Right now, I am entering one of the busiest times of the year for me, and my computer also is out of commission, so the frequency of my posts might not be as much as I would like, but I will try to at least put up some photos.

Here is a photo I took at my high school on Thursday. This is a bento (弁当）which is a Japanese style set lunch box. This is actually a very simple and cheap one from my high school. Convenience stores, like 7-11 have good ones, and you can also buy them from stations and even on long-distance trains. You can get much better ones than this, of course. But even though this was was simple, it was good.

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I took this just a few minutes ago, from Tamagawajosui Station. I am here right now.

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This was not too far from Mitaka Station.

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See you again this weekend.

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Unfortunately, I don’t go here very often. But looking at these pictures, I realize I need to go more. Enjoy.

You can see the SmugMug gallery here or the Flickr Gallery here.
(They are the same. And they both feature fullscreen slideshows.)

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By the way, I have Part Two of my SmugMug vs. Flickr series just about done, but I want to add a couple things. In the meantime, let’s do a little comparison. This is the same picture, embedded from Flickr (Top), and Smugmug (bottom). The galleries they are in are identical. It’s the same picture, but it looks like the SmugMug version is a bit brighter, at least on my monitor.. At any rate, you can click on either picture to go the gallery. Which do you like better?

Flickr Version

SmugMug Version

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One of the many things that makes Gmail such an incredibly powerful and useful email solution is its use of keyboard shortcuts. (Yahoo Mail also has shortcuts, as does Windows Live Hotmail (see this list)

But there is a problem. Recently, I have been on other sites, like the Administration page of this blog or other websites, and I have hit “g” then “i” which on Gmail means “Go to Inbox.” If you’re in Gmail, that will refresh the page and load any new email. But lately, I’ve been doing that on all kinds of sites, and of course, nothing happens.

I don’t know. It struck me as kinda funny.

Keyboard Shortcuts for popular Webmail Services

• Gmail Keyboard Shortcuts
• Yahoo Mail Keyboard Shortcuts
• Windows Live Hotmail Keyboard Shortcuts

Between Gmail shortcuts for my email, and Quicksilver on my Mac, I don’t take my fingers off the keyboard too much anymore. How about you? Do you enjoy using keyboard shortcuts or do you prefer using your mouse?

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Enjoy!

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When I first started setting up this site, I spend a long time trying to integrate Gallery2 into my WordPress blog. Gallery2 is a great way to show your pictures on your own site. I managed to get it set up pretty well, but decided to host them on a photo site, after all.

Initially, I looked at SmugMug, but I couldn’t use it.

At the time, my credit card had expired and I wasn’t able to get a new one sent to me in Japan, so I had to use Paypal. SmugMug didn’t accept Paypal at the time. So I kept looking. (Note: SmugMug does accept paypal now.)

Some of my friends were using Flickr, and it really had a strong buzz, as a new and trendy site for bloggers. I thought it was really cool, but I wasn’t happy with the lack of privacy options. Plus, the social photo sharing idea was not what I was looking for, though over time, I came to enjoy that. My main goal was to share my photos with my friends and family.

I signed up for a Flickr Pro Account, and I began uploading my pictures. At first, not much happened. But over time, people found my pictures, and they asked me to include them in various groups. I also received requests to use my photos in a few publications. It was fun. Then, Flickr unrolled new ways to organize sets, and control privacy settings for photos. I was very happy. But there was a problem. Many of my family and friends have complained about Flickr. Although it is very easy to upload, tag, and work with your own pictures, it can be pretty bewildering for many people to find pictures.

My Flickr Collections

To be fair, I’d never gotten around to organizing my photos in a really meaningful way–until now (I’ll talk about that more later). There is the photostream, which posts every photo in the order that it was uploaded on my Flickr homepage, and I also have most (but not all) photos in sets. You can also click on the Tags link at the top of the page, or enter a term in the search bar, to find tags. (I am pretty thorough with my tags, so it is easy to find things if you use the Flickr search function.) Those sets can be put into Collections, which would provide the kind of “set within a set” gallery-style organizational system that most people expect.

My SmugMug Page

In terms of presentation and viewing quality, SmugMug blows away Flickr. For one thing, the pictures change dynamically to fit the monitor size you are using. Large screen, medium screen, or tiny screen–they just look good. If you want to see a different size, you can click on the picture and change it. It is really clean and professional. But it does lack a couple of features that I like (for example, the ability to put the same photo in more than one gallery (but this is apparently on the way).

In upcoming posts, I will be looking at each service in more depth, and talking about my decision process for choosing a photo site.

You can check them out now, if you’d like.

My SmugMug Site

My Flickr Site

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This is at Ichigaya Station, where my company is located, in Tokyo.

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