Renew Your Oath to Canada

Jul 1 2011

Fast forward to 0:50, it takes only 11 seconds.

Yup, got chocked up there at the end, eh!

But really, it’d be weird if I didn’t; I did dedicate 3 years and 15 000 hours of my life to celebrating Canada. You bet I used a heart wipe!

Here’s the Oath:

I affirm, that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance, to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Second, Queen of Canada, Her Heirs and Successors, and that I will faithfully observe the laws of Canada, and fulfill my duties as a Canadian citizen.

This was filmed in Harbourfront at a swearing-in-you’re-now-a-citizen ceremony, and if you’ve never been to one, go. It will make you proud of your country. At this one there were 60 new citizens representing 20 different countries.

The oath is a little off in the video because I kinda accosted them at the end of the ceremony; thanks for being great fellas.

Both gentlemen are recipients of the ‘Order of Canada’ – the highest civilian achievement, with only 165 permitted to be in existence at any given time.

I’ve seen one up close here. I’ve made no secret I’d like to have one, too. I would wear it everywhere.

Love you Canada, thanks for being the best country in which to live! xo Keri

Thoughts on Being a Paid Blogger

Jun 29 2011

The aforementioned tweet.

Thoughts?

Below is a collection of articles written recently, mostly by fellow bloggers, about the state of the industry. These are the type of articles that started flooding the internet last week.

Send me any I missed, and I’ll link them up.

Casie Stewart – The Blog Days are Over Now, don’t get me wrong because there IS a difference

Mashable – How Social Media is Changing Paid, Earned and Owned Media

Zach Bussey – Bloggers and PR – The Spiral of Earned Media

Rebecca Levey – Someone’s Getting Paid, Why Aren’t You?

CC Chapman – Nice Guys Get Paid Too

Watch a Ford Focus Park Itself

Jun 10 2011

Tuesday Ford invited me to test drive their 2012 Ford Focus for a day via a car rally.

They partnered us each up, that’s my awesome cohort Ryan Durrell in brown.

(photo by Morsel Photography Hi Jerry! Look I stole more of your photos!)

The day kicked off with Ford saying, “here, go run our car through that slalem course, hard as you can”. Oh reallllly?!?! I got this.

I made that thing fly, and below is me standing on the brakes, and tada, cones are prefectly intact. I told them I was surprised how well it took the corners. Torque vectoring FTW.

Remember that time I did advanced driving school? Exploring a Race Car (video)

Each team was given an iPod Touch to film their experiences, and then Ford handed us our footage from the day on a USB key. So sorry for the poor audio.

Have you ever edited iPod or iPhone footage? Ugh. All that tall footage is tough to work with. And I don’t get it, why wouldn’t Final Cut talk better with .movs? Anyway.

How many horse power? Would you like a cupcake?

I learned that a horse is 14.3 hands high, anything smaller is considered a pony.

We stopped by the Canadian Car Museum , so many nice cars. I will never call them whips :|

Here’s Lauren and I, ha.

Interesting fact – the Focus is 85% of each pound of material used to build the car is recycled material.

Then I gave a little lecture.

Thanks for a great day, Ford!

If you ever need me to test another car on a track, I can do that!

All. Day. Long.

A Sacred Canadian Site – Peterbourough Petroglyphs

Jun 7 2011

During my days as The Canadian Explorer I set out to film an exploration on the Peterborough Petroglyphs. It is considered 1/3 sacred sites of Canada.

A petroglyph is a carving in rock from olden times. These Peterborough ones, there are 900 images carved into one huge slab of limestone, between 1000 – 5000 years old. Their origins remain a mystery.

I’m brand new at video making here.

See my old Razr?! And no law prohibiting cel phones while driving? I used MapQuest! Yay 2007!

da da da da da daaaa SPOILER ALERT: I didn’t make it.