A Life Untold & Uninteresting

Some Announcments

This post has been a long time coming, but I have been putting it of for a while now.

As I have eluded in the past, both on here and Twitter, about the “exciting things” taking place in London.

I am thrilled  to annouce, finally and  publicly here, that I have become involved with the London Ontario Live Arts festival – better known as LOLA. I’m very excited because I have participated as a concert goer in the LOLA festival in previous years and had a great time. Despite the stereotype that London does not have an arts community, LOLA has flourished, and shown both this city and the whole country a different part of Southwestern Ontario.

There is going to be lots of oppurtunity to explore different parts of social media and online promotion as a result of this. I’m interested to see how things develop, before, during, and after the concert. There are ongoing concert series during the year and I will be promoting those as well.

The next bit of news that I would like to share is my involvement with Penguin Canada. As part of their promotions, the book publisher has started to branch out online. I have been selected to help promote various books and authors as part of my blog and online presence.This is a great oppurtunity for me, and my readers. I am an avid reader and I love sharing my opinion.

In all of this though I promise to continue to have a transparent website. I’ll make it clear when I am promoting / working on behalf of someone else. I’m going to share my opnion honestly. If I like something I’ll recommend it. If not then I won’t lie. I think these relationships are going to benefit everyone in the end.

Popularity: 31% [?]

The More Things Change The More They Stay The Same

Over the next few days I’m going to make a few changes to the site.

I’d like to update the layout a bit – maybe get a bit more of a blog roll going.  It won’t be a list though. I think a page of different categories would be a lot nicer. Maybe I’ll take some time and “highlight” local social medians in the city of London too.

I’ve already updated the title to the blog – A Life Untold – Social Media, Twitter, Blogging and Life.  I don’t want to become exclusively about social media so that is why I appended “life”.

I’m going to keep things balanced. Especially over the next few months as I make improvements to the new house (already stripped down a room’s wallpaper – pictures soon) and I prepare to get married in June.

Popularity: 31% [?]

The Main Stream Media in London Ontario

Now that we are fully involved in the internet age, and the recession seems to becoming an excuse for all sorts of job cuts are reorganization, many people are claiming that mainstream media (MSM) is dead; they can no longer compete with blogs and twitter and their organizational structure doesn’t allow them to get to the breaking news as fast as “the man on the street”.

I hope, for all our sake, that this isn’t the case. My reasons are not personal, nor are they because I have a favorite MSM news source. Rather, there is something about a news corporation’s ability to gather and report on news that is vital to a healthy democracy. (I’m going to have to leave that thought there for now, it’ll be something I come back to in a later post)

But in order to avoid falling into this recessionary mindset; that the only solution is to give up, or to think that the internet is out to get them, the MSM needs to embrace the web, and combine its features with their resources.

And that is why I am so happy to see what is going on here in the city of London. The local paper; the London Free Press, is heavily involved in Twitter. Not just as a newswire, but personal accounts from their editors and journalists. The LFP has gotten into live streaming events around the City and many of their personallities blog. A real blog with comments and an RSS feed.

Some of the radio stations in the city have also jumped on the Twitter bandwagon. And they too are actively involved in building a community with their listeners online.

But London’s MSM is not there yet. They still have a few vestigial behaviors. Here is my list of what still needs to be done (Its not particular to the LFP either).

1. We work together – make it easy for us to provide you with our opinion and the news see happening everyday around us. And then make it easier for us to consume your product. Which means:
2. Redesign your web interface so that it actually contains more  content then ads. That might involve
3. Getting out from under your parent corporation

Now I don’t think that the last one is really a possibility. But in order for MSM and news in London to become fully social again (I would argue that at one point in history news was an incredible social activity) we need to become completely local – with no outside influence explaining how things should be run.

Popularity: 29% [?]

And Then It All Ended

To finish up my Musical Grab Bag post from yesterday.

The record player bit the dust. As in it no longer spins right round (like a record) when I pick up the arm.

This happened before. Mostly because I accidentally left it spinning for a day or two. I could get it to play by kinda coaxing it along and starting the spinning by hand. But now that won’t even work.

So if anyone wants to see more random musical journies, please send me money for a new one. Thanks.

Popularity: 9% [?]

Musical Grab Bag

Despite yesterday’s post full of musical errors and grammatical mistakes, I’m going to attempt another post today on music.

I’m spending the day at my desk, finishing up a couple of presentations, papers and assignments. I enjoy having some background music, both to engage with and to cover up any other noises.

I’ve also got a small record, vinyl record , collection that I don’t listen to nearly enough. So for today I created a bit of a game. I select out a record at random for the milk crates and then play the whole thing, sides A & B. This is going to be interesting because I have some very unusual records. Albums I would have never paid more the $0.25 for but found at Goodwilll for cheap.

First pick was Herman’s Hermits – 15 Greatest Hits. Including such gems as “Mrs. Brown You’ve Got A Lovely Daughter” and I’m Into Something Good”

Next up; Queen – Greatest Hits. Everyone knows what would be on this record right?  “Bohemian Rapsody”, “We Will Rock You” and “Under Pressure” to name a few.

Number three: Michael Jackson – Thriller. This is one album that I would have paid more money for. Fortunately I found a decent copy of it used for under 50 cents. I am by no means a Jackson fan, how could anyone be after the last 10 years he’s had? I think that everyone can appreciate this album though.

 My brother popped in and made his selection; Styx – Cornerstone. Not suprisingly I have never listened to this album. In fact the only Styx song I even know is “Come Sail Away”. However I’ve just finished listening to the first track and its not bad. Not great, but I don’t feel like ripping my ears off.

I’ll keep updating throughout the day!

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Another Sunny Day

Today’s title comes from Belle And Sebastian, a power-pop group from edit: Glasgow, Scotland off of their 2006 stellar album, “The Life Pursuit” It fits today’s weather beautifully. Its a perfect spring day in London today, a bit chilly still, but bound to warm up by this afternoon.

My 10:30 class was cancelled today, so I’m spending the hour on some errands around campus. First I grabbed a Tim Hortons coffee. Honestly, their coffee is horrible. Underly bland with no strong coffee flavour. I drink a regular, its not diluted with too much cream or sugar. So why do I drink it, when their are Starbucks all over campus also?It reminds me of my time framing houses this summer. Coffee breaks were always Timmies, so sipping back at cup takes me right back to sitting on the subfloor of a home, in the summer sun, and just shooting the shit.(Its also roll-up-the-rim and despite astronomical odds, I still dream of winning big) 

Since its so nice out today, I’ve begun playing albums that I usually reserve for summer listening. Two albums that express summer to me are Coldplay’s XY and The White Stripes ”Get Behind Me Satan” Both albums came out in the summer of 2005 and got a lot of play on my iPod that year. There really is nothing is the albums to suggest a summer theme, but anytime I hear them I feel summery.

So what about you guys? Do you have music that reminds you of a specific season, or time in your life? How about a food or drink that evokes strong memories?

Popularity: 4% [?]

An Oddly Shaped Map

I was checking out my statistics using Google Analytics and I came across this map of the United States. Apart from my abysmal readership south of the border, what else do you think is wrong with it?

For some odd reason the Great Lakes region states (Michigan. Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio) are completely out of perspective. I’m not sure if this is so the map of Canada and the map of the United States will fit together without a gap for the Great Lakes. Or if the engineers working on Google Maps don’t talk to the engineers working on Google Analytics. Either way, it kinda threw me off when I first saw it.

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This the age of search engine optimization. People in hosting business should actually start web design services as well as SEO services. Even advertising agencies are thinking of taking up additional services. Everyone now should have his own web hosting guide in this regard.

Popularity: 4% [?]

Easter Weekend

Its the Monday after a long weekend and I think its time for a more personal post, discussing how my weekend went.

It was nice to take a break from blogging, feeds and twitter over the weekend. I think that almost everyone needs to just unplug every once and a while. Connecting with friends and family outside of the interweb is refreshing and helps maintain a balance.

Friday morning was brich at my Aunt’s. It was a much more low-key affair compared to Boxing Day. Good food though, there is always a lot fo brie cheese, which is fine by me!

Friday night, my girlfriend and I were at her sister’s fiance apartment for dinner. There was a bit of panic once we remembered that all the grocery stores were closed. Thankfully we were able to scrounge up enough ingredients. We played a game of settlers and watched a movie. I’d reommend that anyone who hasn’t seen it yet go rent Renditio

Saturday was spent studying during the day. In the evening we had an amazing fondue dinner with a group of friends. Its always fun to spent time preparing and then eating food.

Sunday was Easter lunch at my girlfriends with her extended family. The traditional and always good turkey and ham.

So now its Monday and I’m just starting to catch up on the internet world. I enjoyed taking a break but I’m looking forward to find out whats been going on.

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Wednesday’s Lunch

So it’s turned into a bit of a trend that I post a camera phone picture of what I had for lunch. Today was a bit unusual since I had to run to the bank unplanned. I lost my bank card and wanted to get another one. Everything worked out fine and I now have a shinny new card. So lunch was eaten in the car on the way there.

Asian cabbage salad from last nights dinner. I also had a peanut butter and honey sandwich and a banana. I was too focussed on driving to take a picture of those though.

As an aside, the Masonville Public Library also has wireless internet. I wonder if this is a plan to roll it out in all the branches?

Popularity: 3% [?]

Tuesday’s Lunch

Continuing my trend from yesterday, here is my lunch today. I just looked at the clock and I see that its quite a bit past noon. Ah well, I usually eat when I’m hungry. I’m not a slave to time.

Tortellini with a basic white sauce. Simply and enjoyable.

Popularity: 2% [?]