I've been involved with a few projects lately where the company doing the hiring has brought on special SEO consultants for the purpose of optimizing the SEO of a particular site. I know for a fact that many web companies look at SEO like it's the proverbial cash-cow, so I'm really curious to understand just what it is that SEO specialists are doing. And while doing a search for that, I came across this website, that I thought interesting. First, I'm going to exclude black-hat SEO, because I don't think it's ethical, and it's definitely something I never want to be involved in. At a personal level, ...

I've been doing quite a bit of reading lately with regards to travel destinations. First and foremost are a few travel books I picked up last year, namely one on Montenegro. But I also have books on Eastern Europe and various city destinations such as New York City. Reading them though one can't help but feel that a lot of what made these destinations unique has slowly eroded over time. For example, you'll find english speaking people in almost every city nowadays. I always like traveling to a remote destination and trying to speak in their language, but even on my trips I could always fall back ...

I wrote a blog entry a few weeks ago where I toyed with the idea of maybe doing some traveling in the next year or so. While sitting on the couch here today watching movies, I started thinking about that idea more and more. The reality is that I can work from anywhere. All I need is a backpack with some clothes in it and my trusty MacBook Pro, and there's really no reason why I couldn't work from any little coffee shop I encounter. Now that my car and student loans are mostly paid off, my monthly expenses have dropped significantly. In an ideal world, I'd be able to rent my apartment out furnished ...

I had a call yesterday from a good friend of mine who lives overseas. We used to work together in Vancouver, so it was good to catch up. He actually lives in a little small town in the middle of Serbia, a place where glasses of wine go for about 50 cents, and people spend a lot more time hanging out and socializing than over here. Prior to moving to Serbia, my friend lived in both Kelowna and Vancouver. I spent most of my 20s working 60 hour weeks, all for the promise of that golden carrot. Looking back, I'm thankful I had many of the experiences I ended up having, but regret the amount of time ...

Gary asked me to write a follow-up post to my last entry, so here goes. I'll also point out that I'm not a doctor, and this information is mostly my opinion based on all the research I've done over the years. In terms of Type-II diabetes and obesity, here's what the research seems to show currently (which may change as research continues): Type-II diabetes is caused by insulin resistance at the cellular level, which in turn increases the body's requirement for insulin. If the pancreas can't keep up, additional insulin is required At it's core, the prime defect in obesity appears to be a relative ...

There has been a lot of talk in the Twitterverse lately regarding diabetes, so I thought I'd write a small entry dedicated to it. While I don't suffer from diabetes, I do a lot of research in the area of something called metabolic syndrome, which in a lot of ways directly relates to diabetes. Prior to around 1980 or so, there were two forms of diabetes. The lay public generally referred to these as juvenile diabetes, which many people essentially were born with (or diagnosed with at an early age), and adult-onset diabetes, which was usually diagnosed later in life. Nowadays we call juvenile diabetes ...

...has been announced, and it'll take place on August 28th. Make sure you come out and meet all your fellow Twitter users in the Vancouver area. The event will be at the Two Parrots pub, which (in my humble opinion) has some of the best nachos in the city. There will probably be a John Biehler endorsed photo walk afterwards for those of you without compact cameras that want to learn more about taking photos in the dark. ...

You see, I have this friend. This friend of mine, well, he was screwed out of a lot of money for a client job he did. There's a substantial email chain verifying that the work was requested, and the price was agreed upon, so he says. But unfortunately, when it came time to pay, the client became unresponsive and has since disappeared. Normally my friend would be quite content to write off the amount owing, and chalk it up to bad debt. But in the process of trying to get a contact number for the client, he discovered someone else who was owed money by the client. And after talking to that person, ...

I get the odd inquiry about the work involved in organizing a conference, particularly a WordCamp. Rebecca, John and I have organized several WordCamps, but WordCamp Whistler was undoubtedly the hardest of the bunch, mainly because none of us had the opportunity to assess the location until the night before. While the event was really successful in my mind (the speakers were great, the staff at the Fairmont were helpful, and everyone I talked to felt that they got good value from the event), in retrospect I might have organized something a bit more local. The costs associated with the event kept ...

It's been nearly four weeks now since I had some minor surgery on my face. For those of you following along, I made a decision a few months ago to have a few moles removed from my face. As a kid, they were awesome beauty marks that made me the envy of the playground, but as I got older, they had slowly increased in size to the point where they were interfering with shaving and what-not. Two of them were fairly flat, but the one on my cheek was raised slightly, and would get nicked from time to time by my razor (at which point I'd spend the next few hours trying to get it to stop bleeding). The ...

I stumbled across three interesting things tonight. First, I purchased and installed ClearTune, which is a pretty kick ass guitar tuner for the iPhone. While a few people in reviews had issues with it, most of the individuals who got it working said it was the best tuner they've ever used. I have to say, it seems deadly accurate for me. It not only has a coarse scale, but it also has a fine scale, so you can see just how many cents you are off and adjust the string even further. Second, since ClearTune supports a wide range of musical temperaments, I decided to do some research about guitar temperaments, ...

Peter Jackson's next film is "The Lovely Bones", based on the novel with the same name. I haven't read the book, but I understand the basic premise -- a young girl is murdered, and she watches the aftermath of her life from the great beyond. Other than that, I don't really know that much. But given how much I liked Lord of the Rings, I'm anxious to see how Peter Jackson does with a new film. Truthfully, I thought his King Kong remake was a little weak. Here's the trailer: ...

It's cloudy here today, which is a nice change to be honest. While lots of people love summer, I'm not really one of them. Sure, I like sitting on a beach as much as the next person, but I hate being too hot. Fall is probably my favorite season to be honest, since I love walking around with a coffee and taking photos. I'm off to do a few errands and to find a little coffee shop or something to do some work. Last night when I came back home my car smelt kind of burnt, so I'm not sure if I didn't full disengage the e-brake or if something is up. I'll be paying attention to it this time, so hopefully ...

While I'm not officially debt free yet, I'm close enough that I'm going to do a post about it. Strangely enough, making those calls today to pay off my loans felt a bit anti-climactic. I'm sure it'll sink in over the next few days, but right now it doesn't really feel that much different. It's amazing how debt changes your life though. Had I been debt free years ago, I probably would have quit my job in Vancouver and branched out on my own then. But unfortunately, when you have nearly $1,000 worth of monthly debt payments, you really can't afford to take that much risk. The only way I was able ...

Placed call #2 a few seconds ago. My BC student loan of $682.47 is now officially gone too, freeing up a whopping $30 a month back into my pockets. Happy trails, student loan. I have one last student loan remaining, valued at $1,630. I'll try to knock it off sometime soon as well. ...

I've been waiting for a rather big cheque to finish clearing in my account this past week. I woke up this morning, logged into my online banking, and noticed it had cleared, so I decided I would finally make the call I have waited almost ten years to make, and pay off my first student loan. At one point I had nearly $40,000 in student loans, something that seems almost insurmountable when you finish school. But unfortunately, that is the high price of an education nowadays, and banks sure don't seem to mind capitalizing on that. Back in March I paid the final $8,000 of my car, and today I placed ...

While out watering my tomato plants outside tonight, I noticed that a few of the roma tomatoes were looking a bit limp. Upon further investigation, it appears that not only are they ripening a bit early, they also have some weird dark spot on the bottom of most of the fruits. I did a bit of research, and it sounds exactly like blossom end rot. Blossom end rot typically is a result of lack of calcium, which in a lot of cases is due to inconsistencies in moisture or large temperature swings. Given that my plants got pretty dry there a few times, especially in this last heat wave, I'm pretty sure ...

So, I was lying in bed last night, letting my mind fill up with useless dribble, when I started thinking about WordPress permalinks. I came to the conclusion that the WordPress friendly permalinks aren't really permalinks in the traditional sense, in that they can be changed after the fact by an end-user. First, here's a definition of a permalink: A permalink, or permanent link, is a URL that points to a specific blog or forum entry after it has passed from the front page to the archives. Because a permalink remains unchanged indefinitely, it is less susceptible to link rot. An example of a ...

Strangely enough, my home town, and the town I'm currently living in, has a reputation for smelling pretty bad. Truthfully, it's a farming community, so that smell is usually just manure or other organic matter than ultimately yields everyone's favourite Chilliwack corn or other farming goodness. I'd be the first to admit that as a kid that smell used to gross me out occasionally. But really, you only can smell it in the summer, and only pretty much in the heart of the growing season. Most of the time in the winter all you smell is that crisp, clean air that comes as a result of being surrounded ...

As I mentioned a few days ago, I decided to try giving up Splenda to see if that helps my stomach out at all. Splenda is a sugar substitute (technically called Sucralose), and it's chemically similar to sugar, although it has a few chlorine atoms added on which makes it mostly indigestible. Unfortunately, since most sugar substitutes essentially can't be processed by the body, they can sometimes cause some distress as they pass through. At the top of that list are certain sugar alcohols (which are used in gum and lots of chocolates), which sometimes have a strong laxative affect. I came up with ...