I received these two pieces of mail yesterday: a complimentary issue of MacLean’s magazine along with a pitch to subscribe; and a pitch from Maisonneuve magazine, a way cooler rag that promises it is “definitely not MacLean’s.”
I don’t know if the people at Maisonneuve were aware of the MacLean’s campaign, or if this was just a coincidence. I hope they were aware, because if so this is a pretty cool marketing trick.
Voting for “round one” is on at the Canadian Blog Awards. A few things have changed at the CBA since last year, the most notable being the voting mechanism. It’s now done through Polldaddy, which probably makes it a lot less complicated for the person who’s running the awards but unfortunately makes it far more tedious for we, the voters.
In previous years, all voting took place on a single page. There was a list of nominated blogs, divided by category, each with a radio button that you ticked to register your vote. The nominee list were linked back to the source blog, so you could easily check them out before voting.
This year, each category is on a separate page in the CBA blog, so you have to do a lot of bouncing back and forth in order to see all the nominees. When it comes to voting, each category is on a separate Polldaddy voting page, and none are linked to the blogs. Unless you know in advance who you want to vote for, all you have is a list of blog names, not even in alphabetical order.
If you have some spare time, I encourage you to sift through the nominations pages, as there are some interesting Canadian blogs to be found there. (I should also note that there are tons of interesting Canadian blogs that are not found there. Montrealers, in particular, seem to be woefully underrepresented.)
Despite the shortcomings, I encourage you, if you are so inclined, to actually go to the Polldaddy pages and do some voting.
Oh, and if you’re feeling particularly blorky today, you might consider voting for yours truly. (You saw that coming, didn’t you?) I am nominated in the following categories:
While you’re at it, why not vote for some of our other friends:
Voting closes January 21, 2008! Note that you can only vote once per round.
(Updated! See below…)
According to Pascal Yiacouvakis, the morning weather guy on CBC Radio’s Montreal morning show, we’ve broken two seemingly opposing weather records so far this winter. Since December 21, we’ve broken the records for snow fall, and for warm temperatures!
We saw that writ large over the few days as the previous week’s big snowfall vanished in what seemed like a matter of hours. I have never seen so much snow melt so fast.
Below are two photos I took recently while waiting for the bus in the morning. The first was taken on January 3, and the second was taken a week later (yesterday).
January 3, 2008 |
Above: cold (-15°C), bright, clean, and wintery. Below: mild (4°C), grey, windy, and getting ready to start raining again. Which do you prefer?
January 10, 2008 |
I wish I had also taken some photos downtown, as the change there is even more dramatic. I couldn’t believe it when I stepped outside Wednesday evening; there wasn’t a single scrap of snow or ice anywhere to be seen. Not even a cold grey clump tucked away in a dark corner. Downtown was as snow-free as a day in July.
Five days later and we’ve come (almost) full circle:
Five days later: January 15, 2008. |
