Yup, another year’s over. I figured before I got all carried away about the next year, I’d take a moment to reflect upon the last twelve months and share some of my favourite things with you. Read the rest of this entry »

So I was reading this blog over at ProBlogger the other day when point 5 really resonated with me:

“Break with tradition: A great idea-sparking suggestion from Seth Godin is to ‘do the never‘ — in other words, to work out what your niche always seems to do, and then do the opposite.”

If everybody else does it the same way, you’re better off doing it differently, and my mom always did say I marched to the sound of a different drummer (seriously, she said it all the time - still does to this day - quite annoying, really). Read the rest of this entry »

My mom is fond of telling the story of my kindergarten teacher being convinced I had perfect pitch. I could actually carry a tune at circle time. Mom always conveniently forgets to mention that as it turns out I only have decent relative pitch, and that even though she was encouraged to nurture my musical talents at a tender age I had to wait until I was 16 before she’d agree to let me study an instrument (but I digress).

Anyway, it seems my son, aged 2.5, might be similarly afflicted. I’ve caught him singing along to Elliott Smith in the car, singing along at pitch to certain phrases in tunes like “In the Lost and Found” and “Memory Lane.” I thought maybe he was being helped along by repetition (we’re in the car every day taking his older sister to school, and I’m notoriously slow to change the CDs in the car), until we were in a store this past weekend. They were playing a Coldplay, either one of the first two I think, and he was up on my shoulders so I could tell he was digging it. He’s never heard them before, to the best of my knowledge, and I spend pretty much all my time with him. So on the second tune, he totally blows me away by humming along with the second chorus in tune having only heard it the first time through. He’s just starting to talk, so he’s not saying the words, but he’s nailing everything else.

So, how abnormal is this. I know lots of kids that couldn’t carry a tune if their lives depended on it, but how often does a child develop a decent sense of pitch before 3? And, more importantly, do I have to worry about him growing up to be a maladjusted malcontent just like his old man?

Last week, my car broke down spectacularly. My engine coolant sprang a leak and my radiator boiled over as I was attempting to drive up Pottery Road, perhaps the steepest hill in Toronto. Read the rest of this entry »

I know this guy. Let’s call him Melvin (not his real name). In 1996, Melvin decided he was going to register a website for his web design company (I won’t give you the URL, for the same reason I’m withholding Melvin’s real name). So that October, he hired someone to build him a simple 2 page website (Melvin can’t code himself - as a matter of fact, he’s been known to have anxiety attacks at the mere mention of the phrase “right-click”). Read the rest of this entry »

For those of you who read yesterday’s blog and have been waiting with bated breath to find out what happened, here’s the long and the short of it … Read the rest of this entry »

I thought I’d turn my very first blog on my new site into my own little SEO test. The prevailing wisdom of the day among the SEO community is that Google’s add URL tool is pretty much the worst way to get your site listed in Google and that the best way is to get as many high quality links back to your site as you can as quickly as you can. I myself have talked this game for a while, but I’ve as yet had a chance to put the theory to the test (usually because some enterprising soul involved in the SEO process will turn to me and tell me they’ve saved me the hassle of submitting to Google by doing it for me).

So here’s my plan … Read the rest of this entry »