Link this blog and be a winner of DVD ripper software

Hobbies and hobbies is now 4 plus with a tag of more than 300 posts. It is getting more than 10, 000 page views monthly. First post which I wrote at this blog was published on 17th March 2008.

I am happy to announce a contest or giveaway for the readers of this blog.

Link this blog to win a PC compatible software:               
10 winners will be selected to get full version pc compatible software WinX DVD Ripper Platium' .
The price of this software is '$35.95 but winners of this giveaway can download this software for free.

1- You need to place this blog link at your blogroll.
2- Like this blog at your face book page.
3- Tweet this post
4- Then post that link at comments section of this post.
5- Remember that depending on the quality of back links, 10 persons will be selected to download this amazing software for FREE.

 This giveaway will end on April 10th, 2012.
10 winner will be chosen and announced soon after it.
I will contact the winners on e-mail with the key to unlock the application.
Hurry up and get the chance to win and download free software.

Features of WinX DVD Ripper Platinum

• You can rip all DVDs regardless of DVD copy protections and region locks, including DVD CSS, region code, RCE, Sony ArccOS, UOPs, Disney X-project DRM. 
• Rip DVD to AVI, MP4, MPEG, WMV, MOV, 3GP for playback on all Windows media players, iPhone/4S, iPod, iPad/iPad 2/iPad 3, Android, HTC, Samsung, XOOM, Galaxy Tab, PSP, etc. 
• It brings you three Copy modes - clone DVD to ISO image; copy full title/main content of a DVD to hard drive with original Video and 5.1 Channel AC3/DTS Dolby Audio within 5 minutes.

Disclosure: This is part of a promotional campaign from www.winxdvd.com. All opinions remain my own.

HURRY UP and be a winner. The contest starts from today March 22, 2012

Check real value and best price for your collectibles

Collectors (either it is antique item, stamps, coins, toys or any thing else) are passionate about their hobby. Their long time collection effort, dedication makes the collectibles valuable as time passes.
How do you value your collectibles?
If you are interested to sell your collection, how to determine what is the best price you can get from it?

'Not for sale now' is the place for passionate collectors to check the real value and best price for your collectibles.

'Not for sale now' enables collectors to safely showcase their collections and share their stories and expertise. You can find great collectibles and connect with like-minded collectors from around the world. Collect offers from interested parties, determine real value and get the best price "if ever" you decide to sell.

From Pez to Picasso's, Coins to Comics, stamps, antiques, toys, clothes or shoes (etc) you may find it here.

There is no charge to list your items or any obligation to ever sell or buy anything.

You can join the 'forum' a place for discussion with like minded people.

'Not For Sale Now'

Discover cool stuff about design, fashion, art and culture at -picocool

There are times when I am tired of writing or reading blogs, and do some browsing for fun or interesting stuff. Sometimes I search at 'StumbleUpon' as it is a nice place to discover cool stuff.

'Pico cool' is the place to discover cool stuff about art, design, culture, travel, architecture and technology. You may find interesting articles, news and posts at the site. Like the facing picture is about 'Origami tea' where you can notice the tea bags are in origami format. Isn't it unique?

So be prepared to get fun stuff at 'Pico cool'!

What they say:
'Our community finds and shares tiny bytes and unique content from the world of peer media, social networks and subcultures. We discover upcoming designs, cool products, micro-trends, subcultures, artists, human experiences, innovations, philosophies, technologies, and more.

Get the tips and technique to clean anything at or around your home

Simple tips and techniques can make our daily house keeping tasks easier. Cleaning is the process of keeping our homes and outdoors in fresh and neat condition. Cleanliness includes the removal of dirt, dust, stains, bad smells and garbage from or around our homes.

At this article you can find the links to the sites offering tips and technique to clean anything at or around your home. These home improvement tips help you make your home a neat and nice looking place.

'How to clean anything.com' is a community based site including group of cleaning professionals providing tips and techniques for cleaning anything, starting from vehicles, household items, stain removal up to home remedies and more. There are product reviews which are tested and then given opinion as to whether the product meets the claims made by the manufacturer, and post select responses from other visitors about their experience with the product.

The site offers more than 1300 cleaning tips. Categories are: automotive tips, general cleaning, home exterior tips, home interior, house keeping, pets and animal, recreational, sports, seasonal tips and stain removal guide.

Related sites and resources:


* 'Do It Yourself' offers 'Clean and Stain Removal Tips'


* 'cleaning.tips.net' can help you make quick work of whatever cleaning you have to do. You'll find cleaning tips on everything.

* 'Hints and things' page gives some suggestions on how to use everyday household products when cleaning; making the job easier and cheaper.


* 'All About Home' There are tips for everything from the general process of cleaning to keeping odors out of your refrigerator.

Hobby and pastime blogs around the world wide web

It is really strange to know that there are not many hobby related blogs. There are many sites or hobby shops around where you can find hobby related news, information, links to other sites but there are not many visible hobby blogs. May be there are many which are hard to find out.  I love to read blogs and as I have been an enthusiast about variety of pastimes and leisure activities I search the world wide web for the stuff often. This post is about few hobby blogs which I discovered during my search. I hope to add more reviews in future.

'Hobbies and Pastimes' is a hobby blog. Blog was created in 2006 so you can expect a lot of articles, but the archives section shows that there were no posts in 2009.  In total there are few posts but very interesting and with a personal touch.

Few hobby related post titles are:

• Pet Shop: Hobby or Business?
• Of Pens, Pencils, and Markers
• Of Hats And Caps
• Old Olympic Games Postcards

Blogger 'Amadeo' is from U. S. A. Another blog from Amadeo is 'The Ignatian Perspective' which seems personal blog.

Discover online free crafts tutorials at 'Totally Tutorials'

World wide web offers links to many online directories, online forums/message boards or blogs dedicated to crafts only. These online tutorials are a good way of getting ideas, tips to adopt these projects or create new stuff or projects. Not only text sites but video sites like 'YouTube' has many videos relating to crafts, or do-it-yourself activities.

'Totally Tutorials' is a blog with a lot of craft tutorials, patterns, recipes and more. There are many how to and do-it-yourself projects, ideas and tips which are very useful for the people having a passion for art/craft activities.

Readers are encourages to submit their articles.

Related links:

* 'Craft site directory' a guide to arts and crafts links on the Internet.

Discover the extraordinary places and past with 'Curious Expeditions'

'Curious expeditions' is for the people having interest in traveling/discovering wonderful and extraordinary places of past.

If you are interested in travel and like to discover amazing or strange places, museums and objects then this site is for you.

describes itself as being “devoted to unearthing and documenting the wondrous, the macabre, and the obscure from around the globe.” These two travel a lot, and bring things back — stories, objects, ideas, what have you. Michelle laughingly points out that she’d like to open her own natural history museum someday…which seems ridiculous until you remember that the first museum in England that was open to the public was a house full of curiosities called The Ark and created by Charles I’s gardener.


I picked up few titles of posts like:

- Museums of Lost Wonder and Mummy Madness
- Museé Mécanique: Where History Lives
- Museums of Lost Wonder and Mummy Madness


Related posts or links:

- 'Mapping the marvelous'

- Diary of a Mad Natural Historian

- 'Cabinet of Wonders'

- 'Extraordinary places' A blog about travel, history, word and phrase origins, curious customs, superstitions, and folklore.

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Discover weird facts and articles at 'Dark Roasted Blend'

What comes in your mind with 'dark roasted blend'? ---Yes! the first thing which could come in your mind is 'coffee'. So when you visualize the scene of having a nice coffee cup while browsing the net, it is a wonderful feeling. Isn't it?

I love to have tea or coffee while chatting with friends, writing posts for my blogs or reading other blogs. I love to browse the sites with strange, funny, odd and weird facts, pictures etc and 'Dark Roasted Blend' is one of those sites which make my tea/coffee time more joyful.

'Dark Roasted Blend' is the place with weird and wonderful things which you can enjoy while having your coffee cup.

It is among the top 500 sites on Technorati, has more than 25,000 subscribers and gets approx. 50,000 daily unique visitors.

The "Dark Roasted Blend" is also a part of "Thrilling Wonder" family of sites, dedicated to the on-going quest for wisdom and beauty, for all things cool and wonderful in our world.

DRB was also featured on USA Today, TIME Magazine, National Geographic Channel (in Top 10 Travel Blogs), Wired, Smashing Magazine, etc.

Discover interesting and fun facts around you at - 'Uphaa'

Interesting and fun pictures or facts can be searched through any search engine, but there are few sites which provide really impressive stuff and 'Uphaa' is one of those sites.

More about 'Uphaa':

'Uphaa.com' is one of the top 50000 sites in the world and it gets more than 1 million readers each month. It provides the odd, funny and bizarre things around the world.



Origami - Creative and Really Impressive Collection

11 Awesome Toilet Paper Designs

Few recent post titles are:

- 16 Creative Motorcycle Helmet Designs
- 9 Creative Recycled Mailboxes
- 10 Creative Door Mat Designs

Related useful links:

* 'Oddee' is another entertainment blog on oddities, getting over two million unique visitors each month. Focused on the odd, bizarre and strange things of our world.

* 'toobizarre' A blog about funny, strange, interesting and odd pictures.

* '2 leep'

* 'Smile panic'

* 'Funlok'

Cet the crafts news at 'Craft gossip'

I have a good collection of books about crafts. Few of those books are gifts from my cousins who encourage my crafts activities. I also search at the net for more ideas, tips and projects which can be easily adopted to teach my reception years kids. Online communities and forums are a good place to share and get links to more ideas or tips to crafts or related topics. Crafts activities are the best time pass for me and I always enjoy doing it with my young students.

'Crafts gossip' offers news, reviews and projects covering various kind of crafts.

You get lots of craft ideas and projects and reviews at the site. Blog is dividied into many sub-blogs, covering topics ranging from knitting, crochet, bath and body, jewelry making, scrapbooking, sewing crafts, recycled crafts, needlework, edible crafts, indie crafts, stamping, lesson plans, glass art, quilting, polymer clay and felting.

I have searched for 'craft' links and found that you can get the links to 'Craft Competitions and Give Aways', 'Craft Competitons', 'Craft Events Craft Groups', Craft Chats & Craft Forums'. So you don't need to use search engine for related links.

A directory to find out art and craft sites -'The Craft Directory'

Being a subject teacher for art and crafts in early years, I usually search the net for useful links and ideas for my lesson plan. I enjoy teaching crafts projects to young children and my learning journey continues as I learn new and exciting ideas from the internet. There are many educational sites which offer useful links, resources and ideas relating to drawing, art and crafts. But I prefer to start searching at specific places becasue it saves your time.

The Craft Directory is a place to search for art and crafts related sites. You can definately save your time by starting search from this directory as I found a long list of topics and there is a list of sites under each catagory. You need to click the link and a drop down list of sites would come with a short description of that site. I just checked if results are good or not and clicked for 'Calligraphy' link. As I had a saved file at my hard drive about calligraphy sites, I knew many of the sites in advance and I was happy to find more sites with useful information about the topic.

Share and discuss your do-it-yourself crafts at 'Crafters'

There are lots of sites offering crafts or do-it-yourself projects and you only need to bookmark those sites for repeated visits to check updated posts. But the best place to discuss and sharing is online community sites or forums. These online forums are a good place to get tips, tricks, ideas and links to other sites which are associated with crafts, or other hobbies.

Crafters.org an online community where people share tips, experiences and diy (do it yourself) projects.

Craftster was started in August 2003 and has gains over 700,000 readers per month. They have total 183,724 registered members at this time. It has been written up in numerous publications including Time Magazine, the New York Times and the London Guardian.

Craftster is commonly known as "indie crafts." ("Indie" stands for independent as in indie music, indie art, indie film, etc.) Craftster is regarded by many as one of the cornerstones of the recent renaissance in crafting known as the "indie craft movement."

Site link: Crafters.org

Useful links:

* 'Do-it-yourself.us' contains reference information and resource links about the do-it-yourself movement.



* More posts from this blog relating to crafts or do-it-yourself projects.

Create your photo story books online

One of the more popular hobbies among women is creating scrapbooks to show of the photos of their children, families, vacations and more. However, the cost and time that is involved in scrapbooks has started to turn many traditional scrapbookers to digital scrapbookers.

'Heritage Makers' – helps you to create photo storybooks. Now you don't need to store your photos on your computer, but rather you can make stories with your pictures while creating a 'scrapbook.'

Using an online studio tool, scrapbook enthusiasts have access to over 40,000 pieces of artwork, paper stock, embellishments and templates – meaning they don’t have to give up the creativity that they’re used to with traditional books.

It’s all online! No special “scrapbook rooms” needed, no scrapbook storage to buy. Plus, it’s easy to use the online art, because the “drag and drop” functionality means that they can also create pages in a snap, often in much less time than a regular scrapbook.

In addition to “decorating” the pages, there are text boxes to add to the pages, allowing for the telling of the stories BEHIND the photos as well.

Once the pages of the photo storybook have been created online, scrapbookers can then send it to print – resulting in a high-quality, hard-bound, bookshelf-appropriate album. There’s even the ability to put text on the spine of your “album” so you can quickly see which photos are in which books!

There are so many great uses for photo storybooks aside from using them as traditional scrapbooks as well. Brides-to-be can create wedding albums, sign-in books with pictures of the couple, bridal shower books, wedding party gift books, photo thank you cards, etc. Families can honor their traditions by creating cookbooks of Grandma’s recipes, Mother’s Day or Father’s Day books, special books for recent grads to remember their high school or college years, memory books of family members that have passed on, and more. And world travelers – like me – can document their trip in photos and text stories that bring the vacations to life!

For an example of one of my vacation photo storybooks, here is a link to the one I created for my Boston trip, so you can see one in action online!

Link: 'Heritage maker'

Creating a photo storybook is something like booking a vacation online. You can do it on your own, but if you need more professional help you can contact a publishing consultant to help!

Guest author: Carmen Shirkey

'Life Hackery' - A nice blog with useful tips and hacks

'Life Hackery' is a nice blog which I discovered while browsing 'stumble upon'. The blog offers useful tips and hacks to make your life better. There are many variety of topics you can read and browse about the tips and hacks.

From the top link bar you can directly go for the posts which are related to these topics:
# Art & Design
# Automotive
# Entertainment
# Gadgetry
# Health
# Home
# Internet
# Life
# Money
# Productivity
# Technology

I just checked the 'art/design' to check what kind of stuff they offer and I was happy to see many good and quality posts like as 'How to Plan a Surprise Party?', '17 Uncommon Uses for Cotton Swabs', 'Five Funky Ways to Reuse Gift Wrappers' etc etc. I was really inspired with the post '17 common uses for cotton swabs' because I am one of those crafts lovers who prefer to use cheap or recycled material.

More about the site (in their own words)

'Who doesn’t want life to be easier? In our time-obsessed society, we’re always looking for shortcuts, and we share the ones that we find with you. Keep reading, and you’ll find useful, unusual and (sometimes) ironic tips and tricks to hack your life into shape.'

You can discover a lot more at the site.

Site link: 'Life Hackery'

Find craft and hobby ideas at 'Hobbies and Crafts'

There are many blogs which are personally created just to share ideas for crafts or handcrafts. These blogs are a good source of taking tips or ideas to make wonderful projects for your home or simple things to give as a gift.

Hobbies and crafts offers ideas, tips to create crafts for your home. It also provides reviews of handcrafted and decorative objects.

There are many posts about decorative crafts and there are many tips which we can use to make projects for ourselves. But there is only one thing which blog reader would notice that there is no picture of the crafts. If pictures of those crafts were added then the blog posts would be more valuable and attractive to the blog audience.

Get everything funny and amazing at - 'Fun and entertainment guaranteed'

Fun and entertainment is an essential part of life. There are many fun and jokes related sites around the net, but I love to read blogs which are related to entertainment topics. Today's blog is 'Fun and Entertainment guarantee' and I am sure that after visiting the site you would say that there is real fun around this site.

Just watch few of the pictures from the site:







Site link: Fun and entertainment guaranteed

Description: Extensive collection of clean humor, Hot Issues, Funny moments, Fun collection, Creative stuffs, Yo mama jokes, etc.


More Useful links:

Bolly jolly

'Circle you' - offering you information about recreational activities

Recreation is a product of any activity which can be described to have fun and enjoyment from any kind of task either sports, music, travel, hobbies etc. Recreation is very important for our lives to keep us fresh and happy.

Circle You.com is a site offering information about recreational activities. Recreational activities naturally deal with recreation produced either from hobbies, leisure, travel or any relevant way.

More about 'Circle You':

This site helps you understand how recreational activities help in relaxation and contentment and also the need of recreation in your daily life. There is a necessity of making recreational activities a part of your daily routine to imbibe fresh spirit and gain strength and energy to lead a healthy and happy life. Make recreation a habit and strengthen the fabric of your life.

Currently they have these topics discussed at their site:
Music, Photography, Books, Electronics, Toys, Art & Crafts, Cooking, Literature, Sports, Internet, and Collecting

Site link: Circle You.com

A site for caricature lovers 'Wittygraphy'

'Caricature' would be a new term or word for many of us. You would notice that in daily newspaper or magazines there are cartoon like pictures which are similar to real personality but few features of the face or body are humorously enlarged or distorts.

Few definitions of this term:

- Caricature, a satirical drawing, plastic representation, or description which, through exaggeration of natural features, makes its subject appear ridiculous.

- A 'caricature' is either a portrait that exaggerates or distorts the essence of a person or thing to create an easily identifiable visual likeness, or in literature, a description of a person using exaggeration of some characteristics and oversimplification of others

Wittygraphy is a social network for caricature lovers. It is a marketplace connecting caricature buyers to caricaturists
It is also a free online directory for caricaturists to promote their work.

It is the place where you can collect favorites, rate caricatures, and track your friends and favorite caricaturists.

What you can get from this social network?

* Discover and view caricatures from their large network of artists
* Build a network of buddies to help each other discovering great caricaturists
* Vote for caricatures
* Follow your favorite caricaturists
* Keep track of your favorite caricatures
* Find caricaturists for live party events living in your area
* Find caricaturists with the style and technique you like to get your caricature done

What you can do there?

* Connect with a huge number of caricature lovers
* Free web space to show your work to the world
* Advertise and sell your services directly to Wittygraphy members
* Receive direct orders from Wittygraphy members
* Listed in our large directory of caricaturists
* Build your network of fans and buyers
* Receive feedback for the work done and build your reputation

Discoer new stuff to do at 'Did dit'

Did dit is a social community place to discover new stuff to do.
Keep track of what you wanna do, share stories about your life experiences (your "diddits"), and meet people like you.

Whatever your interests or hobbies are, if it is meant for fun and entertainment, this is the place for it. You can start browsing from the top menu bar and select the topic of your interest.

It is the list site itself provides:

10 Things to Do on Diddit...

* Check off things you've done - "diddits."
* Star stuff you wanna do - "wanna dos."
* Tell stories about your life experiences.
* Create lists of things you've done, things you wanna do, or both.
* Browse and search our database of over 200k things to do.
* Add suggestions to lists.
* Meet people like you.
* Share your favorite lists on Facebook.
* Build your profile of life experiences.
* Have fun. Get inspired. Discover your world.
Join Did dit or just browse the site to have fun.

'Online Tips' for home improvement and gardening

There are many people who search the net for home improvement and do-it-yourself ideas, and tips. I am one of those surfers who love to browse the net for useful information offered by many site with do-it-yourself tips and tricks. Your creativity skill is developed by doing home improvement task and at the same time you can save money. Sometimes your saving could go upto hundreds of bucks.

Online Tips.org is one of those sites offering home improvement and gardening tips.

Site is easy to navigate and you would like the quotes at the right side bar:
- "Formula for an interesting life: acquire skills and use them. The more skills, the more interesting."

- "Skills unpreventably give pride and confidence. They won't build your character necessarily, but they'll enable a breadth of experience where character might clarify."

There are cleaning, drywalling, flooring, grout, homeselling, kitchen, lawn care, masonry, ceramic tile and lots of do-it-yourself tips and articles.
You can find cleaning tips like iron, bathroom tub, feather pillow and many more can be found at cleaning tips section and every topic provides many articles covering it.

There are many do-it-yourself posts: 'DIY guides'