jesvet’s Neighborhood

This past weekend I took some photos of the dogs playing in the snow.  They were like little kids running around.  Haven's happy jumping as she catches a snowball in her mouth.

In the Air

Here Beacon's fetching his Orbee ball and Haven's "attacking" him. 

Attack!

After getting tired and hot from fetching Beacon decided to cool off in the snow. 

Sophisticated Beacon

Andrew took this opportunity to throw snowballs at Beacon.  He'd look up at them as they zeroed in on him.

Watching an Incoming Snowball

Eventually Andrew hit Beacon with a snowball.  He didn't really try to get out of the way and ended up taking it on the side of his face.  I actually got a photo!

Hit by a Snowball

There was also digging in snow piles for the Orbee ball. 

Digging for the Ball

And of course Haven did her exploring, which usually leads to snow on her face.

Snowy Face

On Sunday Andrew built a snowman for Beacon to "attack".  Beacon's very serious about these attacks.  You can watch a video of Beacon taking on the snowman here. 

Starting tonight another storm will hit us.  It'll last until Thursday afternoon or evening!  There will be rain, freezing rain, and snow so things will be a mess.  Eventually we'll get a decent dumping of snow before it's all over. 

Yesterday we walked to the downtown area three times!  The first time we took Haven.  We had to go to the post office.  And there were ice sculptures being made along the riverwalk. 

Haven Sort of Watching

During our first trip out they were just getting started on the sculptures.  It was neat to see how the blocks start off.  They all have a template put on them so that the bigger chunks can be taken off and a basic outline "drawn" with a chainsaw.  All of the carvers were culinary students at a local college.

Template on Ice Block

We even walked around on the riverboat.  Haven wasn't so sure about that. 

Haven Posing

We were out for about an hour and a half during our first trip downtown.  We decided to go back toward the end of the time the sculptures were being made.  On our way back the second time we saw someone we knew and ended up chatting for awhile and ended up missing the winning sculpture being named (hopefully it'll be in the paper this week).

Here are some of the finished products.

We headed back home and had a couple of hours before walking back to Main Street again.  This time it was for the parade, which was pretty cool.  It was the first time we watched the parade even though we've lived here for almost seven years! 

My favorite part was the cow!!  The local fruit/produce stand had him/her.  The cow had a big green blanket on it with red garland on it.  Cool!  There was also a hot air balloon company that had a burner as part of their float.  From time to time the big flame would go off and everyone would oooh and aaah.  I also liked the old pipe organ that used to be on the riverboat.  Someone was playing Christmas tunes on it as it rolled along (on a float). 

There were a lot of people watching the parade.  It was a good thing that we walked because it was crazy with all of the cars trying to leave.  It was fun participating in some of our small town activities.  You can see more photos of the ice sculptures in this Flickr album.  I didn't have the camera with me during the parade so no photos there.

After a relatively warm November winter has decided to make an appearance.  When we went to bed last night there were a couple of inches of snow already on the ground.  The dogs loved it.  They were chasing each other around.  Haven was eating snow.  Beacon was chasing snowballs.

Things were a bit different this morning.  With snow up to their bellies the dogs weren't as eager to hang out in the stuff.  I'm sure we'll take pictures of them playing in it over the weekend. 

First, we're happy to announce that the team has identified and fixed the issue with the YouTube conduit; you can now find and add videos from YouTube to your library and posts. As always, thanks for your patience!

The other news we have today is about a new addition to the Six Apart family: TypePad Micro, a new free level of TypePad that is streamlined for microblogging. We see a new form of blogging emerging that lives between the quick status updates of Twitter and Facebook and the long-form posts of "classic" blogging; TypePad Micro is designed to meet that need. You can read more about TypePad Micro in Chris Alden's post on the Everything TypePad blog.

TypePad Micro

9 comments

A lot of the new capabilities we've added to TypePad this year were actually inspired by some of the best things about Vox: favoriting, member profiles, a dashboard to follow other bloggers, and easy ways to post content from other social media sites. But the things that make Vox different from TypePad are still there: Vox has always been -- and still is -- the best place for "friends and family" blogging, where you're in control over who sees what. TypePad, on the other hand, is built for the blogger who wants, no, craves, attention.

Do you have a passion or interest you want to share with people beyond your Vox neighborhood? If so, we'd love it if you tried out TypePad Micro. Maybe you've always wanted to start that obsessive blog that's just about waffle restaurants. Or want a place to share videos of your favorite band (Jonas Brothers, anyone? Anyone? ...). TypePad Micro's great for those topic-specific blogs. Take it for a spin and let us know what you think.

On the Vox front, our designers are working on some cool new themes (coming soon!). We'd also love to hear your thoughts about where we should take Vox in the coming year. What are the key things you'd like to see for Vox? If you've had a chance to use TypePad this year, what are the features there that we should bring over to Vox? And, if you're thinking big thoughts, how could we connect the Vox and TypePad communities in order to bring together bloggers and their shared passions? Your feedback is really important to us, so please leave a comment here, or shoot me a message.

And again, thanks for your patience as we found and fixed the YouTube bug!

~ daisy

As many of you have noticed, the YouTube Conduit is not working. I am so sorry about this; I know how frustrating it is.

The team is looking into how to get this fixed and I will update you as soon as I hear something. In the meantime, not all is lost... There is a work-around for posting videos.

When you're in the Compose Screen, just click on "embed." Ignore the fact that it says "Widget" before everything because you can definitely use this to embed videos as well. You'll just need to input the embed code from the video, enter a title (if you want) and hit OK.

It might not show up perfectly in your compose screen, but when you hit "Save," your video should appear just the way you wanted it to.

Hopefully this will allow you to keep posting videos while we figure out what's happening on our end.

As always, thanks for your patience.

~daisy

Go forth and fill your libraries with media.

Seriously, thanks to everyone for being so amazing and patient. You are the reason I love Vox.

~daisy

I was just told that the Amazon Conduit will be fixed by tomorrow. I will post here as soon as I get word that it's back up and running.

I know this has been frustrating and I am sorry there wasn't more I could do to make it less so. I really appreciate your patience though.

Cheers,

daisy

I went to the zoo again today.  But that's not really what this post is about.  As I was leaving I saw that Nessie had arrived.  I'll have to go back again sometime to get some photos of her.  But this post isn't about that either. 

I sat on a picnic table and watched as parts of Nessie were unloaded.  They took a break and I heard someone say they wouldn't start back up for another hour so I left.  But during the approximately hour that I was watching the action there were two squirrels trying to see if I had anything interesting.  And to them interesting meant food.

Neither was scared of me.  In fact they both came within inches of the camera. 

Up Close

And both squirrels were fat.  Really fat.  We have a lot of squirrels around our house but these "city squirrels" really needed to go on a diet. 

The squirrels' diet wasn't helped by the mom and two kids who were feeding them fries.  Both squirrels would get a fry and come back toward me to feast. 

Bad news. As many of you have probably noticed, the Amazon Conduit was not fixed in the last week's release. Unfortunately, there was an undetected bug that is preventing the conduit from working.

We are working on this bug fix and hope to have the Conduit back up and running this week.

I will keep you posted.

Thank you for being so patient.

~daisy