that canadian girl

Category: Blogging & Online Media

  • International Shut Down Day?

    Can you cope without your computer for one day?

    That’s the question Shutdownday.org is asking. They are encouraging everyone to switch off for 24 hours, on the 24th March 2007, and so far 13% are already admitting they cannot go without their computer on Saturday.

    I have yet to tick the red or grey box – I’d like to spend the day away from the computer, but as it’s my bread and butter, we’ll just have to see!

    Going online daily to read the news, check the weather, catch up with people and to blog has been part of my life for the best of 13 or 14 years now, and I could probably count the number of days I haven’t used a computer in all those years on a few hands. There’s no denying it, it’s an integral part of my life.

    So more power to you if you can take part in Saturday’s Shutdown Day, but in my case, a no-technology day needs to be planned ahead to get work and personal projects out of the way first.

    Sad unh?

  • Around the world in as long as you like

    I love travelling, world history, new exotic food, but I sadly spend very little time seeing the world. So I live vicariously through some of my favourite travel blogs.

    Darren at Travel Rants is organising a Blog-a-thon Challenge, with the aim of getting new travel writers to come out of the woodwork.

    Tell your family, friends, anyone you know about the Travel Rants Blog-a-thon. Write a blog post [article] that will be useful, interesting, or humorous for travellers / consumers and you could win yourself a cool €200 worth [or equivalent US$, £’s etc.] of Amazon vouchers donated by SA-Venues.com.

    So if you fancy yourself as a travel writer or want to share some of your past unique travel experiences (some of my Namibian friends’ childhood stories and my sister’s many South American trips come to mind here!), visit Darren’s blog and read up on the challenge.

  • Wine Relief: The first cross-blog auction?

    crossblogauction_hughredose_350.jpgHugh McLeod, of gapingvoid fame, and Tim Atkin, of virtual wine, have come up with my favourite fundraising idea of all times: A cross-blog auction for one of Hugh’s cartoons and a selection of wines from Tim’s cellar. Cool cartoon and nice booze, how can one go wrong?

    If your pockets permit, go have a look at the wine selection and make your bid. Last time I checked, they were up to £300, and we’re still nearly a week away from closing date!

    Otherwise, if your pockets aren’t so deep, why not buy a Charlie & Lola book or a red nose instead? It’s all in the spirit of Comic Relief!

  • Can Google Hear Him?

    googlehears.jpgApparently they can. Aaron Stanton started writing and posting videos on CanGoogleHearMe.com less than two weeks ago, yet he’s an overnight celebrity at the Googleplex.

    Aaron had a business proposal, but his attempts to contact Google via phone or email did not work. So he decided to fly to Google, sit outside Google for several days, until someone at Google would agree to meet with him. He reportedly got that meeting and is running high right now.

    He flew out on the 11th February, and had his first appointment with Google on the 14th, with some generally positive feedback leading to future meetings and NDA’s. Details of his Big Idea aren’t publicly available but Digg rumours* point to “a powerful tool for writers. By analyzing published novels and breaking them down into detailed statistics, then graphing those statistics scene-by-scene, we allow authors to better understand their craft in a way never before possible.”

    Now, we have no idea whether his idea is any good, and whether it’s anything to do with the above, but Scoble deemed Aaron important enough to take his 13 year old son Patrick to meet him. He and I both love this guy’s attitude – He followed his dream, even if it took a few little online self-publicity stunts to get there.

    Some have compared his overnight success to the Red Paperclip guy, Kyle MacDonald. But even if Aaron’s success compares to Kyle’s, and it doesn’t turn him into a multimillionaire for an idea he sells to Google, he’s an inspiration to all young people with an idea. Don’t sit around, and most of all, don’t use typical channels like the Google idea submission form, but instead, make noise, get yourself heard, make a video, talk to the right people to create a buzz, and then, maybe you’ll get through!

    [* No, I don’t take Digg seriously, not even as a source of rumours, but thought interesting to include what some people appear to have dug up]

  • Like my new look?

    It may be a month late, but here’s my yearly new look. This morning, Andrew offered to create a new WordPress template for me and I simply couldn’t refuse such an offer. I knew exactly what style I was looking for and chuwy provided the image the template was built upon. If my memory serves me right, which it rarely does, I believe we’re now on to version 5 or 6 for this blog.

    We’ve now put to rest the green template some lovingly called the “Did you get your inspiration from the Windows XP default background?” and others the “wow you’re so web 2.0” design.

    After the jump, I’ve put up one last screenshot of the green tree template for posterity’s sake.

    (more…)

  • Weird things that have taken my fancy recently

    • Knitting: I don’t know why, I just want to knit something painfully kitsch. I think it’s a mix of watching Ugly Betty, coming across an old blog entry by Katie mentioning crocheting, and just wanting one of those really soft scarves but never finding one I like.
    • Get a Wacom graphics tablet: I’ve had a few short flashbacks to my teenage years when my right wrist was hurting so much I could hardly type. Hasn’t been bad so far, but it does concern me a bit. Plus I wanted to get some basic image editing software for Mac, and it looks like the tablets come with either Photoshop Elements or Corel Essentials (which on their own cost about the same price as the tablet) so … why not?
    • Wanting to write services for the Nabaztag: So she’s officially called Keira (much to Andrew’s great pleasure), but she hasn’t done much so far other than telling me what time it is and doing a bit of tai chi. Longer post on this topic in the next few days.
    • I soooo want these: A shoe rack wheel, the b00tiful iPhone (not bizarre, just droolingly nice!), a little dog like Spudgy and a kitty like this.
    • Gingerbread house: At Christmas, I put together a gingerbread tree, but it was a total cheat and I’d like to do a full house from scratch. It’d be pretty, with lots of jelly tots and candy windows, iced sugar snow and a little house number by the door.

  • New plugin: Technorati tags

    Using categories for blog posts is a nightmare: You start off with a generic category name, then you’re tempted to split it into multiple categories, at which point you realise said category contains 428 posts begging to be reorganised. So you promptly give up on reorganising the categories and go play Wii, or eat a cookie, or something.

    So I’ve adopted a new little plugin for WordPress called SimpleTags. It makes it easy to add Technorati tags to the bottom of a post, and can also be used to create a tag cloud. Sure, tag clouds are oh-so-2006, but they’re also an interesting way to see what I’ve been blabbing about recently.

    We’ll see about the tag cloud later, since I’ve got a stinking head cold, which makes it hard to even keep my eyes open, but the plugin was drag and drop, so that’s in use already.

  • Funny Google Searches: "Looking Back at 2006" Edition

    It’s been a long time since I published some of my favourite Google search results landing people onto my blog, so after reading Google’s own end-of-year Zeitgeist, I thought this would be a great opportunity to pick and choose some of the funniest search keywords from 2006 (since top keywords are a bit too boring in this case).

    • “airplanes games”: As long as they don’t involve saying “boom” or sharp objects
    • “quadra boob”: Fashion crime if there ever was one
    • “make up tips for chinky eyes”: Yikes, I wouldn’t quite have worded it that way myself…
    • “why dont ducks tell jokes whilst flying”: Whatever the punchline in, I bet it’s awful
    • “im fat”: Join the club!
    • “how to make a move on a girl”: If you’re counting on Google or my blog for help on this, you’re screwed, mate!
    • “girls 10-13 advice on having your own business”: A lemonade stand maybe?
    • “canadian chav pictures”: In Canada, we generally just call them white trash…
    • “i want to purchase some womens ugg boots where can i find them”: The “Ugg boots”-related searches are frighteningly high this year. It’s too late to save the world, I’m sorry.
    • “photos of people wearing ugg boots with leggings”: Urgh is it two-for-one at the Fashion Crimes Homestore?
    • “jade goody stairs in your eyes”: Ouch, watch out for splinters
    • “funny but not rude digestion songs”: Digestion song that doesn’t involve farting? Then what’s the point!?
    • “brain reading ipod”: So THAT’s what Apple is releasing next? And here we were, thinking it was going to be a new phone…
    • “6 boobed girl”: Wow, that’s got to be even more painful than quadraboobs
    • “from the 13th of december how many days until christmas”: How lazy are some people?!
    • “crap towns the nation decides croydon”: Have to agree on this one!
    • “blow up doll jason donovan”: Leaving us all with a disturbing mental picture…

  • I've been tagged: Five things

    Only four sleeps left until Christmas. Motivation to do anything is rather low. Distractions are welcome. And then I get tagged by Matt! Well, how could I resist?

    Five things you (probably) didn’t know about me:

    1. I once went straight from an all-night rave to singing in an early Sunday morning classical concert at the National Gallery in Ottawa. I only just had time to shower and change from oversized jeans and sparkly stuff into white blouse and black pencil skirt. I promptly fell asleep the moment we went off stage.
    2. I met my British husband online, on xvi.com to be precise *cringe*
    3. I may be Canadian, but I know nothing of English-language Canadian music. I bet my British musicophile colleagues could name more Canadian bands than I can.
    4. As a child, I was a very evil older sister. I’d regularly throw things to the floor and ask one of my three younger sisters to pick them up, just to establish my authority!
    5. I still own, and wear, cartoon underpants sometimes. My favourite ones have a lion and pink paws on them (and you probably didn’t want to know that!)
    6. I can’t count very well…

    I’m now tagging Lisa, Mat, Liz, and two writers from the same blog, Steph and Annabel.

  • They may be UGG-ly, but they're popular

    *Throws self to the ground in desperation*

    It seems Heather’s forecast on Ugg boots being popular again this winter wasn’t a fluke, and wasn’t a local thing either. Bill, also from Hitwise, confirms that the trend has been set in the US as well. It’s a worldwide plague!

    Oh well… it’ll give the Fug girls plenty of blogging fodder this winter!