I happened to be “Googling”, as it were, the other day and something interesting came to mind.

So firstly, with Google in the world, you could just smash the keyboard and not know how to spell anything and it would say “did you mean?” and you would say “why yes, I did mean that!”. No wonder all the young kids these days spell everything with 1-3 letters, they don’t need to know how to spell because Google is all-knowing!

Secondly, Google has added this feature that auto-suggests what you might be searching for, I’m assuming based on the most common things searched for under what you’ve typed in so far. So when I began typing “how to” it was interesting to see what North Americans are asking Google how to do. It’s also interesting to see the difference between what you get in the auto-suggest on google.com and google.ca.

Google.com
Americans #3 – how to get pregnant… you mean you don’t know?! REALLY???

Google.ca
Canadians #10 – how to roll a joint. Classic.

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It seems as though my blogging has taken a steep dive for amount of posts as of the last month eh? I’ve been working on a couple of freelance projects as well as trying to get the ball rolling for the Toastmasters year ahead. One of my freelance projects for an old acquaintance who is an excellent photographer now, will be up shortly – we’re just putting the finishing touches on it and getting his portfolio optimized for the website. The other freelance project is still very much a work in progress as far as the development goes. The design is finished and looks pretty darn good if you ask me, however I’m a little rusty and not all that experienced at building Wordpress themes so it’s taking me a bit longer than usual to pump it out.

As for Toastmasters, my first month as Club President has been okay however since it is summer we have some difficulties filling all the roles every meeting since many members go on vacation or would probably rather be outside in the nice weather. Once September hits I think the club activity will pick up again, which will be nice – and then I can really start pushing our goal for President’s Distinguished Club.

If you live on the internet as I do most of the time, you may have heard that web developers and designers of all kinds are finally fed up and cannot stay quiet anymore on the subject of Internet Explorer 6. Enough is enough!!! If you agree I suggest you join the campaign by adding an anti-IE6 icon to your online profile pictures in the very least (I’ve used mine on my twitter account). Here is an anti-IE6 image for your convenience in a large size so that you can scale it down to the size needed for your image.

Also, see below my example:

– Rebekah

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Two nights ago was our annual Summer Awards Banquet for Toastmasters. Somebody I know made a comment about it being on a Friday night, as if it seemed stupid because people must have better things to do on a Friday night. In my opinion, this is far from the truth. I’m in a place now where I truly enjoy Toastmasters and public speaking – and the environment with the club is so warm and supportive. I look forward to our club meetings every week and it seems like craziness to miss a regular meeting nevermind the Summer Banquet. Plus, the cheesecake was amazing!

Photos from this year’s banquet can be found on the Burrard Toastmasters website.

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Toastmasters tonight was, I’m not gonna lie, a little sad. Mostly because there were very few members there. I swear more than half the club couldn’t make it to the meeting this week. Oh well, I guess this means the beginning of the summer! I did my second speech tonight, titled “Reasons to Exercise” and I’ve posted it on my speeches page for your reading pleasure. It went fairly well, actually, and the only things I wish I could have done were make it a little longer and to have memorized it rather than using notes. All in all, I’m definitely improving – yay! Next week is the club executive elections when I’ll be running for club president. Strangely enough, I’m not worried about it one bit. I’m confident I was a born leader (and I say that as modestly as possible).

– Rebekah

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This week Jess let me chair the meeting again at Toastmasters. It’s good practice for sure and I’ve made up my mind that I’m definitely running for president in the club executive elections on May 27th. On my way to Toastmasters I even thought of a good argument for why they should vote for me. I’d tell you, but then I’d have to kill you (or bring down your website). I’m saving it for the actual election speech. I’m actually really excited about it and I feel myself opening up more and becoming a lot more comfortable with Toastmasters, speaking, and being myself around strangers in general.

I finished the flash book Leigh had ordered for me, and the satisfying part of it is that I knew about 98% of what it taught. My first project is going to be a Netgenetix social photo gallery which Leigh wants me to treat as a real project with a project brief, a timeline, and deliverables. That should be interesting in terms of the timeline/deliverables, only because I’ll be working on it in my free time, not on a daily basis like a client project. Who knows what client work may fill up my time in the coming weeks?

I’ve come across some awesome design/development articles and pages in the past week that I’d like to share. Take a gander, I’m sure you’ll find at least one of them useful or inspiring!

• • Create an Image Rotator with CSS/jQuery
• • 40 Tutorials for Creating Highly Detailed Icons
• • 26 Horizontal Websites for Inspiration
• • 20+ Brilliant List Styling Techniques
• • Meagan Fisher – An Inspiring Designer
• • The World’s Largest Free Textures Site
• • Run Several Versions of IE on your PC

… and you can see more of my cool website discoveries by following me on Delicious.

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This looks about right. Although I think a section of this pie should include something along the lines of “testing mother-f*#$%@ code in this piece of s*#! browser”.

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