February 2007

Hello. I’ll be uploading some newly received postcards soon, but in the meantime wanted to share this excellent quote I just discovered:

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover. –Mark Twain

Dear reader, if you are younger than 40, may I tell you that this is true? I look back now with so many regrets. But not regrets of things I did do; regrets of things I DID NOT do! And now it is too late. I hope it is not too late also for you!

Marinated Roasted Kumara, originally uploaded by CarolinaRen.

This official postcrossing card just arrived here from New Zealand–thanks to Lauretta for the interesting recipe! I told her that our sweet potatoes here are orange; she wrote back that sweet potatoes are three colors over there! Must be harder to tell them apart, eh? 🙂

International Airport of Guararapes, Recife, Brasil, originally uploaded by CarolinaRen.

This lovely airport card comes from a private trade; I understand that this airport is one of the largest in the country!

Chicago, originally uploaded by CarolinaRen.

This is an ad card; on the back it says that the John Hancock Center near Chicago’s lakefront is just one of the city’s world-famous works of architecture. I never realized Chicago had a waterline like this….cool! 🙂

Herakleion Museum, Greece, originally uploaded by CarolinaRen.

Rec’d this from a private trade; this is a “rhyton of rock-crystal from the sanctuary of the Palace of Zakros (155/1450 BC).” Beautiful!

Canada Map 1, originally uploaded by CarolinaRen.

Map of Canada from my postcard pal Tam. She sent this and the next, Canada Map 2, and pointed out how the second map, Canada 2, was printed before the Nunavut providence came into existance. See the Northwest Territories here? Earlier, it encompassed Nunavut, too.

Canada Map 2, originally uploaded by CarolinaRen.

Second map from Tam; this one is pre-Nunavut. Cool! 🙂

I have to say that, in this day and age, I am surprised at the clumsiness of photoblogging solutions.

Ever since I switched to using Flickr to store my photos, my cards have been cut-off at the right. Flickr’s “BLOG THIS” ability is nice, but it only offers two templates: 500px, which means my photos are too big and are cut off, or 240px, which means my photos show up too small here on Blogger…you can barely see them. So this explains why many of my previous photos are cut off.

I have found a solution, but it creates yet ANOTHER problem.

A wise soul on the Flickr help pages showed how to change the width of each photo blogged to 400px. That’s great! It works for horizontal images. Now they fit nicely, and you can see the detail. But what about VERTICAL images? I was afraid that code would force Blogger to STRETCH the vertical images out to 400px in width. Thankfully, it doesn’t do that. But what it does is super ENLARGE the image to retain the correct proportions! So now, what you will see on my blog in the future, are vertical images that are SUPER LARGE but normal-sized horizontal images. The next two blog posts you see as you scroll will show you what I mean.

Does that suck or what???

The lesser of two evils, I suppose….

The more I struggle with photoblogging, the more I want to find some smart programmers who want to go into business with me to create a photoblogging solution that WORKS. When you run into problems with Flickr or Blogger, you’re basically at their mercy. And for some reason, they refuse to tackle and/or even acknowledge even basic issues that would make very many people happy. (This is not just me!)

For instance, why does Flickr not allow you to easily show photos AND descriptions in a slide-show format? So many people want this option…it would be easy to integrate, according to the Web heads out there talking about it….yet Flickr people won’t even engage in the conversation to tell us that they hear us and WHY they won’t do something about it.

Despite my frustration I continue. I know that some day the right solution will come along and then…I’m outta here!

Back to our regularly scheduled postcards…..

Thanks for listening! 🙂

Cherry Blossoms in Taiwan, originally uploaded by CarolinaRen.

Horizontal images now blog fine….but the verticals, as you will see, are way too big!

Helsinki Center, Finland, originally uploaded by CarolinaRen.

Vertical images blogged here using Flickr’s BLOGTHIS with the template modified to a width of 400 px means images that are TOO BIG.