How can I contact you & see what you’re up to?

You can e-mail me, find me on twitter, see my pictures on flickr, check out what I’m reading, watch my video blogs, or find me on twenty something bloggers.

Can I hire you?

Yes! Starting April 2010 I will be taking on freelance graphic design work so if you need blog buttons, ads, headers or any print pieces done lets talk. I’m not currently taking on blog design work but am hoping to change that by the fall.

What kind of dogs do you have?

Ash & Mal are Schipperkes (pronounced Skipper-keys or Shipper-keys). They are brothers and are full grown at 18 lbs each. We got them as puppies because we didn’t think we could be there for a rescue dog (I grew up with rescue dogs) if they developed issues, so as first time dog owners we decided to ease into the whole thing. And then we ended up getting the most high energy, intensely smart dogs we could find. Did I mention that they’ve learned to open drawers? Please send help.

Who are they named after?

Ash is named for Bruce Campbell’s character in the Evil Dead movies, and Mal is named for Malcolm Reynolds, the ship’s captain in Joss Whedon’s TV series Firefly. They were both my idea, as Mister’s alternatives were even geekier World of Warcraft references.

How tall are you? Are your eyelashes real?

These questions crack me up. I am 5′7″ and yes, my eyelashes are real.

Where on the prairies are you from?

I’m from Manitoba, which is directly north of North Dakota.

Is Mister’s family from Minnesota?

Nope, we just visit there a lot. They have an amazing theatre, lots of pro sports and it’s the closest big US centre to where I live! Mister’s American family lives in Florida.

Say, how do you host mix tapes, do the design stuff you do, take nice pictures, and find fonts that look like that?

I’ve spent a lot of time teaching myself how to use Photoshop, sourcing design resources and making lots of mistakes. Search around, there are lots of great resources just waiting for you to find them. For Photoshop tutorials “You Suck At Photoshop” is an awesome & hilarious place to start, there are great digital photography resources at Digital Photography School. It takes a lot of time to find your own style, but keep at it, it just takes a little time!

What kind of hardware do you use to make this blog happen?

I have a Canon XTI, a nifty fifty lens & tripod but I mostly use my kit zoom. I shoot RAW and for editing I have a Macbook Pro. I use Photoshop CS3 to edit photos and for HTML editing I use Komodo Edit.

What kind of technical do-dads and thingamajigs do you use to keep this site of yours online?

My blog is a self hosted wordpress contraption. I use Netfirms for my hosting and they have always been extremely helpful, especially when I was just starting out.

I don’t use a lot of plugins but I use Maintenance Mode for when I’m making changes to my site, Protected Post Personalizer, pagebar for paginated navigation, Vimeo for Wordpress for video embedding my vlogs, and Ajax Edit Comments so your comments aren’t set in stone right away. I use Backtype Connect to integrate tweets about my posts into comments, CommentLuv to give a little love back, and I’m a chronic planner and hyper visual, so the Wordpress Editorial Calendar helps me to keep my scheduled posts straight.