It’s been about three days since I launched the new site, and I’ve had some great feedback regarding it (thanks everyone). I’ve made a few small tweaks based on some comments, so hopefully it’s a bit better. I’ve been watching my traffic, and so far I’ve consistently about double the traffic (actually, a tad bit more) since launching. I’m sure part of that is a transient contribution from launching a new site and Twittering about it, but I’m fairly certain the traffic will definitely go up, since there’s now a lot more to do here now (specifically in the photography section). ...

I was talking to a few people on the weekend about this current iteration for my theme, and it seems there’s enough interest that I might eventually set this up as a download, or add it to the WordPress theme repository. But, I’d like a bit more input from some photographers about features I can potentially add. One thing I was thinking of incorporating was a stand-alone microstock service. For example, beside each photo there would be a “Buy” button that would take you to PayPal. Once you paid your $5 or whatever, you’d get an email with a large version of the photo and a license to ...

Tonight some of my old friends came for a visit, and we went down to the little park near where we grew up to take a few family photos. Unfortunately the weather wasn’t really cooperating, and we got rained on a little bit. One of the biggest challenges for taking family photos is working with children. Children are obviously full of energy, and taking photos isn’t always something they like to do, especially when there are swing sets and ducks waddling around. Thankfully Kaede was happy to accommodate a few photos in between duck feeding sessions. Since Kaede is about to be a big sister, ...

All my stitches are out. This is day five after surgery now. All the areas are a bit red, but they’re healing. Was nice to take a real shower today and also shave. It generally takes about 6 months for surgery sites to finish healing, so I still have lots of healing to do. A little bit of trivia – after 7 days, surgery sites only have about 7% of the tensile strength of normal skin. So still have to be careful for a while. ...

So yesterday I was sitting on my patio trying to figure out when to take a vacation. I still have a few small client-related items to finish off, so I’ve been waiting around for that. While going over everything in my head though I remembered that because I work from a laptop, there’s really no reason why I can’t work remotely. All I need is an internet connection once and a while to check email, and I’m basically golden. With that in mind, I’m thinking about testing my Nexus pass out in the next few days and heading south. Pretty much every KOA nowadays has free Wi-Fi, so I could easily ...

Well, yesterday was a pretty warm day here in Chilliwack. I think it officially got up to 31 degrees Celsius. My little weather widget says it might rain a bit today, but here’s hoping it’s wrong. I’m hopefully going to go up to the lake for a few hours with some friends. Other than these last few days, this seems to be a pretty poor summer so far in terms of weather. What does everyone else think? I’ve also emailed the TweetMe guys about my widget on the right – for some reason it doesn’t work on this domain properly. It works on my test domains, but not here. I suspect because I ...

While in Cancun back in March, Dale and I had a pretty drunken discussion on our hotel patio, not really about anything, but at the same time, a conversation about everything. We talked a bit about politics, a bit about spirituality, about the past, and about the future. Jump ahead three months, and here I am, on my own patio, drinking a rum and diet coke, surrounded by green tomatoes, looking up at the stars that were absent from my life for the last five years, thinking back on my first five months back home. Yesterday I drove out to Surrey to hang out at a brew pub with some friends. Afterwards, ...

As you can see, things have changed around here a bit. I actually still have quite a bit left to do on this theme, but it’s functional enough that I put it live. I’m going to do a custom template for the upcoming Blogathon event, and also flesh out the content in a few more areas. But it’s definitely getting close. Thanks to Dale for his help with this too. ...

In a perfect world, I’d already be on vacation. But since we have a few client commitments that have taken a bit longer than expected, I’m still working away. My original plan was to maybe go camping for a few days this upcoming week, but that doesn’t seem likely right now. But hopefully by mid week I’ll be in vacation mode, and will be taking a few weeks of downtime (I’ll still be doing a few client related projects during this time period, but those don’t encompass more than a few days a week). I’m hoping to also finish off my new theme for this site, and possibly uprev a few plugins. I’ve ...

I’ve been approved on the official Blogathon website, which means people can actually start pledging for me now. Strangely enough, I’ve already received about $80 in pledges, several of which came in before I was approved on the website. They appear to be legit, but I can’t for the life of me figure out where they came from. But anyways, as I’ve pointed out in previous postings, I’ll be supporting the BC Children’s Hospital on July 25th. So if you’d like to support my efforts and the children at BC Children’s Hospital, then please consider pledging. Thanks for the support! ...

A few weeks ago I blogged about an upcoming appointment to have a few moles removed from my face (the main reason being that I keep cutting them while shaving). Well, today was the day, and they’re officially gone. Strangely enough, I’ve developed a bit of a fainting reaction over the years to needles. That’s weird because needles don’t scare me in the least, and for the most part, I have a pretty high pain tolerance. But there’s something about a needle being stuck in me that elicits some kind of physiological reaction, almost like my body knows something else is coming, and tries to ...

Years ago I was in the lab at UBC when I got a call telling me that my sister was in labour. A few hours later I was back in Chilliwack, and Jessica, my niece, was welcomed into this world. Over the course of her life, I unfortunately haven’t been around as much as I would have liked. But thankfully now I’m in Chilliwack and I can spend more time with her. One time I was back in Chilliwack visiting and decided I wanted to get a Whopper from Burger King. Jessica asked if she could come with me, so we went together. Here’s a photo of Jessica with her jar of bees and her flower. Happy Birthday ...

This year’s Blogathon takes place on July 25th, starting at 6am PDT. As most people know, last year I teamed up with Rebecca Bollwitt to help support the Union Gospel Mission in Vancouver. With some help from Matthew Good, the three of us raised around $8,000 I believe for Vancouver’s homeless. Without a doubt, Blogathon is an event that I wanted to be a part of this year. I briefly debated supporting a local Chilliwack charity, but given that I really don’t know of many here, I decided not to go that route. Lately I’ve found myself spending quite a bit of time with my niece and nephew. ...

I had a bit of time yesterday (really, I didn’t, but the creative juices were flowing and I wanted to start dabbling), so I started tinkering with some ideas for a new theme for this site. While I routinely update the theme on this site (I average about every four months or so), I really want the next one to be up here for quite some time, so I’m not going to rush development on it. I have a few basic goals for the new theme: The theme should put more focus on aspects of my life such as photography, and less on my other content The theme will focus more on my life, and some of my passions ...

I’ve slowly been chipping away at my loans these last few years, hoping for that day to come when I’ll be debt free. My net worth is positive, thanks to some RRSPs and the down payment I put into my car, but having debt hanging over your head obviously kind of sucks. I have a little spreadsheet that sort of tracks where I’m at. In April of 2008 I owed around $25,500 in both student loans and car loans. At my peak, I had around $40,000 worth of student loans, a fairly hefty debt load by anyone’s standards. Back in January I finally paid my car off. The payments on that were $400 per month, ...

I put together a Facebook photography page a while ago. If you use Facebook, and like some of the photos I’ve taken, then please become a fan of this page. I’m going to be redoing my personal website shortly to be more photo centric and mostly reflect my online photography as opposed to some of my writings. ...

Turns out that my friend Lynn down in Seattle has had a blog for years and years, but for some reason I never knew about it until recently. It’s actually a really good read, with quite a few personal entries as well. So if you’re looking for some new reading material, definitely head on over and check it out. She’ll probably kill me for posting this, but I like living dangerously, so. Lynn was nice enough to send me some fruit flowers for my birthday years ago, and even though I’m not in Seattle very often we’ve kept in touch online (which is challenging, considering she doesn’t use ...

I wrote an article last year about a girl named Megan who committed suicide after a boy named Josh on MySpace told her that the world would be better off without her. The tragic element of that tale is that there was never a boy named Josh – it was always a fake person, invented by a friend of Megan’s and Lori Drew, that girl’s mother. The two of them together gained Megan’s confidence on MySpace, and then proceeded to toss insults at her, eventually leading directly to Megan wrapping some rope around her neck and hanging herself to death. Despite a previous jury ruling that Lori Drew ...

I have an appointment on Wednesday to get a few moles removed from my face. I’ve had them most of my life, and for the most part they haven’t really bothered me. That being said, this last year I’ve found myself cutting two of them while shaving from time to time, which usually results in them bleeding for hours at a time (real attractive, I know). You can see two of them in this photo. The first is the one on my right cheek, and the second is the one on my left upper-lip. The third one is really tiny, and it’s in the center of my lip (I don’t cut it shaving, but I figure I might as ...

Today is also my step-sister Alison’s birthday. Strangely enough, I went through my Flickr photos and I don’t really have any good shots of her, so I had to grab one from her Facebook profile instead. Tonight we’re having a little BBQ over at my dad’s house for her, which should be fun (although I probably won’t be staying too long, as I’m pretty swamped with work). Happy Birthday Alison! ...