I have just found my new favourite use for YouTube. If you have been living under a rock and don't know what YouTube is, it is a video sharing service where you can watch anything that someone wants to upload.

I used to just watch funny video clips, sports replays, and random commercials. Anyhow, now I have found that there are a number of guitar lessons on their for specific songs! Someone actually goes through popular songs step-by-step to show you how to play them.

I am a big fan of Jack Johnson and Damien Rice and I have found a number of their songs on there.

Here are a few of my favourites below:

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These men were putting it to work along a beach at Nungwi on the north-west corner of Zanzibar.

This was part of my trip to East Africa in 2006.

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My wife and I go on a holiday ever year. We try to pick somewhere new that we have not gone to before and make an adventure out of it. Since we have been married, we have gone to South America, Africa, and just recently we traveled across Russia, Mongolia, and into China.

The most important thing that we come back with, besides our memories, are our photos. We develop around 400 every time and place them into albums. Usually just 4x6's and the regular old photo album you can buy from the store. However, this year we tried something different.

MyPublisher is an on-line store where you can create your own photo album using and have it created and sent to you. The album quality is quite impressive and the cost is reasonable as well.

How To Create A Photo Book

You basically go to their site and download their software application. Once you have installed it, there is a step-by-step process to get you up and going and creating your book.

Basically you

1. Select what type of book you want to do (size and cover).
2. Select your photos.
3. Organize your photos.
4. Layout your book by placing photos and writing captions.
5. Upload and order your book.

After you have ordered, they ship you your book in about 5 days via FedEx (for me).

Quality

Quality is excellent. The colours come out very well and the software even lets you do "full bleed" pages where the photo goes right to the edge of the page.

Price

The price is pretty reasonable. For the basic linen covered book that is 8.5X11 inches, the cost is US$30 for the first 20 pages and US$0.99 per page after that. The maximum number of pages for my book was 100. You can choose to have pages with 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, or 9 photos on them. This is with or without captions. It is up to you. Shipping was $16.99 to Canada (FedEx). The regular cost was supposed to be $125.99, but there was a promotion on and I paid $82.39

My wife and I usually develop around 400 photos at $0.19 a photo plus $15 for the photo album. This comes out to $91, so the MyPublisher solution look far better and is actually cheaper this time.

What Is Not Good About MyPublisher

Their software definitely could be improved. The performance started to really lag on my computer after a couple hundred photos. It also is a bit awkward trying to move photos around and change fonts. They could definitely improve it in a few spots.

Summary

Overall, their product is excellent. It takes more time to create your album, but it looks professional and you can add nice captions with just a few keystrokes. For your next album or if you want to create an anniversary album or wedding album for yourselves or someone else as a gift, definitely check these guys out.

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The rock jutting out onto the beach framed this scene pretty nicely at Nungwi, in the north-west corner of Zanzibar.

This was part of my trip to East Africa in 2006.

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October is over and the results are in. It was a steady month again. I cleared the minimum payment amounts for both Adsense (again) and Kontera so I will be receiving hundred plus payments from both of them this month.

At the current rate, I will receive a Google payment ever 3 to 4 months. My next goal is every 2 months.

Thoughts From My Life Traffic Stats for October

October's numbers and September's numbers are in brackets.

Traffic had very good jump this month, yet again. Not as big a jump as last month, but still pretty solid. It was still about 3 pages driving 90% of the traffic, but that's all good. I had an increase in surfers reading my new articles, which indicates RSS readers following along. I am getting closer to my April Numbers too.

Thoughts From My Life Revenue

Overall, my earnings for October were $133.15. Here is the breakdown with last month's numbers in brackets.

• PayU2Blog: $70.00 ($50.00)
• Adsense: $34.62 ($37.07)
• LinkWorth: $14.00 ($14.00)
• Kontera: $14.53 ($19.66)

My Adsense and Kontera were not as high as last month, but I more than made up by doing a few more PayU2Blog articles. This pushed me to another decent month of revenue.

PayU2Blog is my active income where I get paid US$5 per posting that I do. It is a good source of cash flow as I get paid every 2 weeks, but it does require constant work as the assignments come out.

Blog Revenue Summary

This blog has officially been live for a year now. I have grossed a total of US$904.29 since I started this thing and now my actual profit is $673.15 after expenses.

Going forward, I am in the middle of a re-design of my site. I am improving the code base for search engine results and cleaning up the appearance. Look for it in the next week or so.

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This gorgeous animal was sitting motionless in the early morning hours. This was part of a tour through the Serengeti National Park in Tanzania.

This was part of my trip to East Africa in 2006.

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My wife Cheryl took this photo on one of her relaxing days down at Chemainus River on Vancouver Island. She grew up only 5 minutes from this spot and she was home visiting her parents there this August.

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This site is essentially a notebook of my financial ramblings, photography, computer, and other ideas. As I learn something new or interesting and spend a bit of time on it, I have been posting it to this site. Hopefully it will bring up some discussion or other useful tips and I can even get a few bucks off my Google ads.

If you are wondering what my banner is about, I just picked a photo I liked from my collection. It is from some of the fall leaves along the street in a district of Edmonton, Alberta. Looked nice against the blue sky.

About Me

I am a software engineer in Canada who has an interest in investing and financial matters for the average person. I have read the get rich quick schemes, investing strategies, and a whole set of other methods and am just trying to find the right mix for myself.

I have an avid interest in photography and also go on some sort of trip (usually overseas) at least once a year.

I'm married to a gorgeous, young gal from the west coast of Canada. We tied the knot on April 1, 2005, on Vancouver Island. She is a junior high school French immersion teacher who teaches math and sciences (she teaches math and science but the language used in the class is French).

Here is a picture of my wife and I and you can find out more about me on my personal blog.

Reverse Chronology of My Life

• 2008 - Working away on the blog. Was in New York for 5 days and the summer trip will be Egypt, Jordan, Syria, and Turkey (Cairo to Istanbul).
• 2007 - Really got going on this blog. Went to Quebec for 4 days and did a trip of Russia, Mongolia, and ending in China on the Trans-Siberian railway.
• 2006 - Trip of Eastern Africa with Cheryl, my sister Janis, Cheryl's sister Shawna and her husband Scott.
• 2005 - Married the love of my life. 7 years since I moved out of home and around 20 roommates later, my bachelor life was officially over. Went to Cuba (honeymoon), then Ecuador and Peru.
• 2004 - Went to South East Asia for 2 months with my cousin Lisa. Came back and moved in with Richard, Shab, and Jesse. Bought my first house as well.
• 2003 - Graduated from university and got my first full time job at Pason Systems. Moved in with James.
• 2002 - Can't think of much. Scott slept on the futon for 4 months until Bruce moved out.
• 2001 - Started dating Cheryl. Lived in Calgary for 8 months on a work term. I lived in a house with a revolving door of roommates (Ryan, Regan, Mark, Blake, Tom, Rod, Shawn, Brian, Kalen). Bruce moved in with me this year in Edmonton.
• 2000 - Lived in Cold Lake, Alberta. One of the best summer jobs I ever had.
• 1999 - First summer job. Kreg was my new roommate in the fall.
• 1998 - Graduated high school and moved to Edmonton to attend the University of Alberta. Brendan was my first ever roommate.
• 1997 - Decided to pick Engineering for my application to University.

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While camping at Crimson Lake in early September, my wife snapped this photo down off the dock. There is a "5-star" camping facility here that I would definitely recommend.

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I liked this shot. It was taken at a local cemetary in the spring of 2007. To get the depth of field so tight I used my 50mm 1.8D Nikon lens. It lets you pull out the letters in the middle of the name quite nicely.

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