The Falcon 1 owned by Musk’s private space exploration company, SpaceX, left the ground and stayed off it for 2 minutes and 20 seconds before second- and third-stage rockets failed to ignite. The whole thing, including Scotty’s ashes, plunged back to earth.
Well, back to the Pacific Ocean anyway. But nothing, particularly not the fate of a legend, is simple, and it seems there had already been a couple of false starts and a frantic search leading up to the ultimate un-ternment. For a man who claimed (falsely, but amusingly) that he was kicked out of the Canadian Air Force for slaloming his plane between hydro poles on a bet, the rolling swells of the unfettered tropical ocean are indeed the Final Frontier.
Blogging for Beginners: four hours, start from scratch and learn to post text, video, audio, and images. Basic copyright and blog etiquette, intro to sidebar widgets, categories, custom headers and design, and what on Earth to put IN the blog. Also where to find technical help.
This one is running August 2nd, ie this Saturday, 10-2, $150 pre-registered, and only eightfour three spaces left. I’ll be running it again on the 23rd.
To register, please pre-pay via the Paypal button in the top right-hand corner of the blog. Paypal will give you a receipt and I will email you one as well. If you are registering for the August 2nd course, please email bloggingclasses AT gmail DOT com in advance to make sure the class is not sold out.
Pimp My Blog is practical tips and tools for increasing your readership and influence, and applies to any blogging platform (with the exception of Tumblr, which is really only good for talking to the voices inside your head in my opinion). It includes a very basic intro to social media like Facebook and Myspace for promotion. I’ll be teaching this one on Saturday, August 9th. This is a $150 course, also from 10-2. There are only eight places in each session.
Last: Vacation Blogging (I should have done this in June!). Covers what to do with all those photos and all those memories to keep them fresh forever. It’s basically Blogging for Beginners, with added talk about mobile posting and internet cafes and photoblogging issues. FYI it’s also $150, and runs Saturday, August 16th. Six spaces, because this is going to be more personal.
Perhaps I may be ever so slightly melodramatic, but I blame California (doesn’t everyone blame California, no matter what we’re talking about? It’s your choice of California, Tories, or Global Warming where I come from). After all, they started it. How is anyone else supposed to make the news when they’re all, like, “Earthquake! Earthquake!”
I mean, I was all, “Yeah, it’s California. It’s not a headline: it’s a given.”
But whatever.
So tonight I went out for a nice skate with a nice bunch of people and it was…nice, despite the fact that I was, once again, the slowest in the group and didn’t even have the excuse of a hangover to blame, although it must be said and indeed will be said, and by none other than me, that my bearings have long since turned to rubble and need replacing. Should a couple more someones sign up for my blogging classes I might be able to buy some new ones next month in the Comor sale, but that is as may be, or may not be.
But whatever.
So, I get the skate in and have a good time and on my way home as I’m calmly skating along, both minding my own business and sticking to the so-called cycle-pedestrian “path” under Canada Place, a “path” distinguished primarily by two painted lines and a texture something like the surface of Mars, when what happens?
Did I mention I’m rather overloaded at the moment? I believe I may have made a passing reference to that situation in the recent past. And overload is antithetical to blogging. Antithetical? That so totally can’t be right.
Stupid spelchekar!
Well, add to that the fact that my bank card apparently won’t work, even though for once there is money in the account and which usually means VISA is mad at me for some reason although I DID make the payment this month but, let’s face it, Mister Visa is an evil, evil man.
And people are now stopping me in the street asking me how to post on their blogs when FearlessCity is down, which it has been for something well over one and possibly approaching two weeks, so I take a few hours out of my day, meet them at Job Shop, and set them up on WordPress.com of course instead. We’ll copy/paste later, although by that time they might be spoiled for Drupal blogging, who knows?
And, oh yes, having spent some of today trying on clothes I realize that making time to exercise is No. Longer. Optional. Frankly, I’m lucky my ass fits in a jeep, never mind jeans.
Also, I’ve consumed basically nothing but bacon-maple donuts, fries, dim sum, cake, and alcohol since Friday afternoon, for which I have to take my friends’s word, as I do not actually recall. Not that this is unusual for me…
So, blog posts are coming. In the meantime, have a nice summer song:
B-52’s Roam
I hear a wind
whistling air
whispering
in my ear
Boy mercury shootin through every degree
oh girl dancin down those DIRTY and DUSTY trails
take it hip to hip rock it through the wilderness
around the world the trip begins with a kiss
roam if you want to
roam around the world
roam if you want to
without anything but the love we feel
skip the air-strip to the sunset yeah
ride the arrow to the target
take it hip to hip rock it through the wilderness
around the world the trip begins with a kiss
roam if you want to
roam around the world
roam if you want to
without anything but the love we feel
fly the great big sky see the great big sea
kick through continents bustin bounaries
take it hip to hip rock it through the wilderness
around the world the trip begins with a kiss
roam if you want to
roam around the world
roam if you want to
without wings, without wheels
roam if you want to
roam around the world
roam if you want to
without anything but the love we feel
take it hip to hip rock it through the wilderness
take it hip to hip rock it through the wilderness
take it hip to hip rock it through the wilderness
take it hip to hip rock it through the wilderness
take it hip to hip rock it through the wilderness
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raincoaster 