW in Blender 3.1

I love raytracing. It is one of the most fabulous and fascinating things a powerful computer can do… and raytracing keeps on getting better and better. However, one of the biggest limitations of Blender’s Default Raytracer, “Cycles”, has always been its lack of caustics tracing capabilities. I assume that if you clicked on the title of this blog, you already know what caustics are so I’ll waste little time describing them. Caustics are the fun ways that light bends through refractive objects causing light rays to change direction. The most commonly recognizable example of this in the real world is easily how sunlight bends off the waves of a swimming pool. To achieve this effect in the Cycles renderer, usually required cumbersome tricks… but not anymore.

January 15, 2022February 2, 2022

You Suck at Karaoke — An Examination of Why

This article is intended for both performers and karaoke jockeys who run karaoke nights. It is a guide to making your karaoke performance the best it can be and making your patrons enjoy listening to their friends, ultimately leading to a fun time for all.

Forgive the clickbait-style title, but hey… what’s a guy gotta do to get attention in this day and age! I’ll cut right to the chase. You might have a voice of an angel, but your Karaoke performance might sound bad. In reality, you might just be a bad singer with a tin ear. You might be singing half an octave out of key, as that 5th-interval is commonly mistaken for an octave… you might have no rhythm… you might not even know the song you’re singing. Chances are if you’re someone who really just “can’t sing”… then this article probably won’t help you, you need singing lessons and potentially music lessons. But hey… it’s okay to suck as long as you’re having fun. Have fun out there!

January 8, 2022February 3, 2022

The Price Gouging of Minneapolis Nightlife in 2022

Disclaimer: Many of the statements in this article are purely speculative as the balance sheets of private establishments are… private.

I spend my days glued to a computer, with no roommates, family, or friends ever stopping by. The only way I get to interact with humanity is by going out on the town at night. If I don’t interact with humans regularly, I start to go a little crazy, and since I make very good money as a software engineer, I go out 7 nights a week. But I have to say, that the price of nightlife right now is completely out of whack, and the limits of what I’m willing to pay to patronize these places are being tested quite severely. Obviously, Covid-19 is largely to blame, and we all hope this is temporary, just like the pandemic is hopefully temporary… but I hope that the nature of free markets eventually balances everything out and things go back to normal, and soon.