Grab your helmet, check the air in your tires, and hop on your bike because in many U.S. cities, May 12 - 16 is Bike to Work Week! Six Apart has a lot of biking enthusiasts, so we're very excited to support this event by encouraging all of our employees to bike to work this week. San Francisco's Bike to Work Day is tomorrow, Thursday, May 15th, and New York's is Friday, May 16th.
Six Apart is helping out its employees by providing maps (shaded according to steepness - a must in SF!) to help everyone plan out his/her route, as well as finding first-time riders buddies to commute with. We're also supporting ALL SF riders who pass the front of our office by handing out coffee, juice and snacks from 7 a.m. to 9 a.m. tomorrow morning. If you're in our neighborhood, look for the sign that says "Six Apart Supports Bike to Work Day" and stop by to say hi and get energized!
Improve your health, financial status, productivity, and happiness by joining thousands - maybe even millions - of commuters around the country who are hopping on their bikes to get to work. Visit the Bike to Work Week website to find out more about events in your area.
Support the two-wheeled way of life with the "Passing Left" theme found in "Photo-Based" in the Design Area. Planning on cycling to work this week? Let us know in the comments!
As we mentioned last week, we had to postpone the maintenance that was due to occur on Thursday, May 8th.
We have rescheduled the maintenance for tonight, Tuesday, May 13th, starting at 6:00 P.M. Pacific Daylight Time (that's 1:00 A.M. UTC/GMT). We'll be taking Vox offline for a bit in order to move the service to a brand new home in some bright, shiny new server racks. We don't expect to be offline for more than an hour or two, but we apologize in advance for any inconvenience this may cause.
Again, thank you for your patience as we continue to invest in Vox's infrastructure!
Tonight, starting at 6:00 P.M. Pacific Daylight Time (that's 1:00 A.M. UTC/GMT), we'll be taking Vox offline for a bit in order to move the service to a brand new home in some bright, shiny new server racks. We don't expect to be offline for more than an hour or two, but we apologize in advance for any inconvenience this may cause.
Thank you for your patience as we continue to invest in Vox's infrastructure!
Update: we've postponed tonight's maintenance, and will let you know when we reschedule. Thanks for your patience!
Last week, we announced the winners of the HP "What Do You Have to Say? Theme Design Contest and promised you we'd make the winning themes available on Vox in the coming weeks. After a little more thought, we decided you shouldn't have to wait a second longer to use these creative and inspiring designs on your blogs, so we made them available for you today. Who says good things only come to those who wait?
Straight to Video
Now you can share your Flickr videos on your Vox blog!
A few weeks ago, Flickr announced that pro members are now able to share videos of up to 90 seconds in their photostream. Many of you already post photos to your Vox blog directly from your Flickr account, and now we’ve made it so you can do the same with your Flickr videos.
To post a Flickr video to your Vox blog, just follow the same steps you would if you were posting a Flickr photo. (Yes, that means you’ll find your Flickr videos in “Photos,” not “Videos.”)
Not using Flickr to add photos to Vox? Find out how to connect your Flickr account to your Vox account. Plus, using Flickr means you’ll never have to upload a photo twice, or waste valuable storage space!
Around the World with Vox and CupCate
A little over a year ago, we announced that CupCate was one of the Grand Prize winners of the Vox World Tour. A month ago, Cate and her husband, Iain, packed their bags and flew to San Francisco, the first stop of a three-cities-in-fourteen-days vacation.
While they were in SF, Team Vox was lucky enough to have a yummy lunch with Cate and Iain and some of us even made it out for a late night karaoke session at The Mint.
We were also happy to hear, however, that she took some time to enjoy a glass of wine, a roaring fire, and the luxury of utter relaxation.
Then it was off to Tokyo where she saw gorgeous cherry blossoms, the Tokyo Tower and the Sensoji Temple, and even got a special tour around Tokyo with Ayako from Six Apart’s Japan office!
And it wouldn't be a Vox World Tour without Paris in the spring time, decadent French meals, and, of course, the Eiffel Tower.
It sounds like an amazing adventure. Congratulations again to CupCate. We had so much fun with you while you were in SF and we can't wait until your next visit!
It was hard to choose from the 355 entries, but the judges have announced the winners of our month-long "What Do You Have to Say?" theme design contest, sponsored by HP. And the winners are....
And while we know it's not polite to brag, you'll forgive us for a moment while we gush about the fact that the 2nd and 3rd prize winners are both Voxers!
The Second Place theme, “Live and Learn” was submitted by Li Kim Goh, or as you may know her: gollykim. We thought it was pretty cool to hear that Li, “didn't really think about winning, but mainly [entered] just for fun [while also] creating a few new banners for [her] own Vox blog.
When asked why blog design was so important to her, Li answered, ““because it draws readers' attention and makes your blog stand out from the millions of other blogs.” With such a great design, we think Li did just that.
The Third Place winner, Terri, showed off her “funky-fresh style” with her theme, “Vector Drips.” Terri said that having her theme picked made her day. You know what Terri? It made our day too!
The best part of the contest? In the coming weeks, we’ll make all the winning themes available on Vox, TypePad and LiveJournal so that you can use them on your blog!
Thank you to everyone who entered the contest and CONGRATULATIONS to all the winners!
Peter is dumb. That's all I need to say to set up this FG quote.
Lois: It's geat they picked your theme, but isn't
it a little esoteric?
Peter: Esoteric?
(Zoom in to the guys in Peter's brain)
Guy1: Could it mean sexy?
Guy2: I think it's a science term.
Guy3: Fellas, fellas! Esoteric means delicious!
(back to the real world)
Peter: Lois, "Who's the Boss" is not a food.
Brian: Swing and a miss.
This is Peter's attempt at figuring out the meaning of an unknown word by using context clues. Cruse writes a bit on this subject on pg. 41 of our textbook:
"...an example of a contextual approach to meaning, because relative normality is a concept which applies only to combinations of elements; that is to say, it implies that meaning is to be studied by observing the interactions between elements and other elements, in larger constructions such as sentences...the normality profile of a linguistic item, that is to say its pattern of normality and abnormality across the full range of possible contexts, gives in some sense a picture of its meaning..."
Neither Peter nor his brain committee are good at judging the normality of unknown words or using context clues. But I guess I'm not either b/c I have no idea what esoteric means.
Here is an example of flouting the maxim of quantity. Diane, the reporter on the Quahog news network is introducing her co-worker who is doing a story in the field.
Diane: And now to Asian reporter Trisha Takanawa, who filed this report... all by herself!
The maxim of quantity is flouted by the addition "all by herself!" The tone is also important but we won't discuss it here. The last bit of Diane's statement is completely unnecessary in the introduction of Trisha Takanawa but she adds it to express something about the intelligence and professional ability of her co-worker. She deviated from the preferred (most efficient) utterance in order to encode more information in what she was saying.
Here is an example of violating the maxim of quantity. Lois had been trying to get Peter to go to the doctor and now she is inquiring about the scheduled visit.
Lois: Hi honey. How was your physical?
Peter: Good. Good. Good...yeah, yeah. Too good, in matter of fact. You know
what the doctor said? Doctor said I was too healthy. You know? In too good of
shape. Don't even know how. Too good of shape.
Lois: You didn't go to your physical, did you?
Peter: No. Ahm, I did not.
She knows he's full of it b/c he tried to give more details than she asked for. He did this not to enrich his communication but to lie. So he also violated the maxim of quality. If the listener is not meant to catch the flouting then it becomes a violation.
Family Guy example. All of my posts will be regarding FG and the analysis of funny quotes from the show. Anyway...
Lois: Brian, you're not wearing the sweater I
made you.
Brian: Well, y'know, it's a little warm in here ...
Lois: Don we now our gay apparel!
Brian: It doesn't get much gayer than this.
Brian's response is not the preferred response so Brian must use more
language to explain himself. He would've said more but Lois cut him off. Also "Well, y’know" is letting Lois know that he is
about to flout the maxim of politeness and relevance. He isn’t giving her the preferred
response but he is making up for it by paying the penance (having to come up
with an excuse). It should also be noted that "Brian, you're not wearing the sweater I made you" is a speech act. She is trying to get Brian to go put it on.
This excerpt is taken from Family Guy. The two characters talking are the reporters on the local news show. Tom says the first part of a well-known adjacency pair and when Diane responds with the normal answer he takes the opportunity to make fun of her. I suspect her answer was the expected one even though he acted as if it weren't. He's such an ass...
Tom Tucker: A bit of breaking news. A local
family is forced out of their home by ghosts. Who are they gonna call?
Diane Simmons (sighs): Ghostbusters, Tom.
Tom Tucker: No, Diane. Their insurance company. That's just stupid what you
said.”
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