Thoughts on Canada

Posted on March 10th, 2010

Our recent trip up to Vancouver, BC for the Winter Olympics was just two hours away in distance but a culture away in experience. I’ve made brief trips to Canada before but none this extended, and I can say that I came away with a fresh perspective of our neighbors to the North.

Almost as soon as we arrived, I felt the need to tone down my usual rather boisterous patriotism, as any well-mannered guest would do when visiting someone in else’s home. I was surprised and pleased to see the strong patriotism the Canadians showed in the streets and at events, which came off as pure and unified, unmarred by the harsh political polarization often seen in the US.

The Canadians were pure and honest in their love of country, singing at the top of their lungs when their own won the Gold…I experienced this first-hand at the Ice Dance competition. It was strange feeling in the minority in that crowd…but something I feel I needed to experience. After all, Canada has lived in the shadow of the U.S. for far too long…this was truly their time to shine in the eyes of the world.

And the Canadians lived it out this love of country and fellow man in every way…everyone we met was encouraging and helpful, whether it be giving directions or providing hot chocolate on a chilly night.

For that week, I saw the U.S. through Canadian eyes, friendly, but loud and with a strong need to win and yes…dominate (count them….37 medals in all). Canadian pride was emotionally overwhelming at times, such as when Canada beat the U.S. in that Gold Medal hockey game, but never domineering. Flags and Go Canada Go signs adorned houses and businesses everywhere…even more than in the U.S. when we have the Games.

I will always love my country and am forever proud to be an America, but I have come away with a slightly different perspective and special love for our Friends to the North. I count them truly as friends.

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My Favorite WordPress Plugins

Posted on February 3rd, 2010

One of the key features of WordPress is the ability to use plugins to enhance the functionality of your WordPress site. However, you often have to sift through a number of plugins that either don’t work or don”t do exactly what you are looking for before hitting on the right one.

So to hopefully save you a little time and frustration, here are a few plugins I am using that I’m very happy with:

Contact Form 8 – This contact form is easy to set up and fairly easy to customize.

Exclude Pages from Navigation – Frankly, I’m surprised this isn’t part of the basic Word Press page setup. If you want to set up a page to link to from your sidebar or another page, but don’t want it included in the top-level menu, you can just uncheck a box that says “Include this page in user menus.”

Collision Testimonials – I had to go through several Testimonial plugins before finding this one, which lists a random testimonial or reference in your sidebar and changes from page to page. This plugin also allows you to create a page with all the testimonials listed. The only thing it doesn’t have is a “View More” link after the testimonial in the sidebar which takes you the full Testimonial page.

NextGEN Gallery – this is an awesome gallery and extremely easy to set up. Gone are my days of setting up galleries manually or using third party services such as Jalbum. This plugin enables you to click a button from the function bar above your page, and voila…you get thumbnails and a gallery/slideshow of your photos. Couldn’t be easier.

NextGEN Resize - a companion to the gallery that automatically resizes oversized photos.

Calendar – a simple plugin that allows you to specify events for a specific date and displays them in your sidebar.

Quick Subscribe – this adds a field for visitors to subscribe to your blog using their email.

Redirect – redirects a page to another page within the site or an external link. This is useful for when you don’t have any content for a top-level page and want to direct visitors directly to the submenu pages.

I will add more as I find them. I hope you will find these useful.

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