09 January, 2007

New Day Dawns


 

I've been busy, a happy sort of busy.  I've been sitting in a dark moldy room using an old computer with archaically (ha!) slow internet.  I hardly go anywhere.  There is precious little food in the house.  Don't even have sweet tea!  No one seems to call me back, no matter how many times I call.  (Why does everyone seem to climb in a hole when I come to town / finally have a phone?)  Martina is half a world away and not leaving—very distressing.  And I have a cold!

Yet, somehow, I am extremely enthused. 

Why?  Because I am finally making headway on a project I conceived five years ago, meant to start four ? years ago, and has been stagnant ever since.  For one thing, all the auxillary parts weren't well conceived in my head, not as well as they are now.

Unfortunately, I am talking about the most simple of things: a website.  Sorry to disappoint.  But this really means a lot to me.  I love photography and I've never been able to share my pictures with anyone.  The photos I / we (Martina and I) took in New Zealand are far and away the best of my life.  But how many of my friends have seen my Alaska pictures, or Ladakh?  Not too many, I don't think.

What is more, for the last two to three years I've had no software to work on my photos.  (I had photoshop on my old computer, but no more.)  Now I downloaded Picasa, which is simple, but I think it may be a really great thing.  I've spent hours using Picasa to reorganize, to crop, add light and contrast—man! this program has brought photos to life that I never dreamed had such character to them. 

It has been an obsession for days.

Now I have almost complete folders of the photos that I wish to upload to the internet.

Ahh. . . but where?

 

The internet is so slow my attempts at building a site were throttled and mocked.  However, the repeated failures led me to learn more about my blog.  I can open numerous blogs.  Then it occurred to me—I don't need a site with numerous pages, I can use one site linked to numerous other sites.  Blogger has been bought by Google and both are affiliated with Picasa.  I use gmail so now I have one log in for everything I use on the internet (well, mostly).  I've learned how to upload photos into my blog, at last, but now have links to my photo galleries in Picasa.

So at last it has begun.  The blog that I have had since '03, started in Nepal, has now morphed into something more respectable, something more useful, something that will become a serious tool in the years to come.

At present it is still a social tool, but I hope to change all that in the next five years.  I hope to change a lot in the next five years.  And what I am doing right now, today, is laying the ground work for what is to come.

 

Today I started looking at quality cameras.  That is the next, immediate step.  I am writing down email addresses for potential writing submissions.  The big rock I've been tentatively trying to push is now slowly starting to budge.

 

In all fairness I should say that, for the most part, my trip home has not been nearly this rosy.  At first, I went out with old friends and did have a hell of a time—best I've had home in years and years.  But it went eventually too far, staying up too late, eventually caught a well-deserved cold that won't go away.  I haven't been exercising enough.  But I got hit hard by family drama—I always get a full year's dose all in a week.  And it has been a big year in the family.  It wore me out.

And I miss Martina who I had such a great time with in New Zealand.  I won't ever be the same.

Yes, and I have NZ stories—I'll get them out soon, I hope.

So until. . . now. . . I've been quite low, even with friends around, quite lonely.  I was more at peace alone on my boat.

 

But this is often because I feel unproductive here.  Usually true.  But not at the moment, not now.  I'm knocking it out and it feels good.  Of course, this is all perfunctory, it doesn't add up to much—but I think in the end it will—it is part of something that is my passion.   Time will tell.

 

 

SO. . . from now on, if you care to read what I have to write, you'll have to click one more bottom to do it.  No more mass emails.  Now there will be pictures in my blog on occasion.  So please—just click the link.  No problem.  Don't be discouraged.  Easy as a self-tailing winch!

 

 

 

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