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blog-L  (2004)

2004/06/21 11:00

Posted to the LL-Letters page: LL-304, LL-305, and LL-306.  These take us back to before the twin-tower collapse and into another era - a time when I was fully engaged in fighting top management at the PR agency I was then employed at over use of toxic spray glue in an office with a recirculating air system!  Glancing at parts of my record of that battle, I again feel a sense of the urgent battle mode I was operating in at the time.  Would I do the same thing again today?  I hope so!  What is clearly wrong should be clearly opposed.  A little more sense of outrage at things that can be easily fixed - but are ignored through fear of taking a risk - would be a good thing for society as a whole I think.

2004/06/20 09:07

Takao... the most convenient mountain to visit from central Tokyo, and still a surprisingly nice place, considering the huge number of visitors it attracts.  I've posted a photo I took there in the Photo Gallery entitled "Takao", which is a photo I like quite a lot and was hoping a local publication would use with an article I wrote for them, but they picked another picture of mine, so since this one didn't make it into print, I'm putting it in here.

2004/06/19 21:17

Good-bye W-ME!!  I am no fan of MicroMuck and ME caused me more grief even than older versions.  (I don't actually mind W2K - so long as it's not on the Internet!)  I never would have had an ME computer in the first place, but since I was given one, I decided to give it a try.  One month is more than enough!  I put in Linux today and that laptop is running with far more stability now.

It doesn't seem to matter how much time passes... always the blasted machines require about as much be put into them as they give back.  Like shoveling coal into a steam locomotive or something.  Too much of today was wasted servicing machines....

2004/06/19 09:48

Ah... the shame of it.  I have not been getting enough freelance writing work so I agreed to teach an English class for an "English conversation" company, and the first class was last night.  The first time in about three years and I report this with a full sense of shame.  I thought - I really thought - that I had finally escaped the horrible world of being a disposable English teacher, but it's either humiliate myself in this no-respect profession or take to the hills and swing from the trees with the monkeys, so....

The contract.  Shameful!  One example - it states that I must give a full month's advance warning if I want to quit, but the company reserves the right to fire me at a moment's notice if they take a disliking to me.  Totally and absolutely one-sided!  Shameful... shameful.  But what's a person who wants to eat to do?  Well... anthropological duty calls, and so I shall be reporting on the details.  The flip side?  Being a disposable no-respect English teacher is light-years better than cleaning toilets, picking up garbage or sweeping the street by hand.  Heck, I suppose it's even better than working in the subway down there out of the sun (although not financially I dare say).  So... looking on the bright side is all well and good, but when you're so near the very bottom of the totem pole, how can you not want to get those other totem pole bits off of your head?

2004/06/18 12:56

Posted to the LL-Letters page: LL-307, LL-308, and LL-309.  I reread my opening paragraph to LL-307, which was written on September 19th, 2001.  I still agree and think events have shown that it would have been better if certain... people... had been a little more intelligent and responsible in their actions.  Here's the paragraph:

"Attempting to....."
(September 19th, 2001)

Since last week, I've gone from thought to thought, and from emotion to emotion... getting ideas that I want to write about, but which go from timely to outdated in 24 hours.......  At this point, I'm not sure what to say (overall) really, but there are a couple of things that are persistently begging to be put on the screen.  One thing in particular that I acutely feel, is at least partially due to my status of being part of a tiny minority here in Japan.  It makes me very nervous when I see anyone being attacked on sight for their race and/or nationality.  For the first couple of days after the attacks on New York, I was in a vengeful mood myself... a vengeful mood to be sure, but still I can't understand how someone could take a gun and just go shoot someone for no other reason than that their nationality seems to match that of a criminal/terrorist/madman/whacko... I mean... if that's all it takes for justification for murder, the answer is the total annihilation of the human race.  In having been in and out of a large number of different groups of people on both sides of the Pacific, I've found it to be quite true that "There's one in every crowd" - both in a positive and a negative sense.  Justice is one thing, but revenge against a terrorist act directed at the wrong people isn't revenge at all, but rather just another act of terror.

2004/06/17 18:23

LL-310 & LL-311... which are the tail end of the whacky PR agency period.  Yikes!  One tale of office fighting after another... I think I've had about enough of offices.  Not enough freelance work at the moment, but hopefully it'll pick up.

Are the old LL's interesting to read in 2004?  It's my own history, so it's interesting to me at least, and I suppose if someone wants to know how an office can be on this island, it could be interesting... feedback welcome!


2004/06/17 16:22

"Tokyo Housing" - in the Photo Gallery.  All three photos were taken on the 15th, when I took a four hour walk starting from Shinjuku Station.  I've also put up two more of the archived LL's - LL-312 and LL-313.

I'd write more, but I've got to get back to a project I'm working on.


2004/06/16 19:39

LL-314 and LL-315... I just posted them (see the "LL-Letters" page), and in reformatting them, I reread parts... it brings back memories!  Truly, if you don't write things down at the time, you don't really remember events in enough detail at a later date to do a subject justice.  If you keep a written record of things though, rereading something years later that was written in the heat of the moment brings it all back!

I'd like to be posting more photos, but I think I'll concentrate on getting a few more of the old LL's reformatted and on-line first.


2004/06/16 10:46

Colors - I've changed the colors on the LL-Letters page.  If you get the right combination, color on color is great, but it can be difficult to hit on the right combination - as color sitting on another color takes on the appearance of a different color - even if it is not (yes, what is see is not reality!).  That... is both an excuse for the somewhat jarring appearance of that purple and to say that I think a lot of sites are lazy to just give up the search for good color usage and use a start white background.

FAQ - I've added one to explain the site in general and the LL-Project in particular.  Also to point out that images are for sale - so send your $$ my way, hoho.


2004/06/16 00:48

I will be taking a break tomorrow from reformatting old LL letters so I can work on some other more pressing issues, but I did post a few back issues today, so the "LL-Letters" page now has LL-316 through LL-326, covering the period of January 2nd, 2003 until the last LL which was dated June 2nd, 2004.  Now that the letters are back into a different office tale than the one that wrapped up last year, I feel like getting all of 2002 on-line as well, but I need to get some sleep first!


2004/06/15 20:15

A four-hour walk in the hot sun... that's what I did today, but I have 460 new photos for the effort, so it was worth sweating and wearing my soles thinner for.  One of the things I stumbled upon is... wait... I'll mention what it was *after* I get a photo of it posted!

Speaking of photos, a couple of writers both commented on one of the photos in the Photo Gallery - one saying that it was the best picture and the other saying it was the worst!  I should rename it "Passion" maybe!

Links, I think the "Back" button works well for most of the site, but as someone pointed out, if someone comes into the site laterally and finds themselves on one of the LL-Letter pages, the "Back" button won't take them to the front page, so... I added a "[Home]" link to each of the LL-Letter pages (top left of page).


2004/06/15 09:28

Archiving and formatting.  I just put LL-319 up - which takes the letters back to nearly the beginning of the last "Fun at the Office" series.  Formatting has been a small headache.  I noticed that some of the HTML files I'd posted were set to "Letter", so I've been going in and changing that to A4 when I find them.  I haven't gone through the Photo Gallery yet, but I changed all the LL letters (LL-319 - LL-326) to A4 in any case.


2004/06/14 15:39

Formatting text the way I like it takes a bit of time.  I would like to just dump the plain text on-line, but even when the fonts are different, people tend to get who said what mixed up, so I think some kind of visual clue to keep the reader on track is in order.  For the most part, the standard fonts are what I wrote, and the italics are letters contributed by e-pals.  I thought I'd get a whole batch of older letters on-line, but there were some distractions and I've only gotten another two up.  Hopefully I'll get a new photo up in a couple of hours.


2004/06/13 22:18

Oops... I was going to leave the site alone today, but I ended up doing a couple of things anyway.  First, I added another LL to the "Recent LL's" page (LL-322).  I could put a lot of them on the page at once, but I'd rather get the italics and bold fonts where I want them first.  As I find time, I'll add old ones in sequence from LL-322 today, LL-321 next, then LL-320, etc.  I'm not sure how far I'll take it, but I would like to get all of 2003 on there at least.

There's also a new photo - entitled "Speeding Reflections", at the top of the "Photo Gallery" page.

Good news!  "The LL-Letters" finally turned up in a search engine!  I hope it stays there, as the address itself is not an easy one to manually type in, so being able to find it via search engines is great!

What else... um... projects, projects.  I'm looking into getting a proper cover (or "dust jacket") for the book printed.  Being the key that makes or breaks too many books, I suspect the printing companies take a larger part of their profits from the covers... which is why I didn't have one printed up when I published the book in the first place.  After insisting on decent paper for the inside, I couldn't afford spiffing up the outside.  Backwards from the way it's usually done I realize, but don't you hate reading books printed on horrible paper?  I do, so....


2004/06/13 10:18

I'll try to put things up on a pretty regular basis, especially since I'd like to get more photos posted, as well as get more of the LL-Letters stuff on-line.  Today, however,  I think I'll take a rest from it.


2004/06/12 18:42

Uuuu.... lots to write about here.  One of my e-pals wrote concerning this site, so I think I'll put part of my answer to him in here, but before that, have a look at the "History" page within the "PDF Files" page.  I put up a photo collage that I put together today - there being space on that page I thought I'd get some photos on there... which are all within one file, so it's a single picture as far as your computer is concerned, but consists of... of..., sorry, I'm not going to count them, but several images!  (I also put that photo on the "Photo Gallery" page - click on the "'51 & '52 Korea & Japan".)

Now - on to the abovementioned e-pal, who kindly mentioned my site at his site:

http://www.hulver.com/scoop/story/2004/6/10/11547/4203

Some parts of a letter I wrote are relevant to the site, so I'll put part of it here.


Re: "A couple of comments about the design. I like the way it's nice and simple, but I think the navigation could do with a little work. Most sites now have some kind of navigation bar: a menu of links, in the same position on every page, that allows you move around the site more easily."

Uh-oh - complaint number two regarding this issue.  I think having a navigation bar on some pages would be nice, but not on the photo pages - the bar would further reduce the viewing area for the picture.  Already there's less viewing area than I would like - in order to accommodate the usual tool bars, etc. of browsers, so I don't want to add to that.  Are people so adverse to using the "back" buttons on their browsers?  If they were stranded on the page with no way of getting back to where they were, I would stay up nights to rescue those stranded souls, but I really hate it when computer programs (and everything else) are designed downward to deal with the very lowest common denominator.  Must we all stoop down in the mud, or can't we help those down in the mud up onto the sidewalk of progress?  If I absolutely must put that in, I guess I will, but I hate to further cut down the viewing window.

Also - there's another reason not to put too many shortcuts into the window.  If too many websites have that kind of thing, then people just get stupider and stupider about their computers - computers should help us to grow, to advance, not to regress into neanderthals.  Oops... heading for a rant I am!  Run, run... to anther topic.


Re: "It might also be nice to have "thumbnail" images of the pictures. The images are quite big: people browsing on slow connections especially might be reluctant to open them without an idea of what they're getting."

Well, I wonder if they are so heavy really - one advantage to not having a lot of little icons and other graphic junk cluttering up every page is that a lean design speeds things up - all those spiffy little graphic bits and pieces have to be downloaded after all!  I went and had a look at the actual size of the photos posted in the "Photo Gallery" and discovered the following figures - all in kilobytes mind you, *not* megabytes:

81, 40, 45, 47, 50, 155, 49, 42, 89, 66, 54, 122, 37, 61, 89, 115, 28, 49, 24.

The only two that I see might be slightly heavy are the 155kb and 115kb ones - most are around 50kb, which, even for dial-up, shouldn't take all that long to download.  I think there's a huge misunderstanding about electronic photos generally... which is understandable considering how complicated they are.  Firstly, the size displayed is often considerably smaller than the size the file would naturally display at - which can be wasteful of people's time.  All of the photos I have posted look large, but they are displaying at their maximum size for their resolution.  In other words, I've already downsized the lot of them to make them as light as possible for that display size.  A side benefit of this is that if someone decides to rip off one of my images and claim it as their own, they will be stuck with only a low-resolution version of the original, which isn't worth much - not for paper printing anyway.  (While I'm on the topic, I don't mind people downloading files from the site for personal use or personal storage.  Commercial use is another matter however, if you want to use one of my images for commercial purposes, contact me and we'll arrange a price.)

.jpg... is not a set compression!  The format is variable, and a lot of digital cameras use low compression to provide higher memory write speeds and also provide higher quality images.  I'm using a compression level that doesn't destroy the image, but does provide a smaller file size for the total pixel count than a lot of cameras do....

This is getting technical... and llllooooonnnnggggggg.....  Anyone on dial-up who can give me some feedback regarding download times for the photos?  I'd appreciate it!


2004/06/12 12:37

I fixed the "Suburbia" PDF file and have uploaded a new photo - "Shinjuku Skies".  What else?  There is lots to do, so I better do it and not spend time on the blog right now.  Talk to you later!


2004/06/11 21:25

There were a couple of typos in the 1:25 p.m. entry that I've fixed.  (I was in a bit of a rush when I sent that out....)  A couple of things, only one that I'll put in here for now - which is that I took the Sardine Run set of photos off the site.  They weren't so bad, but - considering that the trains are not usually quite that crowded - I thought it might be best for me to consider local sensibilities and not leave those up.  I wouldn't have put those up in the first place, but other mega-city dwellers were boasting that their cities had more crowded trains, so I was eager to prove them wrong!


2004/06/11 13:25

I was asked what software I used to make the PDF files and if it were free.  The answer comes in two parts.  The first part of the answer is that I used proprietary software from a certain horrible company that I will not honor by naming here, and then converted it to PDF format via Adobe Acrobat.  The reader for Acrobat is free, but not the full version with which you can make and edit PDF files.  So... I tried OpenOffice.org's Writer - software that I've long used for writing, but never for layouts with photos in them... until today.  I tested it (result on new "New Files" page under "PDF Files") and found it to work very well!  Better than the software I used for my earlier files.  One caution is that a photo I made transparent didn't transfer to PDF that way, so there's a small section of text hidden behind that file....

OpenOffice.org's software can be freely (and for free) downloaded at:
www.openoffice.org


2004/06/11 05:51

The most recent photo up in the Photo Gallery is "Sidetracked" - a photo I like, but it probably doesn't sound too interesting:

Q: "What is it a photo of?"

A: "People on an escalator."

Sounds... very ordinary... but have a look and let me know what you think of it.  Stubborn bugger that I am, I don't even care if anyone else likes it actually, because I already do.  Well... I take that back, I care very much if other people like it, but whether they do or whether they don't, I'm still convinced it's a good photo, which is why I posted it.

...... Obviously nothing profound to say, so I'll stop here!


2004/06/10 11:56

No discernible change after putting that in.  So it's all determined by the volume of traffic then?  Hmm....  Info about my site came up with a Google search for "The LL-Letters" via a first page listing of Bondi Books' blog at:
http://www.bondibooks.com/Blog/blog.html

But that was this morning - as I try the same search again, now it doesn't come up.  Hmmm... I guess I'll just stop thinking about it for now and see what happens over time.


The LL-Letters - Letter-Letter - Lyle (Hiroshi) Saxon

2004/06/10 11:41

Okay, so what's with the stuff above?  I'm trying to make it so people can find the site via search engines.  Will it work?  Let's try it and see....


2004/06/10 06:31

Welcome to everyone from the LL-Letters group!  I've held off on letting most people know about the site until I got the framework and a few things posted.  Now that a certain framework is in place, I suppose I might as well start working with it.  Please bookmark the site, as the address is not the easiest one to enter manually, what with that "~" mark in it.  That wasn't my choice by the way, but rather something the provider stuck me with.  The provider offers a different address arrangement for something like 205 yen per month, but I don't like the address options they offer and so need to look into registering a more normal site address.  Does anyone have any information on how to do that?

Anyway - please have a look around at the site and let me know what you think of it.  If something isn't displaying correctly, please let me know and I'll try to fix it.


2004/06/09 17:50

I wish I could get things up on-line a bit speedier....  In any case, there's an all-new photo up - "Singing in Kichijoji", at the top of the list on the "Photo Gallery" page.  Feedback welcome.  I got very soppy with the text, so let me know if you felt dizzy and had to postpone dinner after reading it. ;)


2004/06/09 06:45

I put up six photos under "Photo Gallery" yesterday and will be doing more work on the site today.  The site seems to be displaying okay, except there was a strange problem with "One Cold January Day in the Suburbs" where the photo was displaying with Linux but not with Windows - even when using the same browser (Firefox)!  I re-saved the file and the photo and now it works, but I wonder what the technical reason for that one was....

As for the blog - sorry that it's only boring musing about website creation so far, but that's all I've been doing since I put this up.  Once I get more of the backlog of stuff I want to upload taken care off, I can return to writing about non-computer issues!


2004/06/08 17:06

Website building... a bit more work than I had anticipated!  It's a strange feeling having my material *sitting* out there.  Up until now, I had always only sent things with e-mail, so there was that beginning-middle-end aspect to any project, but when something is posted and is just... *there*, then it's a perpetual middle, until some unknown time when the data is deleted, but by that time, who has downloaded it?  Where are they?  Are they going to repost it sometime?  As far as convenience is concerned it's great!  I used to carry a CD-ROM around with some of my stuff on it, now all I have to do is go to the site if I want to show someone some of my work.  While I'm on the subject, I'd be interested in hearing different opinions regarding HTML editors.  I'm using a hodgepodge of different software at the moment - trying to figure out what will work best - any tips welcome!


2004/06/08 08:21

I'm beginning to see what a lot of work a site is.  No one piece of it is any big deal, but putting all the pieces together takes a bit of time.  I guess once I get past the development state, things will smooth out and I can get back to writing and photography.  I put a number of PDF files onto the site last-last-night/early-this-morning.  The resolution of the photos in the files isn't as good as it could be, but they were created to be light for e-mail, so I had to use light images.

Well, back to it.  There is a lot of work to be done yet!


2004/06/07 06:45

"Ah... but of course..." I realized upon receiving advice to be careful what I publish in a blog... it is just *sitting out there* after all!  Just sitting there, always available!  Yeah, I can see you long-time blog writers shaking your heads and thinking (saying out-loud even?) "What's with this loony?  Like... the sun comes up every day, right?  What's the point?  Are you stupid, or what?".  To which I just had a mental flashback to my first cell phone in 1997.  The first several calls I made were with a sense of science fiction - I'd call someone and say "Guess where I am?  In a train!" which demonstrated the possibility of what had been impossible for bipeds for all time leading up to cell phones (I noticed several other new cell phone users at the time doing the same thing incidentally).  Now it's just a piece of plastic with electronics inside that I use like... everyone else, hey?  And now I find myself wondering at the availability of material after spending the past eight years publishing exclusively via e-mail; I have just put this blog on-line (still don't like that word "blog"...) and I haven't programmed the biological computer to recognize "always available text" as something "normal".  Give me time, I'll get used to it.

(If you noticed that a piece of my 2004/06/06-16:26 posting has gone missing, you have just discovered the reason for the ramble above.)

One other thing - this will be sloppier than my e-mail text, as I'm going to be tossing stuff onto the site without carefully editing it in order to get a regular flow of text going....


2004/06/06 16:26

I still feel more comfortable with letters than posting text and having it just sitting out there on disks, in chips and on the wires ready to be looked at anytime, by anyone!  I think this will affect my writing in the "blog" (still not quite comfortable with that word...) as well.  So, this in no way is meant to replace the LL newsletter, but rather to augment it.  Another issue is the fact that the attack on the e-mail system by the spam blizzard monsters (WhoWhoWho?) has been making it increasingly difficult to communicate via e-mail, so - in that sense - putting text on-line, whether I like it or not, may be the only way to communicate with many people.


2004/06/06 14:27

Pressed for time at the moment.  The key to getting things done is to not do them right?  Thus this meaningless blurb is going on-line so I can pat myself on the back for getting the blog page on-line... on time!  HoHo, Banzai!!