I found the West Coast Express Civilized

Back in my newspaper journalism days all my transportation was done via car, even in Yellowknife where I lived without a personal vehicle for almost three years. If I wanted to get anywhere it was via car.

Since leaving the profession. Selling the car and purchasing the best commuting bike in the entire world. I have always tried to find different and alternative means of transportation that provide less stress and more enjoyment to my day.

This summer I took my nephew to Stanley Park and in the process we rode the SkyTrain, a trolley bus, a diesel bus and for the first time The West Coast Express (WCE).

For my four year old nephew transit is more a special treat then anything else.  But for me it wasn’t anything more then the status quo of Vancouver living.

After a fun filled day we jumped on board the WCE. Experiencing avenue of transit except the SeaBus that day. I can certainly say the WCE was by far the most civilized relaxing and enjoyable mode of transportation I have ridden. It was quiet comfortable and efficient.

Typical seats found on the West Coast Express

Why aren’t we doing more of this?

I have taken the Greyhound to Chilliwack, BC on a number occasions and found, comparatively speaking, the Greyhound was about as enjoyable as fingernails on a chalkboard. It’s noisy, confined by traffic and the depots are off the beaten path of the highway.

I am sure the daily train travel would have it’s drawbacks, but with the wide seats, air conditioning, power plugs and tables for the laptop I have been left with one lasting feeling from the experience.

It just felt civilized.

Tags: Train, Transit, Transportation

This post was written after reading Justin Tadlock post on changing peoples content via the filter capital_p_dangit() php filter you can read his full post here. I very much agree with it and prompted to write this post after reading this one section.

The real issue is not the bug; it’s the display of content that people didn’t write. Sure, the cases where people actually intend to misspell WordPress are rare, but that’s besides the point.
~ Justin Tadlock

I very rarely dis-agree with the WordPress core team. But I feel you really lost your way with changing my content via capital_P_dangit(). It is not what you did but how you did it.

If you have written, posted, educated and informed, I would have said “Great idea Ma.tt”

But doing this without knowledge or consent and then is breaking across a lot of sites is an unfortunate and unusual lack of foresight on the part of the WordPress team.

(In writing this even the WordPress owned After the Deadline shows WordPress as a spelling mistake ~they fix that )

Also what goes on in WordPress.com is different then what happens on WordPress self hosted sites. You control everything on WordPress.com from the server to the permissions and ultimately you can fix everything. This is just not the case across the world of servers that run WordPress.

I am certainly not as gifted in programming as the WordPress team is, but I certainly see a need for improvement in communication and usability between developer(s) and designers in this regard.

Update: It is nice to see that the WordPress core team still has a sense of humour on the subject.

A high school friend named Jana Curll looked me up to do some photo reproduction of her art work.

A very basic studio set up in my living room.

Loosing contact as one does I never knew she was such an artist back in high school. Her work is amazing.

I on the other hand had to pull out the old Camera Gear and jury-rig up a studio in the living room to capture her work. It was the first time I had really shot something in over a year. It was fun to get back into the photo groove if only for a morning.

She is having a show at the Gumboot Garden Cafe for the month of July. I’d certainly check it out.

I then met up with another artist type friend. Dan Sullivan (better known as exploding Haggis) who in comparison I have only known for two years and we off to enjoy a bike ride around Gibsons.

I didn’t really start feeling old until I realized that it was Elphiphstone Secondary Grad Night and both myself and Jana graduated in the same gym some 15 years ago.

This is when I really started to feel old. Lucky Dan showed up. I asked if we could jet, before I break a hip and my false teeth fall out.

On the way home I felt the entire day from start to finish was comprised of my past and how easily you are reminded of it.

Tags: art, bike, High School Graduation, Photography, Sunshine Coast

Sammy Piccolo 4 time, top three, World Barista Championship finalist and 4 time Canadian National Barista Champion has a brand new website that was made using the wordpress content management system. The site is still very much in beta as we have added 475 products to the site, with more to come. But it is the very first e-commerce website I have made and have been in development since the beginning of the year.

The first website of Sammy Piccolo.com

Tags: coffee, content management, e-commerce, Web Design, wordpress

Veteran television news anchor Tony Parsons announces his move to CBC News on Monday in Vancouver. (Mike Laanela/CBC)

I am so happy to see Tony Parson back on TV. His voice and delivery certainly were certainly missed around the dinner hour.

Along with hosting the 11:00pm news on CHEK (an employee own station). He is also hosting the 6:00 – 6:30 evening news on CBC that is shared with CHEK.

This speaks to the crazy (you can insert your own NSFW word here) happening at Global TV. It is barely a station I recognize. I only rarely watch the morning news cast which is the only palatable newscast of the four they broadcast throughout the day. (it is also one of two produced locally in Vancouver)

Parsons comeback on the air answers to questions for me.

1. He didn’t leave Global by choice.
2. He still has stories to tell and work he wants to do.

Why is a former print journalist and now web designer concerned about the nightly newscast using that old skool media outlet called television.

Because I still think it matters for the delivery of local news content.

Verification code:

EAVB_VEGTCWTSTC

Tags: cbc, Media, Television News

Dear Facebook

The Social Networking Site Facebook

I love you, ever since I joined your service a couple years ago. I have been able to reconnect with friends from Sydney, AZ to Yellowknife, NWT.

But Facebook we really need to talk… Your not Twitter, Nor do I want to be Twitter. See Facebook I joined your service to share my life with a close 200 friends, and I really try keeping up with all of them. Honestly, I have a personal twitter account, but I am not sure what to do with it because I already use this site, and that site, to voice my public views.

And, yes, before you privacy experts get your shirt in a knot. I know the privacy on Facebook is a basic one. And anyone with some savvy hacking skills could potentially see, copy, change any of my info on your site, and I am OK with that. I know the risk of what I post and have read more then one story about employees getting fired for posting stuff on Facebook. I also prefer to keep my business life and social life separate, so if I haven’t accepted your friend request. Isn’t not you it’s me. . .

Lets just call my Facebook friends an extended family for want of a better word. I’d be OK with telling them stuff I wouldn’t be comfortable tell a complete stranger, which quite frankly resembles the entire Internet.

If I did want to publicly rant and rave then I have half a dozen different services at my disposal, or I’d just make all of my post public. but I didn’t join Facebook to do that. Nor is Facebook something I want to use that for. I like Facebook for being Facebook it was the reason I joined and the reason I continue to log in each day.

Hope you had a great Christmas and I look forward to seeing you in the New Year.

regards

Robert

Tags: Facebook, new web, privacy, social media, twitter

Goodbye Tony We will miss you!

When I was in high school I wanted to go into the media and during a class at the old Coast Cable 11 Studio’s in Gibsons BC. We sat in the classroom and watched BCTV.

Tony Parsons and Mike McCardell were the text-book of what good journalism was. As I grew older my views of the media had changed, I was hardened by years in the news, and this hardening had led me to leave the media.  but watch Tony and Mike, they, they were still the tried and true source they were when I grew up.

While Mike is still on the air, at least for now. Both were from the old school of journalism. The type that isn’t taught anymore. The type that really can’t be taught in the confines of a school.

I will miss Tony on the Nightly news. He is Irreplaceable at least to BCTV. You can leave your goodbye comments on their website.

I have stopped watch Global as it is now called, it’s a different station on the same channel. Chris Gailus although a Canadian spent many years at a FOX affiliate in New York, USA and is more of the sensational type and doesn’t have that same calm cool voice Tony has. But I watched tonight, just to say goodbye.

I have moved on to CTV and another veteran of the old school journalism, Bill Good, who use to work at BCTV. In hopes I can find a newscast that if it has to deliver bad news it will do it in a calm cool and collected way.

Tags: BCTV, CTV, Goodbye, Media, News Hour, Television News, Tony Parsons

Chris Young Photography

British-born and Toronto-based photographer Chris Young contacted me about improving his website. He wanted to have a site that was more search-engine friendly, had bigger images to display and something that fit his sense of style and colour scheme.

I showed Chris what I had done with Andy Clark’s site as well as my own and we started on the design process.

Chris wanted the flow of a flash site but none of the drawbacks. So through a process of trial and, admittedly, some error. We found a clean looking site with all the functionality he needed.

Being a freelancer, Chris also wanted a site that would increase visit’s to his site from first-time visitors and hopefully increase sales of some of the spectacular images he has taken.

Making a Splash

Accordion Widget

For some splash pages there are antiquated pieces of the Internet’s past. But for a photographer they do play a key piece of branding as you want to make an impression with your images as soon as possible. I took what I learned from the devious behaviour site and made the entry page one large image that adjusted to the size of the browser. I also did this with CSS and not javascript so it would be compliant across multiple browsers.

I suggested a wide horizontal image and suggested to Chris he use the Stonehenge photo. It is certainly a powerful photo that captures your attention immediately.

My developer Kevin Ganapathy did some programing so that Chris could change his background image from the user interface and not from the confusing FTP.

Playing the Accordion

Chris also wanted some way to hide the thumbnails. So, I took the accordion that I had been using on my own site and Kevin programmed the thumbnails to show up only in the different categories.

We then installed a WordPress blog and styled it toward more of a photo-blog format. Both Chris and I are pretty happy with the results and had a lot of good feedback on the clean aesthetic look.

Tags: content management, Photography, pixel post, search engine optimization, Web Design, wordpress

The summer of bikes and coffee has been going strong. Promoting The Tree has been one of funnest projects I have ever had the chance to work on. Having a contract where you get to bike in the glorious sunshine to events all over the city, talk with people, take pictures and then blog about it has been a blast. Bikes on the Drive has been one of the nicest and easiest clients I have ever worked for.

Biking with Coffee in Vancouver Photo: David Niddrie

I found ilan to be a guy you like a quality cup of coffee and he really enjoys the coffee blog too. It is one of the reasons he hired me to write The Tree Blog. Over one day and a few Americanos we hatched this idea.

A biking coffee tour to some of the best coffee shops in East Vancouver. After blogging about The Tree bicycle for most of the summer and taking it to a few coffee shops I found the bike and coffee blog share the same goals: More sustainable products through education of consumers about the products they were purchasing, It is also great for cross marketing and promotion both were started and localized to East Vancouver and The Drive.

Without further ado here are the Details:

The East Van Biking Coffee Tour

Sponsored by: Bikes on the Drive & Vancouver Indy Coffee Scene

You can just show up but we would like to get a feeling of people who want to attend the event,
You can sign up on the coffee website.

It is the first event I have ever put on and it should be a lot of fun, I hope you can make it out!

Tags: bike, coffee, Commercial Drive, cross marketing, cross promotion, East Vancouver, Tour

Frozen Fog one of many image from Native Landscapes

In my former life as a news photographer and I did a fair amount of travel around Western Canada covering the events of the day. So when Joe and Audrey asked me to show my work at the Bump and Grind I was more than happy (it is the closest cafe to my house).

This show was commissioned five years ago for the Bienal Fotosemana, which had photography exhibitions across Bogota, Colombia. I was chosen too as the international guest and showed at Universidad Nacional de Colombia Meseo De Arte, The National University Art Museum.

With the help of Vince over at 49th and Bump and Grind we will be serving the Colombia Timana during the event.

So here is the skinny:

Show: Native Landscapes
Where: Bump and Grind 916 Commercial Drive
When: Saturday, June 13 5:00 – 7:00 pm

Tags: Arctic, art, coffee, Colombia, opening, photo, Photography, Web Design