Vancouver 2010 for me so far

I’ll start by saying that I’m a Canadian and a very proud one at that – being born on the 1st of July could have something to do with that – and yes I’m glued to the Vancouver 2010 site and all 4 channels (CTV, TSN, Sportsnet and RDS) showing the Olympics, cheering our athletes on!

Yes, I was jumping in our living room when Alexandre Bilodeau won our very first Olympic Gold medal on Canadian soil a few nights ago in Moguls. I had the same reaction when Maëlle Ricker won last night in Snowboard Cross. I gave some “Woot” and major fists in the air when Mike Robertson, Jennifer Heil and Kristina Groves won their medals as well. I’m extremely happy for athletes who have improved in their performances even tho they couldn’t bring home a medal.

Our Women’s hockey team is kicking ass again. I can’t wait for the U.S.A. vs Canada match-up. As always, it should be a nail-biter.

Our Men’s hockey team finally started last night and had a great solid win over Norway. Again, can’t wait for Sunday’s game against the U.S.A. (and Russian hopefully down the line).

Unlike many people I’ve talked to, I quite liked the opening ceremonies. The effects on the floor were very cool. K.D. Lang’s rendition of Hallelujah by Leonard Cohen gave me chills. Sarah McLachlan’s performance was great as well. I wasn’t overly impressed by Garou signing tho. I think Ginette Reno would have been a better signer for that one, it’s one of her big hits after all, by I guess Garou is more internationally-known than her and that’s why he was chosen. Whatever. The unexpected “Wow” for me was the “We are more!” poem by Shane Koyczan!

The major disappointment for me so far is the constant delays because of the weather. It’s fine that “some” of our athletes are used to it, especially our downhill skiers since most of them train in B.C. (tho even that didn’t help them!) but it must suck big time for those not used to the weird Vancouver weather.

Anyways…

Here’s to better weather for the skiers and great performances by our Canadians.

T-Shirt War

Very funny stuff. Found via Adii Rockstar.

CSS has the ability to target HTML elements based on any one of their attributes.

Check out the post: The Skinny on CSS Attribute Selectors

Paid forums

I remember way back when we started The Web Squeeze, the question of having users PAY to either post a question or view a response never came up because in our minds, that’s just non-sense. Before I left, we were talking about the next version of TWS (and the forum) and someone mentioned that the forum should stay free. If Linda, Jacob and I were all in the same room, we’d probably would have look at each other and say: “Duh! Of course!” The only time a payment option came into the mix was for sections of the forum which would be hidden from the public and Google but only for specific reasons (that I’m not going to elaborate on here).

Making money off a forum is not easy of course so it shouldn’t be a motivational factor when starting one.

I’m writing this because I’ve been searching for a .NET problem and I’m pretty sure I found the solution but I can’t get to it because it’s a forum where you have to pay. How frustrating is that! I have to sign up for a Free 30-day Trial. Really? You know what’s going to happen right now? I’m closing that tab with the site I thought I had found my answer to and going to the next one in the Google results list.

And yes, I’ll remember that site so I won’t waste my time next time I’m looking for something.

Paid forums probably think that they get to ask for your money because they have the “best” people answering your questions. Again… really? I’ve been a member of many forums in my time (Sitepoint and TWS included) and, for free, most members will go to great lengths to help out. And in turn, when googling for something, I get my answer right away. Now, that’s a way to get people to come back and maybe even sign up next time!

Some people would have you believe that you aren’t reading this.

Why?

Because it’s not ‘above the fold’.

Read the article from Paddy Donnelly – Life Below 600px