CONTEST: Win Tickets to Sander van Doorn at Dragonfly Nightclub in Niagara Falls

Quick and dirty contest for my fans and lovers of electronic music. I was approached by the folks over at Fiction Productions to do a giveaway for a pair of tickets to the Sander van Doorn (SVD) show on Thursday, October 24 in Niagara Falls, Ontario at the beautiful and intimate Dragonfly Nightclub.

If you’ve never been to the Dragonfly it is a very nice club located inside the Fallsview Casino. The show is going to be super intimate because the place is pretty small and this is a pretty huge international DJ so if I were you I wouldn’t miss out on his set. In fact, SVD just got named Number 39 in the DJ Mag Top 100 DJs for 2013 and you’re going to get to see him up close and personal.

Here is SVD’s most recent of his weekly radio shows also available directly here: https://soundcloud.com/sandervandoorn/sander-van-doorn-identity-203

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In case you don’t win, you can still grab your tickets at www.wantickets.com/sandervandoorndragonfly

You can also get yourself a hotel package at www.fictionproduction.com/packages

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HOW TO ENTER THE CONTEST:

REMEMBER:  If you don’t follow the instructions on how to enter, you won’t have entered so read them carefully. (This line was originally only on the bottom of the post under Terms & Conditions but since people seem to have ignored it I am adding it here too.)

To enter the contest you MUST:

1. Like Fiction Productions on Facebook. Their page is at https://www.facebook.com/pages/Fiction-Productions/628446607199857

2. Share this blog post. Share it on Twitter or Facebook (your call which but extra entry if you share it to both) and tell me the URL(s) of the post(s) in the comment section below. [NOTE: You can put both URLs in one comment. However, if you haven’t set the posts to PUBLIC and I cannot see them they do not count as entries.]

Here’s an example of a tweet you can use:

Hey @TheDanLevy & @FictionPro send us to @Dragonfly_Club to see @SandervanDoorn! Contest deets @ http://bit.ly/1893Bwf

3. Tell me in the same comment as the one you’ve used for the URLs of your social media posts what your favorite Sander van Doorn track is (remixes of other artist’s music counts).

TERMS & CONDITIONS:

Contest is open from the time of this writing until 6pm Toronto time, October 23, 2013 at which point a winner will be chosen.

You are responsible for your own travel arrangements and accommodations (if necessary).

The winner will have 30 minutes to reply to their notification of winning which will be via the email you use with your comment. If you don’t reply, a new winner will be chosen. I don’t care how you reply as long as I receive the reply.

If you don’t follow the instructions on how to enter, you won’t have entered so read them carefully.

GOOD LUCK!!!

CONTEST IS NOW CLOSED:

CONGRATULATIONS TO JENNA-LEE POLLARD ON HER WIN. HOPE SHE HAS A GREAT NIGHT!!!

This is the end, beautiful friends. @PostADay 2011’s 365th Post. Beginning A New Challenge For 2012…

January 3rd 2012. This is, as Jim Morrison of The Doors sang, The End. Not the end of this blog, no, this is the end of the 2011 Post A Day Challenge which I started on January 4th 2011 with this post, exactly 365 days ago.

I was proud to have the badge that said I was part of the Challenge which you can see below and on the right hand side of the page but didn’t know when I put it up if I would be able to do it justice. I am happy – and somewhat relieved to say that I made it and I did do it justice. I remember when I started the Challenge being told by other bloggers – specifically Casie Stewart comes to mind right now – how amazing it is and how it is a great diary when you want to look back on your year. As I look back on my year it amazes me some of the things I wrote and how I wrote them and a lot of the stuff brings a smile to my face. If I wasn’t working with the post per day deadline I probably would have tried to be more of a perfectionist and not gotten nearly as much content out there. Indeed, when I look back at some of my posts I realize I really, really need someone to proofread for me (I think we all do!) but I guess that simple mistakes a proofreader would find comes with the territory of writing a personal blog and writing it daily. If ever you see a simple error – like I mess up and write “it’s” instead of “its” please feel free to call me out on it via email.

What a wild ride it has been since I started this blog. My traffic grew at a pretty constant rate as you can see in the chart below…well constant except for the post I wrote in April about a certain French Canadian high school secretary who was moonlighting in pornographic movies and then got caught which drew A LOT of extra traffic (in retrospect this is not a big surprise). Finishing this challenge just gives me such a sense of accomplishment I cannot begin to describe it. It is just one of the most fantastic feelings in the world to be done something that was my idea (well, for me to take part in it), my commitment, and had no discernible benefit at its end in terms of reward.

In that vein, I think my challenge for this year – aside from my silly New Year’s Resolution of living past December 21, 2012 – will be inspired by my friend Erin Bury‘s resolution for 2011 which was in turn inspired by another friend, Dave Fleet‘s, resolution for 2010: Read 26 books over the course of the year (this means a book every 2 weeks).

As I began writing this I thought I was already off to a great start in finishing John Varley’s “Rolling Thunder” and it is only January 3rd as I thought I had read the bulk of it New Year’s Day but looking back through my GetGlue history it seems I did the bulk of my reading of that book on December 31 so I cannot count it. Good thing I already started reading a new book – Malcolm Gladwell’s “Outliers”. I’ve already made a 90 page dent in it too so I am happy. Looks like it is a good thing I started stocking up on books from the library and I will now get to embody – once again – what I wrote about a couple of days back. Writing this also reminds me I never have gotten to the Steve Jobs book just yet probably because of all the books I just got from the library.

The below is the method I am going to endeavor to employ through this task and is taken from Dave Fleet’s blog post about his own challenge in 2010.

26 books per year… how?

How do you go about reading a book every two weeks, all year?

It’s simple – 20 pages per day.

That equates to 140 pages per week, or 280 every two weeks – roughly the length of the average book. For me, I fit in 10 pages on my commute to work, and another 10 on the way home. You might prefer instead to read for 30 minutes in the evenings, or do all your reading over coffee in the morning. Either way, once you break it down like this, it’s not so bad.

I guess I sort of have a head start in that I have already read, as mentioned above, 90 pages of Gladwell’s book, but realistically I don’t have that much of one because we are already 3 days into 2012 which means I should be 60 pages into the book anyway – so I am only 30 pages ahead of schedule.

I am very excited for this new endeavor and look forward to how it develops. I think I may need a new tag for it too and am spitballing some ideas as I sit here. Right now I am thinking BookAFortnight or maybe 26Books or maybe just Books. I think I am going to follow in Dave’s lead and just stick with ‘Books’ because it is just simpler. (I hope you enjoyed that little stream of consciousness moment in my writing…that was all completely legitimate and I decided to leave it there as is.)

So it is time to go on to my next challenge. Are you trying out anything new this year? Setting any challenges for yourself? No matter how minute I would love to hear it! Let me know in the comments below.

Mobilicity Contest Update & Giveaway!

You may recall my entry to the Mobilicity contest to be the CEO Blogger and go on a road trip with CEO Dave Dobbin.

Thank you, thank you, thank you to everyone who voted for me and supported me in this endeavor. You don’t know how much I appreciate it.

Here is the video below in case you have yet to see it:

I asked you all to vote for me and my YouTube video and the video garnered so much attention that YouTube approached me to become a YouTube Partner for that video. (I sent in the necessary forms but am still waiting to hear back.) But, alas, even with 391 views, 39 Likes, 20 comments, and a YouTube Partnership offer it was not meant to be – I did not win the contest. Instead, a young lady named Kathryn Tom’s video (below) which got 8 Likes on Facebook under 200 views (pre-announcement that she had won), 4 Likes, and 0 comments on YouTube was the chosen winner by the panel of Mobilicity judges including Dave Dobbin himself.

Cool, I hope she is having an amazing time and I wish her, Dave Dobbin, and Mobilicity all the best. But, as a runner-up Mobilicity hooked me up with some nice swag which I would like to share with my readers. The way I figure it, I didn’t win the grand prize so someone else who is part of the LevyNewsNetwork family should get something because you guys all rock.

This giveaway is open to residents of the Greater Toronto Area ONLY (unless you’re physically in Toronto on a regular basis so that means all folks who are within driving distance and are around the Toronto area often are welcome to enter).

First up, we have a really cool Mobilicity branded messenger bag

YouTube Partner? Sure Thing!

On Friday, Jun 24, 2011 at 10:34 AM I received an email from YouTube. The heading, as you can see above read – “Your video has been submitted for revenue sharing“.

I was more surprised than anyone else to receive this letter and immediately became suspicious thinking it must be a scam of some sort. So I read the entire email through and through and checked out all the links on the page. They all were legit YouTube.com links.

Which video was eligible for revenue sharing? My video that I mentioned in this post: “A Favor To Ask: Help Me Blog For & Road Trip With Mobilicity CEO Dave Dobbin”. The video, as mentioned in that post and located at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DAByWNK6z7g, is an attempt to get myself on a 15 day roadtrip with Mobilicity CEO Dave Dobbin as the official CEO Blogger. It is because of you folks and my friends on Twitter that YouTube noticed this video and asked me if I would like to apply for revenue sharing.

I did not expect this to happen but if YouTube wants to offer me a chance to make some money from my video – and the ads that YouTube is putting in it anyway – wouldn’t I be a fool not to accept the offer? I wonder what will come of this but I wanted to thank everyone who reads this blog and has spread word of my Mobilicity CEO Blogger contest entry video and “Liked” it – I have 23 Likes and 3 Dislikes (can’t please everyone all the time!).  This might be where I start making that awesome-cool ‘Internet money’ I keep hearing so much about…but I very highly doubt it. My video still only has 242 views. I wonder what YouTube’s analytics tell it about my video that makes it considered ‘viral’. Will I ever know?

Here’s some more info on my video as it stands today in terms of the “Insight”. I hope YouTube doesn’t get pissed off that I am sharing this info…I don’t see why they would as it is info which is for my benefit…although now that I am looking at the image below I am thinking maybe I should set my Privacy settings for the stats to Private (They’re public now for some reason). Then again, why do I care? I just want to win the contest! But I digress…

I hope you are all having a fantastic weekend!

A Favor To Ask: Help Me Blog For & Road Trip With Mobilicity CEO Dave Dobbin

OK, to be fair, this is the second contest in 3 months I am asking you to help me out with a contest. But I think all y’all know that this is the contest for me. Also, I wanted an excuse to add my video for the contest to this blog. If I win this contest, I will also finally be able to go on my epic road trip that I didn’t go on when I didn’t go to Chicago.

The contest is to be the official blogger for a road trip that Mobilicity CEO Dave Dobbin is taking across Canada.

According to the contest description the winner will receive

…a road trip with Mobilicity’s CEO, currently anticipated to commence from Toronto on or around July 15, 2011 and concluding in Vancouver by or around July 30, 2011 (the “Trip”). Transportation to Toronto will be provided (if the winner resides outside Toronto) and transportation from Vancouver (if the winner resides outside Vancouver) will also be provided.  

….Prize winner’s attendance and participation in the form of documenting the Trip via social media are mandatory.

As my regular readers know (I hope!) I am a pretty good blogger and am a total social media addict so this would be superfantasticawesome for me. 15 days with the CEO of Mobilicity. As a phone and gadget geek that is like a dream come true!

Anyway, without further ado – here is my video. I hope you will “Like” the video on YouTube and support me in this endeavor!

A Huge Thank You To My Readers

I want to give a huge thank you to all my readers who commented and all the folks on Twitter who retweeted my blog post from yesterday.

It made me so glad to see how vehement all y’all were in commenting on that woman’s racist comments and rejecting the disgusting and antisemetic sentiments she conveyed to me.

Again, thank you. Your comments warmed me right down to the cockles of my heart. It redeemed in my mind my image of 21st Century Western Society.

Unfortunately, Racism Is Alive And Well In Toronto

The other night I was out at a great restaurant located in North York for my friend’s going away party. My night was ruined by the most racist experience I have ever had.

I decided to walk out onto the patio in the middle of the night to see if anyone I knew was out there. I looked around when I got out and saw a couple people sitting at the edge of the patio. One of the people, a young lady, shouted out to me, “Heil Hitler!”

I looked at her in utter shock. My brain just didn’t compute that anybody in Toronto in 2011 would have the audacity and lack of sense to say something like that.

After about 5 awkward seconds, she opened her mouth – aka stupid hole – and said, “German?”

I finally found my voice and said – still absolutely not comprehending the situation fully, “No. Jewish.”

I expected her friends/the people she was with to start apologizing profusely. I expected someone on the patio (which, to be fair, was mostly empty) to say something. Nobody said a word.

I expected her to start expressing massive amounts of regret for the disgusting display of racism and antisemitism for which realistically there is ZERO EXCUSE. But she didn’t. She pointed to one of the guys standing outside the patio and either said that he told her to say it or he was Jewish and that therefore made it OK. (It didn’t.)

I continued staring at her for another few minutes and told her that was an epic fail. She told me epic was a big word. I continued staring at her for another minute and then went inside.

I was just so astounded at the whole situation and it just goes to show you how close we are – even in an enlightened, Western country like Canada in the 21st Century – to hate without reason and racism. I refuse to believe she didn’t know what she was saying when she said her hateful comment. There is no excuse to say something like that, ever.

Let’s all be aware of people out there like that and not let this hate propagate.