Colourful Language- The Lighter Side of Strokes of Genius Painting Ottawa (Formerly Smithereens)

Going Off on Gassing Up (Rant of the Week)

2009-11-21T11:17:00.007-05:00

Why do gas stations bother to put the price per litre on their signs at all?

I mean let's be honest folks: Gasoline is, for better or worse (hint: it's for worse), the most inelastic of goods - we will buy it until we literally cannot afford to put another drop in our gas tank without losing our homes. Otherwise we would have to walk or bike or something.

So then why even bother with the price display at all? Why even put on a charade and make it appear as though gas prices are somehow governed by market forces or competition or really anything other than absolute oligarchy with a dash of outright dependency?

I hereby suggest a revolution in gas signs. I propose that stations should make better use of the space. Ladies and gentlemen of the blogosphere, I pray that one day soon, stations will begin to display the current temperature instead of the current temper-inducing-price-per-litre.

At least then, during our frigid Ottawa winters, these signs will actually display something that will help us decide whether to stop and fill up, or not, rather than just making us even more depressed about the orange light glowing in the corner of the dash, reminding us we don't have a choice.

Then, instead of using the other sign space to spell out something unbelievably obvious like "WE SELL CIGARETTES" (which is mildly better that "WE SELL GAS" but only slightly less patronizing than "WE DON'T CARRY FOOD WITH ANY NUTRITIONAL VALUE"), they could instead address the lack of pricing information with a dose of refreshing corporate honesty:

Signs of the Times: But What Ethicity Is It?

2009-11-17T08:05:00.000-05:00

Baba Haidar Natural Ethic Food: For when you want a meal, not a moral dilemma.

Bonus Observation: The business seems to have gone under, judging by the For Lease sign in the window. Hard to believe, given their attention to detail.

Signs of the Times will be a common Cutting In segment dedicated to the many funny, often stupid signs that I come across in my day-to-day rounds and just need to shaden-share. If you have a sign you think I would find funny, feel free to send me an email (sogpainting at that google email service) and I just might post it. (No signs from other sites please, originals only- honour code.)

Signs of the Times: Loo'd Awakening

2009-11-16T14:40:00.007-05:00

Dear Self-Righteous Gas Station Owner:

If you should ever "enter upon" me using the washroom, we will have other, more pressing issues to attend to, I can assure you.

-A Patron Who Really Didn't Want to Have To Use Your Facilities in the First Place

Property manager or prophylactic enthusiast?

2009-11-15T14:15:00.000-05:00

Today, while driving, I was reminded (once again) of the importance of proofreading vanity plates and the importance of using protection.

All In The Inflection

2009-11-13T16:27:00.000-05:00

I enjoy these Dummies book ripoffs The Complete Idiot's Guide to Whatever because they leave to the imagination whether they are exhaustive guides for normal idiots, or just regular guides for complete idiots.

Another Kick at The Can (Or "What To Expect This Time 'Round")

2009-11-10T22:50:00.008-05:00

If you have visited Smithereens Blog in the past, you know that its posts largely fell under the categories of either productivity (web solutions, life hacks, etc.), persuasion (sales and marketing tips) or prose (the art of the written word.)

I had a lot of fun writing that blog - met a lot of interesting people, attracted a loyal group of readers and even managed to get my fabled fifteen minutes when some mainstream media outlets picked up a post I wrote on the Rogers iPhone launch. But alas, it was not to last.

At the time, I was working for an employer (Mark Buckshon at the Construction News and Report Group) who encouraged us to be active online and build our 'personal brand.' When I left that position, however, I accepted a post with a large corporation with strict rules about online publishing by its employees and, as a result, had to shelve the blog for awhile.

To make a long story slightly shorter, eight months and one offshore-outsourcing-of-the-entire-Ottawa-office incident later, it was time to make another career change, sooner than I'd hoped. After a lot of thinking, I decided to revive the professional house painting company I used to run here in Ottawa six years ago by partnering with an individual who used to work for me and had since started his own gig. This melding of my sales and marketing experience, and industry background with his production capacity and industry knowledge created Strokes of Genius Painting, what has turned out to be a very successful residential painting endeavour so far. (Fingers crossed!)

Throughout this transition, my path also lead me into an agreement I certainly never expected to arrive at - a mutually-beneficial arrangement with the previous employer mentioned above, who now has me doing advertising sales and a bit of writing for his publishing business during the day and leaving my evenings and weekends free to handle my responsibilities as the marketing and sales half of Strokes of Genius. I guess it's true what they say about the benefits of not burning your bridges!

I'm not exactly sure what this blog will be about, to be honest. And yes, I know that breaks all the rules about successful blogging. But I think one of the reasons why Smithereens was never as successful as it might have been is that maybe I wasn't truly passionate about every post. So this time I am just going to write what comes naturally and focus on on thing: being me. Specifically, I know I want to experiment with more frequent short snippets of observation and photos of funny things I come across, supplemented by longer posts from time to time.

If you like it, by all means, stick around (maybe even subscribe... or RE-subscribe.) And if you don't like it, well, you're entitled to your tastes (even if they are questionable ;).

You can expect at least a couple posts a week, starting later this week. I look forward to seeing you then.

Everything from Here On Back Is In Smithereens...

2009-11-05T12:37:00.004-05:00

You used to know this blog as Smithereens Blog. (Or maybe you didn't.) Either way, even though the blog's style and subject matter has changed, after a yearlong sabbatical and career change, I have kept all the old articles archived here. So if you are interested in productivity, prose and the art of persuasion, be sure to take a look through some of these Smithereens posts, you just might find them readable.

15 Signs That You're A Blogging Addict and 7 Things You Can Do About It [A Guest Post by Jonathan Crossfield]

2008-08-19T21:42:00.024-04:00

It's been a been quiet around these parts this past week, I know, and I'm sorry. I am currently in the midst of packing up everything I own because I am moving this month, so the web has taken a bit of a back seat. On top of this, I have been toiling away on some exciting projects for my clients that are keeping me very busy, too.

I do have a great post coming up for you tomorrow on Posting Frequency (irony, how I love thee), but in the meantime, please enjoy this guest article by my friend Jonathan Crossfield, from the great blog CopyWrite. This is the very first guest post I have hosted on Smithereens, and I do believe that choosing these carefully is important, because it's your reputation on the line as a blogger. But I couldn't imagine anyone I would more readily entrust my blog to than Jonathan. So please make him feel welcome - enjoy this post and leave a comment, and be sure to visit his site as well, it's chock full of great stuff!

-Daniel

photo "Akron 293 AA Meeting" by watz on flickr, used under CC.

Blogaholics Anonymous

The room is stuffy. Dust floats in the narrow beams of light filtering through the broken Venetian blinds. In the centre of the room is a circle of old, metal folding-chairs.

Gradually, people arrive, nervously finding a seat. One decides to pass the time by Tweeting a message from his phone, until the accusing gaze of his peers forces him to switch it off. Another nervously slides a laptop bag under his seat, as if to to conceal it from the others. Even if he tried to explain that he needed to complete those spreadsheets for tomorrow’s meeting, no one would believe him. Best to hide it.

The last person arrives late, blaming it on her sponsor for confiscating her PDA last night. There are mumbled greetings and uncomfortable looks. A voice asks who wants to go first. The mumbling stops. After an awkward pause, I slowly get to my feet, my eyes never once straying from my shoes.

"My name is Kimota..."

“No avatars or screen names please.” The voice came from the group leader, sitting to my left. I cough nervously and nod, ashamed by such an obvious mistake.

“My name is Jonathan Crossfield. And I...I’m a… blogoholic.”

The First Step is Admitting You Have a Problem

If you’re concerned about blog addiction, you’ve come to the right place. We’ve seen the damage blogging can do to people’s lives. But it is common for people to be completely unaware of their own addiction, missing the signs that indicate intervention may be necessary.

The following list of questions relate to 15 common symptoms of blogging addiction. If you answer ‘yes’ to more than 50% of these queries, there is a folding metal chair here in the circle for you.

Do you become agitated if it has been more than 48 hours since your last blog post – even if you have nothing to blog about?
Do you check your blog traffic stats more than once a day... even though your stats aren't much to look at?
Do you check your Alexa rank regularly...even though no one trusts Alexa?
Have you ever done a vanity search to see what people are saying about you and your blog?
Have you ever boasted to family members or complete strangers about how you’ve made it to the top 100,000 blogs in the world on Technorati... even though they have no idea what Technorati is?
Have you ever missed an opportunity for...uh... meaningful personal contact because you wanted to finish a blog post first?
Are you unable to resist dropping text links to your blogs into everything you do online?
Do you carry a PDA, laptop or other digital device around with you wherever you go for blogging on the move?
Have you treated arguments over whether Wordpress is better than Movable Type or Blogger more seriously than a general election for the ruler of your country?
Have you ever signed an online petition arguing for the reinstatement of Capital Punishment for comment spammers?
Do you find yourself choosing activities – such as movies, books or days out - based on whether they may inspire blog posts?
Do you know more about fellow bloggers who live half a world away than you do about your next door neighbours? Or some family members? (If yes, the latter counts for two.)
Do you get frustrated when someone you’re talking to doesn’t know what a Tweet is? Or an RSS feed? Or a widget? What is wrong with these people?
Does your ideal weekend involve hacking the code in your template, missing a bracket and then spending the next twelve hours finding your catastrophic error?
Did you spend more time updating and designing the header for your blog than you did repainting your kitchen?

These are just some of the major symptoms that addicted bloggers can display. Left unchecked, a serious blog addiction can affect relationships, destroy social skills and reduce mental capacity to the point that discussions over whether Plurk is better than Twitter seem relevant and interesting to you. (This is a late-stage addiction symptom.)

But luckily, there are some things you can do to make sure you don't fall prey to the medium's heavy grip.

Prevention is Better than Cure

Don’t let your blogging get out of hand. If you are worried about developing a blog addiction, here are some precautions you can take now to avoid disaster later.

Once per day, stick your head out of the window. That weird smell is what is known in technical circles as ‘fresh air’. Inhale.
Proactively dump the girlfriend or boyfriend. That way you have no relationship to destroy and you’ll never miss an opportunity for blogging due to an opportunity for meaningful personal contact.
Avoid having to repeatedly tell people about your Alexa and Technorati rankings by buying tee shirts prominently featuring your blog ranks. Of course, you may need to buy a new t-shirt every few weeks, and the Technorati one may only display the rank one day per week if you're lucky, but at least it will be much easier to keep your circle of family and friends informed.
On second thought, ridding yourself of family and friends may be more cost-effective and efficient.
Blogging on the move is great and PDAs and laptops make it so easy. But since doing so will help others recognise and criticize you for being compulsive blogger, it is probably best to just to stay indoors.
Ask your neighbours if they are bloggers. If so, you may be able to befriend them online instead without feeling overly awkward AND nurture a sense of commnunity within your neighbourhood.
Kill two birds with one stone - model your kitchen after your blog header.

Blogging may be addictive. But if you follow these simple pieces of advice, you may just avoid its sticky grasp. And next time you're about to lecture your grandmother for her ignorance of Twitter, take a deep breath and remember: there's always an open chair here for you.

Are you a blogoholic? Reach out to us in the comments. We're here to help.

Introducing Streamulo.us: The Answer To Your Aggregation Frustration

2008-08-05T15:43:00.006-04:00

For the longest time, we technophiles had a nagging problem. You see, we were creating all this content and interacting with others on countless social networks across the web every day, but as more and more must-join networks cropped up and unending avalanches of friend invites poured in, it all became increasingly difficult to maintain...

Then came our aggregation salvation (or so we thought): FriendFeed.

With much fanfare, the brainchild of some former-Googlers arrived on the scene and promised to make sense of all that scattered social media information, aggregating into one, easy-to-follow interface. Phew, what a relief.

But, alas, we all know that when it comes to web 2.0, solutions are just invitations for new problems, and this scenario was no different than the rest.

For just as the early adopters had started to get their FriendFeed on with a vengeance, out of the cracks came countless new startups vying to be the bigger, better social aggregator.

Second Brain. Swurl. Profilactic. iminta. Socialthing!. The list, unbelievably, goes on and on. And then, to make matters worse, other established web services like MyBlogLog, blogcatalog, Facebook and Plaxo started making "lifestreaming" a core part of their own offerings, too.

Before we knew it, we had effectively moved from a web 2.0 landscape of social media overload into an era of social media aggregation overload. So much for technological progress.

But hey, don't give up hope, for I have a solution.

That's right, with this post, it is my great pleasure to present to you a project I have been slaving away at, which will solve this exact problem.

This service is admittedly still far from market-ready, but if Cuil has taught us anything, it's that being market-ready is extremely over-rated. And so, in true web 2.0 fashion, I'm excited to launch my startup prematurely so that you, the user can ~~risk all your data~~ help me iron out the wrinkles and improve the service prior to the "real" launch.

So, without further ado I give you the answer to your aggregation frustration: Streamulo.us.

What is Streamulo.us?

Quite simply put, Streamulo.us, which is currently in private pre-alpha (omega?) testing, is the aggregator for all your aggregators. It is the lifestream for your lifestreams. It's the...ok, ok, you get it. It's pretty darn amazing.

Using this wunder-app, it will only take you 5 minutes to pop in your credentials on an exhaustive list of 15 aggregators, and presto- all your aggregations ~~are belong to us~~ will be automatically fed into your Streamulo.us stream!

With the advent of Streamulo.us, you will never again have to visit 15 sites in order to not have to visit 100 sites!

Still not convinced? Well then check out my '3 Ways Streamulo.us Will Probably Change The World.'

1) You'll Never Visit Another Aggregation Site Again

Have you ever seen a Twitter Tweet talking about some Shiny new Tech object that promises to help you manage your social network clutter, only to follow the link and realize that, oops, you already signed up for that thing the last time Rubel Tweeted it.. and you've never been back?

I know I have.

And clearly, if we can't even keep track of our keeping-track-of-stuff apps, something is amiss.

What we need, obviously, is another app. A better one. To keep track of the keeping-track apps. What we need... is Streamulo.us.

On Streamulo.us, all the activity of all your friends from every aggregation service that has ever been launched (and 2 that don't even exist yet) will be fed directly into your personal stream! No more logging into dozens of services. No more hassle.

2) You Can Use Steamulo.us as Your Web Megaphone, Too

But Streamulo.us won't just be useful for managing all your aggregation streams. It will also be an excellent way to broadcast yourself to the masses. Let me explain with an illustration.

Have you ever felt like no one listens to you on social media networks?

Come on, you know what I mean. You post a witty, insightful Tweet on Twitter, and sit back with a sheepish grin, waiting to see the flood of @-replies praising you for your mastery of the delicate balancing act that is mixing humour and intellect.

Only, no replies are forthcoming.

It's like that old proverb: 'If you send a Tweet on Twitter, and nobody is around to care, does it still make that annoying sound in Twhirl?'

Think about it.

Anyway the point is, many of us often feel like no one listens when we are active on social media. But luckily, Streamulo.us can help!

That's because, with its super-aggregation powers, Streamulo.us can also be an awesome amplifier for your online voice. If you take full advantage of its aggregator-compatibility, for example, you can force a single Tweet to appear in your friends' stream up to 15 times!

Ignore that, Scoble!

Just take a look at the screenshot below to see this awesome broadcasting overkill in action (Click here for a bigger version):

When it comes to blatant self-promotion, it doesn't get any better than this.

3) Follow Your Favourites Closely With Our Patented "Stalker Streams"

Finally, Streamulo.us will be different in one other important way: we'll have Stalker Streams.

This feature is still under development, and will not be included in the alpha release because I am still ironing out the "legal wrinkles." And I can't provide screenshots at this time for the same reason, but I still want to give you a taste of what's to come because it's so ~~creepy~~ awesome.

The Stalker Stream will be a one-of-a-kind feature that allows you to track your favourite online friends in very fine detail.

Using patented technology that ~~hijacks~~ borrows your identification information for other aggregation networks like those I listed earlier, and ~~exploits~~ makes use of weaknesses in their respective APIs, Streamulo.us will be able to tell you everything your favourite friends have been up to, whether they want you to know or not, in one quick glance.

The level of trivial detail in this Stream will be much greater than in the regular Streams and you will be able to click on each item to dig down further if you want (and you know you do.)

Frankly, this incredible feature is best demonstrated with an example, so just to give you an idea of what to expect, here is a plain text rendering of my own Stalker Stream of Louis Gray:

Louis Gray has Logged In on Blogger.com
Louis Gray has Saved A Draft on Blogger.com ["How to Write Blog Posts Without Getting Distracted by Social Media"]
Louis Gray has Logged In on Friendfeed
Louis Gray has Clicked Ten [10] Links on FriendFeed
Louis Gray has Liked Six [6] Items on FriendFeed
Louis Gray has Commented On Two [2] Items on Friendfeed
Louis Gray has Retrieved a Saved Draft on Blogger.com
Louis Gray has Saved A Draft on Blogger.com ["How to Write Blog Posts Without Getting Distracted by Social Media"]
Louis Gray has Commented On One [1] Items on Friendfeed...

You get the idea. Needless to say, the potential for snooping on your soc-med pals will be truly limitless using this feature. Stay tuned.

So, To Sum It All Up:

Streamulo.us is the future of tracking social media-tracking media, socially.

Streamulo.us is the shiniest, newest startup to launch this week.

Streamulo.us is the Answer to Your Aggregation Frustration.

So what are you waiting for? Why not give it a spin? Sign up for the closed pre-Alpha here now, and be sure and let me know what you think in the comments!

The Return of Wordplay Wednesdays: Deconstructing the Witty Tee

2008-07-30T16:17:00.008-04:00

I know, I know, you all probably thought Wordplay Wednesday was dead and gone, a relic of a bygone era (last month.) But alas, if you did, you were wrong.

For this Wednesday, our date with clever diction will be kept!

Well, on this Welcome-back Wordplay Wednesday, I thought it would be fun to highlight a common canvas of cleverness: The Witty Tee. (Or if you prefer, Wit-Tee-Shirt works, too.)

Plenty of online shops have popped up in recent years to cater to our inherent desire to wear t-shirts that make people think we think we're funny. But who has time to go through all those designs and find the best, most punny shirts?

Well, luckily for you, apparently I do.

That's right, just for you, I've scoured through some of the most popular tee-shirt shops online, looking for designs that in some way used wordplay to elicit the requisite chuckles (or groans.) In the interest of keeping it G-rated, I also filtered out quite a few models (including a few entire sites that were decidedly NSFW.)

The fruits of my labour? They're all organized nice-like in the slideshow below, complete with my own not-nearly-as-funny-as-the-shirt commentary. Enjoy!

[By the way, if you're reading this in a feed reader, you'll most likely have to click through to the site to see the slideshow. Sorry! But it'll be worth it, I promise.]

[All the shirts in this show can be bought from Busted Tees (the vast majority), Threadless and CafePress. None of the above are affiliate links. The show itself was made using the very cool Slide.com.]

Also, Jon Jackson left a comment below with a link to his own little t-shirt boutique called Crossty.com.

There are some excellent punny shirts on his site, so check it out! Twitter fans might also like this one.

So, dear readers, what did you think? Good ones or groaners? Let us know in the comments.

Or do you have a favourite funny tee shirt that I didn't come across? If so, drop a link in the comments and let us join in on the fun!

Oh and here's another fun game we can play, as well: If you were going to design your own hilarious tee, what would it say?

I would probably go with: "Treehuggers are Sappy." (Busted Tees, call me.)

Ok, your turn.

---

UPDATE JUL 31/08:

I've been testing out Plurk today and so far, the discussion has been really lively. There have been some great witty tee shirt suggestions from fellow plurkers on the threads about this post over there, too. You can check them out here and here.