Blogging

May 14 2012

My Summer Bike Series

Well summer was coming and now it seems like we got stuck in a rut of this cool chilly weather. Anyways once that warm weather does come I got a busy summer ahead of me. In between my work at Kellett, help at PropertyGuys.com and a potential YkOnline.ca Fishing Show I have a bike series I am going to be producing on YkOnline.ca.

Thanks to Ernie’s Sports Centre in Grande Prairie for hooking me up with a wicked Specialized Camber Pro 29er for the series.

I explain all about the series on YkOnline.ca here but the bottom line is I want to spend all my time on a bike traveling around.

This was one of two videos, check out the other one here.

Feb 08 2012

A Bloggers Burden

My intentions are good, I promise. And I read all the How-to-blog, blogs on the internet to make sure I do it right. And I know that consistency is not king. Consistency may be queen, or prince or even joker.

With a new job come new responsibility, and my what great responsibility it is. That being said, come the evenings I’m a vegetable. I don’t seems to have the effort to accomplish anything on my list of awesome-things-to-do-in-the-evenings-while-not-doing-anything-else.

'blogging' photo (c) 2010, Sean MacEntee - license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

I also seem to sleep a lot. I fall asleep around 10pm and wake at 6am. That is 8 hours, not sometimes I stay up an hour later, but it still seems like I sleep a lot. People tell me it is all about routine or exercising or drinking more coffee, blah blah blah.

Either way, productivity is at an all time low in the evenings. I need to fix this, because I got lots of stuff I want to finish. Rebuild YkOnline.ca, write posts for YkOnline.ca, write a letter to Fort St. John, write about my adventure in to gardening, take more pictures. Yeah I got a lot to do.

So then you ask, why is it that you seem to be able to write this post, babbling on about not being able to write, when here you are writing about it.

Well that is a good question, you see, it is 6:45am. As I have always been, I am 10x more productive in the morning.

This has been the dialog in my head.

Jun 19 2011

In the Lightest Night One Writes

Mrs. Robinson softly plays in the background as I settle into my couch at 12:21am. The room is lit by one lamp situated behind me, right next to the entrance to my quaint one bedroom apartment. HDR flickr images rotate on my TV as a screensaver for my beloved Apple TV. The night is perfec… I just killed a moth.

Each Friday afternoon at 5:00pm I think to myself “I am going to get so much writing down this weekend. I’m going to write up some reviews of places in Victoria, events in Yellowknife, and more travel stuff. It is going to be great.” The Friday night passes with nothing but TV watching. Saturday morning arrive, adventures ensue, but not ambition to write appears. I lose hope once again that I am not going to accomplish any writing.

Then by fluke at 12:21am Sunday morning, after coming home from a house warming party ambition strikes. I start typing. About what, well nothing. I start writing about what is happening around me at that very moment. For that split second everything is perfect. Everything is simple and straight forward. My mind is clear.

No I didn’t write any of the things I intended to at the beginning of the weekend, but nevertheless, getting words on paper, regardless of what they are is an exercise in itself. As someone who blogs (writes) to get those words on page (paper) this is important to me.

I’ll sleep well tonight knowing I accomplished something, although smart, still something.

Good night world.

May 26 2011

Age Old Debate on Local Reporting

Let me set the room for you. It is 11pm, it is dark with one desk lamp on shining down on my keyboard. All that could be heard is the typing of keys and the soothing sound of The Coffee House in the background.

Alright now that I have done that I will get on with what I originally came here to talk about. The age old debate of Local Reporter vs. Local Blogger. I know it is a big topic for a guy like me who doesn’t know much about either, but I figure I’ll give it a shot and see what comes of it. I am hoping to come from a different angle this time around. That angle being passion.

I definitely think that both parties have passion. I don’t think either would do what they do if they did, but I will explain what I think I see. A Local Report has a passion for the job. They take pride in reporting the news, writing a good article and the general process of getting it out to the people. A Local Blogger has a passion for the place. They take pride in where they are, the people that are there and what is going on. They enjoy meeting residents and old timers, hearing the history of a place and how things got to the way they are.

Now each can be positive and negative and I don’t stand for one over the other. A Reporter may not have as much of a deep connection with a place, this could lead them to not care as much, to only be concern about the new and allow them to pick up and go onto other things. On the other hand a Blogger who has been around for a while, knows the community and its people could be bias. It would also be hard for a Blogger to leave their community, much like I did.

I guess you could say there isn’t really a competition between the two, because a Local Blogger is much more like a Columnist than a Reporter. That is why I think we need both. We need reports to deliver the news as it is, with fact checking and hard quote. While the blogger will take the story further and learn about it and the people involved.

What do you think? Am I just rambling or am I making sense?

May 25 2011

Cool New Canadian Site For Bloggers

Oh yes my blogging friends, this site is for you. Ever want a site where you can go and search for other Canadian blogs, well now you can. TheCanadianBlogDirectory.com launched today at the Mesh Conference in Toronto.

Blogs are broken up into categories and subcategories, with the addition of tags. It is a nice looking site and the functionality seems good. It is built on WordPress (this bloggers favourite) and con incorporate blog with their feeds.

The process for submitting your blog maybe a little slow right now as I think they are doing them by hand and with the launch I’m sure they are backed up.

Nonetheless, go submit your blog or recommend one. Be heard.