Mogwai Moments

Screw Kodak moments, these are Mogwai Moments!

Last post, I said I had a surprise for everyone that I was working on. Truth be told, I am still working on it but I figured I would let you all see it now because I am not sure when it will be done to my specs.

If you look on the right side of the page, you will see a new section call, Mogwai Moments. Click the link under the title and you will be transported to the new sister site of this blog. It is hosted by a company called Multiply and since I have been fiddling with the site, I have had a good experience with the setup. You are going to see a couple of ads in the sidebars but that is what keeps it free for me. Other than that, no pop-ups or unders and nothing overly annoying. The nice part is that you do not have to sign up with them to see the pics.

Watermelongirl, turned me on to the site when she invited me to check out her page. Watermelongirl is also a teacher here in Japan, though she lives in Nagoya. If she says its ok, I will put a link to her page from here as well but I haven't talked to her about that yet so, no link.

As for Mogwai Moments, my aim for the page is to have it be an illustrated, multi-media footnote for the readers of this page. I will post more pics on there than I do here and in the future you may see some little movies I have shot on there as well as music, if I find a tune that particulary strikes me. When I started building the site, I originally intended to dump all of my pics on there and just have them so you can see them. Over time, I realized that you can do so much more with the page and that is what caused the delay.

As I have been putting pics on there, I have also been retitling them and adding brief explanations to go with each shot. It takes a ton of time to do this for each picture and considering that I have well over 400 pics that I intend to go on there, its going to take me a while to get everything how I want it. If you go there right now, you will see one of my pics from Tokyo, 14 shots from the Golden Temple, and a ton of pics from my adventure to Area 51. The Tokyo and the Golden Temple pictures have all been renamed and captioned, while I have yet to do that with the Area 51 pics. You will be able to get an idea of the amount of work I could put into the site if I wanted to. Once I get caught up, with each trip I take I will do all of this on the fly and it will be a faster process for me but for now, it is a lot of work.

Along with adding that link, I also updated my other blogs I link to as well. You will find that I got rid of my friend Travis's blog simply because it hasn't been updated in months and when I checked it just now, it says it has been deleted. I also got rid of the Big White Guy in Hong Kong link. I still like his blog but it has gotten very big and has developed into more of a business for him than a journal. While I still read it, I am trying to keep the other blogs limited ot people I know. There are two exceptions to that but I really like those two blogs and so they stay there. Quyen's blog is also gone due to lack of updates, which is too bad because I liked her site as well. But, I have added new blogs in their places. You will now see Karie and Reid's blog, they are my friends that live in Takaoka in Toyama prefecture. I have finally put Phyrry's site on there; I have been meaning to do that for a while but haven't til now. Sorry for the delay on that one. I have also put Heather's blog on there. Some of you guys may not know who she is, but she is Jake's girlfriend and her writings are very thoughtful and I enjoy her musings.

Anywho, those are the updates and I think there will be a few more in the next little while as well. This site will be two years old in a few weeks and I am trying to spruce it up a tad. Much of the code for this page has gone untouched in that amount of time and I intend to change that. I have said this before, but I mean it now when I say, this blog will probably get a facelift soon. I am just not the greatest coder in the world so this has been a learn-as-you-go process for me and I haven't had time until now to really devote myself to the restructuring of the site.

Now, I must get some rest. I got an email from my proxy-grandmother, Mariko and we are definitely going to Osaka tomorrow and early at that. When you retire, I would think one would want to sleep in and do things at their own pace. These ladys' pace seems to be that of the wake up early variety. Anywho, I am going to try to take pictures tomorrow and intend on staying in Osaka for most of the day, even after I part with Mariko and her friend. What does that mean? Three words: Den Den Town.

Enjoys the additions to the page and I will talk to you all later!