LostInaFog.com

I resolve for 2007…

…to be more diligent in seeking out the joy in life.

…to write more, for the sake of writing, as a crutch for introspection, and to tell the stories that bounce around in my head.

…to be open to adventure, to seek exhilaration, and to just every so often throw caution to the wind.

…to be there to teach my children, to protect them, and to see the world through their eyes.

As you’ve no doubt noticed, I have several partner links listed on LostinaFog.com to help connect you readers with cool products or services. You can use me to purchase from Amazon, sign up for NetFlix, buy songs from iTunes, or connect to a bazillion google ad buyers. But the most successful of my partner links is with MagsForLess.

I have made a living for a great deal of my life as a writer. Not the sexy I just hit the NYT Bestseller List stuff, but more mundane things. I wrote and published newsletters for book collectors for about ten years, wrote for several financial newsletters for several years, did some freelance research writing for some Wall Street firms, and most recently have been writing about SPACs (you’ll just have to look it up if you care) for another specialty financial publication. But over the last several months I’ve moved from a regular job back into the project world. I’ve stacked myself up pretty heavily for the next several months with a nearly fulltime gig for the summer and another 10 hour/week consulting job on top of that. And I’ve committed to a couple of more articles on those SPACs.

I posted earlier that using a discount magazine subscription to ESPN the Magazine was by far the cheapest way to get access to the Insider content on the ESPN website. And if you read ESPN online, you know that all the stuff you really want to read is behind that wall. You can click on the magazine cover in this post to hop over to MagsForLess and pick up the cheapest subscriptions on the net.

I’ve made my living for a great portion of my life as a writer, though of the dedicated, owned variety. I recently delivered and saw published the first freelance article I’d taken on in quite awhile. Can I jump into freelancing and make a living? Probably not–the ex and the creditors and the electric company are unlikely to agree to a complete cut and run. But I think I can make it into a nice sideline and I am all about mulitple streams of income and diversity at the moment.

This is old news for any of you who have been using a computer and image editing software for any period, but don’t believe the legitimacy of any photos you see in print. And I don’t just mean the ones showing W shaking hands with tall grey aliens.

Check out Blog Renee’s short piece on the joys of photo alteration. She shows just a couple of examples but it should be enough to make the point. And gosh, who knew Cameron wasn’t better endowed?

This month’s Fast Company has an article about James Montier, the Global Equity Strategist for Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein. Do you remember that name? He made a bit of a splash a couple of years ago by putting out a “research report” entitled “The Psychology of Happiness”. The subheading reads–

If you are after specific investment advice, stop reading now. We seek to explore one of Adam Smith’s obsessions: what it means to be happy. We also discuss why that’s important to investors, and how we can seek to improve our own levels of happiness…

In honor of Franklin’s 300th birthday celebration, the White House is hosting a “period” dinner next week in Franklin’s honor. Guests will include folks holding offices that Franklin held in the early government, as well as other guests of the First Family. I was sure my invite would be in today’s mail, but instead it was just a Forbes, NG Adventure, and USN&WR (the Washington Whispers column is the source for this news).

As part of The Great Magazine Experiment I subscribed to two sports magazines: ESPN the Magazine and Sporting News. The first comes twice a month and the latter every week. This was the area of the experiment that I entered with the greatest doubts. Sporting News’ whole reason for existence ages ago was to supply baseball stat guys like me a single spot to see all the baseball stats every week…and the stats from those other sports, too. And by other sports I pretty much meant basketball and football. It expanded to fuller coverage of hockey at some point and now gives NASCAR pretty much equal treatment.

As part of The Great Magazine Experiment I subscribed to 3 car magazines. Its not a passion of mine, by any means. I thought it would be interesting to look at a narrow subject that I was not overly familiar with already and see how if the mags added value.
I subscribed to Car & Driver, Road & Track, and Motor Trend.

WASHINGTON, DC — Each new year brings with it new laws, many of which became effective on January 1, 2006. Having seen the huge success the Motion Pictures Asssociation and the Recording Industry Association had in protecting their material through draconian DRM measures in 2005, several other industry groups lined the halls of congress in 2005 looking to protect their assets, also.

If the whole idea of The Great Magazine Experiment were to compare similar magazines in order to offer up some insight, I would be looking at Time, Newsweek and USN&WR at least in the category of weekly news/feature magazines. But that’s not what this is about. I just want to know whether print magazines have entirely lost their relevance in an online world. I chose U.S. News & World Report as my entry in this category because my memory of it was that it was more news-centric than the other two that seemed to be more about the feature stories.