I have the new upload scripts working. And I've uploaded all my Austria pictures. It works pretty well. I'm about half way through writing the small amount of textual explanation I want to include. Doing so has made me realize how much my writing style has degenerated. This is thanks to blogging, but I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing.
I could write better. But then I wouldn't write very much. Everything you see on this page is straight off the top of my head. It's unusual that I even proof read one time. Obviously this leads to lots of sloppy writing. It's probably embarassing even, but I don't notice. I'd rather write more, poorly, then not as much. Of course, your mileage may vary.
Still, I used to be able to write better. Which is to say, I used to go over my words many times. Reread and rewrite and rethink. That's fun, for sure, but I don't have time for it. Blogging takes up so much time already. If I made myself proof read, or even think twice about what I was saying, then I wouldn't have any time for it at all.
I guess that's why some people don't understand what I'm doing. I can see that it could seem low quality. It's just that it's not the quality that I'm after. It's the constantness. Is that even a word? See, I don't care. You know what I mean.
Or do you? I think it will become more clear as things turn more multi media. Bandwidth is still a bit constrained for pictures, and certainly for video. So text is where it's at right now. But it's all about the immediacy. Rewriting is something else. I hope I haven't lost the ability to do it, but I seldom run across the instance where I want to give it any practice.
In any case, I should have the pictures all done by tomorrow. Not that it's so interesting. It's almost like it's too late now. That's what I mean by immediacy. If I could have been broadcasting live it would be more interesting. Like you could have come along on my vacation with me. Now that it's after the fact it's more like I'm boring you with lame vacation pictures. But I'll put them up anyway.
I guess the other side of the coin is that they might be interesting to me many years from now. Probably at that point I will wish I would have proof read more. Or maybe I'll just be happy that I kept a record at all. I wonder...
hi! welcome back. tom was nice enough to give me a site on your tree while you were away. and thank you for letting me. (??)
i think your writing is great! beats mine. i think i know what you mean about the quality of writing. i have friends who have wonderfully entertaining stories to share but but can't write them out well because of grammar problems. i guess i'm like that too.
you should ask santa for a cell phone. the new kind that take pictures you can send right away to your friends who also have that kind of phone. then you can be like "tom!! i'm so lucky to be here, and you aren't! look at all the FUN we're having!"
haha. see? i just read over my post and noticed i wrote "but" twice. but...but.... oh well. i should've read it over before i posted it. or i shouldn't have read it at all, because now i feel stupid. i have a feeling it really doesn't matter to you.
jim we need a book on science fiction from in side you and lots of pictures for all please till portale's in the hotels are ready.....when you settle in can i get fritz/gross/rudi shots....are you seperating all the restaurant shots in one file??.....sorry to be needie....
Well well Pamela & Jim, if you are as lousy at writing as you claim, why are all your words so devoutly read by us underlings in the leaf litter. I'll tell you why ! You speak the truth. Your words are alive with all your quivering cutenesses. If you both wish to continue to obfuscate your clarity with lowbrow self effacement I'll have you know that that type of Prufrockian whining is now considered state of the art lit crit. You run the risk of becoming that classical character: the eiron. When the mind dies it exudes rich critical prose whereas a living mind prefers just to carry on carelessly roaming about for the occasional smackeral of tasty.
quivering cuteness? ? Prufockian ? what's an eiron? ??? who is frank???! i'm so confused.
Frank is actually a vast active living intelligence system staffed by hundreds of trained lemurs. Oh, wait, that's me.
So, Jim--what happened? How come no posts from Austria? Was it connectivity? Too busy? I know when I was in Munich and Paris it was hard to sit down and report when there was so much to see and do. My solution was to just jot some details on the weblog, but keep also handwritten notes and scannable images; then when I got back, rewrite the posts and add some graphics. It wasn't easy, though.
Well, I did make a couple posts, but yeah, not nearly as much as I had hoped.
In vienna there was an internet cafe right around the corner from our hotel (and a lot all over the city.) But I didn't like that I couldn't get my pictures on line. I had dial up numbers in austria I could have gotten on from the hotel with, and that would have been ideal, but I didn't have the correct adapters for the phone system. Of course I could have purchased these, I'm sure, but once I was there I didn't want to think about it. I needed to do the research before I went.
One of my biggest mistakes was not bringing the sidekick. It wouldn't have worked as a phone, but the PDA features would have still worked, and this would have been a good way to keep notes. And then when I got back, the notes would automatically sync to the web. Not sure why I didn't think I would want that.
We were very busy. And the time I thought I'd have for such things - in the evening, back in the hotel - turned out to be rather drunken. Whether that would have been good or bad for posting is an open question.
It was great having the laptop. All my music plugged into the car stereo. Watching DVD's in the hotel room a few nights (thanks for the loaners Dave.) And most of all being able to download pictures from the camera every day. I had all my sorting and 90% of my resizing done by the time I got back to the states. That's probably the only reason I got my post up after just a few days.
But I haven't really answered your question. I don't know. Everywhere we went I kept turning on airport (my wireless wi-fi 802.11b network receiver) to see if by chance I could find an open network. Of course I didn't. But maybe just having the thought in my mind about how easy it might be, dissuaded me from putting the effort into hooking up the wired version.
In any case, I don't think it will be too long before these networks are very common in cities Vienna's size. So I guess I am holding out for that.
On the other side of things, I am fairly happy with the way the system is working here. I made a large post about Austria in not that much time. The only missing piece is that I still have to scale my original (3 megapixel) images down to a reasonable web size on my machine. I need more automation there. But everything else is pretty maximized for efficiency I think.
Yes, it is! I was able to do my "elevator diary" and all the subsequent documentation (creating pages, uploading and organizing pictures) very quickly. As far as resizing large images, I still want to do most of that in Photoshop anyway--there's usually some other adjustments (cropping, color, contrast, sharpness) that I want to make. For automatic thumbnails, though, your program does a great job.
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I could write better. But then I wouldn't write very much. Everything you see on this page is straight off the top of my head. It's unusual that I even proof read one time. Obviously this leads to lots of sloppy writing. It's probably embarassing even, but I don't notice. I'd rather write more, poorly, then not as much. Of course, your mileage may vary.
Still, I used to be able to write better. Which is to say, I used to go over my words many times. Reread and rewrite and rethink. That's fun, for sure, but I don't have time for it. Blogging takes up so much time already. If I made myself proof read, or even think twice about what I was saying, then I wouldn't have any time for it at all.
I guess that's why some people don't understand what I'm doing. I can see that it could seem low quality. It's just that it's not the quality that I'm after. It's the constantness. Is that even a word? See, I don't care. You know what I mean.
Or do you? I think it will become more clear as things turn more multi media. Bandwidth is still a bit constrained for pictures, and certainly for video. So text is where it's at right now. But it's all about the immediacy. Rewriting is something else. I hope I haven't lost the ability to do it, but I seldom run across the instance where I want to give it any practice.
In any case, I should have the pictures all done by tomorrow. Not that it's so interesting. It's almost like it's too late now. That's what I mean by immediacy. If I could have been broadcasting live it would be more interesting. Like you could have come along on my vacation with me. Now that it's after the fact it's more like I'm boring you with lame vacation pictures. But I'll put them up anyway.
I guess the other side of the coin is that they might be interesting to me many years from now. Probably at that point I will wish I would have proof read more. Or maybe I'll just be happy that I kept a record at all. I wonder...
- jim 12-03-2002 5:52 am
hi! welcome back. tom was nice enough to give me a site on your tree while you were away. and thank you for letting me. (??)
i think your writing is great! beats mine. i think i know what you mean about the quality of writing. i have friends who have wonderfully entertaining stories to share but but can't write them out well because of grammar problems. i guess i'm like that too.
you should ask santa for a cell phone. the new kind that take pictures you can send right away to your friends who also have that kind of phone. then you can be like "tom!! i'm so lucky to be here, and you aren't! look at all the FUN we're having!"
- pamela 12-03-2002 7:21 am
haha. see? i just read over my post and noticed i wrote "but" twice. but...but.... oh well. i should've read it over before i posted it. or i shouldn't have read it at all, because now i feel stupid. i have a feeling it really doesn't matter to you.
- pamela 12-03-2002 7:24 am
jim we need a book on science fiction from in side you and lots of pictures for all please till portale's in the hotels are ready.....when you settle in can i get fritz/gross/rudi shots....are you seperating all the restaurant shots in one file??.....sorry to be needie....
- Skinny 12-03-2002 3:04 pm
Well well Pamela & Jim, if you are as lousy at writing as you claim, why are all your words so devoutly read by us underlings in the leaf litter. I'll tell you why ! You speak the truth. Your words are alive with all your quivering cutenesses. If you both wish to continue to obfuscate your clarity with lowbrow self effacement I'll have you know that that type of Prufrockian whining is now considered state of the art lit crit. You run the risk of becoming that classical character: the eiron. When the mind dies it exudes rich critical prose whereas a living mind prefers just to carry on carelessly roaming about for the occasional smackeral of tasty.
- frank 12-03-2002 6:53 pm
quivering cuteness? ? Prufockian ? what's an eiron? ??? who is frank???! i'm so confused.
- pamela 12-04-2002 12:10 am
Frank is actually a vast active living intelligence system staffed by hundreds of trained lemurs. Oh, wait, that's me.
- tom moody 12-04-2002 1:05 am
So, Jim--what happened? How come no posts from Austria? Was it connectivity? Too busy? I know when I was in Munich and Paris it was hard to sit down and report when there was so much to see and do. My solution was to just jot some details on the weblog, but keep also handwritten notes and scannable images; then when I got back, rewrite the posts and add some graphics. It wasn't easy, though.
- tom moody 12-04-2002 5:08 pm
Well, I did make a couple posts, but yeah, not nearly as much as I had hoped.
In vienna there was an internet cafe right around the corner from our hotel (and a lot all over the city.) But I didn't like that I couldn't get my pictures on line. I had dial up numbers in austria I could have gotten on from the hotel with, and that would have been ideal, but I didn't have the correct adapters for the phone system. Of course I could have purchased these, I'm sure, but once I was there I didn't want to think about it. I needed to do the research before I went.
One of my biggest mistakes was not bringing the sidekick. It wouldn't have worked as a phone, but the PDA features would have still worked, and this would have been a good way to keep notes. And then when I got back, the notes would automatically sync to the web. Not sure why I didn't think I would want that.
We were very busy. And the time I thought I'd have for such things - in the evening, back in the hotel - turned out to be rather drunken. Whether that would have been good or bad for posting is an open question.
It was great having the laptop. All my music plugged into the car stereo. Watching DVD's in the hotel room a few nights (thanks for the loaners Dave.) And most of all being able to download pictures from the camera every day. I had all my sorting and 90% of my resizing done by the time I got back to the states. That's probably the only reason I got my post up after just a few days.
But I haven't really answered your question. I don't know. Everywhere we went I kept turning on airport (my wireless wi-fi 802.11b network receiver) to see if by chance I could find an open network. Of course I didn't. But maybe just having the thought in my mind about how easy it might be, dissuaded me from putting the effort into hooking up the wired version.
In any case, I don't think it will be too long before these networks are very common in cities Vienna's size. So I guess I am holding out for that.
On the other side of things, I am fairly happy with the way the system is working here. I made a large post about Austria in not that much time. The only missing piece is that I still have to scale my original (3 megapixel) images down to a reasonable web size on my machine. I need more automation there. But everything else is pretty maximized for efficiency I think.
- jim 12-04-2002 5:25 pm
Yes, it is! I was able to do my "elevator diary" and all the subsequent documentation (creating pages, uploading and organizing pictures) very quickly. As far as resizing large images, I still want to do most of that in Photoshop anyway--there's usually some other adjustments (cropping, color, contrast, sharpness) that I want to make. For automatic thumbnails, though, your program does a great job.
- tom moody 12-04-2002 5:41 pm