Well you probably noticed that the blog's name has changed. Again. For the second time in a week, it's true.

But I'm ok with it and I hope you will be too. To be honest, Colourful Language came to me today and it just stuck. Compared to Cutting In, it describes so much more aptly what I want this blog to be: a raw peek into my personality and my observations on the lighter, more humours side of life.

And, as a bonus, it still ties in to the painting theme too (which was important to me because I have connected the blog to the website for my Ottawa house painting business, Strokes of Genius Painting to give potential clients a glimpse into the personality behind the paintbrush, so to speak.)

In any case, don't stick around for the name of the gum, stick around for the flavour. (But I promise neither will change again any time soon.)

On Monday, I had the pleasure of being invited to speak with Mike Blanchard on Calgary Today, a talk radio program on AM770 in Calgary, after they stumbled across my original post on the Rogers/Apple situation (and even after I assured them I was not a qualified expert by any means!)

I've never done a radio interview on this side of the mic before (though I've done plenty on the flip-side back in in j-school) and I really enjoyed the experience. 

I hadn't heard the audio myself until today when received a copy of the mp3, so I figured I would post it here for your listening torture pleasure.   

So, what do you think?  Should I start my own podcast toute suite ... or stick to my day job?

[Thanks to Kim and Mike at AM770 for having me on.]

Get Your Own Free Player

(Click the pic for bigger)

If you are reading this on my blog, you can see that I've given it quite an overhaul from top to bottom. (If you're reading this in an RSS reader, click on over and let me know what you think.)

After painstakingly pulling apart a wonderful theme from eBlog Templates last night and personalizing / tweaking it until it looked just how I wanted it to, I clicked "Save Template" in the Blogger control panel for the last time and went to sleep.

But alas, today I found that I hadn't quite gotten everything squared away. My RSS feed was broken. My Google Analytics (for tracking visitors) wasn't live anymore. Countless other tools like MyBlogLog Link Tracking, BlogRush content referral program and BlogCatalog link were broken. 

Everything looked great, but under the hood some nuts and bolts were definitely missing.

Jamie Grove from the How Not To Write blog and Jen from The Wild Apricot and Domestik Goddess blogs were helping me out on Twitter this evening, figuring out the kinks in my feed (it should be working fine now - I apologize for the delayed post delivery and for any other RSS wonkiness today) and I think Jamie summed up the situation with this great metaphoric Tweet:

Just like a Harley. Get it all put back together and find you have half a dozen nuts or springs or etc. Where do they go?

Well, I've never so much as touched a Harley, much less rebuilt one, but nonetheless, that's exactly how it is: in making sure I sorted out all the main visual and layout-related code here, I had ignored some of the most important "nuts and springs." 

Of course, there's a lesson here, but I don't think I need to spell it out, because you are all quite clever and I have faith you'll get it quite readily. 

In any case, everything seems to be back in working condition now and I really hope you all like the make-over. I would truly appreciate any feedback, so please drop me a comment and let me know what you think. Thanks!

LA - Celebrity Life-  Rumours have been swirling around Hollywood that big-time celebrity Smithereens is the latest to have gone under the knife and everyone is wondering if it's true.

Well wonder no more, because Xtra BS! has confirmed the story the with an exclusive and confidential source!  

A three-week "spa vacation" taken earlier this month started the rumour mill spinning, and suspicions seem to have been confirmed this morning when our favourite paparazzo Jamie Grove snapped shots of what looks like a drastically different mug as the star hurried from his Beverly Hills mansion into an awaiting limo. 

Xtra BS! has learned from a confidential source at the exclusive Eblog Templates Clinic that a patient matching the hunky celeb's description was under their care this month. 

According to our source, the team at Eblog carefully marked off all the cuts and folds as requested by the star, but a specialist by the name of Dr. Daniel Smith was brought in to personalize the surgery and make sure everything looked just right. 

But representatives of Smithereens continue to deny that any work was done. "People need to realize that celebrities need vacations too. He just got a bit of a tan, a nice exfoliation treatment, and that's it," says his agent Bob Younce, "You guys will make anything up to sell magazines."

Here at Xtra BS!, we want to let the readers decide! So, take a look at the two photos above and let us know in the comments what do you think - has Smithereens had some work done? If so, what do you think?  Let your voice be heard!

The Twitter Writing contest was so challenging because we had a whole week to write a story limited to just 140 characters. This post is rather the opposite - I could write as much as I wanted (theoretically), but I've only got about 4 minutes before I'll be jumping in the car with my family to go to an open house celebration for the university graduations of my brother Josh and his girlfriend Megan. Ok, make that 3 minutes now.

This post by James over on the great blog Men With Pens, couldn't have come at a more fitting time. In it, he moderates a debate about whether bloggers should be able to take a break, and what the consequences can be if they do (lost readers, etc.) He doesn't exactly come to a consensus, but he does relate many fears those in the blogging community have around being quiet for too long and losing those subscribers they had worked so hard to hook! Wow, 2 Minutes and counting already?

Well it should come as no surprise that over the past two days, the exact time that I am home enjoying a great visit with my family, celebrating my brother's achievement and as a result, not paying as much attention as usual to this space, I would be flooded with half as many visitors here as I had received in the entire month since I launched combined (thanks to the links graciously directed here from Brian at Copyblogger and Josh at ReadWriteWeb and the residual linkage those produced.) Less than minute? Yikes!

But some things are more important even than blogging (hard to believe, I know), and family is definitely one of them. So I hope you will be patient - I promise I have some great material on deck and I will get it up as soon as possible. Stick with me, I'll stick with you.

3, 2, 1...

[Yes I came back and fixed the typos from the original, speedily-written article. 'Cause I'm a perfectionist like that.]

Yesterday, immediately after work, I made the long 12-hour trek by car from Ottawa, Ontario (my home) to just outside Saint John, New Brunswick (where my parents and siblings live.) My brother, Josh graduates from his Nursing program at UNBSJ tomorrow and I wouldn't miss the ceremony for the world. (Congratulations Josh!)

So four energy drinks, 1000+ calories worth of snacks and many, many text-Twitters after setting out, I arrived here at my parent's lovely home in scenic Quispamsis. (Don't act like you've never heard of it.)

First of all, I owe you an apology. I know my weakest best traffic day on this blog is Wordplay Wednesday, and yesterday, I truly let you all down. You probably sat there all day clicking Refresh over and over, wondering when you were going to get your pun-fix. But alas, I was on the road until 6am this morning and could not put a post together in time (unless you count this text-Tweeted entry to @rjleaman's little game where she asked fellow Twitterers to come up with a phrase to describe the horrible things most of us would like to do to Twitter because of its tempermentality of late...)

But the good news is that twelve hours was a very long time to be in a car by myself (well, except the small dog in my lap), and the radio station selection in rural northern Quebec is not the greatest, contrary to popular belief. So I had lots and lots of time to think. And as Sonia Simone advised us today in her regular Copyblogger article, thinking is what makes for good writing. (Well that and being a bit of a dork.)

The bottom line is this: I have some great topics that I have now thoroughly fleshed out in my head, and I am excited to publish them over the next 3-4 days. I am especially looking forward to annoucing a new Contest I am cooking up that will be launching this coming Monday - so watch this space for more than enough action to make up for yesterday's quietude!

[Click Image to See Larger]

A few minutes ago, Twitter didn't seem to be working, but I wasn't sure if it was my internet or their usual downtime issues. Then I thought of a tool I had read about recently called downforeveryoneorjustme.com, where you can plug a site into its Google-like search field and it tells you if that site is currently up or down. I decided to give it a spin...

Hm, so where do I go to see if downforeveryoneorjustme.com is ... well... down for everyone or just me? 

[In all fairness, the site does work really well and is quite handy, and I think Twitter probably caused the error, but nonetheless, I couldn't resist.]

I just came across this ... intriguing (absurd, sad and almost unbelievable) story in my newsreader* about a young BC man who was just minding his own business, walking to the mailbox, wearing a hoodie and blaring music through his earphones, when he was suddenly and tragically struck, dragged and killed by ... a crashing helicopter. 

Yes, you read that correctly, this poor pedestrian was evidently so enthralled with his music and mail that he didn't hear (or see) a three-ton aircraft plunge to the earth and probably flail around uncontrollably (sorry, I had to) as it slid towards and ultimately over top of him.

As absurd as this story is, it is obviously still quite sad, but the most incongruous part of the Globe article, to me anyway, is the angle the reporter takes, which concentrates on the renewed controversy sparked by this event over the use of loud headphones on or near roads. 

Now I certainly agree that it is just common sense to make sure you can hear when you are going to be near moving vehicles, but let's be serious here, this kid was not hit by a city bus, it was a lightweight aircraft, keyword being air, where it ought to have stayed. 

I mean, the thing could just as easily have plummeted through the skylight in his living room while he was blaring that Nine Inch Nails album over his integrated BOSE sound system. Would the anti-loud music lobby have made a fuss then? (And supplemental question - Is there really an anti-loud music lobby?)

In related news, a Vermont man was struck and killed by an asteroid while jaywalking. Safe road-crossing advocates say he had it coming.

*A far cry from my j-school days, when I consumed a couple local and national newspapers per day, I now apparently get my dose of the Globe and Mail from... American gadget blog Gizmodo? Ah well.

[If you are reading this on my Wordpress Blog, please jump over to my new address on Blogger (explanation for the switch to follow.) If you are reading this on Blogger. read on.]



I apologize that there has not been a post here since Friday. I have had a number of issues with my Wordpress blog since my last post there and am halfway through a longish explanatory post on why I have picked up and moved to Blogger. (note: link is updated to point to new post.) I wasn't able to finish the posting before Sunday, however, and then I was off to Toronto to attend the two-day IAPA Health and Safety trade show at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre. Internet availability (and free time) have been scarce here, and so I am only getting the chance to post now.



Look out for that Wordpress v. Blogger posting at some point tomorrow  next week (oops!) as well as a few more posts shortly thereafter on some ideas that have been stewing for a couple days... perhaps that will make them even tastier to consume!