New. Maybe also improved..

April 19, 2008 | Filed Under Uncategorized | 4 Comments 

Mountains are big. I could feel them strain against their cramped borders in the 500×300 images I’d forced them into. They demanded space to breath, and accused me of covering up my deficiencies. A small image hides a multitude of sins. It was time to come clean.

One rainy night in Tokyo later, and here’s the new version. I hope it looks OK. The vagaries of the browser world and propensity for wordpress to render layout differently depending on the installed version makes consistency difficult. I went for fixed sizes, so sorry if you have an enormous screen with a lot of white-space now, or a tiny screen you have to scroll across to see the photos. 56k dialup guys too, I apologise unreservedly - the photos are heavy. But Google Analytics tells me that there’s only two of you out there. And really, it’s 2008. Join us on broadband. You’ll like it better there.

Google also tells me there’s a surprisingly large number of people coming here from UBS and Lehman (hi guys) - thanks as always for taking care of us.

The posts back to last November have been converted to the new large format, I’ll get around to the ones prior to that shortly. So stop back again in a week or so if you want to see them in their enlarged glory.

Finally, there’s a Japanese version of the blog going up soon too. I stopped posting to mixi.jp a while ago when they unilaterally changed their policy to one which would allow them unfettered use of any and all content. I know the technical background, but it still made me uneasy. There’ll be a link at the top of the page, and I am slowly working back through the translations for the English entries so far.

EDIT:

I’ve noticed some of the photos have lost a little resolution as they get scaled from 1024×685 on flickr down to 800x(something) on the site. Anything with diagonal lines looks ugly. I’ll probably make some 800 width versions specially to use instead. Sure beats packing the apartment for the move next week..

Sayonara 2007…

December 22, 2007 | Filed Under Uncategorized | 4 Comments 

Staying at a machiya in the middle of Gion, Kyoto for two weeks from today - Mount Ibuki and Odaigahara are on the list of climbs while I’m down here…

The gods either have power or they have not. If they have not, why pray to them? If they have, then instead of praying to be granted or spared such-and-such a thing, why not rather pray to be delivered from dreading it, or lusting for it, or grieving over it?

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations (Chapter 9, verse 40)