Just for Fun: Have you wondered what you *look* like online?

What does your online self look like to a computer? To find out, pop over to Aaron Zinman’s Personas project, which was part of an exhibit held at the MIT Museum in Massachusetts. Type in your name and the free program will comb the Internet looking for related data, then use it to create a color-coded bar that visually represents who you appear to be online. It’s an interesting idea and a fun way to spend five minutes — and the colorful output reminds me of ribbons on a military uniform. 

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Of course, the computer can’t differentiate between people with the same name online, which can skew the results. And although my last name is unique (I don’t know of any other Hofmann-Bourques out there), the fact is that as a writer I have a number of articles posted online on a lot of different topics, and they don’t necessarily reflect who I am as a person. My ribbon, above, includes some odd categories, such as aggression. I find it amusing that while “military” shows up as one of my biggest categories, my husband, Kyle — who’s actually in the Army — doesn’t have anything military associated with his name, below. Then again, he has a uniform pinned with real ribbons, so he wins.

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Check it out for yourself and please share: What does your “ribbon” look like? 

The L&S Cupcake Club: Adventures in cupcakes part two

A big thanks to Army spouses and bloggers Lola and Samantha, who created the online L&S Cupcake Club. It is deliciously fun! For this month’s club, I whipped up the Applesauce Spice Cupcakes. (Actually, I had to make two different batches because I forgot to add brown sugar to the cake batter during my first attempt.) So how did take two turn out?

• I wasn’t a huge fan of the applesauce spice flavor, but that’s probably just because I’m a chocolate fanatic who believes (almost) any recipe can be made better with cocoa. 
• The icing was very thin. Although it dripped off most of my cupcakes in not-so-pretty ways, it created — quite accidentally — a heart on this one (below). Sweet! 
• Bottom line: I love any excuse to try new recipes, especially when they’re based around sugar. Join the L&S Cupcake Club fun next month if you too want a reason to bake. I’ll be there.

New! Show off our fun, fabulous (and free!) website buttons

Go ahead, grab us! Or at least grab our buttons! If you have a blog or website — and you like ours — please check out our fun new buttons. Show the world that you are The Strength Behind the Strong! Head over to our “Grab our buttons” page to pick your favorite. Each one (shown below) represents a different branch of the military. (Why are there two Navy buttons? Read our “Grab our buttons” page for the family drama behind the color picks.) Coming soon, we’ll have a page of our favorite buttons from other websites. Enjoy!

 

Need a nudge to tackle your to-do list? Get nagged (for free!) with HassleMe

Do you sometimes wish you had a personal drill sergeant barking orders at you? “Send a postcard every week to your best friend in boot camp!” “Put up posts on your family’s deployment blog every three days!” “Eat something other than chocolate when your husband is gone for field training!” (Hey, don’t judge.) The clever folks over at the British website HassleMe.co.uk have you covered. Their motto says it all: “Because sometimes in life, you just need to be nagged.” Simply enter your email address, plus what you want to be hassled about, and how often. To keep you motivated — and on your toes — you will get hassled by email at irregular times. 

HassleMe loves to nag so much, it even does it for free. 

So, spill: What do you need to be nagged about?

Three! Two! One! Military countdown clocks herald good times (and two are free)

What important event is on your calendar this year? Your sister’s graduation from boot camp? A friend coming home on leave from Afghanistan? Track the time until day zero with these three countdown clocks for your phone, computer, and desk.

#1. Big Day Lite App 
Use it: On your iPhone
Price: Free
Monitor the “days until” your special occasion with the free Big Day Lite app, which you can customize with a title and your favorite picture. (We are partial to any photo with camo or babies.) There also is a paid version of this app called Big Day, which costs 99 cents; it has a few more bells and whistles and allows you to count down to multiple dates. But we found the free (“Lite”) version to be all we needed. Download Big Day Lite from iTunes.

Add your own photo and description to the free Big Day Lite iPhone app, which makes it doubly fun to count down to a special occasion.

#2. Soldier Countdown Clock
Use it: On Facebook, Twitter, Blogger, and more
Price: Free 
Copy and paste the free HTML code from WishaFriend.com into your blog or social networking site so your friends can count down the remaining days, hours, minutes, and seconds along with you. Note: For OPSEC reasons, don’t post specific countdown information about deployments on websites or blogs that can be read by the general public. Instead, consider counting up (instead of down), tracking the number of days your loved one has been gone.

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$10 Red Sox Tickets: An offer even a Yankee fan will love

Call up your best buddy who’s heading off to boot camp, or your son who’s back from Iraq, and tell him you’d love to spend some quality time together this summer at historic Fenway Park in Boston. Juice up the deal by offering to pay for a pair of Red Sox tickets. Just be sure your soldier/sailor/airman/marine brings an active duty military ID so the two of you can score discounted tickets for $10 each. (Regular prices can be $50, $75, or much more.) Singing “Sweet Caroline” in the 8th inning — a Red Sox tradition — is that much sweeter when it costs less than three beers to get into the park.

Play ball! The view is great from this $10 SRO section at Fenway Park. Here’s the deal: At every regular season game, the Boston Red Sox set aside SRO (standing room only) tickets for active duty military personnel. The number of tickets varies, but it’s often around 200. Each serviceman or servicewoman can purchase a maximum of two tickets per game — one for them, one for you — at $10 each. It’s just one way the Red Sox say “thank you” to our military.

Here’s what you need to know before you head to the ballpark:

• Military SRO tickets go on sale two hours before game time. The ticket booth is at Gate B. Each person with an active duty military ID can buy two tickets. (Yes, they check IDs.)

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