It’s no secret that I like technology. Some people may even call me a geek. At the same time, I also have a healthy sense of humor and I love to laugh. In this way, you could say that the ultimate website for me would be one that focuses on technology, but one that makes it funny. Ask Rea Maor seems to be one such site.

Rea Maor is the second person to take advantage of my 90% off sale on reviews, submitting his request mere minutes after InvestorBlogger. Although they both recognize a deal when they see one, those two blogs couldn’t be more different in terms of content.

Who is Rea Maor and Why Should I Care?

Written by a geek for geeks. That seems to be the mentality behind Rea Maor’s blog, which coincidentally carries the tagline of “Geeks and Technology”. Instead of focusing on the latest news and rumors, Ask Rea Maor is more about providing entertainment to the geeky masses. But who is Rea Maor?

According to the About page, Rea is a webmaster, sometimes-employed designer, programmer, mass spammer, internet entrepreneur, and “a great Renaissance dot-com lover!” He is employed in the Electronic Surveillance Industry, so he probably already knows what you’re doing before you do it. The 24-year-old geek lives in Israel amongst a zoo of creatures, surrounded by his 5 dogs, 9 cats, and “any girlfriend who will tolerate him.” I guess his current girlfriend is a ferret.

One Quirky Sense of Humor

Everyone’s a comedian these days. I joke around on Beyond the Rhetoric from time to time, even if I’m not all that successful at eliciting a laugh from the audience. There are some rather strange senses of humor out there, but Rea Maor has one of the quirkiest I’ve stumbled across in quite some time.

Take one of his most recent posts, “Sunday’s Spam - September 30, 2007.” In it, he shares three very strange recipes that involve spam (as in the luncheon meat)… and Viagra. He writes, “Now, that should take care of all the ED [erectile dysfunction] and Spam problems all together, by clogging their blood vessels, of course.” Might I interest you in some Viagra-coated spam tempura?

Beyond the funnies, however, are several posts that are actually quite the interesting read. If you want a unique perspective, Ask Rea Maor is a good place to look. Here are a half dozen posts that are both enlightening and humorous:

• The 7 Bloggers types
• What ever Happened to Chat Rooms?
• Things We’re Tired of Hearing from Mac Users
• What Your Web-Browser Says About You - part 1
• When should you say NO to money
• The 10 “Geek” Movies That Should Never Have Been

On a side note, the Adsense integration has been executed beautifully. The color blending is great, and you barely notice the Adsense link unit placed beneath each post title. It just looks like more navigation, probably resulting in more clicks.

Points for Improvement

Alas, there are obviously shortcomings to Ask Rea Maor, and just as I did with InvestorBlogger, I’ll fire them off in bullet form.

• No obvious RSS link. You want subscribers, don’t you?
• The header image says: “Ask anything on your mind and get unrelevant answer.” Unrelevant is not a word and even if it was, you would need to put an “an” in front of it.
• Too many categories. Who needs 22 categories anyways?
• The post slug to Top 48 posts is top-25-posts.
• Navigation above the header would be useful and more conventional.
• “Premium Links” should be placed above the fold.
• No date/category information within posts, only on index page.
• Empty “Brought to you by” under each post looks unprofessional.

Write For Ask Rea Maor

Apparently, he’s a pretty busy guy. So busy that he doesn’t have time to keep updating his own blog. As such, Rea Maor is reaching out to the geek community to see if anyone wants to write for Ask Rea Maor dot Com as a guest blogger. In particular, he’s looking for geeks with expertise in programming, web development, gadgets, geek hobbies, and so on. Check out this post for more details.

Earlier today, I told you about the 5 TV shows I’m watching this season, so it’s only fitting that I complete the list by telling you about the shows I just might be avoiding like the plague. Who knows? My opinion might change halfway through the season — as it did with Heroes — but given the material that serves as the basis for this quintet, my hopes aren’t exactly high.

Seemingly unlike the rest of North America, I’ve developed a severe disdain for certain reality TV shows, two of which make an appearance on this list. There is still some good reality TV — Hell’s Kitchen is always entertaining — but most of it is utter garbage. I don’t care about these lame dating shows, even if they feature the former lead singer of Poison. Yup, full HDTV can’t even save these shows for me.

Anyways onto the list. Forget about the top five, here are the bottom five.

• Chuck: Lame premise, lame actor, lame name. I tried sitting through the pilot episode of this on Monday and I just couldn’t stand it. Zachary Levi as Chuck Bartowski, a Nerd Herd employee at a big box electronics store (Geek Squad, anyone?), receives a video with some highly top secret information and there are people who are out to get him… or rather, to get the video. Sorry, it just didn’t work for me. Furthermore, the “Chuck” name is already taken by two guys way cooler than Bartowski: Mr. Norris and Mr. Liddell.
   
• Kid Nation: I didn’t catch the pilot, but I saw bits and pieces from what I believe was the second episode. When I first heard about this show earlier this year, I thought that it could be interesting. A Wild West take on the Lord of the Flies. Unfortunately, it isn’t like that at all. Instead, CBS being what it is, just created Survivor for Minors. The children are broken up into tribe-like factions, complete with representative colors and reward challenges.
   
• Survivor: China: Speaking of Survivor, why can’t CBS just let this franchise die? The first Survivor was an innovative idea, setting the stage for reality TV as we know it. What is completely unbelievable is that their journey to China is actually the 15th season of Survivor. Yes, there have already been 14 bloody Survivors before this. It’s time to move on, because I stopped caring after season 3 or so.
   
• K-Ville: Speaking for myself, I can’t possibly picture Anthony Anderson playing any character other than the loud-mouthed sidekick for DMX in some poorly conceived action flick. Every time I see him on screen, whether it be the silver screen or the boob tube, I can’t help but be reminded of his famous line from Romeo Must Die: “Name’s Maurice… bitch.” A buddy cop show with Maurice? No thanks.
   
• Lost: Season 1 was electrifying. It was incredible to see a random smattering of people thrown onto an island, left to fend for themselves and develop some sort of civility. And then it got lame with the hidden hatch and the whole underground enter-the-code fiasco. I tried keeping up with season 2, but eventually lost interest (no pun intended) and never came back. Seeing how John Locke, who plays old man Terry O’Quinn on the show, recently won an Emmy Award for his performance, the show may have picked up some renewed steam, but it’s still not enough to turn me around.

There are several shows that I’m undecided about like Journeyman, Carpoolers, and Big Shots, but if I have a glowingly positive or utterly negative experience with any of them, you’ll be sure to hear about it on Beyond the Rhetoric. Till then, happy channel surfing!

Oh, television. That brilliant boob tube served as probably my best babysitter growing up, entertaining me with a spinning wheel and someone who called himself the Ultimate Warrior. I couldn’t get enough of The Simpsons and I never got sick of ninja turtles.

Now that the Fall season is upon us, there’s a wealth of new shows to absorb, as well as the opportunity to jump back into universes we have not seen since the Spring. The five shows that I will definitely be following over the course of the next few months are:

• Heroes: I didn’t watch this show when it first came out, because I thought it was just a cheap copycat of X-Men. On some level, it is, but the storytelling grabbed my interest and it wouldn’t let go. It’ll be interesting to see where they go with this sophomore effort. I’m looking forward to the Origins spinoff as well. Particularly awesome in HDTV. Yatta!
   
• The Office: Purists will say that the UK rendition is infinitely more insightful and funny than its US counterpart, but having never been exposed to the former, I can appreciate the latter with a full heart of laughter. Steve Carell is absolutely brilliant, but it’s because of guys like Rainn Wilson that I love this show. It has the same appeal as Dilbert and Office Space.
   
• The Colbert Report: Yes, I know that this isn’t a sitcom or a drama, but Stephen Colbert is probably the best entertainer on television today. Too bad he got snubbed at the Emmy Awards.
   
• Poker After Dark: As you may already know, poker is one of my obsessive thoughts. I like the six-player tournament format of this show — featuring some of the best poker pros on the planet — because it mirrors the home game that I play with my friends every weekend. The banter is pretty great too.
   
• The Bionic Woman: Having never watched the original, I wasn’t sure what to expect from this pseudo-remake. The twist, in case you missed the pilot episode, is that the original Bionic Woman is alive and well. In fact, she’s turned evil and started replacing additional body parts. The new Bionic Woman starts off with quite the formidable nemesis.

Surely, I’ll be watching other shows too. I like CSI (only the Las Vegas original), Jeopardy!, Family Guy, and all sorts of other shows, as well as NFL football and NHL hockey. There’s also a flurry of new shows that I’ll be avoiding like the plague… but that’s fodder for another day.

Well, duh!

Kenneth Dickson from InvestorBlogger was the first person to take advantage of my 90% off review sale, so he obviously recognizes an incredible investment deal when he sees one. On his blog, he talks about every kind of investing imaginable, like looking into different income streams, managing your expenses, and other useful stuff to aid you in your quest to make money. Oh, and if you’re a blogger, Kenneth yaks it up about Wordpress too. That’s a lot of content!

Investing for Noobies

I’ll be honest with you: I know next to nothing about the world of investing. Although I realize it’s probably not the smartest thing to do, I have most of my money holed up in a high interest savings account rather than dabbling those dollars in the stock market, mutual funds, and all those other tickers that investment gurus like to watch. Thankfully, while Kenneth Dickson’s blog is all about investing, the way he describes the information is ingestible by even noobies like me.

Take one of his most recent posts, for example. In Loans and Rates: Four ways to save money on your mortgage or personal loan, he provides enough background information on interest rates so that even beginning investors (and borrowers) can understand what’s going on. The first tip that he provides sounds obvious enough, but not everyone would be aware of it:

First, if your mortgage rates are rising, your savings rates should be, too.

Well, that makes sense. And that’s how many of the posts on this investment blog go. Kenneth lays out the scenario and then goes into enough detail that you have something to gain from reading it, while keeping them short enough that you don’t get lost (or bored) in the process. Kudos in that respect.

Here are a few more posts that caught my noobie eye:

• Chinese Domain Names: They’re available!
• Payperpost Click Thru Rates: Much HIGHER than you’d expect…
• LCD TV vs. Credit Card Debt - Is it really worth 12 years?
• Interest Rates: Taking Aim at Compounding
• 10 ways to send traffic AWAY from your blog

Someone Needs a New Blog Design

I realize that Kenneth is more of an investment expert than a web designer, just as I am more of a freelance writer than an Internet marketer. That’s still no excuse for having such a bland and generic blog design.

InvestorBlogger features the tried and true MistyLook theme, first popularized by its use on a certain panda killer’s blog and later implemented by nearly anyone looking to make money online. While Kenneth did go through the trouble of using a different header image, it’s still rather generic at best. He didn’t even change the color scheme at all.

As a result, despite the useful information you may find within, InvestorBlogger (great name, by the way) very much looks like an amateur effort. Content is important, but it’s the presentation that will draw visitors further into your site.

More Design Stuff

I have a few other suggestions in terms of the look and feel of Kenneth’s investment blog. In the interest of brevity, here they are in bullet form.

• Lose the Related Posts on the index page.
• Too many categories: why have Wordpress and Wordpress Classes?
• Category names aren’t very descriptive. More Reading vs. Good Reading?
• The sidebar feels too busy for me. Drop some of the fluff.
• Lack of graphics. I realize that it’s an investment blog, but a few images here and there would really break up that huge body of text.
• Change the byline to read Kenneth Dickson rather than kennethdickson.
• Hard to tell where one post ends and another begins.

Make Money Investing with InvestorBlogger

Follow Kenneth Dickson as he embarks on his “random walk to wealth.” His writing style is fluid and ingestible, while sponsored posts blend in seamlessly with the rest of his content. With a current pace of more than one post a day, there will never be a shortage of things to read at InvestorBlogger. Subscribe to the RSS Feed to stay on top of the latest happs.

I was invited by fellow blogger and technologist Darren Barefoot to attend a media event at the local Future Shop. It was going to be a debate between two individuals concerning the future of HDTV. On one side of the panel was Leo Laporte, who you may know from his absurdly loud shirts and terrible parties. On the other side of the panel was Amber MacArthur, a CityNews International personality known for her Popnology segments and Webnation television program. Moderating the discussion was Tod Maffin of CBC.

They touched on a number of topics from expensive cables to mounting televisions over your fireplace, but most of this information is already common knowledge for any geeks in the audience. I guess the debate, much like Future Shop’s philosophy, is geared toward the ignorant mainstream consumer (as represented by Tod Maffin). Tod’s love for calibration tools arose as did Leo’s fascination with Halo 3. By and large, Leo defended the brilliance of plasma TVs whereas Amber showed her support for LCDs, particularly those by Samsung. Here are a few tidbits that they mentioned:

• LCDs are better in brightly lit rooms and as secondary “lifestyle” televisions; plasmas are superior in dimly lit rooms and for truer home theatre arrangements.
   
• Monster Cables are a rip off and you shouldn’t buy them unless you have a “long throw.”
   
• Look out for the development of 4K resolutions, providing a picture four times as detailed as 1080p HDTV, in 10-20 years. This represents 2000+ horizontal lines compared to the current 1000 lines.
   
• DLP is not dead. Instead, it’s shooting for the high-end, particularly with front projection. A nice DLP setup can get very pricey.
   
• Plasmas are better for gaming simply because of their superior refresh rates and contrast ratios. Just make sure you’re in a dim room.
   
• The best plasma TVs are made by “the two Ps”: Pioneer and Panasonic.
   
• Up-converting DVD players are worth the money, even if your TV does up-sampling too.
   
• How your HDTV handles lower resolution signals is just as important as how it handles high-definition content.
   
• Leo likes to talk (and dominate conversations) more than Amber.

Anyways, here are two videos that I took at the event. The first discusses LCD vs. plasma, response time, gaming, and resolutions. The second talks about which TV is better, expensive cables, and the death of boob tubes.

Probably the most notable attendee among the live audience (the debate was also streamed live onto the Internet) was local personality Buzz Bishop. You might know him from his technology column or from his DJ duties at Z95.3 95 Crave. He stayed pretty quiet and well behaved.

I’ve received a couple of interesting emails in the past week or so. I responded to the first by putting up a post with 5 tips to improve your writing ability, so I figured that I would take a similar strategy with the message that I got from top commentator Matt Freedman. Matt is a 15-year-old high school kid with no real world work experience. He’s on the hunt for his first job and he was looking for some help in the resume department.

Some of you may have already noticed that the vast majority of websites on the Internet that talk about resumes are catering to people who already have a body of experience. They tell you to emphasize your strengths and to toss in any quantitative measures of success that you can find. For example, if I was applying for a job today, I’d probably mention something about managing 26 workplace campaigns at United Way, raising over $700,000 in charitable contributions. At the same time, I’d downplay that I majored in my worst subject in school.

That’s all well and good, but what if the “work history” section on your resume is a big blank? What do you do then? Well, here are 5 pointers that I’d suggest for young people looking for a part-time job. They may not land you an executive position with a corner office, but you may be able to score something better than a McJob. Not that there’s anything wrong with a McJob.

1. Volunteer Experience
You’ve probably heard this one before, but there’s a good reason why it always comes up. Many employers are hesitant to hire anyone who has never held a job, but if you volunteer at your local library, community center, or non-profit organization, that will easily earn you some rather major brownie points. Those positions don’t pay in a monetary sense, but they do provide you with the experience of working with others in an employment-like setting. Speaking for myself, I spent a summer volunteering at the extended care unit in a local hospital. It was a very rewarding experience in many ways.

2. Extra-Curricular Activities
Join clubs. Join sports teams. Participate in extra-curricular activities. Again, much like the volunteer jobs that I mentioned above, participating in clubs at school can demonstrate that you work well with others, especially when striving toward some sort of common goal. Listing these clubs on your resume is particularly valuable if you’re the club president or some other position of authority, because it allows you to discuss your leadership abilities.

3. Get Help with Layout and Wording
When I was in high school, I was pretty sure of myself. Some may have said that I was over-confident in my abilities, but in hindsight, I really knew nothing. Especially when applying for your first job, don’t be afraid to reach out and ask for a helping hand. I’m not just talking about going in for a session with your career counsellor, but also any older siblings (or friends) who have been there and done that. Matt did an excellent job by sending an email message my way. They can help you with appropriate wording, grammar, layout, and all that other good stuff that goes above and beyond the actual content itself.

4. Emphasize Your Skills and Abilities
Give yourself a little respect. Even if you’ve never been formally employed by a company doesn’t mean that you don’t have the skills and abilities for the job. Take Matt, for example. He has his own blog and he seems to know his way around a multitude of coding (he knows way more than me). He may not have formal training in the field, but he can get the job done. Put your Skills section near the top of your resume and don’t be afraid to tell employers what you’re capable of doing. Say that you know your way around PHP. Tell them that you can create a Wordpress plug-in from scratch.

5. Nail The Interview
You may have to send out 20 resumes before you get your first interview. Don’t feel down; just nail that one interview. Be a winner and wow them with your personality, your people skills, and your ability to articulate your thoughts. A firm handshake and dressing appropriately can go a long way, but it’s ultimately going to be your skills and abilities that will land you the position, whether you’re flipping burgers at McDonald’s or tending to servers at BlueFur. Just don’t serve me a furry McChicken or a greasy hosting package.