:Clear Skin Blog

Happy Halloween everybody!

I’ll just be sticking around the house and handing out candy myself (maybe I’ll play Resident Evil 4 or something…). Be sure to check out my post a few days back about junk food and acne if you haven’t, and have a good time. I did carve a pretty scary jackolantern last night, too bad I didn’t take any pics (I’m pretty good with a pumpkin and a steak knife, hehe). Last year I actually dressed up as a ninja (mask and all), and man did it get hot in that costume (no, I did not go trick-or-treating). But the worst part was that some people mistook my ninja costume for being a terrorist, so you can guess I got some interesting looks. Ah, sad when you have to describe that ninjas are not radical jihadists… Oh well. Best wishes, and brush your teeth!

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Well, I’ve already got a major update in store for Acne Vitamins once the first shipment of our new product arrives, but lately I’ve been pretty busy with my other pages, as well as brainstorming for some new ones. My main side project is still Blog-Links.org, and that one has had a slight delay due to my decision to make some stylistic changes. I’ll be going for a more minimalistic and user-friendly design, and frankly I’m a bit undecided on the structure I want the forums to take. Although different forums for each type of blog would be most helpful in doing highly targeted networking, I know the page will likely be pretty sparse for the first year until people discover it, so it’s probably best to group everything into five forums or less (a huge number of empty forums never looks good imo).

One of my new ideas is an acne products site that offers price comparisons, reviews, and links to purchase a huge selection of acne treatment products. I would not stock these products myself, but link out or use an exported Amazon shopping cart, simply making your search for acne products a little easier. Obviously I would target a different audience than Acne Vitamins, although I would definitely include some promotion for that site as well. And those reviews would be user-submitted (probably linked from Amazon.com, DrugStore.com, or Acne.org), so don’t think that I’m going to “objectively review” every acne product out there (hehe, obviously, I’m not exactly in the best position to be objective). This site sounds like a big undertaking, but since I could incorporate a lot of content from elsewhere on the web, it probably wouldn’t be as hard as it sounds. In any case, I don’t plan on bothering with this until after Acne Vitamins is updated and Blog Links is up and running. For now I will probably just pick up a domain or two.

Lastly, if you’ve ever followed my “skin care for men” link, you’ve probably stumbled upon SkinFM.com. The site is obviously a work-in-progress, and will probably stay that way for a while. It’s basically on the back burner compared to my other projects, simply because it would take a lot more work to get it ranking well in the search engines, and I don’t exactly have any means of making money off it in the near future. I was actually planning to introduce an anti-aging skin care product for men, but I still have a bit of research to do before I can get that off the ground, so it will have to wait. Hopefully next year I can start making some progress with SkinFM.

So that gives you an idea of all the stuff I’m working on at present. Acne-Vitamins is by far my main focus, but once you start making sites it’s hard to stop!

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I just picked up some Halloween candy to hand out today (Mmmm….I love Reeses Peanut Butter Cups…), so hopefully I won’t eat it all before the trick-or-treaters get here, but if a few pieces should accidentally find their way into my mouth, well, no one will ever know!

If you also happen to be surrounded by candy, don’t let stress over acne keep you from enjoying a little chocolate. Acne has a lot more to do with what you are not putting into your body, rather than what you are. It is quite possible that a lack of certain vitamins and minerals in your diet can lead to acne (such as you might have from not eating enough vegetables), but there has never been any scientific evidence to show that chocolate, pizza, or any of the other foods you love will cause acne. This is one of the more popular acne myths. That said, everyone’s chemistry is different, and high intakes of certain foods may exacerbate acne that you already have. However, things such as junk food cannot actually cause acne, and unless you are a very special case, it takes a lot of any certain food for it to have any real effect on your skin.

Keep in mind that a healthy diet is a balanced one, and so if you’re eating pizza every day there may be some consequences (both for your skin, and other more obvious features). So just be sure to balance your diet and get a little bit of everything. As long as you’re doing this, a little candy never hurts. Remember that a perfectly balanced diet is pretty hard to pull off, so make sure to take those multivitamins!

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I’ve got a new article out which should be showing up in the search engines and major article sites soon. This one is entitled “Acne Products Made Affordable” and discusses the value of buying acne products based on their main ingredients rather than how pretty the label is (speaking of which, I should have some new pretty labels in about 2 weeks, hehe). The fact is, many of the most popular acne products only work because of one or two ingredients, and by buying these separately for a fraction of the cost, you can usually save a bunch of money and get just as good results.

I also talk about the inflated value of anti-acne cleansers, which usually are more or less identical to any gentle cleanser and add little value to those really looking to stop acne (honestly, no cleanser is going to stop acne -acne isn’t caused by dirt on your face…). Any gentle cleanser on the shelf will generally work just as well. It’s not like normal cleansers somehow miss your pores and you need a special “pore cleanser.”

Lastly, the best way to save money on acne is by preventing it altogether, and of course I use this part to discuss the value of vitamin B5 (along with zinc). In my opinion, B5 is the only acne product that you need, but I know some people hate pills, so this article should include a little something for everybody. Now I just have to wait for it to get reviewed.

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Well I got the chance to play the Xbox 360 for a little while at Walmart today. They were setting it up while I was doing some shopping, so I stuck around a few extra minutes to try it out.

My first impression is that the 360 seems pretty much the same as a high-end PC as far as graphics go. There was a significant amount of jagginess in the games I played, but I suspect this was due to either the resolution being set too low for the HDTV (it may have been outputting 480i instead of 720p, etc) or the fact that these were all demos that, from their descriptions, seem to be the same as those shown at E3 a long time ago. With the 360’s power, I expect that the final games should have no jaggies whatsoever, and what I saw was just way too jaggy to be for real (my old N64 was smoother than this). Anyways, aside from the jaggies the games looked very good. I played Kameo, Call of Duty 2, and King Kong, and while there was nothing that I don’t think a new PC could handle, the textures, detail, and lighting were all very nice. I think what I liked best about the 360 was actually the controller. It felt great, easily more comfortable and intuitive than my Dual Shock 2. I’m still left feeling as though I haven’t really experienced the system, due to the evil jaggy lines that seemed to cover the edge of every polygon, but there’s no doubt that the 360 is a significant jump up from the current consoles. Plus, the ability to wirelessly network with your computer is just cool ^_^.

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Well, Wilma as come and gone without much effect to Tampa at all. There will be a one-day delay on most of the weekend orders due to USPS and UPS taking the day off, but that’s about it.

Time to talk about another new ingredient that will be in our updated formula: OptiZinc.

OptiZinc, or Zinc Monomethionine, is a patented 1:1 complex of zinc and the amino acid methionine. OptiZinc is already in a more biologically active form, and thus is absorbed better (some reports claim up to 20 times better) and retained longer than standard zinc. It’s also FDA approved and is probably the safest form of zinc you can take. Unlike other leading zinc supplements, OptiZinc will not cause anemia or other harmful side effects.

Thanks to the addition on methionine, OptiZinc has been shown to be a much more effective antioxidant than typical forms of zinc, helping to detoxify cellular membranes by displacing heavy metals and toxins from your body tissues. OptiZinc is able to fight free radicals in multiple ways, providing a significant boost to your immune system. Also, OptiZinc resists dietary fiber to ensure a good level of absorption regardless of your diet (people with diets high in fiber have a hard time absorbing standard zinc).

In our acne vitamins guide, we discuss the important role that zinc plays in acne prevention - mainly through detoxifying skin cells and aiding the regulation of oil glands. All in all, OptiZinc is simply a more effective formulation of zinc that gives you all the benefits and then some. Zinc is still a mineral, and one that some people have negative reactions to (it can become toxic at high levels), so the amount in our new formula will be just enough to prove effective without users having to worry about side effects. Besides the latent benefits of OptiZinc, you will also benefit from the fact that vitamin B5 aids in zinc absorption. It’s almost like I planned it this way….Mwahahahaha!! (sorry about that evil laugh, it just kinda slipped out…and no, I didn’t get much sleep last night ^_^)

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Wilma should be hitting landfall late tonight/tomorrow morning, and is expected to be a category 2 when it does so. Right now, I’m not anticipating that the hurricane should effect Acne-Vitamins at all, so the website will remain up and we will continue accepting sales. At most, there may be a one day delay if USPS decides not to open tomorrow (many schools are closed). The national news is reporting local authorities giving serious warnings for certain areas, but this is normal and Wilma is not nearly the worst we’ve seen recently. I expect a lot of the coverage is due to interest generated because of the devastation that Katrina caused, and no one in authority wants to be caught with the blame of not taking the storm serious enough. In any case, a storm like this may cause some damage, but is unlikely to threaten many lives. I’ll let you know how it goes, as I’m off to a hurricane party. Until Tomorrow-

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It’s been a bad year for hurricanes, a bad two years actually.

Hurricane Wilma has of course been all over the news, and Tampa Bay happens to be not far from the middle of its currently projected flight path. We’re not expected to see landfall until early next week, but I expect that it will be a rainy weekend in the mean time. I just hope some of the scientists are correct in predicting that this massive storm will slow down a decent amount before it gets near the coast of Florida.

While hurricanes routinely cause massive damage in certain parts of Florida, the danger is not the same as what the nation witnessed in New Orleans. Besides the fact that we are a little more used to hurricanes dropping by (and therefore generally more prepared), there simply isn’t the risk of long-standing high water. Since cities like Tampa are not built inside a natural bowl, flood waters will generally recede once the storm passes.

Unfortunately, if the worst case scenario does occur and my area is damaged to the point of losing power, Acne-Vitamins may have to shut down operations until electricity is restored. I cannot very well run and internet company without access to the internet ^_^. All our data is stored on servers in California and New York, and our manufacturing is handled in New York, so the loss would not affect our customers or the long-term operations of the business. However, I would have to disable sales for a little while until things got back to normal. I may in fact do this over the weekend depending on how close the storm is on Sunday, as I don’t want the website to be accepting orders that we cannot process and send in our usual timely manner.

I’ll post an update as the storm moves closer, but in the meantime please keep us and all of Florida in your prayers.

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I hope you’re enjoying the search engine saga of Acne-Vitamins ^_^.

Anyways, there appears to have been a backlinks and pagerank update from Google, and this morning Acne-Vitamins.com is now showing the proper title and description once again. I’ve still been dropped hundreds of places away from where I was in the search results, but I’ll take whatever good news I can get. Chances are, my natural rankings will start to slowly come back as things are getting fixed.

One cool thing about the latest update is that my All Clear blog is now showing PR as well (it’s had zero for the last 2 months). That’s definitely a good sign, as All Clear has basically become the main source of new content for Acne-Vitamins. One of the things that search engines like to see is that a site regularly updates with new content, and blogging is simply one of the easiest ways to do this. Each blog entry is like adding a new page to your site, without all the html hassle. In my case, it would probably benefit me more if I tied most of my blog entries directly to the topic of clear skin, but the fact is I just enjoy writing about the business side of things a bit more (as well as the totally-unrelated side of things…), although you can surely expect more acne advice from me in the future. So if you’ve got a web page and need to give it a tune-up, you can’t go wrong with adding a blog.

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If it weren’t for the fact that sales are up and I’ve recently received some nice feedback from Acne Vitamins customers, I would be really stressed out this week.

The server issues I was having yesterday seem to have been fixed. This morning the shopping cart admin area seemed to load fast and without any of yesterday’s glitches. All the company data is still there and appearing as it should. I should note that even if we completely lost all the order data stored by our Acne-Vitamins-Shop online software, we would still be able to process current orders directly by means of our credit card processor and through PayPal. However, it would be very difficult or impossible to offer the same level of service that I want to offer, not to mention that everything on this end would take twice as long. Oh well, things are working fine at the moment.

Unfortunately, another annoyance has reared its head in the form of a Google indexing glitch. I had inserted an htaccess 301 redirect a number of months ago which was working fine until now. All of a sudden, my site is showing up as only a URL in Google, with no title or description, and has of course disappeared from the rankings (and I had finally gotten to page 1, ung…). I’m guess this has to do with googlebot hitting my site while the server was down for a moment, and so hopefully this problem will straighten out over time. In any case, this has been a horrible week for server issues, and the fact that Acne-Vitamins and Acne-Vitamins-Shop are each hosted on totally different servers only makes it all that much more ironic (I think I hear an evil cackling coming from somewhere). Of course, the other search engines are still showing my site without any problems, it’s just Google that can’t properly index a site as simple as mine. Gotta hand it to them…

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