Yesterday was my 8th WordCamp, the first one ever held in Atlantic Canada.
Dalhousie University was a great location, and the buildings are very modern but historic looking at the same time. As for Halifax the city, it was meh. I didn’t spend much time elsewhere as the traffic and confusing signs stressed me out.
I got to see some very interesting presentations my favourites in order were: Shelly Peacock’s The “No Badger” Zone, Sarah Rennick’s You Don’t Have To Sacrifice Your First Born To Make A Child Theme, Laura Hawkins’ Tips For Creating Effective Site And Blog Content, Kathryn Presner’s A CSS Adventure, Jean-Francois Arseneault’s Guardians of the Website, and Chris Van Patten’s It Doesn’t Have To Hurt: Bringing Modern Dev Practices to WordPress.
It is really cold today. It has been less than a month now since I booked my next trip.
On my last trip my old reliable large suitcase met it’s last days from the cobble-stone sidewalks of Rome. That’s right I have to move on with life and break in a virgin suitcase on this trip.
My new suitcase is slightly larger and a harder case. I bought it at the Zellers liquidation sale. It’s biggest problem is there is only one outside pocket. I’m undecided still on whether or not to by a new dangly thing. My last one was given to me buy my old friend when I had forgotten my previous on prior to my first WordCamp trip.
On an interesting note to me anyways, I was cleaning off my dresser and under the pile of junk was my dangly thing. I tried guessing what was in it as it felt unusually bulky. I thought it might have been the baggage tag for my last Toronto trip. I was wrong. (Even though some people think I would never really say that.)
The tag in my dangly thing was the luggage tag from YSJ to FCO via YUL. (Saint John to Fiumicino (near Rome) via Montreal).
Personally I find Rome to be one of the worlds worst historic cities. From all the thieves to the difficult sidewalks to the crazy drivers to the very long lines almost every city in Europe is better than Rome. Though perhaps my views would be different if I ever found true love in Rome. We will have to see May 6-8th.
After twelve and a half long hours on a bus I have arrived in Montreal for WordCamp Montreal. This is my 5th WordCamp which I will do a post about sometime later.
I took a walk earlier today and walked through the historic McGill University campus. One sweet sign that the orientation for the new students coming to university this year will have a better orientation than the three I’ve go to is the size of the beer tent. There must have been thousands of bottles of Boreale Beer and lots of kegs too. Anyone who has been to Montreal knows that is good beer.
Like most of you my readers are aware I am a huge WordPress enthusiast. I also like to write about local Saint John affairs too. While I would like to promote a site that is local and very interesting. It is (update as of 2020 this link no longer functions). I came across this website as a suggested person to follow. (@barbbarbbarb)
This site is focused on fashion and is very well written. To tie it back to WordPress this site is running on an older version of WordPress 2.8.3 and is using a modified version of Kuuler I theme made by stratus, a well-known WordPress developer.
Give the site a good read I’m sure you will enjoy it. Also, next weekend is WordCamp Montreal 2010. It is going to be a blast.
I have been trying to post a lot more lately. But one thing that greatly concerns me us the lack of good comments lately.
Practically everything on this site is open to commenting even the photos and the albums. What’s better is that if you see someone in a photo that you recognize you can even tag them, and they get a custom album automatically about them.
I’m working on integrating twitter feeds at the moment with these custom albums. Also I have run into a big hiccup with a problem in WordPress 3 that breaks the paging of an album. It is almost as if they did something that taxonomy pages only work for a post type rather than an attachment.
I have also decided that I will be going to WordCamp Montreal again this year. I was thinking that I could show off how I was able to pull of my photo album in an advanced theming tutorial.
That is one thing that I found dry about technical lectures at past WordCamps where they show off code but not put it together, to demonstrate something new. I think I would call it “Media and your Theme… Where can you take it!”
First off, a detailed post about my trip to Toronto is coming soon. Including the stuff I learned and would like to add about WordCamp Toronto. In addition, I am sorting through the 400 pictures I took over the weekend for a SnapShots album.
I wanted to talk about movies. I have seen several lately although I am way behind this time last year. I have seen a lot of romantic movies and romantic comedies lately. However, it seems that the romantic movie industry seems to be making traditional tragedies lately. They are not happily ever after anymore. Even the Miley Cyrus hit “Last Song” falls into this category, a funeral, seriously. The little weak happy tag ending does not make it better it starts badly in Act One, gets better in act two, then ends badly. That sir is definitely a tragedy in the dramatic sense.
But this a huge trend this year. Valentines Day, When in Rome, Dear John, Chloë, and many others are the same. Is there no hope anymore?
Since I am in Toronto for WordCamp Toronto 2010 this weekend, I thought I would take this time to update my posts more often. I’m still deciding on my plans for what I’m going to do, but I started the day with some news. First, let’s start with some amazing news from my cell phone provider Rogers Wireless. They are announcing something totally new for a phone company, that they actually listen to their customers.
This must be only the second time that they did something like this. Remember back in July 2008 a revolutionary (changes the way people think of phones) device came to Canada and Rogers after public protest created the $30 6GB data plan. While today’s news is better according to the Rogers Blog all (non-roaming, non-shared, 1GB or greater or non-bundled with voice) smartphone data plans will include tethering in their usage as a permanent feature and not a promotion until May.
The second thing I wanted to talk about was not so much about that when the budget was released yesterday that the new TransitCity project to increase the LRT routes, and station renovations. But that it was hidden in the budget and not even mentioned. Come on people, with Toronto being the centre of the Canadian media universe, did they not know that it escalates the fact that you’re a sleazeball for not helping progress Toronto like a modern city, but that you a bigger sleazeball for not having the backbone to stand up in Ontario parliament and tell the people why. Also, Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty is the biggest sleazeball for taking publicity in all the public funding announcements that you are going to do this TransitCity project.
In the end, McGuinty is not as bad as New Brunswick Premier Shawn Graham that mismanaged the proposed sale of NB Power. The original deal was one that was of a huge mutual benefit to both New Brunswick and Quebec, then made changes to make the deal one that took away the benefits from both parties. Now the only thing left is the benefit of popularity gains to the Progressive Conservatives for going against a bad revised deal. However, they should not be forgiven for their opposition to the original deal.
I started writing this on December 29th but researching the links has taken some time, in fact much longer than I thought to find all the links. I have defiantly accomplished a lot this year, looking back this has been the best year in a while. Of the things that stand out as my holy crap moment of the year was standing at the window in the Vancouver airport with the setting sun breaking a bit through the clouds. That was the moment it rang true to me that mountains were more than just really big hills.
One of the biggest events that kicked off the year was the 2009 Atlantic Major Midget Regionals at the LBR. This one event not only was my first time writing for sports, but I also learned what makes up a shot on goal in a hockey game was. In addition, actually pulling off the live feed was amazing. That and meeting Don Mabee for the first time.
The next moment of this year, happened when I attended to Faces of Fusion dinner in May. That is where I ran into Ian Finley from East Coast Connected. It was from that meeting that I ran into him again on my annual birthday trip to Toronto, that I learned about the monthly East Coast Army nights at Gracie’s.
During that trip, I had the privilege of attending my very first WordCamp in Toronto. It was amazing to see all the interest of all the web community in a town so driven by media. It was there that I met some very interesting people who I hope to never forget such as Jeremy Clarke, Brendan Sera-Shriar, Accordion Guy, Alexa Clark, Erin Blaskie and George O’Neill. But even better from there it leads me on the path to attending WordCamp Montreal where it was there in that little town (humour people!) of Montreal. The place was amazing when during the very early dawn morning that I got to walk through the Montreal Jazz festival that made me realize I was so wrong about Montreal and its many misconceptions. Then meeting folks like Kim Valee, Matt Mullenweg, Jane Wells, Eva Blue and many others.
And then there was Victoria, where at WordCamp Victoria I ran into many more amazing people. I kind of really like BC, despite only seeing it for 2 days. Perhaps I can find a way to go back sometime this or next year.
The first session I am attending is Jodie Gastel talking about installing WordPress. She is cheating a little bit using cPanel Fantastico. Which is good for beginners, although the regular way is not too much harder.
Next
, I went to see Jeff Richards presentation on widgets. It was very interesting to see the basics of widgets and how they can be used to link people’s sites together. It somehow left off many of the cool and fun stuff that widgets can be used for.
Tris Hussey’s presentation on extra tools for WordPress users was absolutely amazing. I haven’t had a chance yet to download all these tools yet but I sure plan on trying them.
The last presentation I attended was Jeff Richards about widgets. He has posted his presentation on his personal blog at Widgets:Making Your Site Great and Letting Others Help. It was very informative on how
widgets can be used to enhance a site or a marketing tool for others to put a link back to your site.
The best part of this WordCamp was the discussions in the breakout room about everything from Copyright, Creative Commons, WordPress MU, legal issues with hosting internationally, and many other topics.
In addition
, the after party at The Office Lounge was very enlightening on every topic imaginable from a Victoria point of view.
At long last I have finally arrived in Victoria. Five hours on a plane is really long much longer that I had really imagined. During the longest lag of the journey I got to see “My Sister’s Keeper” for the first time. I found it to be really an enjoyable movie, in the respect that you did not know who to feel sad for. Then it throws a huge twist that make the plot even more intriguing.
Upon first impression of Victoria is that it has an appearance of a fairy tile that has come to life especially now that its the holidays and the lights of colour in and on everything.
Getting here to Montreal, I had decided to get the bus. (Orleans Express/Acadian Lines) Thus it presents this opportunity to write this long detailed encounter as I have the remainder of the 13 hour bus trip to finish.
After arriving here in Montreal I took a nice stroll down Ste-Catherine to the train station. It was on this trip through the eerily quite streets of the jazz festival site that I ran across the first image. Although to is common to think of those in the financial services industry as “wanks” someone thought it would be a great idea to draw one on the two sided of the corner of the building.
After the fist day of sessions at word camp there was this crazy man that started yelling at me in french, I think he though I took a picture or something. The funny part that is so not like me is the fact that I started yelling back at him in English and he did not seem to understand me at all. That make id kind of funny then he ran off and I went off to catch the subway to the hotel.
The subway in Montreal seemed to be quite different than Toronto. Especially the automated stalls after paying the guy handed me a little card, and I did not get originally how the doors opened, then he started yelling the what I think are the instruction in French. After looking further at the stalls I give the yelling guy the “I have no clue what you are saying look. Then he explains the put the card in the slot in English. I then proceeded to the hotel.
On the way in one of the Subway stations there was a sign in French only that part of the platform was closed for constriction bit it was graffitied with “Montreal is supposed to be Bilingual” to which some one wrote; “We wish!”
Me at the after party. Eva Blue Photo.
I thought it was amusing. One can tell mush about a society by the appearance of the graffiti. Especially, considering the prior instance of “art.”
One great thing about my iPhone is the fact that it really saved me from the being lost. Well kind of. The Google walking and transit directions are really good for Montreal. It was still a difficult city to find things in. I missed the first subway stop without realizing, thankfully my GPS on the iPhone found me the next one just in time.
The last tale before I finish is the tale of the pigeon. After the final sessions of WordCamp, we went to an outdoor patio bar that had some of the most amazing natural and architectural design of any patio bar. While standing outside talking to some interesting people like Kim Valee this word pigeon was doing a bizarre dance on the windowsill across the street and everyone mentioned the crazy pidgin was about to top itself as the guy pass is the bird flies into the bar right behind them and everyone starts chasing after the bird. Classic comedy movie scene.
I just arrived at Wordcamp Toronto. So far the trip here to Toronto has been very eventful. Starting with Air Canada cancelling my flight from Saint John to Halifax and I will post more later.
