After some serious thought, I have decided not to move my blog.
I have played around with wordpress.com blogs in the past, and they are wonderful. If you are looking for a free, but powerful way to blog, you should really look into it. That’s why I figured it would be just as good. And under different circumstances, it might be. But I ran into two problems that are deal-breakers for me:
I didn’t realize how important some of the plugins and features that I take for granted on this site were, until I didn’t have them;
More importantly, some of my viewers were not able to view my blog, because wordpress.com blogs are blocked by many firewalls. I actually experienced this at my high school. I couldn’t view my blog. Some countries, schools, and businesses block all wordpress.com blogs from that site. But, as far as I know, this site has not been blocked. (It’s is so vanilla and non-controversial, that I doubt anyone would bother blocking it.)
This isn’t a tech blog, and I don’t often post tutorials about how to do things online, but I was trying to explain this to a couple family members recently, and I decided to share this quick tip with any of my readers who use gmail. I actually wrote most of this almost two weeks ago, but got busy with work and never posted it…
As many of you who know me are aware, I am a huge fan of gmail, for so many reasons. There are so many powerful and convenient options and features loaded into gmail. One of the features that many people do not take advantage of the added security that HTTPS offers. Whenever you log into webmail or complete an online purchase, you use HTTPS. With most webmail services, you log in with HTTPS, but it usually returns to regular HTTP after you have logged in. Now gmail lets you stay logged in to HTTPS all the time, if you need the added security.
Just a quick note to let everyone know that I’ve renewed my Flickr Pro membership, so you can see all of my pictures again. I will start uploading all my new ones when I have time…
Time flies when you’re having fun.
It’s trite, but true. In fact, it flies even when you’re not having fun…
Five years ago today, at around this time, give or take, I arrived in Japan for the first time. I came here to satisfy my curiosity, and to see where life would take me. Although I haven’t accomplished all the goals I set for myself, I have had many experiences, and I’ve learned a lot. I suppose a lot of the things I learned were not what I would have imagined, but that is ok, too.
Update: I will not be moving to wordpress.com. Please continue to visit this site.
Please update your bookmarks. Effective immediately, I am moving this site, and all its contents, to its new home at http://thewayfarerblog.wordpress.com/.
As you may recall, I originally began The Wayfarer Blog on blogger.com. (Unfortunately, the first few posts I put up there were lost.) I decided to host my own domain so I could learn more about website maintenance, and so I could have complete freedom to design and develop my site. Although I have enjoyed the challenge of building and maintaining my own website, I would rather spend time on other areas of my life now. (I will sacrifice a little creative control over the way my site looks, but I will not lose sleep trying to find the errors in my rather shaky CSS skills!)
Also, although it is rather cheap to host my own site, free platforms like blogger.com and wordpress.com have improved tremendously. For someone like me, whose main purpose is to share pictures and ideas with family and friends (as well as anyone who stumbles onto this site), free is nice.
For those of you who have subscribed to this site’s feed and/or email updates, you should continue receiving posts in your feedreader/email inbox, as always.
If you need to contact me, please use the “Contact” button, in the header above, or leave a comment.
I’ve gone almost four months without posting. That is a lifetime for a blog!
I have a lot to say, and many pictures to post, but when I got back online, I discovered that my Flickr Pro account had expired. The free version is still up, but that only allows access to about 200 photos. I have around 2,000 photos, but until I renew my account, they will not be accessible. If you have tried to access my photos, and had trouble, I am sorry for that.
I will get it renewed and open again as soon as I can.
Sorry for the long absence. Getting my internet hooked up took a lot longer than expected.
Generally, it should only take a couple weeks, but I had many problems. The biggest one was scheduling–I had to be home when the people could come and install the new high-speed wires. Unfortunately, my schedule is very erratic, so the only day I could commit to was Sunday, and they had a backlog of over two months.
I did sometimes go to internet cafes, but I never had my password with me, or I had too many pressing emails to deal with…It just didn’t work out. I also have to admit that it was nice to take a bit of a break from the internet.
Well, I made it back to Tokyo, but I need to change my internet provider. The good news is that it will be much faster, and for less money. But the bad news is that it might take about three weeks to get it installed. So I will obviously not be able to post as much as I would like.
Right now, I am at an internet cafe. I will try to post at least a couple times a week, but things will probably continue to be slow for the next couple weeks.
I have tons of Chinese pics to post, as soon as I can. I need to run for now.
Sorry for the lack of updates. I got busy, then had some internet issues before I left, so I didn’t have time to update the blog and let you know I would be in China. Right now, I am in Beijing. (More on that later.)
I have taken a lot of pictures, so check back for that. I’ll be back in Japan in a couple days.
