About Me
My name is Tyler Hellard. I’m a writer living in Calgary, Alberta. I’m a big Blue Jays fan. I like to read Superman comics. My favourite band is Frightened Rabbit. I’m obsessive about stationery, especially pens and notebooks.
I pay my mortgage writing copy and doing content strategy for an agency called Zu. Previously, I worked at two other agencies for clients like Dell, Mercedes-Benz, NASA, Budweiser, Best Buy, Nissan, Adidas, Travel Alberta and Moxie’s. More recently, I spent nearly two years as the senior writer and social media guy at iStockphoto. I’m also a contributing editor at Avenue magazine here in Calgary, writing mainly pop culture and humour pieces. (Full disclosure: My wife is the editor.)
In my spare time, I collect links and occasionally blog here at Pop Loser. I contribute to and edit a sports blog called Fifty Mission Cap and harass my friends to share their favourite music for a site called 52 Mix Tapes. I used to be a DJ, but I got too old. My old mixes are archived at Vinylslut.fm. I still like playing with music though, and have a mini-mix series called Walking Without Rhythm that’s updated with varying regularity.
I’m currently writing a novel about hockey. It’s taking me a very long time to finish.
About the Site
Pop Loser started in 2006 as a blog about marketing, advertising and popular culture. That didn’t last very long because, frankly, I didn’t have much original to say on those subjects. Inspired by blogs like Fimoculous, Kottke and Coudal, I got in the habit of just linking to things I’m interested in. This means that the blog’s flavour changes and evolves with my own tastes. So it goes.
The site was originally and briefly powered by TypePad before moving to WordPress. From March 2010 to December 2011 it was on Tumblr. Currently, it’s back on a self-hosted install of WordPress using an increasingly modified version of Dulce by wearepixel8. The soup can illustration was created by Pieter Heyman for Simple Desktops and is used here with his permission.
All posts are made using MarsEdit and code/design changes are handled with Coda. Reeder is essential to finding links and content worth posting.
