Lackadaisical Blogging

I've been more than lazy regarding the blog. I've been apathetic, careless, dull, inattentive, indifferent, lackadaisical, lethargic, passive, sleepy, tired, weary, asleep on the job, comatose, dallying, dilatory, drowsy, flagging, idle, indolent, inert, laggard, lagging, languid, languorous, lifeless, loafing, neglectful, out of it, procrastinating, remiss, shiftless, slack, slothful, slow, slow-moving, snoozy, somnolent, supine, tardy, torpid, trifling, unconcerned, unenergetic, unindustrious, un-persevering, unready, and whatever else might be in your thesaurus.

Through all that inactivity, I have been thinking about blogging again. I just didn't have all that much motivation.

What really got me going was this morning (actually yesterday morning), we found out that photos we had of our Mennonite house that we want to rent out, were not appearing in Facebook for many folks.

Panic ensued. So to get something up in a hurry, I cut and pasted Dianna's Facebook posting to the blog. Naturally, the photos were another story. Anyway, all is up as a post on the blog (http://www.winjama.net/2018/07/renting-out-our-mennonite-house.html), more or less mirroring the Facebook post.

Thought you might like to know. I have been missing blogging. So, we'll see how it goes.

Cheers,
Dave

Looking Back

One of the problems of getting old is becoming obsolete. Not me, of course. It's my technology.

The Old Photo Box

I was rooting around in one of our boxes of photos Dianna and I have. It's this one on the left. You know the box. Everyone has had one at one time or another, full of photos that you intended to put into albums. Somehow, the contents of that box just grew and grew, until it became too daunting to even consider.

Anyway, over the years, and various glitches with computers, hard drive crashes, lost files, etc., I realized I had lost a sizeable collection of vacation photos. I had captured most of the ones I was looking for on little 'mini' CDs, that held around 120Mb of data. They were the hot thing at the time.

Just Like My Mavica

I had purchased a brand new Sony Mavica camera for the vacation specifically so I could capture a lot of photos in very little space. Of course, within a year, it was displaced by something smaller, faster, more convenient and so on.

Anyway, I knew I had saved those mini CDs, so I was fairly sure I could replace the lost photos off the CDs.

So, I was rooting around in the box, looking for the CDs when I came upon this stack of 3.5" floppies. These are from the same trip the CDs are supposed to cover.

I don't remember taking any photos with a film camera on that trip. I must have because getting a floppy disk back instead of prints was the new thing, and here they are.

Photos Trapped By Obsolescence

I'm hoping to be able to find someone in the local Corozal area who is either still using floppies in their PC or that has an external floppy drive so that I can capture these long lost gems.

Oh, before I forget. That gold-colored CD in the background. That too has photos.from that same trip. Now, what's weird is that around that time, I did have a Macintosh computer, an SE-30. But it only used Mac 3.5" floppies, never had the capability of using mini or regular-sized CDs. I'd like to recover these photos as well.

That's probably going to be easier than recovering the photos off the floppies. Anyway, the search is on.

Little Bit of New Stuff

For those of you who are visual types, I mean very visual... That is, really, really visual, I present the following:

Up in the upper left hand column, you’ll notice something called ‘Winjama’s Window On the World.’

[Well, not right now you won't. Because of the switch back to Blogger, the gallery had to be redone using different software, but, I'm working on it and it should be up and running soon... Right now!]

Our Window On the World

If you hover your cursor over the text in the column, you’ll notice some sub-menus that appear, drop-down menus listing the years from 2007 through 2015. If you click on any of the years, you’ll be shown in short order, a gallery of most of the photos we’ve taken for each of those years.

Altogether, there’s over eight-thousand photos. Feel free to look at as many as you want. It’s more or less a chronological listing of our journey to date here in Belize.

I’ve decided to break each year’s batch of photos into monthly items for that particular year. It was a lot of work, but I think it was worth it.

There you have it. I hope you enjoy the shots. Few if any are anywhere near professional quality. I never said I was a pro. Prolific yes, just not a pro.

COMMENTS - Posted here as part of the message because I can't figure out how to transfer comments from InMotion back to Blogger.

05/04/2015 at 2:35 PM
 

Well Dave, it looks like you may have “turned the corner” on getting a handle on the blog. I admire your “cussidness” in sticking with it and continuing (other than at pool time) to get things back on track. I hope to see your font in use soon, but I can wait util you get arount “tuit”.

Seriously, the blog is really looking good. I like the way its coming together. The only thing that might get in trouble is the large diffence in the Winjama Tags secton between the Men’s Group and Dianna.

Enjoy,
Julian

05/04/2015 at 3:19 PM

Hi Julian,

Yes, I think you’re right on both points. I’ve about got the formatting taken care of. I’m working with the authors of WP-SpamShield to fine and correct a problem. Everyone appears to be able to bring up the blog fairly fast. When I do it, it takes, on average, 3-minutes and 20-seconds to load. I’ve got a whole laundry-list of stuff I have to do/look at so those folks can determine why it’s taking me so long to load up.

The fonts are another issue. That’ll be taken care of in due course. I’m also working on all the postings and correcting the export from Blogger errors. That should take about a month or two for me to go through the nine-hundred-odd postings and get things corrected. Then, I can work on the fonts, and then, when that’s done I can get back to just plain posting as in days of yore, so to speak. I’m looking forward to it, seriously.

Thanks for the comment. I appreciate it.

Cheers,
Dave

Julian Foster

06/04/2015 at 11:21 AM
 

If it makes you feel better, Dave, I should tell you that up here in the land of the fast internet your page loads in literally about 3 or 4 SECONDS, period. Tried it several times. So the slow load up times down there are one of the prices you are paying to live in your paradise, I guess. I checked it against some other belize blogs like John Henry East’s and Bound for Belize and they are all comparable in their load times — so that’s good. At this point I’d spend my time seeing if you can speed up your download pipe.

I know that the internet is indeed a challange down there so I can understand if you just continue to live with the situation. Have you ever used speedtest.net to see what your speeds are at the casa? (Just for comparison mine is 64 mbps on the download and 4 mbps on the upload. I do realize that your system down there is very similar to the days when we were happy to get a 58K modem…. yeee hawww! Anyway, all that to say the blog (from this end at least) is performing fine and I’m ready to hear about more motorbike disasters and stuff like that — you know, normal living things. LOL.

Hang in there,
Julian

PS - To make you feel better: the other day I was walking with a friend on our morning 2 mile trek when, for no earthly reason that I could tell at the time, something stopped my right foot from coming foward — just like it had hit a real low clothesline. Down I went, pitching forward and almost catching myself with my out flung arms. But, and maybe that’s why I am on a diet, I couldn’t quite stop myself and my head came right down and bounced off the asphault. Luckily I was wearing gloves and had a wool “watch cap” on and that area of my forehead was cushioned somewhat and all I did was create a big raw, bleeding spot big as quarter. My walking partner, Steve, said “what in world are you doing?” I was a little stunned and took my time getting up. But when I did, I looked back and on the pavement were several small sploches of concrete that had fallen from the latest driveway pooring next door. My foot had to have landed exactly right to place normally but with no room to move forward when it was supppose to do so and, of course, my weight was moving forward and the left foot was fast going behind me.. perfect disaster. You ought to hear my wife when I leave on my walks now…. LOL.

06/04/2015 at 7:00 PM
 

Hi Julian,

Faceplants are the worst, aren’t they? I done that three times, each time while walking my dogs along the seawall in town. It’s always tripping over tiny pebbles or sticks or something. You know it’s happening, and you seem to be falling in slow motion, but just don’t seem able to get a hand or arm up in time to prevent it. Thankfully, Haven’t done that in a couple of years (knock on wood).

Thanks for the speed info. That’s good to know. I’m working, as we speak with the authors of the Spamshield software that appears to be slowing the system from my side down drastically. Spamshield isn’t the cause, but the result. Anyway, testing is going on to see what’s happening. Things should get squared away soon I hope.

Cheers,
Dave

Hardy Belize Polar Bears Take the Plunge

Newsflash - Corozal -- Some "tough as snow shovels" Corozaleños braved the winter chill to make history for the third annual Corozal Polar Bear Swim on New Years Day. Brushing aside low water temperatures of around 81° (f), these hardy souls plunged boldly into the depths (OK, it's only four foot deep) and managed to stop shivering long enough for 'Lizbit' to snap a pic or two to document the occurrence.

Belize Polar Bears - Thanks Lizbit

A quick word about the photo - I had planned on using a photo from my camera, which had been duly mounted on a tripod and took advantage of the self-timer so that we could all be in the shot - except I was going to use Dianna to actually hit the button that actuated the self-timer. That part of it all worked fine. The part I screwed up was when it came to saving the shot. I assumed it was simply a matter of clicking the button and it took care of that little detail all by itself. Not quite. Apparently, you have to then save the shot. Minor detail that, but it meant that I didn't get any shots. Major bummer. It's an easy mistake to make when the only time I use the self-timer is for this event. Maybe next January I'll read the instructions beforehand.

That's where Elizabeth Wright - 'Lizbit', came in. I had noticed while I plunged into the pool for the photo, that she was also taking photos with her camera. She was kind enough to let me use the shot above so we could document this momentous occasion .

Not only did we do the dip here, but we have some friends who are also Polar Bears who happen to be up in Canada, up near Edmonton, Alberta, in a place called Tofield. They too, took part in the festivities and provided documentation of their experience. My God, talk about willing to go to extremes to get a Tshirt that they had to pay for... just goes to show, some folks will do anything for a Tshirt.

Denis - A True Polar Bear

Vivien - Even More So

Thanks for providing the shots Vivien. We shiveringly appreciate the suffering you had to endure. A truly monumental effort.

Here's a copy of the image Belize Tee Shirts, right here in Corozal, printed up for us. As usual, they did a bang-up job.

The TShirt

Now, as long as we're on the topic of photos... we are, aren't we? Anyway. Remember I had said something about the photos not showing up? Well, just a couple of minutes ago, when I downloaded the photo above, guess what showed up? The missing shots still on the SD card in the camera. So, it wasn't such a screwup afterall. Here's one of them:

The Suffering We Endure...

Well, that's it. I hope you all had a nice and peaceful Christmas.

In the words of Francis, the first Pope to be named after Frank Sinatra, and a pretty cool sounding dude in his own right, "I ask everyone to share in this song [the song of the angels]: it is a song for every man or woman who keeps watch through the night, who hopes for a better world, who cares for others while humbly seeking to do his or her duty." That sentence, from his Christmas message, just really spoke to me.

Have a good new year too, while you're at it.

The Question Is Often Asked...

The Question is often asked, "Just what do you do down here to fill your time?"

We usually answer, "I don't know, but it sure keeps us busy. There's never enough time to get everything done."

Just as an example, take a gander at this:

4 Years, 4 Minutes, No Kidding

Ok. So it's not quite four years, close enough for government work, as we used to say. Anyway, you'll get a quick idea of just what we've been up to over the past 3.5+ years. Most of these photos are documented and talked about/explained throughout the blog. Feel free to search the index or the search feature to find out more about what we've been up to.

The video does make for a cool snapshot. Thanks to the folks at pummelvision.com for their free service. You too, might want to give it a try for your own snapshots.

Snapping fotos at the Crack-O-Dawn

For those of you who know me, I tend to get up early... like around three or four in the morning (Yawn. Boy, do I need a nap.).
Anyway, on one of those early AM excursions, I took a cool photo of sunrise over Corozal Bay. I could virtually shoot this same picture every day - the weather is that consistent.