Spring comes early with cherry blossoms blooming and a clear blue sky but winter is alive and well fresh snow on the mountains. I’m not complaining.

A video blog of me ranting on about spandex cycle wear.

I’m not sure why so many cyclist dress in spandex like they’re in some bike race when clearly they are just communting to work. Perhaps they are racers in their spare time and it’s habit to but on the full regalia.

Stripped down to its bare cold bones, the Olympics, simply put, is a world sized party. A party that no wedding planner or online event organizer could ever imagine putting together in their wildest wet business dreams. It’s a party that’s been planned again and again for a long long time. O.K., it’s history is fuzzy so blur your eyes. It’s still been going a long time. It’s only because of it’s ongoing history that it is possible at the scale it is today. It’s only because of its shear size that it is the way it is.

Who doesn’t like a party? If you left town then it must be you. You don’t like a party. Maybe you just don’t want the party in your house. Maybe you went to Mexico and delivered your tourist dollars there were they get distributed to the disenfranchised… oh wait.

Maybe you didn’t leave town. Maybe just sat there and complained about crowds of people who (how dare they) were enjoying themselves aimlessly walking around. Perhaps you might try aimlessly walking around sometime, it’s a lot of fun. How was your commute? did it affect you you you?

Fun was always having an event to watch and root for. Fun shows and events put on for free and popping up everywhere magically. Fun was learning more about my country. Fun was accidentally walking into a giant crowd of happy people – all the time. Fun was being a part of the elation that built in an ever increasing momentum – because I let it happen to me.

I think that’s the difference. I let it happen. If you’re pissed off you will remain so because you need to be right.

To be honest, I voted not to have the Olympics here. I could, (and still can) see all the issues it brings. I lost that vote. Are we better off? who cares? nothing can be done about that. I know that party will have a hang over. I know we need to clean up. I know.

Yea, it’s easy to critisize and point to everything wrong with the Olympics. I am surrounded by these people. It’s easy to say in loud online voices how you hate the people “invading”, hate the organizers, hate money being spent for anything other than healthcare, schools, the arts, and any other special cause that personally affects you. In reality, there never is enough money for those programs. There never will be – ever. Let’s talk about that some other time.

What’s hard for some is being happy because in their minds, happiness equals stupidity. Happiness has a bad reputation among pissed off people. Let’s talk about that next time.

I am so glad I experienced an Olympics in my town.

Fridge vs Avocado Green, Stainless Steel, White…

Running Car vs Paint Colour, Shape window tints….

3 bedroom home plans vs spacial environment and finishes inside and out

Having worked in the construction industry for years before taking the design career by the horns has helped a lot in web design. A single building is drawn by an architect,  many engineers and a designer. The architectural drawings describe how it’s built, the engineering describes what size pipes, wiring, supporting walls etc. And the design drawing give the finishes. They almost always all work together at some point in the planning process.

Creating a web site can be just as complicated as house construction.

The web developer is like the architect. If there is no final wire frame (plan) in mind then that becomes part of the solution. The developer must create a website that allows for the design to be altered by the user.

The web designer brands, colours and re-shapes the functioning website.

If you hire a designer to develop your site, hopefully they will contract out the hard coding parts and not attempt to do it themsleves.

If you hire a developer to design and brand your site, hope fully the same will apply as above.

Very rarely do both co-exist in one person with any degree of success. It’s a simple fact of left brain right brain thinking.

No where in this post is SEO mentioned. That’s because SEO not just part of website construction alone and has nothing to do with branding and design. If SEO is important to the website owner (and who wouldn’t), it get’s built in as part of the development. It is then taught to the owner on how to use it, what content to write and where to put it. If SEO is the most important thing on your website list, don’t ask for it last.

Think of it this way:

A website is a bricks and mortar storefront, (Really it is the new store front of today but that’s entirely another post). How easy the door swings open is how easy it is for search engines to index. But here’s the kicker, (and a big giant ass kicker to some), if there is nothing inside your store worth going in for, then no one will go in, including search engines. It’s not that simple but close.

More and more people who understand this concept are winning the SEO battle. They treat their websites like a real store on a real street. They make it look good, inviting, social and interesting to the niche they want to attract. They change it up, keep it clean and easy to get around. The more people who visit the website, or should I say: The more crowded the inside of that store becomes the more popular it becomes – to search engines too. Go figure: it’s just . like . real . life.

If you see a crowd of people in a store, you go in, even if the door is a little hard to open. You are going to find your way in.

Not a believer yet?

Why then do I come up 2nd or third on a Google Search typing in the words BC Ferries Assured Boarding? Because it’s more interesting than the boring static government regulated website. People comment here creating more activity. You go there because you have to, you come here because you want to.

I found a great article that lists the importance of SEO techniques and other factors considered when everyone else is trying to shoehorn a site into search engine existence. The highest ranking factor is popularity among other things. but here are some of the things I found listed low on the SEO importance list that you may find interesting.

HTML Validation to W3C Standards is of minimal importance (a good thing for this site – let me tell you)
Server/Hosting Uptime minimal importance
Use of XML Sitemap(s) 29% minimal importance
Social Media/Social Graph Based Ranking Factors minimal importance

Surprisingly

Geographic Location of the Host IP Address of the Domain 57% high importance (wouldn’t have thunk it)

Check it out yourself at http://www.seomoz.org/article/search-ranking-factors/

We’re all familiar with blog posts and one of the familiar parts is seeing a number of  links at the bottom of every post wanting you to “share-this-article”. They are called Social Bookmarks. People who are active in the blogosphere push those buttons because it nice. It’s a new social etiquette like letting others on the elevator first or holding a door for someone, clicking those links helps the blog owner increase search ratings. Bloggers and commenter’s are usually one and the same and we have our blogs we like to visit. They become friends.

This blog has never been about search rating but it is fun to watch traffic after blogging some opinionated article and experiment with different forms of SEO. I never added any social bookmarking links because they are ugly. (but who cares about my opinion). A few clicks for the sake of ruining the look of my page wasn’t worth it.

Enter the Sexy Bookmarks Wordpress Plugin found during a search for client work over at TribalYell. As soon as I found it I knew it was a winner and it would soon be on my blog too. Easy to install like any plugin in the latest versions of Wordpress. Click “add new” in your plugins menu, search for “SexyBookmarks” and click install. Go to the admin section for Sexybookmarks and choose which bookmarks to display. Enjoy.

So now you see them, Feel free to click on them. The makers of the Sexylinks plugin will thank you.

I don’t know why my friends are sending me this stuff. I love all my clients.

How much does it cost is a common question for a design business’s email inbox supplying websites to Realtors. Of course no one minds answering. It’s what we signed up for in this line of work. But there is no easy short answer to the how much question because everyone is different – or are they?

Almost all inquiries about how much a website cost to design and build are coming from people without any branding what-so-ever. It seems a common trait in the real estate niche but for a small few. In any other business there is a plan in place but in real estate the end result is the plan and most web designers working in this real estate niche are creating the visual branding as part of the web-design and including it in their price.

“My web guy designed my logo” is a pretty common thing to hear when a sign guy needs the printable artwork to work with or a printshop is trying to put together the business cards and all they have to work with are crappy web graphics.

So the question how much is a website isn’t the really the question.

This is a week filled with meetings. Meetings with people who are in the business of designing for real estate. Together we will work to discover the true nature of the problem and come up with a unique solution – or two.

On the business side of things no one cares but I’ll save that for the other blog. On the friends and family side of things, it might be mildly interesting but I’m not expecting a huge following on this one. I’ll make it easy read point form. Here is today:

• Didn’t have enough energy to make breakfast until it was almost lunch.
• Had to get outside to meet BCAA dude and prove the car wouldn’t start. (banging on the gas tank, etc)
• He called a tow-truck
• The BCAA tow-truck came and did the exact same things, (banging on the gas tank, etc).
• Towed it up and out to Midas on 4th and Arbutus (pic) and what an idiotic time it was towing it there.
• Walked to the clinic on Broadway to be poked and prodded and sent to the lab
• Walked to lab one block down and was drained, wizzed and stooled.
• walked to pick up Brandon with Danielle because I needed one of those fruit cups that a sandwich shop near us carries but she wanted to go to … wait for it…. Starbucks! so that’s where I had my fruitcup lunch/dinner
• Left them to play cards while I walked across the Burrard Street Bridge to cash cheques at TD Canada Trust because I haven’t made into work to get my regular pay cheque.
• Got to TD Canada Trust on Davie only to discover I left all the cheques at home.
• purchased bus tickets, rode home, got the cheques, rode back, deposited, rode back
• Made dinner for Brandon and I and it all made me feel so good when he finished the whole thing, casually got up and said:
• “I’m getting some more”

Help us reclaim your back alley with Christmas lights, caroling and mulled cider.

This year, join us and decorate your alley.  Light up your windows, balconies, and fences on the alley side with the spirit of Christmas and Solstice.

At our location (2137 West 1st Avenue) we are decorating the alley between 1st Avenue and York Street, from Arbutus to Yew Street. Then on Sunday Dec 20th at 8pm, we are Christmas caroling and handing out mulled cider  in the alley.

Join the Facebook Group and tell us how you’re turning your alley into a livable area.