I’ve got yet another new project: Indy Animal Media. Check out the website and its first podcast at indyanimalmedia.org.
Archive for the 'AdoptAnAnimal.org' Category
Though AdoptAnAnimal.org is still in its infancy, my calendar is gradually filling up with related happenings, and I’m realizing that this non-job is a lot of work!
On Saturday, my wife and I attended the North Shore Animal League’s “Tour for Life” at the Indianapolis Animal Care and Control center. (Before I forget, check out Shakie to the right, one of the adoptable dogs at IACC. He looks very similar to my dogs Aja and Diva, and it’s so tempting to rescue him… but I can’t, so maybe you should! Click his pic to go to his Petfinder page, or visit IACC to see him and take him for a walk.)(Updated on 4/29/08: Shakie is no longer available: he was adopted!) NSAL purports to be the world’s largest no-kill shelter. I don’t know if this is true, but either way, I didn’t find out at Saturday’s event. It was great to see a lot of no-kill animal rescue organizations represented at the event, but besides a small hand-written poster board and an NSAL pamphlet at one of the booths, I didn’t see any presence of the League at all (and their blog currently doesn’t have an Indy entry, so perhaps something happened and they couldn’t show up.)
At any rate, I met some great people representing some worthwhile animal activism groups, adoption shelters and rescue organizations. I talked to Warren Patitz, president and founder of Move to Act, which has been one of the Humane Society of Indianapolis’s most vocal critics (though critics of HSI aren’t hard to find, especially after their decision to stop taking in stray animals - read this Nuvo article for the full story.) He told me some more about an upcoming No Kill seminar with author/activist Nathan Winograd, which should be quite interesting (I listened to Winograd’s podcast, based on this blog post today; it definitely makes me rethink the comment I left on Nuvo’s site in which I mentioned that even if HSI is making a mistake by not taking strays, at least their end goal of finding homes for pets is a noble one. I hope they’re doing all they can to adopt out every animal.)
So in addition to the Tour for Life and the No Kill seminar, I’ll also be attending the HSI Mutt Strut this Sunday with Aja, Diva, Pixie (my dogs), my wife and my parents (and their dog.) I’m sure my dogs don’t really care what HSI is doing as long as they get to be around hundreds of other excited, panting dogs.
Speaking of dogs, I found it interesting that, at the NSAL event this past Saturday, my wife wanted to take home the smallest dog, Honeybunch (a beautiful little boxer-type mix from Rescue Farm), and I wanted to take home the largest (Titan, a gorgeous malamute from Indy Homes for Huskies, who arguably had the liveliest bunch of dogs available for adoption.) If only we had acres and acres of farmland so we could take in more dogs…
When asked why he spent so much time and money talking about kindness to animals when there is so much cruelty to men, George Angell (founder of the Massachusetts SPCA in 1868) replied, “I am working at the roots. When human beings finally learn to honor the spirit of all beings most of the world’s problems will be solved.”
This post isn’t as focused as those previous, but read on, kind sirs and madams:
A big week for me at Angie’s List and for Adopt An Animal. At Angie’s List, I set up our magazine department’s blog and released List-en up!’s first true video podcast. I say “true” video because previous episodes were in what was technically a video format, but were basically a still-image slideshow with pictures to accompanying the audio. This time, though, I actually followed a home energy auditor and videotaped the house-inspection process. After watching the video, I hope you have an audit performed on your home to find out how much money you can save through some simple energy-efficient upgrades.
As for the blog, you’ll notice that its design is basically the same as the Angie’s List podcast site. For the “Blue House Blog,” as we’re calling it (thanks to Brandon Smith, Angie’s List magazine artist and Goldfish Don’t Bounce bandmember, for the awesome logo!), I used the same Wordpress content management system, and the same theme, K2, simply because it works well. It looks good on its own, but is easily customizable and functions quite well for the most part. And though I have little PHP-programming experience, going into the code and fiddling with certain things isn’t too difficult. And there’s a tremendous network of free plugins, forums, and bloggers that serve as terrific resources for any Wordpress-related problem.
On a Wordpress-related note, I’ve posted some more dogs for adoption in Indianapolis at my Wordpress-based Adopt An Animal site. Please check them out (an adult female German Shepherd and adult male Pit-bull mix) and let me know if you or someone you know is interested.
Finally, I hope to install Ableton Live this weekend and create my first digital mix of some songs I’ve been really into lately. If you have any experience with Live and have tips to offer, please let me know. Thanks!
I received an order of business cards for Adopt An Animal the other day from Natural Printing, and they look great! (Check out the design below.) This is the first time I’ve designed and ordered business cards for myself, and I’m quite pleased with the final product. I originally thought about using a service such as VistaPrint to get free cards, but they didn’t offer 100% recycled (as far as I could tell), and I couldn’t quickly figure out a way to simply upload the custom card I designed myself instead of using their templates (such was the case with similar free-business-card sites.) I found a few other places online offering recycled cards, but most required huge orders and were considerably expensive. Natural Printing allowed me to order a relatively small number of 100% recycled cards (don’t be fooled by the rather unattractive example) for a relatively cheap price ($60.) Sure, it was more expensive than VistaPrint’s free cards, obviously, but with Natural Printing, I got exactly what I wanted, quickly, and supported a small business at the same time.
This being my first business card design, I was a bit apprehensive that I may have set up the printing layout incorrectly. Natural Printing’s website gives guidelines on how to set up your design’s layout so it prints correctly, and though the directions are easy to follow, Mark from Natural Printing let me know of a minor problem shortly after I submitted my order - the version of Adobe Illustrator I was using (CS2 12.0.1) was too high, even though it’s a few years old. So I saved the design as a PDF, sent him the update, and quickly heard back from that my design was good to go. About a week and a half later, the little box showed up, stuffed with perfectly aligned little cards.
I chose to use a one-sided design. I originally thought about including Adopt An Animal’s services on the back of the card, but I realized that many times when people give me business cards, I write notes on the blank side about the organization or the person I met. I could’ve used lighter ink on the card’s backside had I used it, but chose to go the simpler one-sided route. I also figure that it’s a good idea to use matte printing, because glossy cards are virtually impossible to write on.
The one minor issue I have with my order is that the heavy-duty, pure-white cards say nothing about being 100% recycled, which I think would be a nice feature and selling point for Natural Printing. I’ll probably let Mark know about this and see what he says, but in the meantime, if I order more cards, I might just put a small watermark on the bottom mentioning this fact. It might look a little self-congratulatory (”Hey, I use recycled products!”), but with so many business cards floating around out there, people may as well start printing them on recycled paper!
