Easily Distracted

I know, it’s ironic that my first post for 2009 is about 2003-2004, but….

I was looking at some old website designs and was reminded that I had created a static HTML website for blogging while I was in Japan. This was called Steve’s Japan Journal and it is not available anywhere online, right now. I have now manually copied these 32 entries into this blog and tagged them with JapanJournal. I stopped using this method of blogging because it took too long to update and it was actually served by my family’s computer in North Vancouver – which didn’t exactly fill me with confidence while I was in Japan.

So what did I use next? Well, everyone else in the Gifu flock were using LiveJournal, so I joined them (reluctantly). I’ve imported the 37 LiveJournal blog entries, as well, and tagged them with LJImport. Most of these entries were also made in Japan. All entries made in Japan, from both sets, are tagged with Japan. After LJ, I moved to a self-hosted WordPress, which is what I’m currently using. I’ve left the Hello World! post in there so it’s obvious when this happened.

It took much longer than I thought to import all the entries, especially the Japan Journal ones, as I had to edit the timestamp for each and add a bit of formatting. And I found myself reading them again. Interesting how I’ve both changed and stayed the same. =) I found it great listening to music that I listened to at the time, while reading them.

I want to read!

Many of the links and images are broken, because they don’t exist any more, and the formatting may seem a little strange (especially from LJ). I’m not too keen on reformatting everything. That being said, if you’re feeling like a walk down memory lane, you can start (re)-reading about my 11 month Japan experience, from June 2003 to May 2004, right here:

On a Boeing 747 somewhere over the Pacific Ocean

A word of caution, however, it’s quite a bit of reading!! ^_^

Enjoy!

I’ll probably be doing most posts on my new(er) blog, which is still in testing phase.

http://stevenbrown.ca/blog/

- If you’re interested. If not, that’s okay too.

I went swimming in the COLD OCEAN, today! Wow. Been a while
since I did that. Walked down to the beach with my brother, and even
tried out my underwater housing for my camera, for the first time in
Canada! Unfortunately, the water was very murky due to to the tide,
and we were surrounded by jelly fish. I swam into a couple jelly fish
by accident… interesting feeling: they kinda just slide right over
you. But the worst is grazing them with your feet when you’re treading
water. “That was a jelly fish…. right?”

If I said I’ve been busy, would you believe me?
Well, I suppose that’s a flat-out lie, but I have
been occupied. Been shopping around for a domain
name and web hosting, recently. The whole process takes a while, so
we’ll see how that goes….
I’ve been organizing my photos, too. Yes, again. This takes SOOO LONG.
Anyways, to make a long story
short, I didn’t reset my camera’s time right away when I changed
timezones (Vancouver->Japan, and Japan->Vancouver). This is a big
problem (to me, at least) because my photos are named by the time the
file says they are taken.
I’ve also been combining photos taken by other people into one place.
From my Fuji-san gallery, I combined my photos with Alex’s
photos. Most of Alex’s photos were better than mine. I noticed the same
thing with the CEATEC convention, which I’m going through now.
Everybody else’s (including Ben’s,
Shirley’s,
and John’s)
pictures are generally better than mine, I’d say. But mine are
improving. I’ve got a better camera and I’m finally learning how to use
it. It’s funny, I’m always discovering new things… or just better
techniques. I’ve also stopped taking pictures simply because I can…
Okay, maybe not “stopped.”
It’s been really nostalgic; looking over all these photos. However, I
find the video has a much better ability to bring you back to the
moment, it’s just not as presentable or convenient. The video…
another organizational headache. No EXIF data! And John, those
videos your Sony took are quite good! That camera was much better than
the Canon at videos; it’s 2x the dimensions, it auto-focuses during
video, and it can take as much video as you can hold. …I hope you’re
not crying…. (It holds everything in memory
sticks, though!)
*spits*
John, I made a new lj-icon for you. You should know what picture
it’s from; Alex probably will.
width='100' height='100' />
“So Flute” by St Germain is an awesome track.

Well, was right. My Deepest Sender
Firefox extension crashed two times in a row. One of those times, I
lost a lot of data. The other, I spent too much time fighting back
bugs. Too buggy to be usable (for now, anyways). So I’m trying other
clients, cuz I will have difficulty going back to the browser method.
drivel: This on looked okay. But it crashes when I start it up. :/
next.
logjam: Currently using this. It’s nice and fast, but not quite as
feature-full as Deepest Sender. And on the HTML preview option, it
doesn’t seem to show where your lj-cut tags are or show any actual
images. Hmm. It’s usable, though. There’s a “synchronize offline copy”
option that may come in handy, too; haven’t tried it, though.
I took the student that is staying with us to English Bay to watch the
fireworks on Wednesday night. I took nearly 200 pictures. I brought
my mini tripod with hopes of setting it up, but there were too many
people in front of us. I was impressed with how they turned out,
actually.

width='500' height='500' />
For some reason, this will not show up in HTML preview in
LogJam…

I don’t think it’s worth going down there, though. Way too many people,
and too many of them are idiots. The bus is an especially bad
experience. Compared to Japan, I’d say these fireworks are a little
thin in quantity (okay, they’re tiny in comparison), but they
are more graceful – they got scratchy radio music to
go with it! w00T!
That being said, I would prefer the dark sky eclipsed by brilliant
lights. Japanese fireworks are awesome!

I had a big detailed post with a list of digital printing
services
written, but Deepest Sender crashed; so much for that. 
:-/ 
Anyone got any recommendations/comments on where I should get photos
printed?  I’m gonna try FutureShop, for sure.. and I’ll have
to
try Superstore and Wal-Mart simply because they are so cheap. 
I
will compare the quality.



I’ve
recently set up gkrellm
on
my computer.  “wow”  I spent a
long time customizing it and now I love it!  (screenshot)



I tried out the new Gimp
(version
2)!  The UI has had a major over-haul, and it looks so
nice! 
I like GTK+2.0. 
But when I
emerged it, I couldn’t find an icon for it in
/usr/share/pixmaps/
(and I still have the older version installed)… I’m not sure that
I’ll ever use version 1.2.5, but it’ll remain on my system for now, and
I needed a good way to differentiate the two in my drop-down
menu.  I figured that would be a good opportunity to try out
the
program. 

Here’s what it looks like in my drop-down menu:

I also played around with Anjuta
(looks very promising for a graphical Linux IDE) and that led me to
GLADE,
which I also thought I’d play around with.  I’ve always wanted
to
make a filesystem cataloging program, so I made a mock-up. 
Actually, it was really fun!  It also helps solidify the
vision I
had.  That still doesn’t mean it’ll ever be made,
though.  ^^;

Here’s an interesting
looking gallery
generator (in Java).

And here’s
how to get Nvu working on
Gentoo
(but probably applies to all flavours).  Definitely worth the
5mins of effort.


Hmm… my flash is
busted
since installing new Firefox…. I should probably try and fix
that.  >.<