Tag: Blog Posts

I was recently looking for a decently priced VPS where I could host a couple of small to medium sized websites. I actually signed up for a few random ones that I found on Google and tried them for a few days, but they didn’t strike me as working very well. One of them actually crashed after about an hour, and it took about eight hours for support to finally restart it for me. Eventually I started looking around the internet a bit more, and ran into a relatively new company called Digital Ocean. I realize that not all web companies have nice looking web pages, but whenever I encounter one that does it immediately makes me feel more comfortable about trying it out. One of the claims on the front page really stood out to me: Deploy a SSD Cloud Server in 55 seconds. I had to test it […]

One of the first things I did when I committed myself to travelling around the world was to set up a blog. Indeed, I recently just assisted two other people in getting theirs up, one for a trip around the world, and one for a yearly RV trip down to Arizona. This post will give you easy instructions for how to set up a blog using WordPress. Part of the motivation I find with most people is the desire to share some of their experiences, both positive and negative, with others. Since so much of travel research is done these days via the Internet, the desire for most people to contribute to that wealth of information during their own trip is great. Using WordPress WordPress is one of the most popular blogging ‘engines’ powering the internet today. If you visit a website that looks like a typical blog, then chances […]

While I’ve tried off and on to make a little money from my website over the years, it’s never been something that was really important to me, primarily because I have another full time job that makes me more than enough money. Another reason is that I personally am not a huge fan of most advertising, as I find a lot of it to be intrusive. That said, travelling around the world and writing about it isn’t cheap. I likely spend anywhere from $6,000 a year or so on plane tickets, and lots of other money on tourist attractions, subway tickets, bus rides, and of course restaurants and pubs. Some of those expenses would exist if I were back home as well, but some of them are exclusive to travelling. I know a few travel bloggers who manage to get sponsored trips to various places and as a result have […]

As you can see, things around here have changed. I finally got around to doing something I’ve wanted to do for quite sometime – I’ve removed all my old entries. Obviously I have backups of everything I wrote, and can reimport things at a later time. But truthfully, pretty much everything I wrote in the old days is all over the map, and I’ve been thinking about starting to write consistently in a few different areas. In terms of the look and feel, this is the default 2010 theme with WordPress 3.0. I debated spending some time re-theming this site again, but just don’t really feel like spending the time and effort this time around. So for now, I’m just going to use the default theme and place my focus on generating content for a change. The two areas I’ll probably focus on in the short term are food/cooking and […]

I don’t do it very often, mainly because my fingers are not iPhone friendly, but i have the wordpress iPhone app which allows me to blog from anywhere pretty much. So here I am in bed, working my iPhone. Today was a long day, and tomorrow will likely be as well. Good news is there’s a light shining at the end of the tunnel (hopefully it’s not a fuse). Not sure what I’ll do this weekend. I’d like to hit the gym a few times if possible. Other than that, probably catch up on errands and maybe catch a movie in the theatre – haven’t done that in a while. That’s me on the iPhone, signing out.

Pretty good article I read today about the importance of slowing your life down. I think it’s relevant since it’s basically been the direction I’ve been taking my life for the last seven months. Read the goods here.

Well, thus ends Blogathon 2009 – it was quite the adventure, one that I’m glad I was a part of again. The official Blogathon website shows approximately $40,000 raised for the various charities this weekend, which is totally awesome. Of that amount, approximately $1,250 was raised by the content on this blog, and by the people who supported my efforts and the BC Children’s Hospital Foundation. So once again, you guys all have my sincerest thanks. But while the donations and money are obviously appreciated, this event is about more than money. It’s about a group of people banding together to make a difference. And for that, every blog or person that was a part of blogathon helped make a difference. So with that, I bid you all adieu. I’m packing up, grabbing a cab, and hopefully spending the better part of the afternoon sleeping. Thanks again everyone.

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 use the photo. Still thinking about how that would work, but I think it would be a useful feature, and I’ve always wanted to write a plugin that interfaces with PayPal. Some other things I’d like to integrate: Somehow incorporate Flickr photo […]

I’m going to overhaul this website again, most likely starting in July. To be perfectly honest, writing content just isn’t as satisfying as it once was, partially because I don’t have as much to write these days, and partially because I am just enjoying other aspects of my life more (such as going outside to hit some tennis balls around or heading up to the lake for lunch). Something I’ve always wanted on this blog, and that I’ve never really been able to achieve, is to have something that’s predominantly photo-centric. So my goal in July will be transform this blog into something more photo oriented, and pushing most of my other content to the sidelines. One thing I’ve realized is that my current content dictates a lot of the design when I do each iteration. To that end, I’m probably going to scrap a lot of the main content […]

Somewhere in Vancouver.