Recently I had a client that we had come up with an amazing domain name to help promote his local Extreme Pita franchise. The goal was to attract more schools & businesses as regular catering clients. The domain, we thought was clever and simply was extremepitacatering.com – to the point, and key word rich.
Well unfortunately head office didn’t think so. Honestly, it’s not my fault they didn’t register it in the first place. Apparently the franchisee can utilize the Extreme Pita name in their domain, but not other terms. We’re still not clear on this, but honestly don’t want to hold up additional actions around it either. So since the location is in North East Calgary, the decision was to make it simple and still relevant so we opted for extremepitane.com – in fact it’s even shorter, so good for a Twitter world.
The issue came about though in trying to figure out the fastest, easiest way to get the domains redirected without having to copy over code and not losing any (though minimal) search results. A nice Google search for .htaccess forward domain generated a nice lead on a forum. I read through the results and came up with the following solution.
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} extremepitacatering.com$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://extremepitane.com/$1 [R=301,L]
It was so quick and simple and nice to do. Something I’ve never had the experience of doing on a Windows machine. The pure power of Apache is definitely something I won’t sacrifice for clients. Utilizing the power of mod_rewrite is even better, but that’s for another post. BTW, if you’re hungry, go visit Dan at extremepitane.com and tell him we sent you.
Posted: August 4th, 2009 by Marshall
| Filed under Code Development, Searches
The conversation yesterday in the office surround some retro things. Everything from Jury Duty
with Pauly Shore
to sour soother (some times called sour key) candy. Gail decided to mention that the cool thing in her twelve year old’s school was Toxic Waste. I immediately thought they must be like Warheads but according to her description, they were to be the most sour candies in the world. After reading “Steve, Don’t Eat It” the other day I figured, why not?
So today she brought in the Toxic Waste. Upon opening the packaging the candies looked very similar to Warheads. I knew this would be easy so popped in the first lemon one. Often the most sour of sour, lemon ranks the highest. Well, no issue so I decided to add another without concern. Her face was agape in awe as I didn’t break a sweat. So with me being the guinea pig, a few got passed around the office with similar reaction. Tt was time to put one in her mouth. She lasted not even 15 seconds so according to the Toxic Waste canister, she’s a “Total Wuss!”
That’s when it struck me. I’d finish the container. Unfortunately there were only seven left to munch on. Some quick un-packaging and I slammed them back like a shooter. I’ll admit, I feel a little warm, but the sour, no way. The packaging says if you can keep one in your mouth for 60 seconds, then you rate as a “Full Toxie Head!” I’m wondering what the rank of seven for that long would be? My guess is “stupid idiot” or something like that. Well it would seem that after pounding nine Toxic Waste candies in a matter of minutes I’m still alive…though honestly not feeling present! Additionally I found out the twelve year old kids think they’re cool keeping two in their mouth for sixty seconds. Gail confirmed this with a text to her daughter informing her that I managed to put seven Toxic Waste candies in my mouth at once. The text that came back simply was “oh wow, crazy” (though probably missing punctuation and spelled wrong).
Tomorrow’s challenge will be the whole container, brand new. My only concern is actually fitting them all in my mouth. On the canister in fine print is indicates “WARNING! CHOKING HAZARD”…I guess so with that many in there!
Oh and the reward for this? A Starbucks tomorrow. The reward for tomorrow’s entire canister of Toxic Waste is still TBD. Stay tuned if you have nothing better to do.
As a last thought, tell me what it would take for you to consume 1.7 oz. (48g) of pure, Toxic Waste.
Posted: June 17th, 2009 by Marshall
| Filed under Life, Pointless Thoughts
Today at the office we were trying to find out what station was what in Calgary. I knew a lot of them but not all of them so decided to hit our friend Google with a friendly search. And of course got a whole bunch of other things to search through and/or incomplete and/or outdated lists. So I decided to write one here that will hopefully evolve just as station call-signs come and go.
I’m hopefully the above is a good representation of a complete, current list of Calgary radio stations. If I’ve missed any, please let me know.
Edit: June 20, 2009 – Fuel 90.3 has switched names & format.
Edit: July 9, 2010 – Vibe 98.5 has switched names with similar format.
Edit: August 17, 2010 – 101.5 Energy FM has switched names & format.
Posted: April 13th, 2009 by Marshall
| Filed under Life
It’s been a desire of ours for the last while to go for some good sushi. You may remember our visit to Kinjo Sushi and how great that was. Well today for dinner we had a friend in from out of town and decided it was time to try Globefish Sushi. There were 6 of us in total, including my 8½ month old daughter. We got there just before 5:00 when they opened and were amazed there was already a line…definitely a good sign. They opened the door promptly at 5:00 and we were seated quickly even though we were still waiting on one person. The place filled up quickly and within about 15 minutes there were already people waiting to be seated.
The menu was easy to read and definitely had a Calgary influence, including an Alberta Roll (beef rolled sushi). I opted for the Flames Roll Combo which was spicy tuna roll, spicy salmon roll and spicy California roll as well as a 7-piece salmon sashimi. There were other options like the Iginla roll, Flames Sushi Combo and more. It wasn’t until I left that I noticed all the autographed Calgary Flames photos on the wall…no doubt frequented by a lot of them. The service overall was pretty good, though nothing quite compares to the owner coming around offering free sushi samples. His recommendation on saki was bang on (it really just tasted like apple juice – even though it was made with plums) and everyone enjoyed their food. Even my 8½ had some teriyaki chicken and a few edamame beans. The price wasn’t that bad and with tip averaged out to roughly $36 a person…not including my 8½ month old.
Overall, I’d definitely recommend checking out Globefish Sushi in Calgary. We went to the one in Kensington however they have another one in Marda Loop. I look forward to eating there again.
Posted: February 27th, 2009 by Marshall
| Filed under Diet, Life