that canadian girl

Latest adventures…

  • I blog, therefore I talk about cats

    There’s an unwritten rule in the blogosphere that one should not talk about their cat on their blog. It’s cheesy and highly uninteresting to everyone but you. But I’ve decided to break the rule just this once…

    This is my new pet cat Sammy.

    Sammy the Cheetah, Park Villa Hotel, Heilbronn Germany

    Ok, so maybe he’s not mine, and maybe he’s not really a cat either. He’s a 9 months old cheetah, an animal usually found in deepest Southern Africa. But this baby lives elsewhere. It lives in Heilbronn, beautiful Germany.

    We spent a fantastic, if a bit too hot, weekend in Germany – a first-time visit for me – for our friends Eric & Alex’s wedding, but I’ll post those pictures later. Much too knackered right now from the flight back!

    We had the wonderful chance to see Sammy this morning when the owner of the Park Villa Hotel allowed us to join him while he fed him breakfast – a nice big piece of meat. Sammy went on to also snack on the hotel’s pet tortoise’s breakfast as well – a leaf of salad – and moved on to main course by trying to take a bite out of Andrew’s thigh! It was like a giant cat who’s play-biting, so Andrew didn’t have the reaction to move away, but the owner quickly lured away Sammy with some leftover meat, to ensure Andrew kept both his legs.

    And the purring, oh, the purrrrring! It’s like nothing I’ve ever heard, he really wants to be loved and cuddled, and purrs like a giant version of a house cat!

    I’ll link to all the photos of the cheetah, as well as the wedding pictures tomorrow. But for now, danke schoen and gute nacht.

  • As a marketer, I promise to respect my designers

    These days, I’ve been doing a fair amount of work directly with the designers at work. I’m also sitting directly next to them (marketing and design together – whoddathunkit?) so I’m getting a lot more honesty as to what guidelines they need/want when starting on a project.

    Apple logo croppedThis morning, seeing Seth Godin’s post on “How to live happily with a great designer” made me smile. I may have been guilty of the lack of clarity, and a few moments of “I’ll know when I see it”, but I’ve learned to be clear in my brief, and then to let them out to play for a while. Usually gives good results!

    If you also work with designers, or even software developers, and are in charge of strategy, briefs, or giving some sort of guidelines before they start work, have a read through. You’ll probably go through the typical steps of “This is funny”, followed by a touch of guilt, finishing with a feeling that this may help you a lot in the long run.

    And why don’t you go over and thank you designers for all their hard work today?

    PS – The marketer did not get paid off by the designers for writing this article. It’s genuine designer-love. Really!

  • This is why outsourcing tech support is a bad idea

    amorfuss: “i’m having problems with your software in OSX”
    Indian tech support: “ok, first please to being click on the start menu”
    a: “i don’t have a start menu, i’m running osx”
    ITS: “please sir to being click on start menu”
    a: “i don’t have a st…”
    ITS: “sir if you don’t to being click on the start menu, i can’t help you”

  • I love and I loathe

    This used to be on the About Me page, but I’ve decided to move it and make room for other stuff on there. Just like I can’t bring myself to throw out anything that could potentially be useful when doing a Spring cleaning, I can’t bring myself to delete posts altogether, so I’ve moved it here.

    I love…

    • People who just ooze good mood for no apparent reason and seem to brighten the room
    • Strong coffee – just one a day, thanks, otherwise I’m up in the curtains
    • Shiny new gadgets
    • Blogging – I’ve got a big gob, I need to tell everyone about everything. By blogging it, at least it’s up to the reader to get to the end of the story. When you’re listening to me, you’re a bit stuck because I’m unlikely to shut up anytime soon…
    • Clever marketing and ad campaigns – They don’t always take big bucks, they just take some clever thinking.
    • People who challenge my ideas – I used to feel intimidated by them, but now I love a good devil’s advocate to make me look at all aspects of an idea.
    • My amazing family – Being this far from home can be tough, especially when your family is as cool and completely wacky as mine is. They don’t seem to hold it against me that I’ve decided to settle down on the wrong side of the Pond, but I’m sorry anyways.

    I loathe…

    • People who smell funky at 9am – didn’t it cross your mind that you should have a shower before leaving for work?
    • The feeling you get after eating McDonalds or Burger King for the first time in a couple of years, a bit like a brick in your stomach
    • Driving – Ok, maybe not “loathe” anymore, but it still creeps the living hell out of me to be in a moving heap of metal at 100mph. The creepiest part is that people trust ME to be in control of it. I don’t mind the 100mph when some other people I trust are driving!
    • My shitty memory – How am I supposed to remember all those logins and passwords?
    • Ironically, adverts. I get excited about good marketing and advertising campaigns, but I still detest adverts on TV. Especially the ones for loans or claims against your employer. That’s why I watch and listen to the BBC most of the time!
    • People who aren’t careful with their stuff – You know, you lend that brand new DVD to a friend and it comes back with the box tatty and the disc scratched? And they don’t explain or apologise, because to them, it’s “normal wear and tear”, because they’re not particular with their own belongings.

  • Shiny Shiny's new tech columnist

    Shiny ShinyI’ve been itching to tell you about this for a while, but wanted to keep it under wraps until it was really happening. But now, I can officially say it – I’ve started writing for Shiny Shiny: A Girl’s Guide to Gadgets.

    First post about women and gadgets went live this morning, so have a look and tell me what you think! And have a look at all the funky gadget reviews on Shiny, there’s some good stuff in there.

  • The Prompt of Doom: Having too many logins

    “You know the one I mean; when you visit some site that you haven’t been to for a while, long enough that you’ve changed browsers or something expired, and it asks you for your your username and password and you don’t have the vaguest idea, so you guess, and the browser says “Remember this username/password?” I always get a sinking sensation, knowing that my immediate future probably contains email confirmations (which will probably end up in the spambucket) and half-forgotten password (is the answer case-sensitive or not?) hints. I confess to rankly superstitious behavior, telling the browser “No, don’t remember it.” in the hopes that the general orneriness of things will cause me to guess right. I know some Internet Identity gurus, and they say “It’s about so much more than single sign-on”, but dammit, do I ever want single sign-on; and I can’t be the only one.”

    That quote is taken from ongoing, and what can I say? The man’s right.

    How many passwords do you reckon you have in total? After a quick count, I’m up to well over 50 almost-daily-use login/password combinations I need to use on a daily basis. And, in fact, I’ve left most work-related ones out of that number. No matter how many hours of brain training I spend with Dr. Kawashima, I still can’t remember them all.

  • Spamtastic emails

    Just a quick note to let you all know that if you happen to get any spam that seems to come from an email address from my domain, let me assure you it isn’t from me. Some sneaky f*cker has been using my address as return address for some medication-drug-related spam.

    So there’s nothing much I can do other than reassure you all that I haven’t been so desperate for money that I’ve jumped into the dirty dirty world of spam.

  • Blogging turns on the red light

    PayPerPost.comIn a vaguely insane post-holiday attempt to catch up with all the new stuff in the RSS feeds I read regularly[1], I came across this article by Andy Beal, from Web Pro News, announcing the launch of PayPerPost.com.

    The basic premise of Pay Per Post is as follows:

    Advertisers pay to post details about their “opportunity,” specifying, among other things, how they want bloggers to write about, say, a new shoe, if they want photos to be included, and whether they’ll pay only for positive mentions. Bloggers who abide by the rules get paid; heavily trafficked blogs may command premium rates.

    Now, I have no problems with the idea of plugging someone’s product or service on your blog. Even getting paid for it in goods or cold hard cash can be alright. What concerns me about Pay Per Post is that the blogger generally does not need to disclose that they’ve been paid.

    Maybe I just need to lock myself at home and live in a little world in my own head where everyone has morals and no one can be swayed by money. Otherwise, looks like Mr. Beal and I will have to learn to cope with bloggers prostituting themselves even further.

    —
    [1] For your own sanity, I highly recommend following my friend Mat’s advice, “Just mark them all as read when there’s too many”, because attempting to scan through every new item is causing me to go cross-eyed.

  • Do Not Press This Button

    The human mind is a strange thing, says Seth Godin. (well, we all knew that, didn’t we?) Click here and have a look why he says so – it’s like an itch, you just can’t stop!

    Spamroll leaves an interesting comment, “I say it is half the reason we have so many infected computers.” We’re just too damn curious to find out what will happen next, what’s behind that closed door or that red button, even if deep inside we actually know it’s bound to be either dangerous or pointless and a waste of time. And if we’ve already invested seconds or minutes, we feel we deserve a result.

    Can YOU resist?

  • And she's back…

    A week and a half later, I’m back from holidays. I had a fantastic week in good ol’ Menorca, our regular summer destination, adopted for the past few years as the best place to spend a week away from all things and people who cause us stress.

    This time, we brought some company along; my sister Jo and her boyfriend Louis, who had just finished a two weeks trip around Europe, and one of my younger twin sisters, Julie. She’s the little troublemaker who’s been living in Cambridge this summer and working on the river doing punting. 🙂

    We had a great time, pickled our brains with sangria (I’ll have to share Andrew’s wicked recipe) and spent some time on the boat and beaches getting some well-deserved relaxing time. We always put on plenty of sunscreen on, as promised to mom before we left. In fact, the only potential sunburn I’ve incurred happened today on the long drive back from dropping Jo and Louis off at Heathrow, because we were stuck on the M25 for what felt like a millenium! Britain welcomes you home! (I actually could’ve done with a rainy grey and cold day today. I’m a bit tired of the sun, even though some of you may consider this to be blasphemy.)

    Jo & Vero at El Castillo, English Bar in Addaya, Menorca

    I’ll be posting plenty of pictures shortly – I just need to boil it down to the best ones, as between 5 people and 4 digital cameras, we’ve got enough pictures of us and the island to keep you in front of a slideshow for a few days straight. Plus, I don’t know how many photos of my fat arse in a bikini I really want to put on the weeb…

    So I’m back, feeling relaxed and chilled, ready to get back into real life head first. Well, I’ll be ready after I finish my last holiday book tonight. Maybe.