Of hot weather, outdoor weddings and inappropriately placed mosquito bites (now with survival tips!)
I don’t know what it’s like in the rest of the world, but the last two days in Vancouver have been absolutely brutal, temperature-wise. Most locals around here have spent the majority of June whining about the lack of summer and then all of a sudden, SHAZAAM!, 100 degree weather two days in a row.
Well. Let me be the first person to tell you that I hope it rains as soon as possible, because this face-melting heat is HELL. As far as I know, Canadian homes this side of the country aren’t even equipped with air conditioner—which means a whole lot of fans, cold showers, running through sprinklers and sprawling out in dark, cold places are employed as heat-diffusing techniques.
C’MON NOW. If I wanted to live in an oven, I’d move to the south. I’m a 60 degrees sunny day kind of girl. This is why I live in Vancouver. I love the rain, I love the sun, but I hate extreme cold and extreme heat. How about some moderation, weatherman?
According to our local newspaper, summer is the most dangerous time of year. After experiencing two full days of this said “summer”, I’m afraid I will have to agree—and since I feel especially fortunate to have survived the past few days, I feel that it is my duty as an upstanding citizen to share my newfound summer-surviving knowledge with the rest of the world. Behold:
Creative frustration
Have you ever wanted to do something, attempted to do that thing and then found that no matter how hard you tried, you simply couldn’t?
That’s how I feel right now about anything that requires creative energy. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve sat down with a witty idea or two, only to find that those ideas dancing around in my head simply couldn’t find their way out my fingers. Everything feels forced, and definitely not inspired.
For me, the worst thing about creative frustration is (surprise, surprise!) the “frustration” part. Unlike other negative emotions, I have yet to find a way to channel frustration into something positive. When creative frustration hits me, it crashes the whole operating system of my right brain, sort of like what happens when you try working in Photoshop and Illustrator at the same time while you browse Firefox with 50+ tabs open—I can’t write, I can’t draw, I can’t take photos, and I sure in hell can’t design.
How were YOU punished?
Switches? Soap in the mouth? Food deprivation? Cold showers? Spankings? Cayenne pepper?
Call my naivety what you want, but I am appalled to have recently learned that the above punishments are actually considered “acceptable” by a disturbingly large number of parents. How this could be is completely and utterly beyond my farthest stretch of logic, because quite frankly, I don’t believe for even a second that you could starve, beat, or shove soap in your child’s mouth out of “love”. That’s total bullshit. Barbaric. Inhumane. Absolutely, undeniably, without a doubt appalling.
The same parents will often tell you that these children “need” these types of punishments. Somehow, this doesn’t surprise me in the least. You raised them to be this way - of course its your fault that your child is a raving brat. Don’t make matters worse by taking your own failures as a parent out on your child. Didn’t *your* parents ever teach you that violence and anger solve nothing?
Oddly enough, it seems that few to none of my Canadian friends were raised this way, yet many of my American friends were… So I’m curious to know: Were you punished as a child? How? If so, looking back now, do you believe that it “fixed” anything, or did it make matters worse? Would you punish your child in the same way?
Now I understand how some americans can think we still live in igloos.
More reasons why I hate Alberta and never wish to go back:
- Sub zero temperatures during the winter months: i.e., spending the greater part of the last 72 hour weekend in -45 degree temperatures with WINDCHILL. Do you know what that means? It means that no matter what you wear and no matter where you are, you’re still cold.
- Bodily complications related with sub zero temperatures: frozen noses after being outside for 10 seconds, fingers that don’t work after 1 minute, frostbitten toes after 10 minutes, death after 20 minutes. Oh, and dare I forget the breathing problem? The air is so cold that my windpipe refuses to let it pass to my lungs: “Hmm, I see that Chanel is unwittingly attempting to kill herself by disguising liquid nitrogen as oxygen and hoping it passes to her lungs. REJECTED.”
- Did you know that salt doesn’t work as a de-icer after a certain temperature? Did you know that there are large metropolitan cities that live below that temperature cut-off for several weeks or months? ME NEITHER. They can call it whatever they want to to fool unwitting tourists, but I’ll tell you how it is: HELL. These places on earth aren’t “great ski locations” with “beautiful powder” or “incredibly scenic” - It’s a ploy the city comes up with to lure people into their death trap. BE YE NOT FOOLED.
An open letter to the technologically dependant
Older generation, I have a bone to pick with you.
Look, I understand you didn’t grow up with “The Internet”. Or computers. Maybe they make you a little nervous. Maybe they make you feel completely stupid, because your five year old grandson can use your computer ten times better than you can. That’s okay. I too remember the day my second grade teacher announced that our next assignment was to research something on the internet - it was terrifying, believe me, I know.
But let me explain something to you. You see, the world is changing. The internet is a great place, really… You can shop online, talk to people all over the world, learn about anything (and everything)… and oh my god, you can even do all your banking in your UNDERWEAR. Preposterous, you say? I know.
I understand that the older you get, the harder it (typically) becomes for you to change—and that’s okay. If you don’t want to use computers, don’t. If you still want to send all written communication via fax (what’s that?) or mail, that’s fine. If you still want to do your payroll by hand, that’s dandy. If you still want to run down to the bank before 3pm to pay your bills, more power to you.
However.
If you find yourself desiring to do dirty little 21st century things like sending emails, shopping online, reading weblogs and the likes, don’t rely on “the younger generation” to do everything for you.
Asians vs. First Nations - The battle for our city’s olympic image
Place yourself in the shoes of the Vancouver Olympic Committee for a second.
They’ve been getting a lot of negative opinions lately. I mean, first there was the whole debate about actually having the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver, and then there was the (ongoing) concern of how much it would cost, and then there was (and still is) the related mess known to Vancouverites as “that huge hole on Cambie that makes everyone avoid the street altogether and creates millions of dollars in losses for Cambie street business owners”.
But let’s forget about that. Today we’re talking about Vanoc’s newest unveiling: The official mascots (yes, mascots - the best place on earth clearly deserves more than one!) for the 2010 Winter Olympics. (A big thanks to Kaiti for suggesting a topic I couldn’t resist!)
When it came to creating a visual for Vancouver’s culture, I don’t doubt for a moment that the Vancouver Olympic Committee was stuck between a rock and a hard place. Why? Well, the reason is fairly obvious: Vancouver has no singular ethnicity or culture. You can find nearly every ethic background represented in this city, so what do you do?
I think Pete McMartin hit it right on the head in his column yesterday when he said, and I quote: “And, as usual, Vanoc went native, and heavily so, since it believes that the only culture worth promoting to the world is first nations. That, or it’s the most marketable.”
Hi. My name is Chanel, and I abuse hard drives.
Let me tell you a story tragedy.
Once upon a time there was a girl who had a portable external hard drive. It was her back up hard drive, because previous to it, she had been foolish enough to almost loose her data TWICE when her laptop’s hard drives failed (and were replaced) twice on two separate occasions.
One day, this girl was watching an episode of my wife and kids, happily laughing along. Without realizing it, she placed her elbow on the small portable external hard drive, and placed some of her weight on it as she leaned over to get something. The TV show, which was playing from the external drive, froze. Then the drive made a “click” sound. She immediately unplugged the drive and then plugged it back in, only to find that the drive did not start spinning, but instead emitted a series of very scary warning beeps.
She has now fallen into deep depression as this back up drive contained all her travelling photos from Europe, Egypt and Israel as well as numerous other very important data.
I’m calling WeRecoverData.com tomorrow and getting a free quote to evaluate the damage, all whilst praying the quote isn’t above $500. How could I have been so stupid? I hate the feeling of utter helplessness I have over hardware problems. I can usually fix software issues, but when it comes to hardware issues, I’m screwed. I know nothing. I’m just the silly girl who was stupid enough to PUT HER WEIGHT ON A SMALL PLASTIC BOX CONTAINING HER LIFE.
I was discussing this situation with my mother today and she suggested I take a class on hardware repair so that I can fix (or at least know what to do) when it comes to situations like this. I think I just might. I am so angry at both myself and just the world in general (hehe, emo!) for the simple fact that HARD DRIVE PROBLEMS ALWAYS HAPPEN TO ME.
Not only that, but technology hates me. It really does. Why just the other day month, the UV Glass Lens cover on my [very expensive] digital SLR shattered when my someone picked up the case not knowing the cover wasn’t zipped shut - my fault, of course. Needless to say, my camera DROPPED ON THE FLOOR and the protective lens shattered. However, while the lens and the camera itself was fine, the rim of the lens cover was bent in the drop and remained on the lens. Now, I can’t unscrew it because it’s bent and I can’t put the lens cap on my camera properly because the rim is bent. I’ve been meaning to figure out a way to get the rim off but I’ve just been so damn busy lately, barely leaving time to sleep, eat, and breath.
Three hard drives, destroyed? Check. Two A/C adapters overheated? Check. One portable external hard drive possibly destroyed? Check. Case in point? I should not be allowed to own anything expensive. They should lock me away in a cell far, far away from technology because I am the careless asshole who ruins everything.
Pray for my hard drive. Srsly.
A look at faux pas: The personal website scene, part I
Personal tastes differ. We all know this. The internet is no exception - everyone has personal preferences when it comes to web design and the content therein.
My web skillz0rs are by no means amazing. I’m not a professional at what I do, nor have I spent years (and money) in formal web design education and training. But like everyone, there is one thing I am entitled to that requires no formal education or training, and in this entry, I plan to voice it: my opinion.
I have seen a lot of websites that are hideous, both in the markup and in their aesthetic outward appearance. Much like people who can’t properly dress themselves, or like those who leave their house looking like they crawled out of a garbage can, I must ask the question everyone wonders on some level: Can they not see how ugly it looks?
The truth is, everyone starts somewhere. Hopefully they get a good start (i.e. not learning web design in this day and age by starting with iframes and tables) but even if they don’t, there’ll always been some smartass know-it-all who will be there to let them know when they’ve done wrong. Today that smartass know-it-all is me.
Offense #1: Large black serif font on a white background
There is a tasteful way to pull off black and whites together. This is not that way:
See this? This is hideous. Note the border. That is hideous too. Please don’t automatically assume that lots of contrast = good. There is a difference between making your font an appropriate size & color for all to read and going way overboard. Some people have yet to learn this.
(The specifics used for example 1: font: 15px georgia; color: #000; border: 1px solid #000; background: #fff; padding: 10px;)
Since this entry is all about my personal preferences, I’ll start this off with a head’s up: I like depth in a website. Flat designs can be awfully boring if you don’t know what you’re doing. Elements like shadows and color shading can make all the difference in a site. The difference between example 1 and example 1a is good proof of this. While example 1 looks flat and standard, example 1a and 1b provide more flair to the same block of text.
See this? Now this is much better. You can still read the text clearly and I haven’t changed the font size, but I’ve given it a “softer” look. It’s easier on the eyes.
(The specifics used for example 1a: font: 15px georgia; color: #333; border: 1px solid #ddd; background: #eee; padding: 10px;)
Even if you wish to keep your white background, there are still ways to soften and refine the look. In this example I’m still using the same font size and color as the above example, but I’ve made the background white. It is still easy to read, but unlike the original example, it is easy on the eyes.
(The specifics used for example 1b: font: 15px georgia; color: #333; border: 1px solid #ccc; background: #fff; padding: 10px;)
Offense #2: Clashing colors
Coming from the woman who once wore a red spandex shirt and a green terry zip hoodie together in the middle of July, when *I* of all people tell you something clashes, it clashes. Have no doubt. Purely for the sake of proving my point, I will provide you with some visual examples of colors that should never been within the same vicinity of each other:
Do your eyes hurt yet? If you’re even somewhat normal you should be seeing spots and feeling a slight inclination of a killer headache. It should come to as no surprise to any decent webdesigner then that if your design colors cause your viewers to experience pain, they will not return. End of story.
Offense #3: When your significant other hijacks your website
This is more of a huge pet peeve than anything else really, but it still deserves mentioning. I hate it when people go on and on about their boyfriend/girlfriend on their about pages - your about page is about YOU. Obviously your significant other may deserve mentioning in there, but he/she does not need a whole five paragraphs.
I understand you’re proud/happy/whatever and you wish to tell the world about your special relationship. This is fine. Creating a separate page for him or her is even okay by me. However, when you go on an on, making it appear as if you have no life outside your boyfriend, you make me want to empty my stomach contents in the nearest waste bin. Please stop. I realize I am not forced at gun point to read all of this and that it is your webspace and you may do with it what you wish, yadda yadda blah blah, but realize that by publishing it on the internet, you are expecting people to find it and read it. Unless you appropriately warn your readers ahead of time (”WARNING: MUSHYGUSHY SPILL AHEAD! PROCEED WITH CAUTION”), they are probably not going to see it coming.
This is my opinion: It’s tacky. I’m all for love and happiness, but like most things on an about page, I think your feelings for your loved one can be nicely summarized into one unmushy work-safe paragraph. At the very least you can mention him/her in your about page and link his/her name to a separate page where you may unleash your icky gushiness in full force - Just warn us poor unsuspecting readers beforehand.
Offense #4: Having “affiliates” - A word most teenybopper “designers” know not the meaning of, but use anyway.
I don’t like the concept of having affiliates. When I think of the term “affiliates”, I generally think of businesses and corporations - in other words, not your Britney Spears copyright infraction of layout.
This is how I see it: Affiliates on a personal website is tacky way of saying you’re “hits hungry”. It’s just not cool. If you want a popular site, having 57 affiliates is not the way to reach that goal. Read up on search engine optimization and lookup traffic boosting tips. Comment on popular blogs, link the ones you enjoy (you never know - they might return the favor), and join a forum or two and become a valued contributor to it. But whatever you do, don’t affiliate.
Offense #5: Pay Per Post-ing, badly-placed advertisements, and other obnoxious means of getting paid on your site
I truly, madly, deeply hate PPPs. They’re fake, obnoxious, and make me cringe. There is no sincerity in them. They break the flow of a personal blog. They’re horrible, and in my opinion, should have no place in a quality personal blog.
Working in the marketing industry only increases my strong dislike for PPPs. Ask anyone in the industry, and they will tell you that the one of the vital ingredients needed to effectively “sell” a product is passion. When you’re not passionate about what you do or what you sell, people can see it. Pay Per Post entries desperately lack the true passion, sincerity and enthusiasm that is needed to effectively get your message across. Of course, PPP bloggers don’t care about this, because after all, they’re just paid to babble about how great (more often than not) something is.
Other means of advertisement are almost as bad, but not quite. Google ads, when strategically placed on the sidebar and made to match the colors found on the site, are not completely horrible; they usually won’t hinder my overall reading experience, even though they’re not very visually appealing.
Text (or graphic) ads placed between blog entries or in the midst of content, however, is a major no-no in my books. They break up the flow of text and ideas rather harshly and really irritate me, sometimes to the point of forcing me to close the window and never return. Why must you do this? Are you obnoxious ads really not happy enough staying on the sidebar?
A personal website is, well, personal for a reason. Personally, I don’t think it shouldn’t be your place and source of income. Ads and PPPs just look ridiculous next to personal entries about your life adventures. It’s cheap and screams “I NEED MONEY SO BADLY I’M WHORING OUT MY SITE JUST TO GET SOME” - definitely a faux pas of the personal website scene.
Ring ring ring, BANANA PHONE!
I am getting awfully sick of tech trends.
As of lately, iPods were the latest measure of how cool you were. The bigger the space, the more gazillions songs it could hold, and the slimmer it was, the cooler you were. They were, if not still are, somewhat of a fashion statement. “Match your iPod with your outfit!” was the subliminal message the cult of Mac was screaming at its devoted followers and prospect converts.
I almost go sucked into it. When I was shopping around for an MP3 player around Christmas time, the lime green iPod Nano was looking rather delicious—Looking being the keyword here. All my friends, many of them already devote members of the Cult of Mac, were gunning for me and my lime green iPod Nano soulmate. But then I started thinking with my brain instead of my eyes.
Has anyone ever bothered comparing the features of an iPod to other competitive MP3 players? Once I started doing my research, I soon discovered that my engagement with the lime green iPod nano was going to have to end. It just didn’t cut it. I found true musical love with the Sansa. For the same price (or cheaper) it had more space and more features than its comparable iPod relative. Why on earth would you buy an iPod Nano when you could own a Sansa e280 and get FM radio (& recording), Music, Movies, Pictures, and Voice recording for almost the same size and a cheaper price? It even has a scroll wheel!
They say that sales is 20% logic and 80% emotion. I read that in a book somewhere. Are we even truly aware of how the sales industry is approaching sales these days? It is interesting to note that the best salespeople are the ones that never seem like they’re selling you somthing, but rather, subliminally manipulate you into selling that product or service to yourself.
And then there is the latest mobile phone craze. What do RAZR, KRZR, SLVR, PEBL, and RIZR all have in common? Well, aside from being a set of arranged characters a couple letters short of actual words, they’re also outrageously expensive phones nobody actually needs but everyone wants.
I was recently at a high school grad showcase (fancy word for grade 12 only talent show) where I happened to witness just a prime example of what I’d consider the mobile phone companies’ prime targets: overtalkative teenagers.
Girl: “Oh my gosh, this is a THREE MEGAPIXEL CAMERA!”
(I dryly remark that my first digital camera wasn’t even that)
Guy: “Forget that, I have a SIX megapixel camera on my phone at home”
(I silently wonder just how many phones he has?)
Girl: Runs thumb over glass screen Wow, this phone is amazing.
Guy: (Looking smug now)
One out of every three or four kids there had their mobile phone out and were looking at it. How did I know this? Simple. The auditorium was poorly lit until they starting pulling out their phones—It was a safe guess judging by the blueish glow the room took on.
I’m not old. I don’t consider myself majorly “out of the loop” when it comes to technology. But somehow, just somehow, I missed the cinching point where mobile phones went from “a cordless phone I can use anywhere” to “a slim, slick, thin, sexy sliver of technology that not only happens to be a phone, but also mp3 player! and a high-quality camera! and a video camera! and a PDA! and everything else you could ever dream of but will probably never use!”
… And by the way, since when did cell phones have six megapixels?
