I’m a typical guy! I think Led Zeplin is the best rock band of all time, I drink beer, I watch football and my celebrity crush list includes Salma Hayek, Catherine Bell and Tanya Memme.

I am fortunate however in that I learned something very early on…Women Love Men Who Can Dance!

Knowing how to dance is like knowing several different languages. Most people understand Rock, Funk, Classical or Rap…but not many can also understand Tango, Waltz, Salsa or Swing.

My Revelation: I was aproximately 15 years old and our school was organizing a dance in which parents where invited. Parent attendance was rare so they planned to have a Waltz contest for the … ‘old folk’.

I had discovered the previous year that I liked moving around to music when a  friend put on Midnight Star’s “No Parking On The Dance Floor“. I really had never heard this kind of ‘electronic funk’ before and it pretty much blew my mind.

Aware of my newly found appreciation, my friend Lilas looks to me and says, ‘We should learn to Waltz for the contest’. Understandably, most 15 year old boys when confronted with a request to ‘learn the waltz‘ would tend to shy away, if not literally run away! Fortunately, my 15 year old, puberty bent mind processed the idea of spending time in close proximity with a pretty girl..and I accepted the challenge.

Now I hardly remember the school dance, nor the contest. As a matter of fact, we may never have even attended. But I do clearly remember going to the library, finding an ‘Arthur Murray book of ballroom dance’  and learning the basic waltz ’box step‘ with Lilas.

**Did you know that when a guy knows how to do a basic waltz box step, there are ENDLESS girls lined up to be taught?? This is something I learned almost immediately.

After my schooling I ended up visiting one of those Arthur Murray dance schools in Orange County CA. The next 5 years found me teaching social dance professionally. Ultimately I grew tired of all the egos, boas and glitter and left…but the education was invaluable!

Disclaimer: I am NOT telling guys to stop everything and walk into a dance studio… God No!

I completely understand guys cringing at the thought of dance lessons. Shows like Dancing With The Stars don’t help matters at all! The representation of dance in the media is piss poor.

Guys, the reality is this…telling a woman you can swing or salsa has more effect than telling her you’re rich. Being lead around the dance floor is something very few women experience anymore…and women LOVE to dance.

If you are secure enough with yourself to walk into a dance studio..do it! If you feel better with private lessons, there are plenty of teachers in most any city, simply ask their training. Most independent teachers did, at one time, work through Arthur Murray or Fred Astaire studios.

Learn from books, learn from online videos. Learning the basic step patterns is important, but utlimately I recommend working at least a little with a female instructor to build your skills in ‘leading’.

Dances I recommend learning: (in order of ease)

Rumba: it’s easy and slow. The rhythm of a Rumba works with most any slow song. (anything but a waltz song)

Waltz: the basic pattern is the same as the Rumba, just different rhythm.

Fox Trot: great casual walking around the floor dance, perfect for those Sinatra fans

East Coast Swing: (aka Jitter Bug) same rhythm as Fox Trot, just more rhythmic than smooth

This Blog will be growing with actual instruction, please bookmark it for more later.

H.R.3261.IH better known as SOPA  (Stop Online Piracy Act) is a legislative nightmare.

Listen, I’m a web developer who has built numerous interactive interfaces for countless organizations. I’ve had MANY creations ripped off and have made other people abundantly wealthy from MY hard work. Nobody is more agitated by Intellectual Property theft than myself. However SOPA is not the answer.

As a web developer and hosting service, SOPA could hold me responsible for the acts of others. It will open the door for fraudulent accusations with laws that would support those accusations before defending my rights as a responsible server/sight owner working in a global market!

I understand that we all want to think and hope that the government should be able to facilitate SOPA efficiently, but the internet is EXTREMELY complicated with VERY vague laws. The government can’t even run Amtrak or the United States Postal Service, less complicated entities that have been around for decades & decades.

Please make an effort to demand SOPA be brought back to the drawing table!

This is a quick shout-out for the Looxcie bluetooth camcorder. I’ve had this device for about 8 months. I have the first generation…which is a bit bulky, but still very cool!

Here’s what it is and how it works:

Looxcie is basically a Bluetooth audio device for your smartphone, I have an Android. If I want to make a call, or if my phone rings, I can speak using this little gadget in my ear. However, Looxcie also contains 4GB of a flash memory and can act as a camcorder.

The tip of the device (the white part) is a camera lens. If you where to simply press the red button (on top of the ear piece) you would start recording whatever you are looking at. You can twist the camera very small turns to ensure you are getting a stable recording (make sure everything is not crooked).

How do you see what you are recording? You use the Looxcie app that goes on your phone! Looxcie has two applications, well three now, more on that later. In general you have LooxcieCam and LooxcieMements. To be TOTALLY honest, I really don’t understand the difference between them. I have BOTH on my phone..but still don’t quite understand what the difference is except that the interfaces are different…they appear to DO the same thing (start recording, view previously recorded videos etc).

Regardless, in a nutshell, you turn on your phone’s bluetooth, you turn on the camera and turn on your LooxieCam application. As you record you see your footage on your phone, pretty darn cool. Because this is video delivered via a bluetooth connection, it appears a bit jumpy, but rest assured the actual footage is not jumpy at all. On that note, when you review your footage via your phone, you are initially viewing it from the earpiece to the phone..so that footage is also jumpy because it’s Bluetooth that is still pulling from the earpiece to the phone display. You need to SAVE the footage to your phone before you get the actual footage as it really is.

The video format is MP4 and the camera has two settings (set on the LooxcieCam application settings). You can set the resolution to either 480P (30 fps), this is youtube ready footage, or you can use 380P (15 fps) which is smaller and better for emailing.

You can view Ariel Winter from Modern Family via Looxcie here.
You can view lots of users samples here.

One very cool feature from Looxcie is the 30 second clip button. Let’s say you just recorded something cool…with one click of a button on your ear piece, the last 30 seconds of footage is taken and uploaded it to your Facebook account…pretty bitchen!

Now, as I mentioned, I have the first generation Looxcie, it cost me aprox $149.00 down from $200.00 after about 3 months sitting on the shelf. It clearly was a bit over priced and I don’t think people understood what it was.

Looxcie 2 is now out (pictured left) and is a bit more sleak and attractive with an all black, more lightweight design.

And finally, one of the coolest features just released from Looxcie (1 & 2) is their Looxcie Live! Now I do allot of live streaming (I developed and own Bspot.tv) so my natural assumption is that I’d be able to use this feature to stream to Bspot.tv..too cool!!! But, that is NOT yet the case.

Looxcie Live only works with other people using the Looxcie Live app on their phone. I personally had to upgrade the firmware on my Looxcie 1 in order to use the feature at all. So currently you can not broadcast live to other peoples computers..only their phones IF they have the looxcie Live app on their phone. While this feature is basically useless to me personally..it’s a step in the right direction and I have to think home computer viewing is right around the corner!

Here’s Looxcing at you!