JAWing On – Life on Okinawa

With earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes, and floods isn’t there enough to deal with in this world? Why is it that the human race insists on creating more trouble for itself?

When reviewing some of the events of this past weekend, one can’t help but be reminded of the ‘60s. The anti-war demonstration in Washington and a news story on the San Francisco Loveparade, help remind me of how great it is to have the freedom of expression. But in all reality it’s not the ‘60s and situations are different.

Do I know whether or not we should be in Iraq, no I don’t. I do know that I wish there could be a less violent manner in which to solve international disputes. I do know that this is a time of an all volunteer armed forces. I do know we are losing lives. And I do know that this is not the time for “free love”, remember something called AIDS. I also know life for everyone could be better if everyone in the world would just learn to stop the hate. Is anti-hate realistic? I doubt it given the history of humankind, but it is a nice thought!

The internet is such a fascinating place, so full of information and creativity. In keeping up with the latest news on hurricanes I found the value of online hurricane trackers. Although there are several variations on the theme, I found the most informative to be the tracker on MSN. Not only is in-depth information on the current hurricane provided, but also included on the site is information from past hurricanes that can be used for comparison. This tracker has a straight line design that allows you to see the sometimes unrealistic patterns that hurricanes take. Well done.

I’ve been trying to keep up with current info on Rita. I’m glad people are being more cautious this time. I was in Texas when Camille came through and Guam when it was hit by Pamela. These size storms are never much fun for anyone. Please take care everyone in the areas forecast to be affected, our thoughts are with you.

Not giving up on this yet:

Okay, after five tries, I finally got Feedster to recognize my claim. It seems there is a step missing in the instructions. Or at least after I did this non-mentioned step Feedster recognized the claim. After you post the claim HTML, view the site and click on the link.

Now if I can just get Feedster to recognize my Jpeg for the icon. On and On, and on and on…. LOL

In my quest to find the best uncomplicated method to provide images to the widest array of mobile devices, I have reached the following solution (for now).

Open two copies of your browser (One for the blog and one for the Flickr account)
Go to the Flickr site and open a Yahoo account
Open a Flickr account [try to use the same user name for your blog, Yahoo account, and Flickr account to keep others (and yourself) from being confused when viewing your Flickr photo gallery]
Upload images to Flickr

For each image applicable:
Select image and all sizes
Select thumbnail
Copy and paste HTML info (selection 2) into your post (Note: it helps to create a message such as “Click on image to view large size” on line following image)

So far this is the only method that allows all images I have used with it to be viewed on my Japanese mobile phone. Usually image files are too large to be loaded. Also, the Flickr account lets you use a “buddy icon” that can produce a sense of continuity between the blog and Flickr gallery. I simply used my blog URL icon (favicon), enlarged it in photo editor, used “Paint” to save as a Jpeg, and uploaded it to the Flickr account buddy icon section of “Your Account”.

Good news, I was able to get the mobile page’s Japanese characters to display properly my mobile phone . If your Japanese cell phone isn’t showing the blog’s Japanese font properly, try going to the menu for help. Click on the menu and make sure the font selected is UTF-8. This should eleminate the garbled mess that appears if the font for the blog is set on something else.

Here it is almost two weeks since I last discussed blog search engines. I’ve posted daily, usually more than one post, since that time and what I’ve discovered is the posts don’t always get picked-up by the blog search engines. I believe the best bet in keeping up-to-date with a site or topic you find interesting is by suscribing to that site’s feeds with an aggregator (also known as a reader). I use Sharp Reader. Aggregators also let you keep up-to-date with comments. In some cases, regular blog search engines will not pick comments up because the adminstrator has turned “allow pings” off in the discussion section. To suscribe to a feed of a site you like simply type or copy the URL into the aggregator’s “suscribe” or “open” feed section.

We just had a nice little rumbling jolt to wake us up this morning! Nothing like the ’64 shake I got when my family lived in Alaska, but even the little jolts still send my heart a racing.