Speaking the King's

"Now, about this pickle..." classic line by Michael Fassbender, my new favourite actor, and as much as I admire Daniel Craig, I wouldn't be disappointed if Michael Fassbender (eventually) becomes the new James Bond. He's already got the role down pat - that supreme coolness under fire. Here's the full heaven:


"Well, if this is it, old boy, I hope you don’t mind if I go out speaking the King’s… [smokes] there’s a special rung in hell reserved for people who waste good scotch. Seeing as how I may be rapping on the door momentarily… [drinks] I must say, damn good stuff, Sir. Now, about this pickle… we find ourselves in…"

- Michael Fassbender as Lt. Archie Hicox in Inglourious Basterds

Twitter Tips for NL Bloggers

Twitter has been invaluable to our community as of late and I'm not only talking about the wealth of new blogs I've discovered either. The ability to spread the word about our beloved blogroll to a whole new group of socially connected people has been very worthwhile. Not only have I met a tonne of new and awesome folks, many new visitors are checking out this blog as well and thus, everyone else's blogs. Most of all though, twitter has been fun and if you're a user yourself and an NL Blogger, you're going to want to read up.

Twitter Lists
I've created a bunch of Newfoundland and Labrador related twitter lists (NL Newsies, NL Arts, NL People and Newfoundlandia), some of them displayed on the sidebar, but the main one we have to chit chat about is the one dedicated to this BlogRoll community: NL Bloggers. It currently sits at 136 followed, all bloggers from the province also using twitter. If you're not listed there yet, let me know and I'll rectify that problem (@seliharris).

NL Blogger's Daily
A related initiative comes from a free service (Paper.li) which collects links from tweets into one online 'Newspaper'. I've created one for us (NL Blogger's Daily) which will collect posts found in the NL Bloggers Twitter list daily. Every 24 hours a new paper will be created and with that, a new tweet of the top stories selected from these posts sent out to the twitter-verse. Lovely no?

Twitter Feed
Speaking of sending posts into the twitter-verse, I strongly recommend any blogger n' twitter user sign up for TwitterFeed. It's again another free service which automatically tweets whenever you post a new entry to your blog. It creates a short url of your post and includes it in the tweet, along with the title. It also lets you add a prefix and suffix (any text you want) to the tweet as well. For mine, I decided to have 'NL Blog Post' before the link and title followed by a couple hashtags: #Newfoundland #Blogs. It can be anything you want though. Have fun with it. I think it's a great tool to easily help promote your blog posts. Check it out.


As you can see, I've been busy trying all kinds of new way to help promote all of us here. Twitter has provided me an opportunity to network with a boatload of new people and with that an ability to talk about this beloved community we have here. That to me is worth all the time I spend there.

Of course, I'm slightly twit-dicted, so that helps too...

, BlogRoll

Desperate Last Gasp of the Socialist Senate

McGuilty, Dexter, and Quebec Liberals agree. Don't reform the Senate. Abolish it.

Balloney.

I don't believe these knuckleheads for a nanosecond - no wait - not a picosecond!

Canadian socialists, oh hell let's call them what they want to be called - elitist snobby neo-urban "Progressives" - love an unelected, unaccountable, unequal senate.

It's served them well. Being a home for the privileged few experts that can manage all things from the top down is a theme not unknown to Socialists everywhere - especially well mannered Jack Layton.

The senate was the only real opposition to Stephen Harper since 2006. The rest of the political left being too afraid to offend voters, actually grow a pair and fight for what they actually believe in.

The Senate is a Progressive's dream legislative body. Filled with former bureaucrats, former social elites, former/current criminals, former media personalities, and artists how could it get better for the Canadian left?

Jack Layton isn't change. Neither was Iggy Puff. They are the status quo. Canadian Progressives have been in charge in Canada for decades, controling the judiciary, most bureaucracies, and proliferate among most of the upper echelons of Canadian society.

That's what it's really about for Progressives - fear of change.

In order to avoid charges of being elitist they turn to calling for the Senate's abolition to mask their hidden agenda. The truth is Senate reform is the only practical way of fixing the senate. Abolishing it would require Constitutional reform - good luck with that! Progressives know this, which is why Senate abolition is such a good fall back for them. They can always block any changes and avoid any charges of elitism by saying "abolish it!"

Canadian Conservatives finally have the power to reform that dis-functional disgusting throwback to European feudalism. And Canadian Progressives are scared.

They should be.

Blog of the Week : 05/29 - 06/04 2011

The Blog of the Week for the week of May 29th to June 4th, 2011 is 'Librarian Mom'; a personal blog from the mind of Lisa who writes mostly about being a new mom. I've always been impressed with personal bloggers who are freely able to share themselves to the world. It takes a certain something in a person to be able to let themselves be open like that and I fully respect it.What's best is what you can learn from such people as they share their experiences with us. In Lisa's case, she posts tales of being a new mother and there can't ever be enough information and advice on such a thing. Better still is the fact that Lisa's background is in research and within her blog she also responds to news and updates related to her new journey. It really is a delightful corner of the web and like every blog featured in this community, it's well worth the visit. At this point, you probably know what I'm going to say: go visit. :)

Choice Awards Prep

In preparation for the 2011 Newfoundland Labrador Blogger's Choice Awards, I am attempting to achieve many things, and with time winding down before my intended (unannounced) start date for the awards quickly approaching, the pressure to keep working is intensifying. Of course, it's more excitement than stress I should point out. I'm just ecstatic to get this thing on the go! In the meantime, I should cool my jets for a moment and take a break from the tinkering to fill you in on what I've been working on.

Shortlisted
As posted in the Bloggers Choice Awards section, 50 blogs  have now been shortlisted. I will be finalizing the list of 30 (3 per category) as soon as possible. There are still some promotional and information items I'll have to take care of when the finalists are selected and time is running out. The thing is, it's rather difficult finalizing the list with so many awesome blogs to choose from.

Categorical Update
The most work I have to take care of before the dust settles within the awards, is finishing off the category pages that I've been working on. For those who don't know, I've been developing stand alone pages for the 10 categories we have within the BlogRoll here, each with a dedicated list of all the blogs found in that category. The intention is for a better browsing experience.

And just because I'm excited; if you'd like a sneak peak of what these pages are going to look like, check out a rough version of the Politics / Commentary one I've started. Keep in mind that this is not anywhere final, but it will give you an idea of where I'm going.

What's best about these stand alone pages is that it provides an opportunity to further promote the choice bloggers this year and beyond. Each category's page will have promotional items (badges, rss feeds, etc) for winner's blog for the entire year... and who knows where each page will go from there. With each category essentially now having it's own 'blog', the possibilities are endless really... 

I should perhaps remain focused on the awards though. I have to remember that time is short and I am easily distracted... and with that, back at it!