I confess near-complete apathy towards local politics. I voted in Vancouver once or twice, but it was from a position of near naivete. My interest in politics declines as it becomes more local. People try to convince me that local politics is where my vote counts most. That may be true, but I care a lot more about, say, saving the Great Bear Rainforest (more on this next week) or our troops in Afghanistan than a sewage treatment plant for Victoria.
Both issues matter, but one matters a lot less in my worldview.
In any case, tomorrow I’m getting out to vote in my local election. That’s because our personal trainer, Nick Baker, is running for city council. He’s a thoughtful guy, and makes sense on the issues that seem to matter to Victorians:
I applaud the efforts made by the city to handle the homelessness problem, but it feels like too little, too late. The emphasis on homelessness, while definitely an important issue, neglects or even directs blame to the wrong people for the mess our downtown has become. Drug use and addictions need more aggressive tactics to rid our streets of the drugs and crime. by focusing on providing safe detox centers with ongoing rehabilitation, we can save lives and money.
Debating strategies for combating drug addiction has also made working out slightly less miserable.
I spent some time trying to identify the major differences between Peter Ladner and Gregor Robertson, the two leading candidates in the Vancouver mayoral race. I’ve met Mr. Ladner, and he seemed like a savvy, straight-up guy (and apparently a former editor of Monday Magazine). He gave me a straight, non-politcal answer to a question I asked about (of all things) landfills. A bunch of my peers advocate strongly for Mr. Robertson.
Looking at their platforms, I’m having a hard time picking between them. I don’t have a vote in Vancouver, so happily it’s academic.
Who are you voting for, wherever you live (assuming, you know, that you live in BC)?
Insert phallic joke here. I was at Blenz last night, and spotted these measures of cup size:
Didn’t Blenz used to eschew crazy Starbucks-esque sizing? What’s with ’supremo’?
Incidentally, this post shows off the new site design’s ‘light box’ functionality. If you click the above photo, you should see a kind of pop-up thingie that shows you a bigger version (speaking of the tyranny of size). I hope it’ll be handy for instances when I want to share a big image. The cup lids aren’t example a great example, but you get the idea.
UPDATE: At least, that’s what it should do. The light box thingie doesn’t seem to be working at the moment–I’ll trouble shoot as time permits.
UPDATE #2: Yeah, that works for me now, too. Don’t know what’s up with that.
We’ve finally gotten around to launching the newest version of this website. It’s about nine years old, and I think this is version 4.0. There are still plenty of bugs to squash (and the Jobs section is going to be ‘coming soon’ for a while), but all the basics are in. I also need to think about what the best stuff to include in the sidebars of the site is. I welcome any suggestions on that front.
I didn’t have a lot of grand plans for the redesign. Mostly I just was tired of the old design, and thought it was high time for a new one. Plus, I wanted to broaden the main column space a bit, make the site widget-ready, implement threaded comments, get all the static pages into WordPress and tweak sundry other bits and pieces.
One Mashed-Up Header
I am particularly pleased about the way the header graphic came together. Regular readers may recall that, back in March, I ran a competition on Pixish (now defunct, sadly) to get a new header graphic designed. It looked like this:
That was designed by a guy named Sam, who lived in Brighton. It combined a photo that Roland took of a film lot directional sign (that really said ‘DB’–no Photoshopping required) with a photo of me that Phillip took at BarCamp.
I handed the header graphic to Tzaddi, who tweaked it and built out the rest of the site’s aesthetic. In early previews of the site, people weren’t keen on that photo, so we replaced it with one that Scott Beale took at Gnomedex.
The header is the happy result of an ad hoc collaboration between five people and powered by Creative Commons. Plus sixty4media did the installation and upgrading of WordPress, so I suppose that’s seven people.
Feedback Welcome
I welcome any and all feedback. I’m pretty happy with the aesthetics at this stage, but I’m open to suggestions. If you spot anything that’s funky aside from the obvious, feel free to leave a comment. And do let me know if you have an opinion on what belongs in a site’s sidebars.
I’m certainly no expert in real estate marketing. However, if I’m identifying the six bullet points I want to put on my new building’s sign, should ‘fully sprinklered’ really make the list?
Let’s ignore, for the moment, that ’sprinkler’ is not a verb. Does this really matter to their buyers? I’d imagine that their target demographic would be empty-nesters and young professionals, most of whom have lived their entire lives in ‘unsprinklered’ accommodation. Is the omnipresence of sprinklers going to convert them to buyers?
As bloggers know, old blog posts can continue to receive comments for the entire life of the blog. I don’t mind, because I often learn stuff from these late commenters, and I occasionally hear some fascinating (and creepy) stories. And sometimes you get hilarious comments like this one, complaining about ICBC:
DEAR READERS MY NMINIVAN GOT STOLEN ,IT WAS 1994 PLYMOUTH VOYJOR VERY NICELY KEPT LIKE COLLECTER CAR , BUT ICBC GAVE ME A VERY SOUR DEAL ,REASON RACIAL PREJUDICE . I HAVE BEEN PAYING FOR MY INSURACE SINCE BILL BENET BROUGHT ICBC , I DID COMPLAIN TO OMMBADS MAN OFFICE BUT NO AVAIL , IF SOME ONE CAN HELP ME PLEASE !TOTTLE LOSE DEPT WOMAN HAD SO Awe attitude . i know in icbc all workers are cousins , as this is just society ! may be too much !
I’m not sure what “Tottle lose dept woman had so” means, but it’s not good news.
John recently wrote a post and made a video demonstrating a specialized power strip that can eliminate standby or ‘vampire power’. This refers to electricity consumed by appliances and electronics which are apparently off, but are actually in an energy-leeching sleep mode.
John is Irish, so bonus points for the (Waterford? Wexford? I can never remember) accent.
In 2006, John’s neighbours in the UK banned standby power, which allegedly accounts for 8% of all domestic usage. I went looking for similar news from Canada, but all I could dig up was this FAQ about toothless ’standards’.
Here’s a chart that shows the worst culprits–plasma TVs, computers and game consoles.
How odd. Look what Google Reader suggested I check out.
I’m sure it’s an excellent blog, but it seems like an strange fit, doesn’t it? I guess I subscribe to a couple of mommy bloggers–maybe that’s the source?
Due to my own busyness and ambivalence, this site’s redesign is moving at a glacial pace. However, it is happening.
In the spirit of revamping things around here, I’m considering dispensing with my links page. Despite what the page claims, it is no longer an accurate representation of what I read. I used to use Bloglines, and I shared my public feeds on that page. That’s no longer straightforward, because I use a variety of aggregating and filtering services (most notably, AideRSS) to mash and morph the feeds to which I subscribe. Plus, I switched to Google Reader a while back.
As a result, my blogroll is littered with old sites I don’t read, defunct sites and inaccurate links. I’m very bad at maintaining it because it’s a chore, and always at the mucky bottom of a long, long list of tasks.
So, should the old blogroll stay or go? I could discuss the pros and cons of killing it, but Rebecca recently did a good job of considering the issue. Looking at my site stats, it ranks #68 in popularity over the past two years. Do you ever use my links page? What do you do on your site? Should I keep the thing? Here’s a poll:
Adding a Job Board?
I receive an email mentioning a job in the Vancouver technology or marketing industries at least two or three times a month. Depending on my inclination and busyness, I occasionally post these to my site. I thought it might be useful to include a job board page on the site where all of these jobs could live.
Somebody recently pointed me at Job Thread, which displays local jobs specific to the industries I specify in a widget. Somewhat like Google AdSense, you earn money “based on a number of factors including the quantity and quality of traffic your Widget generates”. I ought to reject them for the needless capitalization of ‘widget’, but never mind that. That’s not quite the right thing, because I don’t see a seamless way for people to submit jobs that would ensure they appeared on my site. Plus, I want something more robust than just a widget.
Ideally, I’d like a system where anybody can submit a job listing, which would be held in moderation until I approved it. Then it would be posted to a page, and eventually retired to an archive after a couple of months. I imagine one could hack something together with WordPress, but does anybody know of any ready-made solutions? Plus, you know, if there’s a money-generating angle, I wouldn’t complain. I’d do it out of the goodness of my heart, but I’m not going to turn down a little passive revenue. Any advice?
