Season of Shadows Blog

I got the inspiration to make a couple of changes a few days ago; one was to the site’s landing page: http://seasonofshadows.com/. It’s now covered with jack-o-lanterns from last year’s haunt, while the 2010 vid autoplays in the center. I’ve also set the vid player to loop, and created a separate window to launch the home page. That way, when a visitor chooses to enter the site, they can continue enjoying Nox Arcana’s music in the background while taking a look around.

The change I’m most excited about is the addition of a mini-version of one of my favorite online games: “A Murder of Scarecrows.” Lately Google’s been doing all sorts of “gadget-based” technology to be used with iGoogle, portable devices, desktops and websites. Many of the gadgets they allow embedded on sites are video games, and thankfully A Murder of Crows has been developed into an app-like version of its original incarnation.

It’s now available to play in all its crow-shooing-creepiness without having to leave SoS: Season of Shadows – A Murder of Scarecrows – Google Gadget Edition. I’m not sure how the gadget developer and the original creator of A Murder of Scarecrows collaborated, but I noticed credit was absent in the embedded player. So, I’d like to mention the extremely talented Vincent Marcone. I’m not only a fan of his A Murder of Scarecrows, but also of Vincent’s many other projects, including his work with the band Johnny Hollow.

Currently, the only direct link I have to the game is in this entry and in the home page’s site content section. But I’ll eventually get links up throughout the site so it will be easily accessible.

If you’d like to know more about Google Gadgets, take a look around their gadget page — they have a ton of stuff in the directory.

On another note, I’d like to congratulate Jennifer of Bowling Green, KY. She was the second winner in the Halloween in America Giveaway. Congratulations, Jennifer! Thanks again to everyone who participated. Just a reminder: the Season of Shadows Bottled Water Giveaway closes tomorrow.

Just wanted to give an update on the status of my Season of Shadows nonprofit Drinking Water project. As you may remember from my previous post, SoS H2O Giveaway, the plan was to start selling the bottles here at the site; charge a very fair price, but still make enough to recoup the cost of creating the bottles (to continue the bottle making process), plus have extra to donate to UNICEF’s Tap Project.

Unfortunately, even in the small experiment I set up, customizing, packaging and shipping the bottles ran into much more money than I anticipated. By the time I factored in all the supplies and shipping costs, the water just wasn’t going to be reasonably priced for visitors/customers — we’re talking some hefty prices for bottled water here!

But, if there’s three things you’ve probably learned about me by now: 1) I get really jazzed about certain projects. 2) I love coming up with creative and sometimes crazy ideas — to the point I should shut up about them until I figure out if they’re even gonna pan out. (Note to self: I probably should work on fixing that issue in therapy. ) And, 3) I never, ever, ever give up, no matter what! So, even though selling SoS Drinking Water isn’t going to work for right now, I’ve decided to host multiple Season of Shadows Water Bottle Giveaways over the next several weeks — at least until Halloween and maybe even beyond.

I’m hoping the giveaways themselves will continue to raise some additional awareness about the Tap Project. And each time I post a new water giveaway, I pledge to make a $5 donation myself to UNICEF’s Tap Project.

I even added a new H2O page to the site to help keep the awareness alive and hopefully generate actual action based support of the amazing Tap Project.

Speaking of the giveaways, if you haven’t entered the 12-pack of SoS Water and the Mio Strawberry/Watermelon Water Enhancer yet, it closes in six days. I’ll be launching a new 6-pack Giveaway in the next few days… gotta keep you guys hydrated during your Halloween preparations.