Archive for February, 2009

 

How to write spam that sticks

Feb 25, 2009 in Productivity

Since last week I’ve been receiving upwards of 300 spam comments a day. I somehow made it onto the Internet radar, which is proving to be a mixed blessing. A pet peeve of mine is seeing well known, high profile blogs with spam comments, as if the owner doesn’t care about the quality of their community, only the amount of comments against their posts. For this reason alone I will continue to moderate comments against my blog. Readers who comment regularly will have their comments approved automatically from their third comment onward, unless their comment matches other triggers.

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And this is the great mystery

Feb 22, 2009 in Philosophy

I’m still recovering from the events of this past weekend. I spent all Friday at Northern Voice 2009, met some people and learned a whole lot more about Social Media than I ever thought possible. I took what I learned home with me, and dropped off the face of the planet on Saturday. This weekend I was challenged to decide between men’s meetings on Friday night and Saturday morning, blog camp on Saturday, and taking my family to Science World. When forced to choose between business development, spiritual growth, and family connection, family always wins. Every time.

Tonight, when I checked my email after my “sabbatical”, I was excited to see this video sent to me by my in-laws. I leave it with you as a start to the new week. Enjoy!

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Ink blogging at #northernvoice09

Feb 20, 2009 in Creativity, Productivity, Technology

Hi Everyone: While watching Tris Hussey's Blog Mechanics presentation I just installed Ink Blog & Live Writer

Example Ink Blog

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Internet—forever but not permanent

Feb 18, 2009 in Creativity, Personality, Philosophy, Productivity, Strategy, Technology

When I saw The Other Coast (image) comic strip in the paper this morning, I had to laugh. So much of today’s communications media: phone, text/SMS/MMS, email, TV, online publishing—are only available as long as there is enough storage to keep them. The Way-Back Machine on the Internet Archive helped me recover my Tablet PC Blogs posts in a jam, but if all the hard drives in the universe were full, what would have happened then?

In contrast to my post about what happens on the Internet living forever, I present the alternative view. My friend Wayne Radford, the self-proclaimed “King of Poco”, put this bug in my ear over lunch one rainy afternoon. The short version is that our online publishing efforts, though wide reaching, are only temporal.

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Tony Macchiato from Starbucks FTW!

Feb 04, 2009 in Creativity, Personality, Strategy

The Tony Macchiato ~ AKA the Triple Venti Peppermint Soy Caramel Drizzle Macchiato Style Latte

The Tony Macchiato ~ AKA the Triple Venti Peppermint Soy Caramel Drizzle Macchiato Style Latte

As the new year rolled around I thought I would stop drinking coffee, or rather, espresso—more specifically, my Triple Venti Peppermint Soy Caramel Drizzle Macchiato-style Latte, which I want to officially label as the Tony Macchiato. I first stumbled onto this drink the morning after my wife and I celebrated Christmas 2007 with the staff from a previous employer at a hotel in downtown Vancouver.

Starting from its humble beginnings as merely a Caramel Macchiato with peppermint syrup instead of vanilla, the drink evolved over the last year and a bit into its current incarnation. I have my barista friends, and even Starbucks itself, to thank for that.

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Some things death teaches us about life

Feb 02, 2009 in Personality, Philosophy

Between new years day and Chinese new year my grandmother, and great-grandmother to my children, passed away at the age of 92. We admitted her into the hospital on new years day because she had stopped eating. She died peacefully in her sleep only one day before we would have celebrated Chinese New Year. We’re going to miss her.

At the “Celebration of Life” service we held in her memory, Rev. Terry Shea opened with a poem by Linda Ellis, to remind us that while our date of birth and date of death appear on our gravestones, it is more important to consider how we spend the years in “the dash” between those dates. I first heard “the dash” several years ago when Wayne Myers, an elderly missionary to Mexico, spoke as a guest at Coastal Church in Vancouver. The message within those 36 lines was appropriate for the occasion; I later spoke about my memories of life with Grandma Rose, packaged as “some things death teaches us about life”.

This is a recap of those thoughts, but not exactly as I presented them.

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