This is about the most “Canadian” that Ottawa can get.
Hopefully the weather will stop being so moody, and the Rideau Canal will open up again soon.
Photos from the funeral prosession in honour of Ottawa police Constable Eric Czapnik.
Walking home after my class yesterday, I noticed a huge crowd of people gathered on the sidewalk. I was just in time to see the funeral procession on the way to Lansdowne. There were endless rows of Mounties, police officers and firefighters all in a row along Campus Avenue waiting to begin. Just the sight of all of these men and women was enough to make me tear up. I saw police officers from Perth, Toronto, Kingston, Barrie, Cornwall and way more than I can remember. It was so nice to see all of them out in support. I wish I was at Bank and Sunnyside because I hear that the kids from Hopewell Avenue Public School came out to line the sidewalks. It was just an all around sad and somber day remembering and celebrating a fallen hero.
I feel like my journalist hat is never off. You’re always on call, always on the clock, always on deadline. You can’t really escape it, no matter how hard you try.
Searching, in vain, for Jack London in Ottawa.
I spent a good three hours walking around tonight looking for a copy of The Iron Heel by Jack London. It is the first of five novels on the reading list for my english class. Every other student must have been proactive about getting books for this class, because all these stores (all nine of them!) were out of stock.
Octopus Books – Bank Street and Third Avenue
Patrick McGahern Books – Bank Street and Third Avenue
Dragon Tail Bookshop – Bank Street and Fourth Avenue
Book Bazaar – Bank Street and Frank Street
The Book Company – Bank Street and Slater Street
Chapters – Rideau Street and Sussex Drive
Sunnyside Bookshop – Dalhousie Street and Murray Street
Argosy Books – Dalhousie Street and Guigues Avenue
The Book Market – Dalhousie Street and Rideau Street
Can’t believe I walked this far in the cold only to come home empty handed. On the bright side, the War Memorial looked so pretty tonight:
Update 01/26/10:
I took out the map pictures. Nine photos of Google map screenshots is excessive. I did end up getting The Iron Heel from Octopus Books. My review: don’t even bother reading this one. It is socialist propaganda parading around as a novel. It’s less than 300 pages and it took forever to get through. I didn’t enjoy it at all! Our next book, Bend Sinister by Vladimir Nabokov is even more tough to read. I thought I was good at this kind of thing: reading, thinking, reflecting. Guess not.
Happy 2010!
Ringing in the new year with some new things. Yesterday I ordered a new keyboard for my laptop because the period key has been missing for about a month. I’ve gotten used to the little plastic knob instead. A new keyboard will be nice. I also ordered a new power adapter cord because the one I have right now doesn’t charge the battery. Everytime it gets unplugged, my laptop shuts down. I’ve taken to agressively saving word documents just in case of emergency.
So glad that I don’t have to deal with this on a regular basis. I’m happy to use computers as they come, and not look inside ever again. No wires, no problem.
Our Chihuahua puppy Veronica Corningstone helped too.
I also got a new phone to replace the one I lost in the library before Christmas break. New year, new phone. Endless possibilities.
Marching to the drum of Dustin Curtis.
Last night I came across this post by Dustin Curtis about Twitter and click-through rates. Curtis studied the click-through rates based on different prompts to readers, urging them to follow him on Twitter.
“Follow me on twitter” is the phrase I usually use. Curtis discovered that he got a 7.31 per cent click-through rate with this prompt. “You should follow me on twitter here” raised the click-through rate to 12.81 per cent. This is an impressive increase.
According to professor Wikipedia: click-through rates are calculated by taking the number of times a person clicks on a link or ad and dividing that by the number of times that the link was available for viewing. For example, if my About Me page was viewed one hundred times, and five people clicked the link to my Twitter page, then I could have a click-through rate of 5 per cent.
There are a couple of cool things about this study:
- Curtis uses a lower-case t in twitter instead of a capital T in Twitter. This is something new to me. I think it works because it slips in the command seamlessly. It doesn’t interrupt the flow of the sentence by having Capital Letters throwing off your GROOVE. Also having a capital Twitter just seems a bit overpowering, while lower-case twitter seems nice and friendly.
- The command is a bit stern: You should follow me on twitter here. It just sounds so tough. But, if you think about it, a lot of people may have no idea what Twitter is or what you do on Twitter. If you sound like you have authority in this area, the herds may be more willing to follow you. It’s 10 per cent what you say, and 90 per cent how you type it.
I’m going to follow his lead, and I am already following him on Twitter (@dcurtis). I’ve put that command in my About page and I look forward to seeing if there is any change in my click-through rates. One more thing:
You should follow me on
twitter here.
Maggie de Barra
