Just spent a little over one hour quickly looking over TDavid’s OPML list [OPML] for all sites who celebrating Halloween, total websites/blogs visited: 181. The 13 sites (13.92%) — and really that’s the supernaturally unlucky freakish number that turned up — who celebrate Halloween are listed and linked below.

1. Way Out Auctions - check out creepy insane man’s jars or the Jacko slumber doll auctions. Way, way out, love it.
2. VTOR - Virtual TO Reality - JohnnyRS posts about Halloween / Halloween Part 2 in the virtual world Second Life. Note: TDavid contributes to this group blog.
3. Vitamin News - pumpkin logo (pictured)
   
4. USATODAY.com Offbeat - what is up with an offbeat website with no Halloween spooky love? Honorable mention for story about witch who must refund a fee because here spell didn’t work or the bag of seedless grapes that comes with a black widow spider.
5. Things That … Make You Go Hmm - If it’s past midnight you are too late to enjoy or be horrified.
6. Search Engine Journal didn’t do anything design-wise but posted a list of 13 Halloween sites and search destinations
7. MAKE is going all out, including a Halloween craft contest. Just link to Makezine:
   

   Treat-or-Treat contest: This is the easiest one. If you have a blog, a website, MySpace or anything online, just post a link to MAKE or CRAFT. We will pick 10 people we see linking to us. It works best if you have a blog-like site; we’ll be using the Technorati service to track who is linking to us (you can view it here). You can post a link to us in your sidebar, a link about this contest, anything really. Do a post about MAKE or CRAFT, it doesn’t matter to us, but we can see it best if it’s on a blog and making it fun always helps (extra credit if it’s a SPOOKY STORY!).

8. Life On the Wicked Stage: Act 2 - Warner gets into the spirit conjuring up a crazy audio track from Hmm Halloween 2005.
9. WARNING: ADULT ONLY! Fleshbot sure knows how to partay Halloween-style with their Girls and Corpses spread (NSFW, Adult only!)
10. eclecticism - Michael Hanscom offers a Halloween wish with a picture of a gargoyle-like creature
11. Diva Marketing (Blog) - Toby gets into the groove, storing up like a squirrel her feast of a diva kind of Halloween. Nobody does the whole “girlfriend” thing in a post better.
12. Dead2.0 has a likely unintentional Halloween we’ll be back back message. The gas mask is classic horror.
    
13. Blogcritics publisher Eric Olsen breaks out a list of 2006 Halloween-oriented posts. Spooky!
14. Loren Filmer in a diaper playing the debut video of Jason’s Place is very, berry scary

Not linked?
If you didn’t do anything Halloween-oriented and weren’t in the subscribed list, then you aren’t linked above. If something Halloweenish happened at your site that was missed say so in the comments below. Not end of life as we know it. Why should we subscribe to your Halloween-creative blog? From looking through list it’s a rather small percentage that have done anything for Halloween with the standout being Makezine. Remember to be spooky and in costume if it’s still October 31, 2006 [Hmm Halloween 2006 comment contest details] here there be tygers.

What did you do to your site for Halloween? Nothing? Scary!

Hello, my name is Aura Nge. My spirit possessed this blog and you RSS. Everything that give this site trick and treat, I do before clock strike midnight. You like candy? Scary movies? Scary links? Creepy crawlies? Click on over to the site makeyougohmm.com and see what I do design already.

Ahahaha-heheeeehehehe-hahahahahahahaha! Today I share tricks and treats, prizes and much more. Don’t you change. I just warm up flesh for welcome soul.

Spooky / Crazy Halloween 2006 MakeYouGoHmm comment contest
Today only Halloween 2006 PST, you leave comment wearing you costume spirit spooky name in any trick or treat Halloween 2006 post only, if you make me laugh or scare by your craziness, you win $6.66 sent to your email via PayPal.

Example.
your real name TDavid,
you could be TeemingMaggotDavid

Regular comment you might leave: Hey this could be fun, count me in!
Spooky comment you leave today Halloween 2006 as TeemingMaggotTDavid: I will suck the soul from this blog with my blood stained fingers wrapping away at the keyboard. All other commenters are tame by my insane ramblings. Die mortals, die!

You leave comment in space below, it make my spirit laugh or scared, I pay email address you leave with spooky crazy comment — you email not be shared public or added to any list, only used to pay you, if you win — paypal to you, if you win: $6.66 USD.

Warning: not very easy to scare or make laugh me!

Rules, Regulations, Red e-coli tainted meat
1. Contest not valid where prohibited by law, bizarre satanic rituals or cows without steroids
2. Comment under costume name only allowed in posts dated October 31, 2006 count for contest (like this one, ahahaha) — bizarre posts or names in archived posts will be banished to hell.
3. Comment must be on topic and related to post, but can and should be as creative and spooky and crazy as possible. More creativity = greater likelihood of winning $6.66 prize.
4. you spam, you die horrible unspeakable death and maggots crawl all over your skull
5. There is no limit to the number of prizes any one email can win, but remember rule #3 and #4 or feel razor blade across eyeball
6. Aura Nge reserves the right to tease and torment unworthy, weak comments. You have been warned. Aura Nge will clearly identify winners in the comments and/or in posts throughout the day and PayPal payments will be dispersed between now and midnight PST. There might be zero winners, there might be 100, it is all up to Aura Nge discretion and depends on the number of third party comments.
6. Management of Aura Nge spirit, KMR Enterprises, reserves all rights to terminate any comment or invalidate the contest at any time (no, this isn’t trick, we really do intend to pay $6.66 via PayPal for the most spooky and/or crazy (fun or creepy) comments left today as determined by Aura Nge)
6. Reserved for future abuse.

What you waiting fo, mofos? Take our money. Take our soul. The clock ticks…

Just in case you wanted to practice your pumpkin carving skills online.

Running low on candy tonight? Want to scare the hell out of people? Play this on LOW VOLUME near your door in a continuous loop. Time for some custom evil laugh tracks created in a cold, damp dungeon. A trick of the mind in audio …

Stretch that candy a mile as they will be running away in droves!

DISCLAIMER: None of the computer altered voice talent below that follows resonant from real, evil people, this is purely for Halloweenish fun, but know that their laughs have been put through a tortuous evil filtering process. The pure have been tainted! Whatever you do, don’t crank the volume up on this or you may blow your speakers completely out — YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED — and don’t listen to these tracks in the dark yourself … no way. Do. Not. Do. It.

And first the raw material (still mixed somewhat):

- Todd from Geek News Central [5.2 mb WAV] can’t get podcasting out of his laugh. If you ever thought his normal laugh was eccentric, wait until you hear this twisted take.
- Dim the lights and crank up Warner Crocker’s scary laugh [2.7 mb WAV] … if you dare
- Scoble makes fun of his laugh, but see how it rates on the scare scale. Oh, and yes there is some backmasking. [2.5 mb WAV]
- Bill Gates [2.3 mb WAV] shrill laugh remixed and talking email, blogs, security … don’t have a full bladder when you listen to this one. And on the trick mix version you can hear what Microsoft’s chief architect might sound like aboard the Borg cube.

WARNING: EXTREME audio perceptive experience ahead! TURN YOUR VOLUME LOW!
A horrifying mix of all the above and more from the demented madman Gray V. Robber. This contains all sorts of speaker melting sound effects SO KEEP THE VOLUME LOW on the first few listens and gradually increase as you get used to it. If you play this around your house with fog running, strobe lights and darkness you will scare the hell out of people. You’ve been warned, mortals!

Helloween Trick Mix ‘05
[Running Time: 9:21 4.3 mb 64k MP3]
WARNING!

All these clips are being released with a Creepy Commons v666.0 License, meaning they’re totally free to borrow, burn, beg, mix, rip, mutilate and/or steal for podcasts, target practice, public shamecast, conventions, for sale and whatever else any twisted minds can conceive. If you use any of this source material you might want to link to the unofficial Creepy Commons v666.0 License at:

http://www.makeyougohmm.com/creepycommons666/

Which just redirects here for now. Get these why they are HOT, they may not be here long …

The Creepy Commons v666.0 License treats the creator of work like worm food, so you might as well too!

Happy Halloween!

Here’s treat #1 for you today: go check out Yahoo’s LAUNCHcast radio.

Wait, internet radio haters, put away the reaper blades and give it a serious listen. Really. That means while you are working or playing today if you were lucky enough to get Satan’s holiday off, put it on in the background and rate the songs it serves. On a dark today like this, don’t you need some hardcore rock and roll in your lives?

To partake, you don’t have to download or install anything from their site (like their more bloated Y! Music client), although you are required to use Internet Explorer.

Need something to start out listening to? You can start by listening to my constantly evolving, terrifying station: MakeYouGoHmmdotcom LAUNCHcast station

Note: that station link will open and launch a window with the player so you can start listening. I don’t expect readers will like my music tastes, but if you like rock, particularly classic rock, hard rock, 70s-80s, then my feed should get you off to a solid rocking start.

Rock the office!

BTW, I wonder if the The Metal Show is doing anything Halloweenish tonight? Matt? Metal podcasters unite! United, United … United we stand …

I spent a lot of time listening to LAUNCHcast over last weekend and even chipped in for the subscription because I got tired of listening to ads every five songs, so my opinion that follows is not based on thirty minutes worth of listening, it’s based on many hours over several days of listening (yes, it’s playing now). It’s not required to pay for a subscription, but if you do then there’s a few more bennies.

Why internet radio does NOT suck
Time. To me, it’s all about time. Finding good music offline and/or online and organizing takes time. We’ve subscribed to/paid for online music subscriptions — my son has one to Napster right now in fact — and I’ve done the whole search through the database of a million plus songs and built playlist things but the problem again? Time. Time.

Time.

I would rather let the music play in the background and tell some system guess what I like, don’t like, and what I never ever want to hear again. Let it serve up songs I do like mixed with songs the system thinks I might like and learn from my ratings.

That’s exactly what LAUNCHcast does. The DJ that never sleeps. The musical delivery bot. Musicinator.

I almost never listen to music on traditional radio any more, what about you? Talk radio, yes, I do that frequently, but FM radio I pretty much have left for dead. In the car, it’s talk radio or MP3/CDs. While at the computer I like to listen to something besides silence, especially when I’m coding. A random mix of a huge playlist is good sometimes but those lists get stale, even with a large list (we have hundreds of CDs ripped and mixed into iTunes and Windows Media). The staleness is only replaced by new music coming in from somewhere, some place and I don’t want to invest the time to find it. Yeah, I’m a lazy music fan. I’d rather use that time exploring and/or coding new programs, products and services. Oh, and of course blogging and podcasting along the way!

What about being exposed to new music?
A random mix of music I’ve already purchased and ripped to MP3 doesn’t provide the serendipity factor that only radio mixed and provided by someone or something else can provide. Fellow music fans know that lucky, giddy feeling when a cool song comes on the radio we haven’t heard before. It’s like: hey, who is that by? We want to hear more!

With LAUNCHcast I’ve found their programming was scary good at figuring out what kind of music turns my crank. The more I rate, the better it seems to get.

Yeah, there’s the occasional trash that I have to send to never play again hell, but most of their selections are pretty accurate. I discovered a couple bands this weekend that I put on the CD wish list.

And rated songs I have (see screenshot above of my page showing nearly 1,000 ratings). I made those ratings while doing other things. LAUNCHcast put levels on the number of ratings made like Newbie, Listener, Enthusiast, Trendsetter, Fanatic and more. Whomever racks up 10,000 music ratings deserves to be coined a Rating Master. That dude/dudette must be in a rating frenzy.

My rating system is pretty straightforward:

It’s ok (1 star) - I can tolerate, barely, don’t really like them that much
I like it (2 stars) - wouldn’t mind hearing this song/artist/album once in awhile
I love it (3 stars) - play this a couple times a week in the song rotation, I’m grooving on it
Can’t get enough (4 stars) - please play this NOW, it totally jams!

Remember if a song comes on that you don’t like, just tell it never to play again and hit the skip button. You’ll be building your own musicinator.

What is LAUNCHcast missing?
A few things that would take this service from being cool to being extraordinarily mindbendingly cool are: an OPML export feed listing all my music ratings and an API to plug into. Listeners spent time generating the data, and what if they want to take that data with them, use on their website, etc? Yahoo should let at least their paid Plus subscribers take that info with them and/or be able to tap into that with an API. If this functionality exists already, please somebody drop me a pointer in the comments/trackback area. I realize Yahoo has an API for Y! Music but nothing seems to exist for LAUNCHcast. I hope this Y! Music bias is not an indication that LAUNCHcast’s days are numbered(?).

So give LAUNCHcast a try (or another try if you’ve done so before) and then see if it treats you to some music you like that you haven’t heard before today.

At midnight server time last night, Hmm turned scary, hairy orange. For those terrified by the color scheme, don’t fret, it’s merely a one day illusion.

For those reading this in their RSS aggregator then they are missing on all the holiday frights and frills (boo hiss!). Today, every post will have some trick or treatish wording/slant/content. Next to Christmas, Halloween is my 2nd favorite holiday of the year.

Why? Why! Why arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!

Because it reminds us all how human we are and that some of us actually enjoy being scared. It’s a very real time.

(insert creepy Halloween music)

Something I never thought we’d own was a fog machine, but what Halloween-inspired consumer could resist? I checked online for fog machines via Amazon (affiliate) and there are lots of even fancier ones, but no time to order online for tonight, just hit your local Walmart and be one of the most ghoulish spot in the neighborhood for the kids to trick or treat at tonight. Don’t forget to buy enough candy for the candy-seeking squirrels.

Fire up the badboy.

Our kids enjoyed pressing the button to totally fog up the room. This will be great for trick and treaters tonight … open the door, creepy music playing in the background, evil cackling, muhahahahahaha!

Happy Halloween readers

Via Yahoo! and Forbes: http://biz.yahoo.com/special/masks04.html -> Celebrity masks (FREE)

Update 10/31/07: Original link above is broken, try this instead: Forbes celebrity masks

I’m sure that we aren’t the only people moblogging Halloween [9/10/07 9:23am PST: Textamerica linkrot] this year. If you are moblogging the ghosts and ghouls tonight, then trackback or say something in the comment about your moblog. Logspirit mentioned on the radio show today that he liked the Halloween theme for this blog. Think we’ll keep this color scheme up for awhile.

Occasionally during the radio show on Fridays we will break away from technology and talk about weirder side of the world. If you would like to hear the audio commentary of these articles LIVE, then tune into the radio show. The show starts at 2pm PST / 5pm EST every Friday.

The following stories are scheduled to be reviewed on show #165, Oct 31, 2003:

- At least one judge who bangs more than his gavel: French judge found masturbating in court
- Man drops cell phone in train toilet and then gets arm stuck trying to remove
- Driver falls asleep at wheel and hearse cargo ejects onto the road, along with corpse
- 28-year-old man accused of stealing a man’s penis through sorcery has been beaten to death
- Buy yourself a vampire killing kit for only $12,000
- Florida women disarm an intruder with a sawed-off shotgun with rum and sandwich
- Scuba diver hopes to break world record for underwater pumpkin carving

There is an interactive 3D chat world and today for the Script School radio show we had been planning to have a Halloween Party there. I was a beta tester and signed up for a lifetime membership.

The problem (see above) is that even after hours of wandering around, interacting with other folks, etc, I still don’t have enough “event host skill” to host a party. Is it just me or is this sort of lame that a paid member should have to generate this skill just to be able to host a party? Maybe it’s so they keep the number of events down, but I’m kind of disappointed because I had looked forward to doing some virtual partying today in There. Oh well.

We will be having fun in the Script School IRC chat today at irc.scriptschool.com or via java at http://www.scriptschool.com/commons/ and the radio feeds are here

The show (#165) starts at 2pm PST / 5pm EST. Stop on by and have some pre trick-or-treating fun with us!