I recently did some housekeeping on the site and removed a section of my About page, dissecting it into several other pages. One that I would like to bring your attention to is Causes.
I know folks around here love to give and help out whenever they can, that’s what makes this area so great. However only once a year at Christmas do we see a huge spike in support. I’d like to do another Food Bank RoundUp to highlight some events and ways you can continue to give this summer.
Surrey Food Bank: Car Wash Fundraising Event at Eaglequest Golf Course on Saturday May 31, starting at 9:00am. There will be hot dogs and refreshments while you get your car washed by donation to the Food Bank, or you can bring by non-perishable food items.
Greater Vancouver Food Bank: Through the GVFB I found out about National Hunger Awareness Day, which will be June 5th 2008. This event is to encourage Canadians to give, speak, and spread the word about hunger in their towns and across the country.
On May 31st it is Healthy Kids Day at Langara Family YMCA (282 West 49th Avenue), admission is free but all those who attend are encouraged to being a donation for the GVFB. There will be a BBQ, bike rodeo and even pony rides. Yes, pony rides.
There is also the North Burnaby Food Bank, located at 250 Willingdon Ave and the New Westminster Food Bank Society at 1111 Sixth Avenue (also a part of the GVFB).
Tri Cities Food Bank (Share Society): Because not every region in South Western BC falls under the GVFB, please remember that you can donate locally, to help out those in your own neighbourhood. Here are Food Bank locations in the Tri-Cities area:
2615 Clarke St. Port Moody (rear of building)
2211 Prairie Ave. – Port Coquitlam, Trinity United .St. Catherine’s Anglican Church
535 Marmont St., Coquitlam, Como Lake United Church
For some quick numbers from the Surrey Food Bank: More than 1.2 million hours of labour, including 800,000 plus volunteer hours, contribute to the operation of food banks every month… More than 40% of food recipients are children… Many food banks give more than just food – people in need often require advocacy services regarding landlord-tenant issues, income assistance applications, training programs, etc.
If you have a community event coming up consider partnering with the Food Bank in your area ie. bring a non-perishable food item and get a free balloon animal.. or something because I sincerely feel that anytime is the right time to give.
Being the liveblogger for my friend Dave‘s “Fuck Stats, Make Art” session that I attended at Northern Voice, I know full well that none of my content revolves (or should revolve) around statistics. However, for many reasons stats tracking is important to me, here are a few:
I do have ads on my site for local businesses, and I am ‘for hire’ for live blogging and event coverage. When all of these potential advertisers or gigs would like to know what their exposure will be on Miss604.com, I rely on my stats for this information.
Unfortunately we live in a world where cyberbullying is becoming more prevalent each day and individuals hide behind their computer screens to spew nasty, unproductive and defamatory comments and emails at others. In this case I use stats to locate IP addresses and take note of these flamers, if even for my own security.
With that being said, here is every stats program I have ever installed on Miss604.com, and what I use what I use.
SiteMeter – FREE – I like the instant updates, you can see who is currently on your site and with one click of a button their IP is revealed, along with their visitor path and other information that filters right down to which operating system or browser the reader is using. Drawbacks are that the numbers are not always on target, in fact they’re about 50% lower than results from other tools, and SiteMeter’s uptime is not always consistent. They’ve had about 3 outages in six months, which can actually affect my monthly totals when I’m using them for professional purposes.
StatCounter – FREE – I use this most of the ‘keyword analysis’, I can have a little fun finding out what search terms people entered into Google to reach my site. Like SiteMeter it’s instant however its numbers also vary greatly compared to any other tool.
Mint – $30 One Time Fee – Brand spankin’ new to me. I have signed up today but it’s not yet installed, check out Duane’s report for more information and to see what’s in store for me.
Google Analytics – FREE – A very meaty report that I rarely even look at. The stats are not tracked instantly however they are posted once a day and you can setup monthly reports, set up goals, track numerous pages and align it with your AdSense should you be setup there as well.
WordPress.com Stats – The graph is a nice little addition to the WordPress Dashboard when logging in but I don’t really take its numbers seriously. Also it posts figures once a day and the cutoff for the “day” is in GMT so that’s late afternoon for us in on the Pacific Coast.
Again, using stats in a professional capacity is my only concern, this is far from a popularity contest and I never like sharing my “magic number” with anyone, nor will I ever state when numbers have raised or dropped. My blog is my content and this is my choice; to promote local business, use my skills to promote events, and to spread the link love. If folks require information about me or my site, I’m happy to share, I would just like to make sure what I’m providing is the most accurate.
It’s been almost a year since I wrote How to Live Blog, and in that time I’ve completed over 15 live blogs at a dozen events (brining my live blog total close to 30). Everyday tools are being devised to help make this process a little smoother, fancier, and attract more viewers however I still haven’t found my ultimate liveblogging tool.
Cover It Live – I tried out CIL for DemoCamp5 and while it was fast and the viewers enjoyed their experience, I still wasn’t compelled to use it again for a tech event. On the other hand I think it would be great to use for another concert setting.
Thumbs Up: You can have live polls, message your readers and readers and comment. You can also “replay” the live blog by embedding its code onto your site in a player and it’s a pretty smooth process to add photos and multimedia.
Thumbs Down: No SEO. The products, people and sites you link in your live blog are not being attributed back to your site. If that sounds backwards, you need to remember I’m a huge supporter of linking out in order to get the link love or simply the visitors back to your site.
Scribble Live – This new kid on the block requires one of the following to get started: A Facebook login (then it will install an app on your profile), Windows Live or MSN login, or OpenID. Once you get past that, the interface is pretty simple – just start typing (I have a test up right now). Your updates show up in seperate boxes below each other and you’re giving a share code to send to viewers or publish.
Thumbs Up: It’s simple to use, and it’s plain text so you can scrape and paste the content into your blog later. You can also email updates. No refreshing, it loads i real time.
It seems similar to posting on your Twitter page and having people follow there, although there isn’t the character limit and you can add photos.
Thumbs Down: It’s not publishing directly to your website, thus your site is not getting any traffic or comments from the entire production. You can add a YouTube video and possibly a link but that’s about it.
When it comes down to it, I simply prefer using my WordPress and my own system I’ve worked out over the years. Although I wonder if a WordPress Plugin exists to help you automatically timestamp mini liveblog updates within a post? Hmm.
Here are some of my key liveblogging tips:
You don’t have to capture everything, it’s not a live transcription so don’t kill yourself trying to keep up.
It’s good to keep an eye on comments and also engage in a conversation with those not present at the event. For this I suggest turning off comment moderation until you’re done so they can roll in freely.
Get names and links, don’t be afraid to ask the speaker to repeat or mention their website name at the end of their presentation. Link, link, link.
On that note, thanks to Phillip for passing along this article from the Globe and Mail, and to Tod for informing me about Scribble Live last week (and according to my Gmail archives he’s also the one who told me about Cover it Live).
The only pets I’ve ever owned are a hamster and my Kitty (who is pushing 17 years old and going strong) so I’ve never really known either side of the story, but growing up I knew which house to avoid walking past on my way home from school. You know, the one with the growling, salivating dog behind the weak fence post which could have even been a Pomeranian but you didn’t care because it’s bark was enough to make you quicken your pace? Yeah, that one.
I am well aware this is not a Pibtull, the image simply amused me
Photo credit:
Travis Smith on Flickr
Recently Surrey’s been in the news because of a recent rash of dog attacks on humans. Some are now calling for a ban on dangerous breeds.
Surrey Mayor Dianne Watts says a ban on the breed is not up for discussion. Watts says the city has some of the toughest rules in the province governing vicious dogs. She says there’s absolutely no way they’re ‘soft on safety’ despite what some critics might say.
A few years back the city did consider a breed ban but instead Watts believes the responsibility should be on the owner. [News1130]
The Province of Ontario banned pitbulls a few years ago, and Saskatchewan did a few years before that, but it seems dozens of breeds could be deemed vicious. In most cases bylaws and provincial legislation requires an animal or person be killed or seriously injured before a dog is deemed dangerous.
An argument is that responsibility lies with the owner and malicious dogs are not bred, but raised, which leaves this open for another Miss604 poll.
[poll=7]
While reading VancouverHistory.ca I always check out the sidebar where there’s a teaser for the book, the Street Names of Vancouver by Elizabeth Walker. It asks, “Who was Davie? Why do we have a Broadway? What street was named for a Spanish Secretary of State?” and until the other day my previous knowledge of the origins of some Vancouver street names had floated like a McBarge out of my memory.
Walking down to Waterfront Station the other day John and I paused in the hallway to get some change out for a Jugo Juice and when I looked up at the side of the wall. It was someplace I had never thought to look before but there was a plaque dedicated to Henry John Cambie.
Cambie, a surveyor born in Ireland, was charged with the task for bringing the CPR (Canadian Pacific Railway) to its terminus on the coast, which he decided would be Vancouver. Plotting the route for the CPR through the Fraser Canyon and out to Burrard Inlet was no easy task. In fact his survey mission began at Yellowhead Pass, through the Rockies and across the Continental Divide.
I have a great photo of me sitting on a monument marking the Continental Divide, one side of me in Alberta the other in BC. However this was from my rebellious teenage years and I simply cannot justify the outfit I was wearing at the time (that and we were on a two week long camping trip) but I digress.
But that’s not the only route Cambie surveyed, “In 1879 surveyed the north for a third route from Prairies to coast. From 1880-83 supervised laying of tracks from Emory Bar to Boston Bar via Fraser Canyon; next supervised Savona to Shuswap Lake. In 1903, moved to Vancouver; retired in 1921.”
In honor of Henry John Cambie, Cambie Street in Vancouver, Cambie Road and H.J. Cambie School in Richmond are all named after him.
The history around here is rather new compared to other parts of the country but it wasn’t until the last century that it started to build up and boom. Talented people like Cambie helped secure the routes that would get people and supplies from our Pacific ports up, over and through the Rockies, truly building BC.
