[ frangipani ] [ a life in tokyo ] [ photoblog ]

This, my friends, is a bowl of HEINZ BAKED BEANS and TOAST.

If you need to ask why this is worthy of a photograph and blog mention than you probably don't live in Japan. Or anywhere in Asia, maybe!

There are days I just can't stomach another onigiri rice ball or bowl of soba or inari sushi or....anything Japanese. They are the days I just have to eat my western comfort food. On Wednesday, I made a trek through the back streets of Shibuya (in behind the Mitsui Sumitomo bank on the Nrth side of the station) to find the fabled international supermarket Yamaya - I had heard fabulous tales of shelf after shelf of great wine, breakfast cereals and ....Heinz Baked Beans (amongst other things). And lo and behold - the stories were true. I hotfooted it home to eat a great big lunch of Baked Beans and Toast.

I have been having a wonderfully leisurely time of it lately. Most of my schools have finished their classes so all I have left is the night job and my private students. I swear, all this free time is going to turn me back into someone worth knowing again soon. I've been hanging out with friends, watching DVD's and catching up on a million little chores and joys. Like cooking, taking baths (as opposed to quick showers), reading books, ironing (?!), sewing, emailing, toenail clipping, makeup make-overs in expensive cosmetics stores, re-potting the pot-bound potplants, making millions of lists and plans.... and sleeping in every day. Oh the delirious joy of free time.

A few weekends ago, I bought a 256 GB external harddrive from Biccamera in Shinjuku (oh the points I have on my Bic-card now!) and have been thoroughly enjoying gathering all my old backup discs of photos and MP3's and putting them all into one place. My itunes is now groaning under the weight of my entire collection of over 3000 songs - it's fantastic to have all my music in one place again, to be able to listen to all the old faves as they stream through my random player.

I wish my photos were in a similarly well organised state but dear god, it's all a mess. Last night I finally opted on a photo management program to try to help me sort out the 519 seperate folders of photos on my new external hard drive. Picasa 2 has so far got me chortling with glee - what a great program. I've spent most of today strolling down memory lane and making plans on how to make use of its powerful tools. I'm especially keen to attach key words to photos so that all you have to do is type in the key word and it pulls up all the tagged pics. And the best part - if you choose to duplicate images for use in different folders, the program doesn't actually duplicate the image - it uses the same source file, saving heaps of space.

Anyway, all this explains why I am still in my pajamas at 3.45pm...oh shit... is that the time? gotta run! Have to work tonight.

frangipani wrote this on March 25, 2005 3:19 PM

Uncle Don

said:

Just a couple of points on the external hard drive, these should be used mainly for "running" backups. If you want to back up valuable images then they should be burnt onto CD or DVD. The magnetic media of a hard drive can degrade over time whereas the optical media of a CD or DVD is more permanent. If an external hard drive crashes you have lost everything. Maxtor have been having trouble with their external drives lately. You probably know but your PC should be turned off when you either, plug in the external drive, or unplug it.
Also another tip from the experts: If you are burning to CD or DVD it is best not to use the maximum speed and you will get a better burn. It doesn’t have to be the slowest speed though.
Sorry to be such a worrying old uncle but I would hate to see you lose any of those beautiful photos.

Picasa2 and "Hello" by Google are wonderful especially if you want to swap photos and chat over the Internet. There is even a simple Blog program called BloggerBlog, which work ok for anyone who wants to have a blog without the bells and whistles. (I even started my own pathetic one www.goldensalamander.blogspot.com)
Picasa2 is so easy and saves all the attaching procedure via email. Together with Skype these are the tools to have.
Don't let those cherries bloom for a week or so please Martine.

On March 26, 2005 10:20 AM,

amanda said:

i'm sorry to do this through your blog dear martine, but i just wanted to thank uncle don. i had a peek at what you called your 'pathetic' blog, and was most duly impressed. along the lines of what martine said, i really liked the simple and clean-cut layout, and the way you presented your very distinct photographs. i had a little spare time and mosied around the bloggerblog site, going through the steps to make my own blog to see what the catch would be at the end. then before i knew it i found out there wasn't a catch and suddenly had my own blog. arumanda.blogspot.com even dumb people with no computer skills can do it. how truly bizarre. thank you uncle don.

On March 28, 2005 3:34 AM,

Due to the proliferation of comment spam, I've closed comments on all older entries. If you would like to leave a comment for this post, please email me directly at martine {at} frangipani {dot} info and I'll add it manually. Thank you and sorry for any inconvience caused.

frangipani

Hey Don,

Thanks for caring. Don't worry, absolutely every photo I have ever taken (and will ever take) with the G3 is/will be on CD backup.

So nice to see you got into the blog thing too, I just visited your site, it's really simple and uncluttered, I like it a lot. I have added it to my bloglines sub.

On March 26, 2005 9:57 PM,

momo said:

Ohhhh. Looks enviably delicious, Martine! My husband smuggled me home some Easter eggs, hot cross buns and a slab of Coles BBQ sausages (!) on Friday.

While concerned about them spending 12 hours in cargo without ice, my daring took over, I ate the snags and lived to tell the tale ... so far.

Thank you for the information posted on Art of Fighting, too. I'll hook myself up with some tix.

On March 30, 2005 7:20 PM,

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