Thank You Very Much For The Honor

The same day I realized that the invitation to the Wynn Resort and Casino in Las Vegas and the free two night stay, free dinner and free tickets to the two famous shows Avenue Q and Le Reve were not a joke and blogged about it all happy, another thing happened. I guess not only bad things happens in packs, but good things too.

I checked my deviantART account and found a message from one of the people that operate deviantART in my inbox who I contacted a few weeks earlier regarding SAC (Superior Art Creations) and the possibility to get SAC listed as partner on the dA Homepage along side the other Underground Text Art Groups ACiD and iCE.

Angelo (dA nick $spyed) was all happy that I created an account at dA. He knew my Art Work and SAC from the times when he was active in the BBS Scene himself. He showed a lot of respect back then and continues so to this day. In his appreciation for my work did he upgraded my free membership at deviantART to a life-time (paid0 membership for free. My home page at dA now shows "is subscribed until Hell Freezes Over"... nice.

He offered the creation of category for SAC at dA, an offer I will come back to once I get some SAC internal stuff cleaned up. The "Partner Link" will follow he said, when SAC found a final home on the Internet. He made a very good point there.

The SAC Homepage on the Web seems to be a Nomad moving from one address to the next. Actually it's more like a rebuild at another address, because "move" implies that the Site is the same and only the Web Address changes. This is not the case with SAC. It was always completely redone with more or less features during it's travel through the internet from superiorartcreations.sk, superiorart.org, superiorart.dk, superiorart.net and now superiorartcreations.com which is an embarrassing one page website with a logo and link to the latest art pack to download.

I am currently spending time to get a hold of the domain and site to move it to my servers and create a real home for SAC on the Internet. So far is my homepage the only Site that comes close to be a SAC Homepage, but it is of course a lot about me and my part in SAC, because it is my personal home page after all.

When this is done, a partnership with dA, visible to everybody will not be a problem. We will use this opportunity to get as much current and old members of SAC together to re-connect. It will be a focus point where everybody can come back to after years of inactivity and pursuing other things in life. It will also become the main point of contact for everything related to SAC.

People who wants to find out about us, our History and get in touch with current or ex-Members of the group for whatever reason. Let's see how this will go. I already managed to make contact with Idiana which "manages" SAC more or less at the moment. It's looking good so far.

I will keep you updated on this one.

Carsten a.k.a. Roy/SAC

p.s. This made me upload 18 more pictures which resemble actually over 30 pieces of my past Text Art to my deviantART page. I included my very first pieces of ANSI Art and included detailed comments for each of them. Have a look at my Galery at deviantART.

I am getting spoiled on my Birthday

In a few weeks is my birthday coming up. I did not plan anything special, may be dinner with some friends and some drinks in my favorite bar here in Fresno, that's it.

Well, It happened by coincidence, that I got this week an Invitation to the Wynn Resort and Casino in Las Vegas. This has to do with my Internet Project ConsumerMatch.com.




Wynn decided to invite their Affiliates to "get the full experience of staying at the hotel as a guest". Hey, who says NO to that. The "Wynn Famtour" will be from April 12 to April 14. April 14th is my birthday.

The Tour includes a two 2 nights stay at the Hotel, for FREE. A complimentary Dinner at their famous Daniel Boulud French Brasserie, a free Dinner at their Bufet and Free Tickets to their famous new Shows Avenue Q and Le Reve. Don't be jealous, this does not happen all the time. The trip to Vegas is not paid though, but that's not the problem, because I live in Fresno/CA which is not too far away. I just use 25,000 of my Bonus Miles and voila, flight is taken care of as well. My business partner can not come so I invited a friend who supports me a lot to come along instead. Another 25,000 for a second plane ticket and a call to Wynn and everything was taken care of.

Don't get it wrong, It will not all be fun. We will spend some hours during the day with their Marketing staff to get to know the property better and discuss ways how we as Affiliate can help to promote their new Resort which just opened last year. I think this idea to invite us to get a good Idea what we are promoting on our sites, search engnes and ezines is a very good idea. I am probably not the only one who is already writing about this give away which is in fact already good marketing for Wynn. A win win situation and fun for everybody. Not bad. I wish this would happen more often.

I will blog about my experience when I come back.

31 Pieces of Art added to my deviantART Page

I spent several hours today on my home page at deviantART. I added 31 ASCII's, ANSI's and VGA's from my personal "best of" collection.

It wasn't the upload of the art that took so much of my time. What took the time was writing comments for every single uploaded piece of my art. Some Comments were quite detailed and have some inside details about the Group, BBS, FTP Server (etc.) the Art Work was created for.Also some interesting stories about the actual circumstances that lead to the creation of the individual piece. It's often not only interesting to read for the people that were also part of the scene at those times and can personally relate to the things I am talking about. It is also interesting for the viewer who never had anything to do with the whole thing and is just interested in the classic art of ASCII and ANSI Text Art and Low-Res VGA (320x200 256 Colors or 640x480 16 Colors).

Whatever the case, I believe it will be worthwhile for you to stop by and have a look for yourself. Carsten a.k.a. Roy/SAC

ASCII Lens Rebuilt

After the Schlock and desperation on Thursday night when I found out that my Squidoo.com Lens about ASCII and ANSI Text Art was severely damaged and a lot of it's content gone all whining did not help so I went off and was looking for something to do that would distract me and get my mind off the problem with Squidoo. I actually found a pretty nice distraction in form of a Website called DeviantArt.com which is dedicated to Artists and Art loving people who can use Deviant Art to publish their Art and interact in a virtual community via Forums, Comments and Personal Groups. Every Member has its own Homepage. The free Membership offers everything you need as Hobbyist. Memberships are interesting for the folks that want to sell their Art to interested Buyers. My Home Page at Deviant Art is here. You can Showcase your latest Art and favorites. You have a Personal Journal you can write and make public to visitors. Other Member can visit your Page and leave comments just to you, but also to your Journal entries and published pieces of Art. They offer much more and I can only recommend that you check it out.

I spent today several hours to rebuilt my ASCI & ANSI Text Art Lens at Squidoo. It is now all good and shiny again.Have a look here. My Lens-Rank improved too. I am now # 31 in the Art Category and # 263 across all Categories. I hope that this will not happen anytime soon again. I was lucky that I had most of the content somewhere else saved which made it not as hard as I initially thought to rebuilt it. See you at Deviant Art. Carsten a.k.a. Roy/SAC.

Half my Lens kaputt

It had to happen after I got it nice, nicer and also more popular at Squidoo.com.

I made it to the Top 100 Lenses for Art, moving to position #41 in that category and #347 over all topics working my way up to the Top 100 Lenses. I was in the middle of adding content when everything fall apart on their end.

Half of my "Lens" about ASCII and ANSI Text Art at Squidoo is gone. Text is missing, Images (Flickr), Amazon References, RSS Feeds and all related links. Ahhhh!!!!!!

Squidoo Support! Help! I contacted them and hope that the can recover the previous version. It's easier for me to add again the new stuff than to re-create the old.

The site is still a mess. No Flickr Images are displayed. None of the RSS Feeds is working amd the technorati.com search doesn't work either.

I am so mad , but I can't do anything right now but wait that they got their stuff fixed at Squidoo.com. Then I have to clean up the mess and will try to recover as much of the content as I can and reconstruct the rest from memory as good as I can.

Squidoo.com is still beta, but you should try it out anyway. It's fun and they add stuff all the time. But learn from my problem and save the content of your Lens(es) somewhere. What happend to me can happen to you too. My other Lenses at Squidoo.com (followed by their "Lens Rank" today:

- My "Merchant Product Datafeeds for Affilates - 101" Lens #649
- My "BBS" - Bulletin Board System Lens #1,301
- My "Affiliate Marketing" Lens #2,699

Roy/SAC