Some new stuff
Michael | 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
| 3.6 (2 people) |
Topics: Uncategorized | Comments
Upgrading my Blog
TheCanadianFoodie | 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!
| 2.7 |
Excuse Me for a Moment
Michael | 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!
| 3.2 |
Breaded Veal with Mushroom Gravy
TheCanadianFoodie | May 28, 2008
Wintered Vegetables
TheCanadianFoodie | May 5, 2008
The Perfect Steak
TheCanadianFoodie | May 3, 2008
Canadian Foodies in 2008
TheCanadianFoodie | April 24, 2008
The new and improved ScribeFire
Michael | 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!?)…
- Some tags, like heading tags, are absent from the interface and you will need to code them directly (not a huge deal).
- If you accidentally use the wrong formatting somewhere, clicking the same button doesn’t UNDO it, you have to flip over to code view and delete the associated tags
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!
| 2.9 |
Topics: Blogging, Lifehack, Tools | Comments
On another note…
Michael | April 21, 2008
I 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.
| 2.9 |
Topics: Conversations | Comments
Firefox is the #1 Browser
Michael | 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!
| 2.9 |
Topics: Analytics, Technology | Comments
