Explorations in this amazing landscape
It seems that Technorati has become an important part of successful blogging. KylesCove’s Ultimate Guide to Using Technorati provides a good explanation of how (and why) to use Technorati effectively.
Technorati Tags: Blogging, promote, Technorati, WordPress
Well, these are the instructions from technorati that are required to prove that I manage this blog. Edit to comment that Technorati was not working! Edited again when the problem seemed resolved. Read on for details.
Technorati Tags: Blogging, promote, Technorati, WordPress
I was surprised to find that by using Ecto instead of MarsEdit, there were some blogging features available to me that may be valuable. I’ve learned about them as a result of trying Ecto. Since I am new to blogging, some of this exploration may be incomplete, or even incorrect. Here are the 3 discoveries.
Technorati Tags: WordPress, Flickr, iPhoto, MarsEdit, pictures, promote, Tags, Technorati, Blogging, Categories, ecto
That pic was taken only a few moments ago. It will be snowing for the rest of the afternoon. The forecast for the City of Vancouver is for the snow to become rain overnight. We’ll see, it is often just a bit colder here, around the corner, in Howe Sound.
Technorati Tags: Vancouver, Canada, snow, blizzard, Howe Sound, fun, cold, winter
Snow is a rare event on this balmy island in the Salish Sea. It is November, it has snowed, and now it is sunny and cold. This snow is not vanishing. That’s the upper plateau of Black Mountain on the mainland. The view is from Miller’s Landing on Bowen.
Yes, snow down to sea level on Bowen Island – in November! (Click pic to see larger.) This morning as my daughter walked to work, I went with her as far as the top of the 7-Hills.
Last night Bowen Islanders went out in the rising snow storm and packed Collins Hall to see Al Gore’s movie on global warming, An Inconvenient Truth. The movie was introduced by Councillor David Hocking, who was at Kyoto, has been with Mr. Gore when he delivered the talk, and is currently Acting Executive Director of the David Suzuki Foundation. It was wonderful to be in a room filled with people who care about this old world.
The irony was that because of the unusual snow and cold, we didn’t dare drive the van all the way up the hills to home. We walked the last bit. It was lovely, actually.
“What is the Salish Sea?” I was asked recently.
It is the beautiful and abundant waters of the Pacific Ocean that are protected from the open ocean by Vancouver Island in Canada and the Olympic Peninsula in the USA. It is the homeland of Coast Salish First Nation people.
This large waterway includes Puget Sound, the Strait of Georgia, and the Strait of Juan de Fuca. The cities of Vancouver and Seattle are here. It is surrounded by snow capped mountains and fed fresh water from mighty rivers and long fjords, some of which drain vast high icefields that are reminiscent of the great glacier of the last ice age.
It is a powerful seascape that is moving in all of its moods. I love the way it is celebrated in song by Pauline Le Bel on the CD, Voices in the Sound. And it is my home.
Please explore the region with this Google Map. We like maps! This one can be a bit slow to load.
Technorati Tags: Canada, Howe Sound, map, nature, Salish Sea, Vancouver
Here is a bit of bloggery that I will forget if I don’t record what happened.
I wrote that bit yesterday about a wonderful wet romp up to the new new snow on Mt. Gardner. And created a new category called Backcountry. Backcountry is a word my spelling checker does not know; but all wilderness wanderers use it. And us environmentalists make a distinction between frontcountry and backcountry activities.
When I clicked my new category to try it out, it opened a page that reported:
Error 404 – Not Found
Sorry, but what you’re looking for isn’t here. Perhaps you typed a URL incorrectly or clicked on a broken hyperlink.
Then I found that clicking ANY of my categories led to that page. What had I done? I tried reposting that new article, and a few other silly actions, and finally went to the WordPress Site for a solution. I posted my problem in WordPress Support » How-To and Troubleshooting. Moshu, the Moderator wrote right back to say:
The right forum for you is at http://wordpress.com/forums
(we are the wp.ORG guys here)
Howesound wrote:
Thanks moshu. I suppose I should understand the distinction between org and com at wordpress. Anyhow off I go to the world of com-merce.
At the WordPress.com/forum a sticky message recognized the problem with categories, and promised a fix. So, there was no point in my posting anything. And I see that today it is fixed.
At another sticky, Andy the Key Master provides a full description of the difference between WordPress the ORG and WordPress the COM, here: http://wordpress.com/forums/topic.php?id=3700. It was good to find out about this, and to discover this helpful forum.
So, didn’t I say I’d no longer be writing to this blog? Well, I just wanted to talk about this somewhere.
My daughter (C) asked if I’d walk up the mountain on Bowen Island, Mt Gardner, with her today. It is a treat for me when anyone wants to go into the backcountry with me. We would go whatever the weather. We left home a little after 10 AM. Hardly an alpine start.
The sun had been shining earlier, but as we headed up there were a few drops blown by a gusty breeze. It is a short hike – about 2000 vertical feet from the trailhead to the summit. In good weather, when I am fit (I’m not fit now), I can make the top in under an hour. So I decided that I’d wear my hoody fleece, toque and gloves, but not bother to carry a pack with food, water, and extra clothes.
By the time we were at Viewpoint 1 (about 1/3 of the way up – and no view) it was raining. But we were warm from walking. We were taking the route up from Bowen Bay, which is relentlessly steep. By the 1/2 point the rain was mixed with snow. At Viewpoint 2 (about 2/3 of the way up – and no view) it was snowing. The ‘Valley of the Trolls’ (a gully leading to the shoulder of the mountain) was stunning with its glowing fronds and dark shadows. At the summit (actually a sub-summit, but the usual hikers’ destination because there are views – no view today) there was 1-1/2 inches of snow on the ground, and huge flakes falling in spite of the wind whipping past.
We were soaked, and didn’t stay to risk becoming cold. The trip down was speedy. We had to be careful because everything was slick and slippy. We saw no other people the whole day. As a result of the recent wicked weather there are many new blow-downs on the trail.
Why do people love only the bluebird days in the mountains? This was awesome, and we were both glad to experience it.
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