OK, here we go

Welcome to my Chinese blog. I will hopefully be able to update this thing from China, along with my Photos. There is also a link to the right for my photos, so feel free to check daily, or not at all. I tweaked the html on this site myself (yayyy, me!) so let me know if anything displays weird for you so I can try to fix it before I go. I will be able to send posts via my cell phone while I am in the US of A so those of you concerned can check on my flight progress both coming and going.

If you are at all interested in background info I will tell you the various things that have happened so far. Well, some of them. There was that incident with the Llama but we don't need to discuss that. I got a new camera, it's a Nikon D40. It's their "cheap" new digital SLR. Six Megapixel. I already need a new lens for it to get decent telephoto (update- I got a 55-200mm lens two nights ago after quite a quest).

As for my choice in blog sites, I chose Blogger.com because it let me email posts without having to pay (you hear that, Livejournal???). I wanted to be able to email status reports from the Chicago airport and when I get back to L.A. Plus, of all the blogs I read , I like the look of the ones here the best. I had a Livejournal account already but Blogger was better.

I ended up going with a site called Bubbleshare for my photos. Yeah I hadn't heard of it either. It was the only place that would let you batch upload files without having to download some crappy software that didn't work anyway (do you hear that, Flickr???). It also lets you download the high resolution files, although you have to use the "Download Album" link on the left side and it downloads them ALL. But no place else would keep the full resolution files anyway (do you hear that, Flickr???). So if you want an individual shot, you'll have to talk to me. I will gladly give anyone (OK, it'll only be Grandpa Jim who wants them) any or all the pictures.

Annie (you know, my sister, the reason for this whole trip) told me her CD burner doesn't work, so I signed up for a free online site that gives me 25 gigs. That one isn't perfect either. It likes to not always upload all the files or not show them all until a day later, by which time, you've re-uploaded them and now have two copies of everything... I still would rather have a backup I can hold in my hand. I also just found out from Annie that since the earthquake about a month ago, their internet has been very slow. I guess that's not surprising considering the severity of the damage to the undersea fiber optic lines, but I hadn't thought of it relating to her. She says email has worked ok so at the very least I should be able to post that way. Assuming I can get to my web mail accounts...

As for pictures, I decided against shooting images in Raw format after reading an excellent article on Ken Rockwell's excellent site (did I mention it's excellent?). So I will be shooting high quality JPEGs. That means I can get almost three times as many shots on a card though.