Some new stuff

User ImageMichael | July 1, 2008


MichaelValiant.com is undergoing some changes… all for the better.

First, this site was never intended to be a strict ‘Internet Marketing’, ecommerce, or social media type blog.  MichaelValiant is me, literally (obviously) and I get bored writing about the same thing all the time (sorry, blame the gemini in me).

So, in order to try and regain my center (refind my Zen as it were) MichaelValiant.com is about to shift more towards my original plan.  Feel free to let me know whether you love, or hate the changes that will be occuring over the next couple of weeks.

The good news is that I will be posting more often.  Actually, I will be posting just as often, but now, the posts I do on other blogs will be syndicated back to this one, which will continue to be my main ‘home’ online.

The bad news (at least for some, I anticipate), is those posts will vary in topic along with my interests. I will continue (and actually increase) my writing on ecommerce, SEO, social media, internet marketing, blogging, etc. etc. etc. but you will soon see more posts that are ‘off-topic’, especially food related (I like talking about food).

I also plan on delving more into productivity and life-hack type topics, parenting, and other things that I like to do, see and talk about (like music and movies!)

In the end it’s all good news and broadening the scope of this site will allow me to spend more time talking about the things I love (like Reputation Management… yeah, I know, I’m a geek) and less time worrying about whether or not a topic is applicable/right for this blog.  From now on, it’s ALL right.

What I WILL try to do is this:  While I will continue to show full posts for everything I write specifically for this blog (as I’ve always done), I will use the ‘More’ tag and only show snippets for everthing that is syndicated in from my other blogs (and therefore, a little more off-topic).

I installed the FeedWordPress 0.993 plugin to help me with this, and I love it so far!

You may notice that I’ve already setup my Food site to syndicate content to this blog.  I have to work out a few display quirks (spacing and blank lines seem to be missing in the syndicated content), I really like the plugin so far.

Thanks for your patience in advanced while I try to get organized over the next week or two.

Michael

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3.6 (2 people)

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Upgrading my Blog

User ImageTheCanadianFoodie | June 30, 2008


I am about to upgrade CanadianFoodies.com to Wordpress 2.5.

So please ignore any short term randomness as I disable plugins, upgrade and (hopefully not) troubleshoot. We’ll be back to our regularly scheduled program shortly!

Thanks for your patience.

* Update (15 minutes later) - Upgrade complete. If you notice any further randomness, it is completely my fault!

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2.7

Topics: iFoodie | Comments

Excuse Me for a Moment

User ImageMichael | June 30, 2008


I am about to upgrade to Wordpress 2.5.

So please ignore any short term randomness as I disable plugins, upgrade and (hopefully not) troubleshoot. We’ll be back to our regularly scheduled program shortly!

Thanks for your patience.

* Update (20 minutes later) - Upgrade is complete. If you notice any randomness from here on in, it’s completely my fault!

Rate this:
3.2

Topics: Wordpress | Comments

Breaded Veal with Mushroom Gravy

User ImageTheCanadianFoodie | May 28, 2008

I forgot to take a picture! -ack- I must be out of practice… I took a few days off work to celebrate an extra long holiday weekend (and my birthday - yay me!-) and that generally means a little more time to plan a nice meal. And in typical fashion, I went with a few new dishes… Thursday night meant Breaded veal in a rich mushroom gravy (a hunters-style gravy) and lemon beans (with lemon zest and more mushrooms) . Read the rest of this entry »

Topics: iFoodie | Comments

Wintered Vegetables

User ImageTheCanadianFoodie | May 5, 2008

We spent a day in the fields today. For future refernce (because I know you MUST be visiting and reading my site fanatically!) Saturday or Sunday means garden day. Unfortunately, and if you followed along last summer you probably know, we live in the city. Not that living in the city is unfortunate, there are plenty of good things about living in the city and at this point in our lives it just makes sense to be close to everything. But, I was raised in the country and would like to find my way back sometime before I retire :) Read the rest of this entry »

Topics: iFoodie | Comments

The Perfect Steak

User ImageTheCanadianFoodie | May 3, 2008

How do you know when your steak is finished on the bbq? Practice. But in the meantime, stop asking HOW LONG… because it’s not the right question. Read the rest of this entry »

Topics: iFoodie | Comments

Canadian Foodies in 2008

User ImageTheCanadianFoodie | April 24, 2008

Hello everyone! Thanks for visiting. To any of my old regulars, thanks for checking back. We’ve been a little quiet around here over the past 6 months or so… what can I say :) I’ve been hibernating through the long Canadian Winter! Read the rest of this entry »

Topics: iFoodie | Comments

The new and improved ScribeFire

User ImageMichael | April 22, 2008


I love Firefox.

I have plenty of other browsers installed, some are good, some less so… but I’ve never found anything to coax me away from Firefox.

Believe or not though, this post isn’t about why I love firefox, but rather it’s addon capabilities.

There are a lot of smart folks who have produced a lot of smart addons that make my day to day life easier and more productive. (I’m sure most of those smart folks don’t read this blog, but if you do, THANK YOU!)

Specifically, the reason for my little ode to Firefox came about because I just installed the new version of ScribeFire.

I used to use ScribeFire back when it was called Performance or Performancing and for one reason or another stopped (I honestly can’t remember why). But I came across news on the newest release today and reinstalled it… and what a treat!

ScribeFire is a Firefox addon that provides you with full posting capabilities from any webpage.

Once you’ve set it up to talk with your blog (took about 15 seconds) you can create posts/notes/drafts/pages from anywhere! No more copy and pasting from one tab or window to another!

And the ScribeFire WYSIWYG is significantly better than any built in blog editor I’ve used before.

Other features from ScribeFire:

…categorize and tag your blog posts, upload images, set the timestamp of your posts, save works-in-progress as notes, post an entry as a draft, share your posts on social websites, and upload files via FTP.

You can also open multiple posts in ScribeFire at the same time, copy text from a website and preserve the sites formatting, copy text as a quote with attribution, supports common keyboard shortcuts, call up old posts in the ScribeFire interface, flip between code and design views, pull in images or video from flickr or youtube instantly and even promote your post via several social bookmarking sites right from the interface.

I love the fact that ScribeFire is tabbed and isn’t locked to the page you are on, so you can do some research, opening each source in a different tab, and then open ScribeFire and flip back and forth between all your sources, pulling what you need without interrupting your blogging interface!

A couple of funny things I did notice already (hey, nothing’s perfect right!?)…

All said this is a great addition to Firefox for any blogger and I heartily recommend giving it a try (I’ve only been using for 1/2 an hour and look what I have to say!)

This is the best lifehack/workhack tool I’ve tried out in a long time!

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2.9

Topics: Blogging, Lifehack, Tools | Comments

On another note…

User ImageMichael | April 21, 2008


lineup-scjody_295949049.jpgI read an interesting article on China today that claimed two intriguing things (neither of which I’ve spent the time to try and validate… but they sound good!):

1. If the entire population of China were to walk past you in single file, the line would never end (due to the rate of reproduction).

2. There are more English speaking people in China than in all of North America.

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2.9

Topics: Conversations | Comments

Firefox is the #1 Browser

User ImageMichael | April 16, 2008


I was just glancing through some of the analytics for this domain (MichaelValiant.com) and noticed that Firefox has taken over as the number one browser being used by visitors.

And firefox didn’t just slide ahead, it blew by IE usage!

So either Firefox is taking a huge market share nowadays (and I love the new betas of 3 (other than the fact that my plugins don’t work)! So keep it up FF!) or I am attracting more and more of the geeky side of the interwebs.   :)

Either way, Firefox rocks this blog!

FireFox rocks this blog

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2.9

Topics: Analytics, Technology | Comments



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