Sadly after four long years I've
made the jump from my VOX blog to WordPress @ http://grantalias.wordpress.com.
What at one time I would have thought impossible leaving VOX, SixApart has made it a much easier choice with their neglect of my once favorite blogging site.
Honestly I would have left sooner but since VOX lacked an export tool I was effectively walled in (along with everyone else) and there was no way in hell I was going to manually copy 700 blog posts.
The VOX community had addressed this issue over the years but with limited results with posts from Typeset and Alexleonard to name a few.
As it turned out WordPress has build an import tool for us lost in the wasteland VOXers and I can not tell you how excited I am to have saved my blog. WordPress is a breath of fresh air compared to the stagnant tool set of VOX. I even wrote half this post on their iPhone app.
A lot of things have changed in four years. Back then I used my blog as a tool to share all my photos and videos with friends and family. Now I use Facebook. I used to post incessantly about everything and anything that popped into my mind. Now I use twitter. I also had two less children which has seriously cut into my free time spent infront of the computer.
What I will miss is the community that grew up around my VOX blog. Luckily a few have transitioned over to Facebook and Twitter so some of the old gang is still around.
One of my neighbourhood from VOX has done an excellent write up on import tool and what VOXers looking to break free of the walled blog can expect.
If Moses had access to Facebook one of the plagues upon Eygpt would have most assuredly have been application notices in your news feed.
I made the off hand status update of blocking Facebook applications (200 and counting) the other day and understandably some people were wondering how such a feat was accomplished. What I think most people do is just (myself in the past) have just unfriended (it's a real word) people to cut out the spaming of news feeds. Remeber block applications not friends.
Here are the step by step instructions.
- Your friends spam your news feed with applications.
- You click the HIDE button on the right of the notice.
- You can hide either all news feed notices from that person (without removing them as a friend) or hiding the particular application.
- The application has been hidden from your news feed.
That's one way to increase the usability of Facebook.
I'd love to know if you have you found any tips or tricks that makes Facebook more useful, like not playing Farmville. Leave a comment with your favorite Facebook tip below.
Next time you bitch about how it's now a law in Quebec to have winter tires between December 15th and March 15th, there might be a reason for it. I should mention that this photo was taken on December 8th, a full 24 hours before the 35cm of snow that the Montreal region received on December 9th.
This is probably the most unique car in ditch poses I've ever seen in person.
This morning I took the three kids to watch the Olympic Torch relay as it passed through town on it's way to the 2010 Vancouver Olympics.
Before you think I'm the best dad ever, just to let you know I did totally lose it on them getting everyone ready and out of the house on time. In the end think we got there 5 to 10 minutes before the relay arrived.
It was pretty exciting to actually see the flame coming down the street. We have been watching the daliy updates on the local news so I think with ET being the oldest he understood what was going on.
I'm glad we saw it at the town hall since with the kids being so young I think just watching along the route would have been too quick for them.
I was hoping that we might have seen some of the mascots as they are super cute and kids would have enjoyed it but they probably save them for the big end of day celebrations. Or not since they seem to be currently on tour in British Columbia. This weekend I'll try to make some folded paper mascots with the kids.
When the relay arrived the crowd of course swarmed and left us on the outside so quickly (because I knew this whole was just going to last a few minutes) I put Carts on my shoulders, put a foot up on the carriage and balanced ET up on my knee so they could see the flame. I would love to see a photo of that, I must have looked crazy.
And like that it was over.
The boys seemed to have enjoyed it but noticed people had little Olympic flags and like a Norwegian Blue were pinning for the fjords wanted one (we did do an arts and crafts before bedtime and they made there own). We went in the city library to see if they had any but unfortunately they were all out. They had refreshments but the boys didn't want any so we started walking back to the car.
On the way back I noticed the relay bus was parked around the back of city hall and some people were milling about. So I headed over. I'm glad we did since one of the relay runners let the boys hold a torch and posed for a photo. Best advice I can ever give my kids; you want to meet someone after an event, run the around back.
While it might not be something the kids remember when they are grown, it was a fun event for them in the short term and as a parent you get excited to see your kids excited. When I picked up ET at school today he had two drawings of the mascots holding Olympic torches and he told me how one of the torch bearers had visited the school today as well and talked to his class. It's still strange for me when he recounts things that happened that I wasn't there with him for. You get excited because he's growing up and sad since he doesn't need you around.
And of course the last time the torch came to town was in 1988 for the Calgary Winter Olympics games and who knows the next time we'll get a chance to see it.
Plus I have to thank my boss Cindy for letting me take the time off work.
This blogging thing is a lot of work.
In previous years I did a round up of (what I felt were) my best posts, photos & events that happened here. Unfortunately this year you're not getting it. I really dropped off the map this past year and only posted 10% as many posts as my first year on VOX. Of course I did sleep more, so there's an upside to everything.
My initial reason for blogging here was to document all the happens of the family, but once I realized that people actually check Facebook, I started to move stuff over there.
Secondly last year I really started trying to post on stuff that I had first hand knowledge or effected me personally in some way. That really brought down the number of superfluous posts but it also broke me from daily posting and like going to the gym once you stop going it's hard to start again.
So for this coming year I'll going to make an effort to post at least once a week, if nothing more than for the fact I enjoy writing and I really miss doing it. Plus I've totally missed out on my neighborhood here. Children have been born during the time I've been away!
The mistake parents can sometimes make is to put everything they enjoy on hold and defer to their children and with an ever growing family that's been the case. But a lesson I've learned is that you've got to make time for yourself or you'll go crazy and VOX is a great outlet for me in that regard. Plus (hopefully) children move out.
So here's to another year on VOX. I just wish they would let us export / backup our blogs.
The new Sloan EP Hit & Run has dropped (as they say) and it's pretty good.
If you're unfamiliar with Sloan I'll make the assumption that you don't live in Canada but if you do... shame on you. And if you don't live here you should move, I'll wait.
Do yourself a favor and click play below and listen to the album as you read the rest of my review.
The title of the EP is most probably in reference to band member Chris Murphy being injured in a hit & run accident this past summer. That caused the group to cancel shows while he recouped.
As a long time fan it hits all the Sloan standards with tracks like Take It Upon Yourself, hand claps and all. It would have fit in nicely on their 1999 album Between the Bridges. It Is Never is pure Sloan awesomeness, but I'm a sucker for layered songs that build up to distortion endings that reprise the main theme. Plus I've always had a man crush on Patrick Pentland and his songs.
One of Sloan's strengths can also be a weakness on a five song EP like Hit & Run. With four distinctive song writers the variation can be jarring switching between them. Jay Ferguson's Midnight Mass is a perfect example of this problem. It's a good song but sandwiched between two up tempo ones brings down the energy. Which is a shame since Jay Ferguson has done some really great songs with excellent lyrics and melodies over the years.
That said it's a good addition to the Sloan catalog of memorable songs.
Sloan is offering the EP in MP3 320kbs, Apple Lossless and Flac formats directly from their site in addition to other music stores.
This is unreladed to the Hit & Run EP, but Witch's Wand was one of my favorite songs off their last album Parallel Play but the video that I just got around to watching is so weird I have no idea what's going on.
This is why I love going to Wal-Mart without the kids so I can stop and window shop and enjoy awesome toys. It's a rare occurrence and I totally have to thank my parents for looking after the boys for a few hours on the weekend.
Sadly they are both $50 each and I fear they would never survive in our house very long. I learned that lesson by letting the boys get their hands on my Jedi Starfighter and Slave 1. It's a miracle they have kept their hands off my Doctor Who Dalek which hangs on the basement wall.
I don't know how many of my fellow VOXer's read Team Vox's latest post but there is now a free version of Typepad called Typepad Micro.
I'm guessing with the prevalence of Twitter (@grantalias), Six Apart wanted to get into the micro blog / status site. We all knew this was eventual since their acquisition of Pownce's earlier this year.
I've done a test post on my Typepad Micro so you can see what it looks like.
You can have links to all your online sites like flickr, Vox, Facebook & Twitter. Those of us from Vox will find it very familiar. I wish it could automatically pull data from those services. It would certainly save some time for the user.
Unfortunately (like Vox) you can't pull Facebook photos but unlike Vox you can't pull photos from any service or video sites for that matter (which you can do on Vox), unless you use embed code. Unlike Twitter there isn't an ecosystem of third parties developing sites like Twitpic to close the short comings.
The only real saving grace is that you can use the Typepad iPhone app to post while on the go (which is how I composed my first post).You can link it to both Twitter and Facebook with manual or automatic posting to each service as you wish is nice. To bad it won't cross post to my Vox account. Too bad there is not a Vox app like this. And no Blog It does not count. Don't even get me started there.
Since it's Typepad you can import and export your blog to or from it. With Vox there is no such ability and I'm pretty much screwed if I ever want to move anywhere else.
UPDATE 11/24/2009
I've discovered that you can seemingly cross post from VOX to Typepad Micro (along with other LiveJournal) . I have not posted enough to actually see it work but some of you might find it interesting. My main goal was to see if I could then export my posts, but it doesn't seem possible. Maybe it's only for the paid version.
Here are the directions
- Click Account
- Click Outside services
- Add Blog
- Enter login information & save settings.
In what's turning into a yearly event, the local mall had Dora & Diego for a two hour meet and greet.
Carts enjoyed it much more than last year. When we talked about going ET said it was for babies... that's a five year old for you. He did say he had papillons in his stomach when we were waiting in line (that's butterflys for the non french speaking). AR didn't go since she was with Donna in Zellers, maybe next year?
The photo made the [Life is Good] explore page.
My Groups
-
Graphic Novels Updated: 7 minutes ago
-
Geeks Updated: 7 minutes ago
-
Sci-Fi Updated: 7 minutes ago
Neighborhood
Explore friends, family, friends & family, or entire neighborhood.
Recent Comments
-
grantalias said:
Sadly I hardly play GH anymore. Moved on to Modern Warfare 2. read more
on Guitar Hero Wii faceplate looking FINE! -
grantalias said:
If memory serves, I re-encoded it in iTunes. That might have done something to it. Or it might not be... read more
on Highfreq1 -
Links
Edit: Upon re-reading my post, I realize I sounded a litt...
The Voyage: Roz Savage: Row...
Rowing solo across oceans might not be everybody's idea o...
For those of you who have now joined FlockdUp, the social...
My new favorite blog all about Montreal
A must for why you try to figure out ALT characters
I left Vox after being forced to last December. It took up to two days for a compose screen to... read more
on Ding Dong The Vox Is Dead