I love my city existence. My life in Vancouver is so absolutely stellar; I can’t imagine too many ways it could possibly improve. I’m surrounded by great friends who are wells of talent and inspiration. I live in a rickety old house on a hill and I can see the sun rise over the lower mainland any day I choose to, from my front porch. I have a beautiful roommate who is also one of my best friends. I could go on, but I won’t! I am really happy these days.

Something new and exciting that I’m a part of is The Good Life Community Bike Shop project. It’s a collectively-run bicycle shop in my hometown of Calgary, Alberta, opening June 2008 in Eau Claire Market. If you’re in Calgary you should definitely ride by and check it out. I’m doing some work on the website.

Speaking of websites, I’ve got a bunch of projects on the go right now. My lovely friend Steph has been gracious enough to lend me her Macbook, so I even have a functional computer to work on. (My iBook is pretty close to computer-death.) Once I’ve got some of those cranked out I’ll post them here.

I have recently updated the way Vegan Mania’s front page and bakery operate. If you like yummy vegan food and live in the lower mainland area, please do go give a look. She’s also got a formidable vegan recipe index that puts mine to ten kinds of shame. I’ve used her recipes before and they’re all definite crowd-pleasers.

I think I’m going to participate in the upcoming “Alt Slam” - it’s a poetry slam next month with an erotica theme. Wish me luck… it’s something I’ve never done before. I think I can do it. I don’t get shy - I get shameless.

This weekend I’m going to Sasquatch Music Festival to see some really amazing acts. I’m particularly stoked for MIA, Flight of the Conchords and Tegan and Sara. Mostly I’m in it for the road trip down there. It’s my only excuse to eat Super Nibs.

A castle…

Microblogging service Twitter helped an American protester, a UC Berkeley student, get out of jail in Egypt. James Buck was photographing a factory worker protest when he, along with a bunch of Egyptian blogger-journalists, was arrested and thrown in jail. According to the Mercury News article, Buck texted “ARRESTED” to Twitter - a message that was instantly received by many of his Twitter “followers”. They then proceeded to give him advice on how to deal with the situation.

To Buck’s credit, his main concern is that as a white American he got out of jail with few problems, while the Egyptian journalists and bloggers that he was arrested with, as well as his translator, are still being detained, many without charges.

Behold - the power of intarweb!

In other news, I finally saw Persepolis - it’s been in theatres 14 weeks, so I obviously fail at seeing the associated movies of books I’ve loved - and it was amazing. It’s the beautifully and evocatively animated autobiography of Iranian Marjane Satrapi’s coming of age during the Islamic Revolution… so if you’re at all political, or artistic, or sentimental, or into movies, and you haven’t seen it - do.

if you are of the bored-at-work generation, or are somehow inexplicably addicted to my charm and wit, i’ve decided to revive my long-forgotten twitter account. real-time, regular updates on whatever the foccacia i’m doing, and/or witty one-liners that i don’t feel like spamming my lj friends list with.

in bicycle news, yesterday i took a rush-hour ride from work to campione cycles, to purchase for myself a bulldog mini lock. it was fucking terrifying. (excuse my french.) now, i realize that rush hour is the most terrifying time of day to ride a bicycle, and that the route i chose was also quite terrifying, but i used to fly down those streets with the greatest of ease. now i am a timid, quivering, helmet-wearing* pussy. it was stressful and unpleasant.

i realize now that my pre-car-smashy bicycle-riding self was probably really difficult to ride with. i took a lot of risks. i have realized that i am not invincible, and i’m sorry to anyone who thought they were going to die when they rode bicycles with me.

that said, i would like to rid myself of this wimpy attitude stat. any pointers?

*helmets are a great thing to wear on your head while you are bicycling, and in no way does wearing a helmet make you a pussy**. helmets protect your brain from cars, asphalt and other unexpected hard surfaces. please wear one.

**i use the term pussy as only a feminist can; cats and vulvae alike are very courageous, and my use of the term pussy seeks not to imply otherwise.

I’m now running malloreigh.com on WordPress. I’ve been doing WordPress installations lately for clients (like VeganMania) and so I really no longer have any excuse for running my own website in such an archaic way. Hand-updating each page is truly in the past; I may be a code snob (I code by hand, natch) but I don’t have to be silly about it!

My new photography portfolio is up. Check out adjective, adjective at photography.malloreigh.com. I’m not currently offering any prints for sale because I’m traveling in Australia and don’t have access to most of my files, but I’m hoping to have something up there soon nonetheless.