I will be gone for the next two weeks. I hate to leave Mfop in a state of "lot's of improvements needed". I'm worried about work (mainly because of the "incident" when I went on vacation two years ago). I have slept 3 hours / night for the past 3 days, and I don't like how it feels. Jason, who seems to have been living off 2 hours / night for the past year is amazing.)

Rode my bike to work today for the first time in year and feel like I'm going to have a heart-attack. (I'm almost 30 you know).

Tomoe isn't meeting her friend who just flew in fom Hong Kong.

To create the illusion that things are happening with Mfop while I am gone, I created a blog for people to add complaints and suggestions to make it better. I hope nothing happens to the system it while I am gone. If for some reason everything stops working. Know that I will return.

Maybe I'll find an Internet cafe while I am gone.

Posted by bastish at 09:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (1)

I'm a happy Bastish today! Simon from Simon Says is the first Mfop user I have seen to put the Mfop logo on his site!

(thanks again to Kristen at Media Tinker for the great logo design.)

Posted by bastish at 10:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

My roommate, who works at the Japanese version of NASA did me a favor today, and printed out a ferry schedule I was wondering about. When I looked at the back of the printout, I found some cool looking secret rocket plans. I had the pictures all ready to put on the web when she saw and freaked out. They were papers from a presentation some scientists are going to give in a big once-every-two-years conference in May. Knowing that makes the pictures look even cooler. Maybe I'll post them in the end of May.

As always there are more on the next page...

Posted by bastish at 11:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Hi All,
(An email to the bitflux moblog mailing list )

I just read about the list on Margin Walker

Just a self intro, I don't have a mobile, don't plan on getting one until
absolutely needed. But I know that everyone else does, and all those young
whippersnappers are pretty crazy about this moblogging thing, (and I do
enjoy looking at other peoples photos) so I made Mfop...

To tell the truth, I made it because I thought it was a good idea and would
be fun. What drives me most is that it is fun. Upon further reflection as
to *why* I liked the idea, I come this reason why I think it is "good".

Most of the people who read my site would never even *think* of trying to
install a moblog script. But that doesn't mean they shouldn't be able to
moblog.

I really like the idea of blogging, but I don't think it is anywhere near as
"influential" as many like to believe. I also don't really think it ever
will be. But... the easier it is to make various types of blogging
available to non-techies, the more blogging will influence the next
technology, which will influence the next technology after that... and so
on, each step having the effect of moving closer to not just sharing of
knowledge and information, but sharing of ideas and ideals, and doubts and
fears, and glimpses of lifestyles.

I'm waiting for the wireless connection with a chip in the brain allowing
ESP like communication. I think the more we know about our neighbors
secrets, and the more they know about ours, the better off we all are.
Moblogging is a step in that direction, allowing me to see snapshots of
people's lives in real time (or at least we can look back at the exact
moment they saw it). The grass is always greener when we compare ourselves
to people on TV and in movies (and everyone does), but more we can see real
people's lives without speculation the more it brings us back down to earth,
and lets us examine ourselves in a little more realistic light.

But mostly I think it's cool and fun :-)

As for technical aspects. Since I have been working alone (with the help of
some very patient beta users) in my spare time, it has taken a couple weeks
to get everything (interface and backend) up to speed. The back end is so
very simple. Most of the problems my users have are a result of poor
usability, and poor instructions on the registration page. Once this is
cleared, I would like to begin thinking about how mfop can grow. It'd make
it a whole lot easier if we can work together.

I don't see mfop as being a centralized service on one system. People
should be able to choose their moblog gateway, which means mfop should be
available for download and install to anyone who has the know-how and access
to install on their server. This would hopefully allow or a wide variety of
uses to develop in different places, and hopefully, if it gets widespread
enough, other relevent software makers will add any needed APIs or support
for it. For example, some of my users have asked for gallery support. It
is an almost trivial matter to adapt it for Gallery, but it would be a lot
easier if Gallery offered an API for Mfop.

Then there are the other fun goodies... I know there is "facerolling" now,
but if I visit too many sites that have it, I get sick of seeing the same
photos of the same people ;-) What about Moblogrolling? Instead of showing
faces of the people whose Blogs you link to, show something more dynamic...
their last moblog photo!

There are a few sites out there that accept moblog images and display it for
the user, and that is cool, but it is centralized. What if there was a page
that read some feed and displayed the 50 or 100 or whatever latest moblog
photos from other peoples sites? If Mfop is on one server it is easy, but
if it is on servers around the world, it takes a little planning to make it
easy.

Add location to that, and the viewer would be able to view other recently
updated moblogs from within xx km of another photo. This would really be
great for breaking news. I mentioned on my site about Fuji erupting. If it
did, and there where hundreds or thousands of people moblogging it, it would
most likely take over the "most recently updated moblog" section, and even
if there was some competing news, say a war in Syria, the viewer could click
on either "Fuji" or "Syria" image and see hundreds more shots from all
different perspectives of whichever news they are looking for. As technology
advances, this would be like having hundreds of CNNs.

People who aren't interested in that, but would rather see what is going on
that moment in their own home town could restrict their distance setting to
100 km and only show moblogs from 100 km away.

I'm getting carried away though...

Anyway. I hope this list gets big, and I hope I can help.

BTW as I send this mail to your list, I am also CCing it to mfop for posting
on my site which explains anything you might think is odd... such as the
formatting around Margin Walker

trackback[http://blog.bitflux.ch/b2trackback.php/476]

Kevin Cameron
kevin@kevincameron.net
http://www.bastish.net
http://www.bastish.net/mfop/

Posted by bastish at 10:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Tomoe called last night. Durnig the day she recieved a phone call from her
old roommate in England. Apparently the roommate was on the airplane on her
way to Osaka for some sight-seeing and wanted to know if she could stay with
Tomoe in her one-room apartment. Now, I'm all for opening your home to
someone, and I have a friend staying with me in my one-room, one-kitchen
apartment for two months... but...

Oh did I forget to mention the friend was on a plane from Hong Kong?

Is it still legal to leave Hong-Kong for pleasure? Maybe this is the start
of a flow of refugees, people who don't already have SARS getting the heck
out when they can.

Posted by bastish at 09:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I'm ofiicially and mfopper now!

Since I don't have a mobile, I didn't think I had need for mfop other than it's fun to build and I have been able to "meet" a lot of cool people on/offline.

Today I wanted to post something from my desk at work, but it's hard to pretend that I am working when I have the browser open to some form that everyone knows is not on any of our client's websites.

Mfop to the rescue. Since I spend so much time writing emails anyway, it's natural to have Outlook open. No one will know I'm slacking unless they get close enough to read the email text!

Posted by bastish at 09:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I don't usually care to post anything about politicians or famous people, but I just received an email that had the pictures found here attached. I couldn't help laughing because I remember my brother being taunted on the school bus (sorry Tim) and being called "Timmy Booger Eater". Unfortunately my sister Kelly was too young to be on the bus at that time.

I didn't want to post the photos, because I don't know who owns them, but a quick search on google turned up this site with the same photos.

Posted by bastish at 08:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I saw on Joi Ito's site that Hirata-san from dh's memoranda had the same idea as mfop. It's amazing there aren't more. Maybe his is a little more stable than mine :-). (It sure has a much less error filled registration page!... But I think I win the logo category.)

I'll contact him and see if we can't get together to make both ours better. It looks like his only supports MT for now. And Paul still wants that Gallery support, so I think there's more than enough work to go around.

I was just in the process of making my own code a little less embarasing to my programming ego so I could let other people host it on their servers as well, and people can register to moblog via someone they know and trust's server. And the only reason I can think of to have it "centralized" into one system, is to have a cool page that shows the latest moblog updates (like blogrolling). But that can be accomplished other ways.

I'm thinking about the day that Fuji erupts, and when you look at the mfop page it will be filled with thousands of mobloged photos of people running in terror from all parts of Tokyo. If the moblogs had the location with it, we could all know where NOT to run to. Of course when that happens I probably wont be looking at my computer anyway.

Posted by bastish at 06:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Posted by bastish at 11:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Since I have started taking LOTS more photos, I have reached a dilemma regarding displaying them on my site. For a few days there, amidst the euphoria of having a new camera, I was interested in getting cool looking shots, and then displaying the coolest of the cool on my site.

Today however, I spent the day walking through a park nearby my apartment.

When I got home, I went through the photos and left out all the ones that didn't look "cool". There would be none left to put on the site. I started to realize then that was getting carried away. My site is not supposed to be a photography site, so I don't have to have good photos. What I noticed when I started leaving photos out, was that the story was missing big parts. Even if the photo is kind of blurry, I took it for a reason, because I thought it was interesting... and each photo I took lead to me taking the next photo. They are all connected in a timeline of my walk through the park, and they all follow a certain thread. If I leave too many out, the story of my day had huge gaps. There are so many poor quality photos that I still want to add because I was excited about the subject, or found it interesting (obviously or I wouldn't have taken the photo)

So then maybe I should just put them all up... but that's like if I write about the fact that my shoelace broke today. Too much crap will dilute the non-crap. (then there's the problem of uploading 100 MB / day to the site)

I haven't figured it out yet, and I am not uploading every photo I took today, but I may be uploading too many. For me the story is incomplete, for the viewer (especially on a 24k modem like my mom) the story may be too detailed. Hopefully I'll figure it out soon.

In the mean time, please enjoy the photos from today. If your sharp you may notice the same old themes... birds, and people painting. This time I have a little more time so I have added some commentary.

Once again, click on "more".

I know I know, there are enough cherry blossom photos on Japan blogs... but I am just amazed at how blue the sky looksi n this shot. Yes, I'm very simple minded.

The door fetish rears it's head again. This time I'm a little more pleased with the results.

All these photos are from a huge park a couple minutes from my apartment. I hardly ever go there though, and I sure never noticed this great looking canteen. Next sunny weekend I'm packing up my painting gear and going there to down a few beers, hang out with the oji-sans (old men) and paint.

The Yaki-imo man drives his beat-up old truck around town selling sweet potatoes cooked in his fire pit. It all looks very low tech, so I always assumed he is an old man living in an old house with no electricity... until we started talking about digital cameras and found out that he knows more than I ever will...

As you know by now, I have a fascination with people painting outdoors. With any luch though, tomorrow will be clear and sunny, and it will be me painting with some friends in Fujino. Anyone is welcome... we leave at 9:30.

Posted by bastish at 10:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Another walk through the park. That goes without explenation, except that I got up early today and instead of getting off at Kichijyouji Station, I got off one stop before at Iinokashira Park Station and walked throught the park to work. It is a small station, and I was very impressed that they have a greeter. An old man who stands in front of the station and says "good morning" to the people on their way to work. Obviously everyone recognized him, and they all replied with their own cheery "Good morning!" Some stopped and chatted a bit. What a WOW! idea.

It reminds me a bit of the laughing meeting I helped implement at Arbor Brewing Company when I was a waiter there as a student. Apparently many companies in India take a couple minutes each morning to laugh. No jokes, no tickling, they just force themselves to laugh. When I was a waiter, one particularly crazy night, there was a waitress who was about to have a nervous breakdown so I took her in the back and forced her to laugh with me for 60 seconds. Of course she had a hard time laughing with nothing funny, but apparently me laughing with nothing funny was funny enough to make her laugh. It helped make the night liveable, and the two of us started to do this often. After a while a few others noticed and joined in. It got to the point that we would end some of the shift meetings by lauging for 60 seconds. This was right out in the middle of a dining room crowded with customers from the lunch shift, so naturally they wonder whats going on, and many start to laugh just seeing us laughing. Maybe it was just my imagination, but the whole mood of the reseraunt seemed to change when we did this.

Not too long after the owner of the pub heard about it and made it "policy" to laugh after every meeting. Nothing could have killed it faster. The policy was dead within a week and noone ever laughed again.

The point is that I often forget how small things like that can really change a whole day. As I grow more and more discontent with my current job and daily life, I forget to do the things that made me feel better in the past, such as laugh on the train (I always have a book in a book cover so people think I am laughing at something in the book, and I'm not just a freak), or a few years ago when I used to open my window, which faces popular walking path, and dance alone to a steel-drum cd in the morning for all the people who pass by and look in my window to see. I should really start up again, but I'll have to be careful about making it "policy".

Anyway, check out the photos, and click on "more" for more.

Awii.

For some reason every day when I walk out my door I love the way the neighbors door step looks. I have taken this photo many times, even before I got the new camera, I have never been satisfied with the photos, and can't seem to catch whatever it is I love about it. These photos failed too.

The dog was watching the cat... very closely.

Posted by bastish at 09:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Went to nudie sketch club last night, and afterwords out to eat and drink to a nice little bar with some of the artists. No matter how far off the beaten path I try to go by myself, I never find anyplace with such great atmosphere as I do when I am with some old Japanese locals!

As for the nights sketching, nothing to write home about... Zooming in with my new camera seems to help my photos, so I tried zooming in with my drawing too... it just makes it harder more difficult.

Posted by bastish at 08:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This certainly is frustrating. I have 75MB worth of photos I took around my neighborhood today, and I don't have enough room on my computer to save them, let alone spruce them up with Photoshop. I tried to save all my photos from the past few years to CD so I can erase them from my hard-drive, but the CD writer appears to make a copy of the files I select in RAM and then saves that to the CD. Again, I don't have 750MB of RAM, so it obviously uses the harddisk... but like I say, there's no space left there to even create and image to save to CD.

I try to save (very slowly) one directory of photos at a time, and it seems to be working, but when I try to check the CD afterwords just to make sure there all there before I erase them from my hard drive, I can't open the CD. Is my CD ok and only my computer is fricked up? or did nothing get written to the CD?

I guess it's times like these (and like when I am making Mfop) that I should be glad to have full access to the company web-server and don't have to worry about bandwidth and file size... my website is by far has grown to be the biggest on the server with all my photos. One of our clients is even a stock-photo company, yet my site is bigger.

I think that's something I am going to have to start worrying about though. Maybe I will have to stop uploading all my photos in their full multi-megabyte glory and start "optimizing" them for the web.

Posted by bastish at 07:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

More people are using the mfop system than I expected (at least this early).

It's making me all glad 'n stuff.

So far there are between 13 and 18 active moblogers using it and every day someone experiences a problem :-)

Some of these problems are because of poor instructions on the registrations page... I'll fix that up as soon as possible. Other problems are quickly solvable as soon as I notice it... for example I didn't have it set up to handle Japanese until someone tried to post Japanese, and I didn't have it set up top do text only (no image) posts until a few people tried that. Next I have to make it able to upload multiple images to one post... because someone tried that yesterday. Now that I know people are using it, I'll try my best to get it working for as many people.

Paul from IN-duce has written a very nice little blurb about Mfop at his own site and over at MarginWalker, and has requested support for Gallery. It shouldn't be a problem at all. I'll download Gallery soon as I get a chance and set it up. Or if Paul can give me access to post photos to his gallery in a test account, I can forgoe the trouble of setting it up on my server. (although it looks like something I might want to use anyway).

Seeing as I will be on vacation for two weeks from Friday, I'll try to get as much done before that so as many people as possible can moblog without problems, and without waiting 2 weeks for me to get home and fix whatever bugs I programmed in in the beginning.

Carsten, The first mfop Guineapig, is also one of the planners for the First International Moblog Conference happening in Tokyo in July. He asked me to talk about mfop a bit and I said it sounds like fun... I didn't realize the conference was such a big deal at the time... I guess now it sounds like more fun.

On my to do list in no particular order:

1. Find out why people's posts are not going to the correct category
2. Find out why the trackback link doesn't show up when people want it to
3. Spruce up the Mfop page with the fity design and logo that Kristen whipped up for me.
4. Re-write the instructions
5. Set up support for Gallery
6. Allow multiple images
7. Add link list of people using mfop
8. Clean up code so I wont be embarrased to let other people look at it (and host it on their server too if they like)
9. Check through my emails and make sure I didn't miss anything for this to do list
10. Figure out why Jeffrey can't post from his Sony T68i (no I didn't forget about you Jeffrey)

Posted by bastish at 05:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (3)

I guess the most important photography skill I will have to learn is recognizing what to leave out. I'm used to being able to just upload all the photos I take without paying much attention, but now that I am taking 70+ everyday I should start to use some restraint with what I put on the site... for now, just bare with me.

Hey! Lucky you! There's a lot more waiting.. just click the "more" link.

Yesterday:

Today:

Posted by bastish at 09:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Looks like I could have used an anti-blur-when-it's-dark filter last night. Most of the photos were too bad to even put up. i.e. they were even worse than these! (don't miss the "more" button!)

Posted by bastish at 08:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I hopped on the last train home with only about 30 seconds to spare.

Posted by bastish at 07:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Had another meeting tonight with geeks and non-geeks who have websites like mine. It was better than ever. Lots of people and I met some of the peopl whos web sites I comment on frequently. (somtimes I spend more time commenting than writing on my own site)

I got some feed back about my site (some people actually look at the photos... and they are photo-geeks themselves. GREAT!) It seems to me that more Tokyo bloggers are photo freaks than can be called average. good for me I guess... but bad in the sence that it makes me feel like my new camera is inadequate. (I need a polarizing filter to go along with my "I'm a cool pro photographer with a long camera" attachemnt)

I also found that I am now known as the "budgie guy" (Budgie means parakeet for those who don't know) This means I can never change my design again, as I have already established my brand... I gess I don't have to feel guilty about posting pictures of crows anymore.

I have lots to write, but my new roomate is getting resltess, so I should stop with my loud typing. Instead just check out the photos.

On second thought... why don't you check out my photos tomorrow... but all you really need to see is right here

Posted by bastish at 02:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)