The blogging software I’m using (b2) has some capability that I’ve had a
lot of trouble with — that is, the ability to pick up e-mail from a
mail account and put it in the web log. Because it didn’t work
correctly, I wrote my own routine and have been using that for the
purposes of receiving email from my Blackberry and posting it to the
website. That works fairly well, but some mail forwarding programs that
my Blackberry uses breaks up the e-mail text in in arbitrary ways and
inserts some other characters. When this type of e-mail message is
posted to the blog, it really looks bad and I have to go back and
correct the post manually. Supposedly the native b2 e-mail processes
these e-mails correctly.

So, today I spent some time fixing the native b2 process and getting it
to work. Now I need to try it with enough different e-mail
configurations to see if it really does handle the funny lines
correctly. I’ve still got some work to do on this native process since
it doesn’t send out notifications that the weblog has been updated. I’ll
need to add this code. Anyhow, it turns out that there were two
offending lines of code in the native b2 e-mail process. By commenting
out those lines of code, it now at least works. Time will tell if it
works with strange e-mail relay servers!

This is the first post using the native process. Perhaps over the next
week I’ll be able to determine what else needs to be done to make this
truly a useful process.

A couple of days ago I listened to a podcast from Tokyo Calling where Scott described his Japanese holiday called Bunka no Ni, or Culture Day. It reminded me of an earlier Bunka no Hi holiday when Nina and I were living in Japan. The Stake had arranged in 1997 for an overnight group trip to Mt. Fuji to tour some of the lava caves in that area. Since the holiday was on a Friday, this would make for a two-day trip. The trip was for the older members in the stake and some 40 people signed up, including Nina and me. While we didn’t know exactly what to expect, it sounded like a lot of fun, and it turned out to be completely different than what we had expected and a whole lot of fun!

We boarded the bus in Ushiku, a nearby city, to drive into northern Tokyo to pick up members from each of the ward buildings. By mid-morning the bus was full and we were ready to leave from the last pickup location. However, since it costs money to drive on the expressways in Japan, and the fee for busses was very expensive, we took normal roads through Tokyo and south towards Mt. Fuji, along with twenty million other Japanese drivers. Overall I’d expect we averaged about ten miles an hour for the entire drive that day, and that might be generous! We didn’t arrive at the hostel until well after dinner time.

Now, most Westerners would have been very frustrated with that traffic and we would have immediately taken up a collection to pay for the expressway…. Not the Japanese! No sooner had we started than the karaoke started. The bus, of course, came equipped with a karaoke machine and TV’s all along the bus aisles showed the subtitled words to the music. A couple of microphones were attached to cables along each side of the bus so that the mikes could be passed from person to person. Four huge books of songs available on the karaoke were passed up and down the bus. Everyone came with treats to share (Nina had made chocolate chip cookies that were very popular), and they began calling out song numbers to the bus attendant who entered them into the karaoke machine. For the next nine hours we participated in the number one all time favorite Japanese activity: singing karaoke.

Even though there are karaoke bars in the U.S., they are nothing at all like how karaoke is done in Japan. In fact, if I had asked anyone on the bus after the trip what the best part of the trip had been, they would have unanimously said, "Karaoke!" It is infectious as well. Long before we arrived at the hostel, we both had been hooked into singing something as well. I was also amazed at the quality of voices and singing on the bus! It was very much a nine-hour concert.

The hostel was a kind of a community sleeping hotel where dinner and breakfast were supplied, but you had to go get it from the kitchen and then do the dishes afterwards. The men all slept on the tatami mats and futons in a couple of rooms and the ladies all slept in other rooms — no other arrangements for married couples. I don’t sleep well in the floor, but it worked out OK.

The next morning we toured one of the huge lava caves at the foot of Mt. Fuji. These caves are remnants of the cooling lava flows where trapped air bubbles had formed huge cavities. That was followed by a trip to a huge garden (which was almost devoid of plant life in November) and the inveitable group picture. Then we boarded the bus for the ride back home.

The next day the traffic was much different. What had taken nine hours the day before took about four hours on Saturday. Traffic made that much difference. But, again as soon as the bus moved, karaoke started. It didn’t stop until we were at the last drop-off point. The trip was one that we’ll remember fondly and vividly for the rest of our lives. It certainly was a "Culture Day" for us!

This weekend our niece Ashlyn came down from BYU-Idaho to visit. We also attended the blessing of a great-niece. I’ve posted a few pictures on the web page. Click on "Pictures!" on the right.

Election day has come and gone, Thank Heaven! This was certainly one of the most acrimonious elections in my memory although I remember the Goldwater / Johnson campaign in 1964 has being very harsh. Mostly right now I’m happy to have all of the advertisements gone from TV for all the local offices. Some of them were very nasty. Why must all campaigns be attack campaigns? What ever happened to talking about what the candidate stands for and what they will work for without having to attack the opponent at the same time? Anyhow, it’s now all over and I’ve certainly breathed a sigh of relief.

The forecast says we’ll got some snow or rain this afternoon. It looks too warm for snow, so the fact that the new snow blower is in the garage still in the box and in need of some serious assembly won’t become important. On the other hand, the wind never seems to stop blowing here! The hot tub sits kind of out in the open and as a consequence, in the cold weather it isn’t very useful. I’m going to have to put a gazebo or something around the hot tub so that we can make use of it during the winter!

The podcasting capability I’ve referred to in a previous post continues to be very interesting. So far I’ve found a couple of podcasts that are interesting enough that I’ve added them to the podcast aggregator iPodder. These are:

• Tokyo Calling: a reasonably regular podcast from an American living in Tokyo Japan. Some of the things he talks about are quite familiar to me and I find it very interesting.
• Geek News Central: Todd Cochrane’s speaking style is refreshingly amateur. He does spend a fair amount of his podcast talking about technical stuff along with his own views on the subject. It has a little too much music on the podcast, but I still find it interesting.
• Daily Source Code: Many will remember Adam Curry from the early MTV days. He’s kind of the father of podcasting. His podcasts are fairly long, but usually quite interesting and sometimes provoking.

I’ve also found some very interesting stuff on itconversations.com. These are either recordings of speeches from technology luminaries or interviews with these luminaries. I download the recording in iPod format, double click on the resulting download, and the file is moved into iTunes. I put it in the playlist I’ve set up for itconversations, and then listen to the talk or interview at my convenience. This is very cool stuff.

Finally, I’ve read some stuff on the web and on Slashdot about photoblogs. The idea is to put on the blog one photo periodically and then perhaps talk about the photo. I guess I should stop calling this a weblog and refer to it as a photoblog?

Winter has arrived. The hillsides and mountain tops are now covered in
snow. Grey has turned into black and white. It is actually quite pretty.

I’m just not yet ready for winter to arrive. Not that there’s a lot of
stuff that I wanted to do outside, but winter means it gets dark earlier
and stays dark longer. I like sunlight and winter means less of it! Winter
also means wearing more clothes and heavy coats. I’m bulky enough already
and the extra layers seem to magnify that bulk. Finally winter also means
the likelihood of falling down on slick surfaces, e.g. I have to get rid of
snow and ice on the sidewalk, driveway, and porch. That means bulking up so
as not to be too cold and getting out on the slick stuff. I bought a snow
blower to assist in this work. It will be delivered on Tuesday — in
pieces, of course, requiring assembly. Then after it is assembled, it needs
to be put somewhere. Therein lies another problem.

This litany could go on at length. Perhaps because I have a cold, the
advent of winter is more ominous.

My little iPod is becoming quite the tool. I’ve found a website
www.itconversations.com, that has some excellent recordings on it. Highly
recommended. It is so useful to be able to quickly put a recording on the
iPod, listen to it, and then either keep it to listen to again, put it on a
CD to share with someone else, or simply delete it. It is so easy and
convenient. I wonder if Apple knows the power of this device beyond playing
music? I think not, because their next step was to make it able to store
digital pictures and show them on a TV. What they really needed was a voice
recorder!

We are pretty much staying home on this Sunday. I’m (hopefully) on the back
end of a cold, Nina is just coming down with one, and mom has a cold as
well. We’ll get together later this week. I’ve got a couple of Home
Teaching visits to make. Today is Halloween, but most kids came last night.
I’m not expecting any kids tonight. I was surprised by how many
Trick-or-Treaters came by last night. We almost got none in Colorado
Springs. We are at the end of a street with few houses around us. It was
cold with occasional showers. That didn’t deter the kids with some 30 or so
showing up on our doorstep.

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Sent from my BlackBerry Wireless Handheld

The past day or so I’ve been quite consumed with a very new technology that is the "New Hot Thing" on the Internet: podcasting. This is very cool technology and will, at least for a while, be quite the rage and then will settle down to being a "Good Thing".

So, just what is podcasting? It’s kind of like amateur radio broadcasting made initially possible by the Apple iPod. The capability is very new — perhaps about a month old. It works kind of like this:

1. Download software from ipodder.sourceforge.net and install it on your PC.

2. Subscribe to the audio feeds that you are interested in. One such list of audio feeds is found at radio.weblogs.com. Another list can be found at www.ipodder.org/directory/4/podcasts. These audio feeds come from a variety of sources, all amateur and all at no cost. It is quite possible that pay-for audio feeds will be available in the near future.

3. Set the ipodder software to regularly look for new audio feeds.

4. Sync your iPod with iTunes — and the subscribed audio feeds will be downloaded to the iPod.

5. Listen to the audio feeds at your leisure!

I’ve found several feeds that I’m interested in. A couple are related to computer technology. One is from Tokyo, Japan and another is from Helsinki, Finland. The American living and working in Tokyo puts out a new audio feed every few days and talks about life and things in Japan. A recent installment provided much more detail about the recent devastating earthquakes in northwest Japan. The feed from Helsinki is from a native Fin who speaks pretty good English and talks about life and things in Finland. Both have been interesting so far.

So what makes this all possible? Downloadable audio files on various web sites is not new. I’ve fussed with it a bit but haven’t been very happy with the results (it turns out I didn’t have the right software or technology). The real problem was finding these bits of audio and then getting them to some device where I can listen to the audio. A few weeks ago Adam Curry (some may recall him from the early days of MTv. Adam has been around radio and rock and roll music for many, many years) came up with a whiz-bang idea: put together a directory of pointers to the audio files along with a piece of software that would periodically check requested locations for new content, download that content to iTunes which would then make the content available on an iPod. The ipodder program is an aggregator — a facilitator to get the requested content to the player device. It works very well and it’s been quite fun listening to this stuff rather than the drivel that passes for music on FM radio on my way to and from work. There isn’t a classical music station here in Pocatello. The closest we come is a public radio station in Idaho Falls, which is broadcasting Morning Edition on my way to work and All Things Considered on the way home, neither of which have any interest for me. During the times when I’m not really able to listen to the radio, it broadcasts classical music. Not very useful at all!

But, now with podcasting, I can choose much more interesting things to listen to. When I left my previous job in Colorado Springs, I was gifted with an Apple mini-iPod. It’s a nice device and stores quite a lot of music. I’ve generally used it on airplane trips in the past. It has now become much more useful. However, if you don’t have an iPod, don’t dispair! There are also aggregator programs that will download content that can be played on Windows Media Player, either on a PC or on a WindowsPC device, such as a Compaq iPaq. The ipodder.org webside has some information on how to do that under the documentation links. However, because this is such a new phenomena, there isn’t a lot of good documentation available, yet.

I think this has some real business potential as well. I can easily see companies (like the one I work for), putting podcasts about products, or earnings releases, or other product and financial information on their corporate website and making that content available through an aggregator like ipodder.org. This would be a true publish and subscribe business. I like it a lot!

So, what does it take to become a podcaster? I’m not totally sure, but I’m going to figure it out. There are a couple of choices on how to get the audio content. Several MP3 players, such as the devices from iRiver, have the ability to record from a microphone and store the resulting audio as an MP3 file on the device. When the device is connected to the computer through a USB cable, the recorded sound file can be moved to the PC for mixing and editing. There is a great mixing and editing program called Audacity (free!), which can be found at audacity.sourceforge.net. This program can also take a microphone feed as well. The program is then used to edit and mix the desired output which is saved as an MP3 file. Then through a web form, the link to the new content is inserted into ipodder.org. Now this is how it is supposed to work. Over the next week or so I’ll get it figured out and working.

Then comes the big question: What to do with the capability? I don’t really know, yet. It may well be a solution looking for a problem! On the other hand, I can see it being a great way to store and distribute oral family history interviews and stories. I’m interested in suggestions.

We’ve now been home for two days. The flights were on time and completely without incident. We drove home from the Salt Lake airport and were in bed by about 9:30 p.m. And, of course, we were up and wide awake by 3:30 a.m. Making the transition is difficult this time, complicated by the fact that I’ve come down with a cold. The last day in Amsterdam I was feeling kind of lousy. By the time we were on the airplane, the cold has set in and isn’t yet showing any signs of going away. We had a great time on the cruise and, in addition to being a good vacation, it was very educational. We’ll definitely do another river cruise in the next few years. I’d like to do one in China and one in France. Neither will happen next year, however, as we’re already committed to a Mediterranean cruise next October.

In a two week cruise it is possible to get to know a few of the crew onboard the ship a little bit. Our cruise director Carin was just delightful. She hails from the Netherlands and kept us right up to date on everything that was happening. She is definitely one of the better cruise directors that we’ve known. The dining room staff was also very competent. The dining room was open seating, but we generally sat at table 16 so we would have the same waiter. He was a great young man with good work ethic. We really enjoyed getting to know him a little bit. Our good friends from Colorado Springs, Duane and Bobby, were great fun. Traveling with good friends on a trip like this is a special treat. Bobby was having trouble with her foot which she solved by cutting a hole out of the side of a pair of tennis shoes so the little toe could stick out. She had no more problems the rest of the trip — just a kind of a funny looking shoe.

All was well at home — all the computers were running but the firewall was blocked for some reason. Turning it off and back on cleared the problem. I’ll need to figure out some way of being able to do that remotely. It was quite frustrating having the weblog unavailable for the entire trip. Bradica (the dog) fared well in the kennel and seems to be quite happy to be back home. There was plenty of work waiting for me at the office. The vacation is now over and it almost seems like a distant dream. Retirement sometimes begins to look very enticing. All I need to do is save enough money to afford to retire!

The cruise came to an end today. We’re now in a hotel at the Schipol Airport just outside of Amsterdam and are preparing to re-enter the normal world tomorrow. Our flight leaves Amsterdam at 10:25 a.m. CET (Central European Time) which corresponds to 2:25 a.m. MDT. We’ll arrive in Salt Lake City (if all goes well) about 6 p.m. MDT and then drive to Pocatello. Reality is already beginning to invade our lives once again. At least the weather correlated — it is dark, cloudy, and rainy today, which, according to our ship’s Cruise Director, is normal weather in Amsterdam.

We arrived in Amsterdam yesterday about noon. We set sail from Koeln about 9:30 last night just as we were finishing the “last supper” in the dining room. The food on the ship has been very nice and the only reason I haven’t gained about ten pounds is that we’ve been out walking just about every day for a couple of hours. However, I’m sure I’ve put on five pounds or more on this trip. The soups for lunch and dinner have been very nice with one of the highlights being a carrot soup with grapefruit! That’s not a combination I would have ever in my wildest dreams concocted, but it tasted very good. Our waiter, a delightful Hungarian fellow called Greg, took excellent care of us during the cruise making sure that we stayed “alcohol free” during the meals. He has a great sense of humor, and on the evening featuring the crew show, he played an inebriated waiter in a third-class dive of a restaurant — a performance definitely deserving of an award. By the end of the 14-day cruise we had gotten to know Greg a little bit along with some others on the crew. That certainly added to our experience, bringing another dimension to the cruise. Greg and his fiance Helga both work on the ship and have worked together for several years. It sounds like a very good arrangement for them. We found his recommendations for food and places to visit to be worthy of our attention.

The cruise from Koeln to Amsterdam is completely devoid of interesting stuff, particularly the part we sailed past during daylight hours on Saturday morning. The Rhine River divides just as it crosses the border into The Netherlands and a part goes somewhat northwest. The main part of the river flows into the North Sea at Rotterdam. The Rhine-Amsterdam Canal connects the waterways and canals in Amsterdam with the north branch of the Rhine River. That was the area we cruised through this morning. Quite uninteresting. However, it gave plenty of time to start packing and get other items out of the way in preparation for ending the cruise.

One of the absolute highlights of the trip happened on Saturday afternoon. After a bus tour and a canal tour we stopped at the Rijkes Museum for a brief tour. Our tour guide was very knowledgeable and the visit through the Dutch Grand Masters was stunning. His commentary and explanation really brought the paintings to life — and all of them were of the kind that I could have sat and looked at for hours. The tour guide stopped at about five paintings and referred to a couple others in the tour. He compared and contrasted the styles and content and showed the progression of painting through a couple hundred years. A knowledgeable guide like that really adds to the experience.

The Rijkes Museum is being renovated. The main galleries are completely gutted and being rebuilt. Originally the museum renovation was to have been completed in 2005. However, asbestos was discovered and all of that will be removed. Now the projected completion date is in 2008. Meanwhile, a small two-floor gallery has been set up with a couple hundred of the most important works on display. The Night Watch by Rembrandt is, of course, a signature piece of the museum and rightfully so. We saw several other pieces that were also mind-boggling. The museum was definitely a highlight of the entire cruise. As far as art is concerned, the St. Stephens Cathedral in Passau and the Rijkes Museum in Amsterdam top the list. The most interesting city stop was definitely Duernstein, Austria. The most amazing Cathedral was in Koeln. The most interesting museum was the mechanical musical instruments in Ruedesheim followed closely by the Gutenberg Museum in Mainz. The most amazing residences were the Prince-Bishop Palace in Wuerzberg and the Schoenbrunn Summer Palace in Vienna. The place I’d most like to return and visit would be Budapest closely followed by Vienna.

Tomorrow morning we’ll be on the airplane headed back to Pocatello, Idaho. I’m going back with a new vision of European history and culture and now need to read up on the Holy Roman Empire and it’s decline. Napolean certainly had a huge impact on Western Europe and probably did more to dismantle Rome’s dominance than anyone else. I’d like to know more about that. Finally, the role of the Bishops and their conflict with the merchants and patricians is very interesting and I’m sure it has a lot to do with the Holy Roman Empire. In addition to this being a vacation, I’ve learned a lot and have had my curiosity piqued. It’s been a great cruise!

Today was one of the best weather days we’ve had on the river. We stated with chilly temperatures and sunny skies then are ending with clear, sunny skies and warm temperatures. Nina got up early and was out on the front of the ship camera, at the ready. By about 10 she was bundled in her sweater, coat, and blanket. By 10:30 she had come into the lounge almost frozen, but with several (hopefully) great castle pictures.

We spent the night docked in Ruedesheim and set sail at about 7:30 along the most beautiful part of the Rhine river, past all of the castles built to extract illegal tolls and taxes on the river traffic. The trip was very pleasant and we arrived in Koeln (Cologne) at 3:00 pm.

I really enjoy the days cruising on the river. It’s kind of like a sea day on the big ships, except there is always something to see. We spent a lot of time on this trip sailing at night, meaning we couldn’t see very much through sleepy, closed eyes. We’ll go past Duesseldorf late tonight. I’d like to get up and see the town from the river!

Koeln is still a fascinating city. The Cathedral is massive, one of the three largest cathedrals in the world. After all the others we have seen on this trip, the Koelner Dom just takes your breath away with it’s massive size and spectacular stained glass windows.

The infamous McDonalds is still there. That was the first McDonalds opened outside of Bravaria in Germany. When it opened, we took all the kids there on the train for Family Home Evening. The Germans in the Krefeld Branch thought we were crazy. I’ll bet we still have the tray mats from that visit!

We did a little shopping. I had to dial into a telephone conference at 4:00 pm about the 3rd quarter results. We sat in front of the cathedral watching the hoards of people walking past. The fine weather and a Friday afternoon seem to have brought the entire city! After we left the Cathedral, we walked down the pedestrian shopping street along with several thousand other souls. The size of the crowds certainly complemented the size of the cathedral!