My tweets of the last week:
Crushing On: WordPress Editorial Calendar plugin
If CK frequently seems like bursts of organized, topical posts followed by droughts of randomness and silence … well, that’s because it is.
Not that it’s meant to be that. As CK has transitioned from a personal blog to a blog about my music, Philly, and other specific topics, I finally settled on the perfect mix of posts for the current incarnation. I even made myself an Editorial Calendar – basically, a forward-looking schedule of what content is in which stage of readiness for the weeks ahead. EdCal’s are traditionally a tool of newspapers and magazines, but in recent years they’ve become an important resource for bloggers.
The WordPress Editorial Calendar Plugin is a drag-and-drop calendar that lives in your "Posts" screen. It's also my communications-nerd dream come true.
Then I hit a barrier: how would I keep the editorial calendar updated?
It was a barrier I couldn’t overcome with blogging as a part-time exercise, fighting for time against my three musical incarnations and dealing with the new house. Paper EdCals were a chore and got lost. A Google Spreadsheet was great for planning, but I just kept planning and never wrote. Penciling drafts into WordPress was meaningless without some structure, and I wound up with endless lingering drafts since I couldn’t see an overview the lineup of an entire week or month.
I thought, maybe WordPress has an EdCal plugin! It seemed like the sort of plugin motivated bloggers would create. Alas, I searched and searched, to no avail.
I keep re-drafting my own EdCals, but they never lasted more than a few weeks as they were interrupted by actual work and my musicianship. Despite a myriad of ideas for CK, I just didn’t have the spare time to wrangle them, write them, schedule them, and post them.
Then, in an actual work meeting about WordPress during actual work hours, Mel & I were glibly showing off our personal blog plugins to the social team at the office. I showed some of my favorites (Yet Another Related Posts Plugin being primary among them), and the she whipped out WordPress Editorial Calendar.
Screenshot of the quick-draft screen in action, from the WordPress Editorial Calendar Plugin page.
WHAT IN THE WHAT NOW!?
(I may have actually screamed that in the middle of the meeting with our Director. Luckily, he is already well aware of my insanity.)
Yes, about 13 months ago someone came up with a fully-functioning EdCal plugin for WP. Set up a schedule of posts, start a draft right on the calendar, and drag and drop them to your heart’s content. When a post is ready, just move it over to “Publish” status via a dropdown – or, edit it the way you’d normally edit.
Ta-Da – instant blog organization.
Needless to say, the next time I logged into CK I immediately installed the plugin. I’ve been working with it all weekend, and for the first time ever I have a month of planned posts. That doesn’t mean I wrote them all today – it just means I finally have a living schedule of what I hope to talk about and when I hope to say it.
I’m positively aglow about it. I hope you dig my first week of EdCal content, starting tomorrow morning!
Crushing On: Rita’s Water Ice
Philly is a city full of water ice. As a child in the 80s every block of South Philly seemed to have some mom’n’pop store with a cooler of the poor-man’s gelato at the front.
I remember when Rita’s launched its first few chain locations into Philly proper from their base in the burbs. People were understandably skeptical, since to that point water ice was a strictly homegrown phenomenon, with Pop’s being the major local “brand” with a handful of locations.
I instantly loved Rita’s. Every other water place in town had a white, super-sweet vanilla flavor. Rita’s vanilla was brown, slushy, and had the cloying, nearly-liquory taste of vanilla extract. If I was in the mood for vanilla, I’d demand a trip to Rita’s.
After an entire years sans water ice, yesterday after a dinner date I convinced E that there really was a Rita’s nearby and we needed to find it. Lo and behold, not two blocks into our drive we struck gold.
Gold, and their amazing Juicy Pear flavor.
I’ll always love Philly’s homegrown water ice shops, but as chained franchises go you could do a lot worse than Rita’s.
I’ve got a beautiful feelin’ nothing is goin’ my way.
I think Mel should tweet the punchlines to all of my posts before I write them.
I’m not sure I can make this story any funnier than that tweet, other than to point out that there is clearly some sort of voodoo curse on our car.
Here goes…
Early in my process of learning to drive I decided it might be a good idea to save our local service center’s number to my phone. You know, in case I got stuck in a situation where knowing the price of, say, a new car door would impact my decision-making.
Being a denizen of the mobile age, I punched “Ardmore Toyota” into my phone’s Google search, added the number to my contacts, and went on with my life. Thankfully, I didn’t have any occasions to call them while I had my learner’s permit, aside from inquiring about getting an iPod dock installed.
A few weeks ago I called to get the price of my replacement car keys. Oddly, all of the hold messages were spoken in a southern drawl. Why would a dealership in Philly advertise with a southern accent, I wondered. It seemed a little counter-intuitive, given the well-to-do, perfectly-coifed mainline clientele they serve.
My question was answered this week when I ordered my keys. Everyone I spoke with had a southern accent! Clearly our local Toyota dealership was a family-owned business, and the family was transplanted from The South. Why not have hold messages with accents – their accent is part of their brand! They assured me that getting a Saturday appointment would be no problem, even if I called on Friday.
Wow, I thought, our dealer is awesome. They made their regional heritage part of their brand identity, they had plenty of Saturday appointments available, and they were all so darn friendly even though I speak about four times as fast as they do.
On Friday I dutifully called to make my Saturday appointment. At the time my cell was buried under a pile of proofreading, so I Googled the number and used my desk phone to call.
Ardmore the county seat of Carter County, Oklahoma, United States, and is generally considered the hub of the 10-county region known as Arbuckle Country or Lake and Trail Country. It is located 90 miles equidistant from Oklahoma City and Dallas/Fort Worth. Ardmore was named after the affluent Philadelphia suburb and historic Pennsylvania Main Line stop Ardmore, PA.
Weirdly, the dealer had no record of my order. And, even stranger, no one I spoke with had a southern accent.
While on hold while they looked up my order confirmation again I glanced back at my computer screen and saw that there are two Ardmore Toyotas. One in the Philly suburbs, and one IN ARDMORE, OKLAHOMA.
I gingerly hung up the receiver and called over the wall to Mel.
Me: You know how I ordered those car keys on Tuesday?
Mel: To replace the ones you lost in the middle of a field in broad daylight, possibly stolen by some sort of highly intelligent vole?
Me: Yes, those. I think I may have ordered them from Oklahoma.
Mel: You mean, they had them in stock in Oklahoma and are shipping them to you?
Me: No. Like, now I have to drive to Oklahoma to pick them up.
Thus the above tweet.
To Ardmore of Oklahoma’s eternal credit, they do outstanding PPC mobile search targeting, and they were very good-natured about shipping my keys to Philadelphia.
so many songs, so little time
Tonight we held a marathon acoustic Arcati Crisis rehearsal with the addition of our old friend and new bass man, Jake.
As we learned last year with Zina, it’s not the easiest thing to onboard a new band member – even when they’re the most instinctual player and consummate professional. As the bandleaders, we have to know our stuff cold. Every rhythm, every transition. Anywhere we’ve developed a bit of sloppy shorthand with each other will fall apart when the new instrument hits it – especially with the force of Zina’s drumming!
As opposed to Zina (who started from just two songs that had drum arrangements and learned our entire repertoire in eight months), Jake has the benefit of existing fully-notated arrangements that imply a certain amount of bass action. Sounds great, right? Yet, Jake has both Gina and I competing with him on low end rhythm, because at many points we act as each other’s bass player.
Two steps forward, two steps back.
(No, that does not mean we’re covering a Paula Abdul song. If only. I’ve proposed that cartoon cat action at least once a year.)
(Also, FWIW, bass isn’t as obvious as drumming or adding harmony. A new bass part can sound perfectly fine for weeks until it’s turned up just a touch, and you realize it actually clashes with everything.)
Last week we learned out of the blue that we’re responsible for a three hour long acoustic spot next Saturday in Collingswood, so Zina got the night off while we attempted play every song we can even vaguely claim to know – which turned out to be 30 – with Jake playing bass on as many of them as he was able.
To put that in perspective, on the current never-ending U2 tour that boasts different setlists every night to date they’ve played a total of 61 full-length unique songs, along with a vast number of medley’d snippets.
Three hours later and I am completely spent – mind, body, and voice.
I fundamentally don’t understand how bands keep more than 30 songs in repertoire. Even rehearsing two or more times a week, it’s just a monstrous amount of material to keep fresh.
Of the 30 songs we eeked out around 25 solid versions – most with Jake. The giddiest success was “Better.” After weeks of misses and curses-under-breath, we nailed 11 out of twelve three party harmonies. We finally clicked on “Brother John,” “Real End” has transformed (again) into our best pop song, Gina and I delivered a close to note-perfect “In My Life,” and Jake made “Under My Skin” giddy and new again.
(What were the seven bum tunes? Mostly covers, though we fell apart repeatedly on “Hyperbole.” Specifically, we bombed “Total Eclipse of the Heart,” and I was overwrought and flat on “Across the Universe.”)
We have one more three-hour rehearsal left, and then our show. I’m sure we’ll be fine – after all, we’ve done this three-hour thing before, and we had a lot fewer songs back then. But it will also be our first trial-run with Jake helming our low end. It sounds fine in our parlor, but who knows how it will turn out in the wild?
Also, it makes me wonder how we’re going to achieve on of our big goals for the 2011-12 season of AC – learning a new song every month. Are we really ready to be rehearsing 44 tunes by a year from now?
I guess we’re about to find out.