Greetings from Big Bear Lake California, U.S.A.
Day after tomorrow I fly from LAX to Prague on the first leg of my long
planned yearlong sojourn into serendipity. Perhaps someday I'll write the
story of how it took me two years to catch this plane. But, here I am a
day away from that great bungi jump off into the "Dark
Continent."
My staging area for the past couple months has been a place of tight
quarters hidden away in the San Bernardino Mountains. Among still packed
boxes I do have a cleared desk, my computer, a telephone with cantankerous
access to the Internet and even a bed. Big Bear Lake is just about the
quietest place on the earth, at least between the mobbed snow frenzies,
something that I had forgotten from my high school days up here.
When I do return from this next episode of learning what I can from the
Africans about the human condition, quiet, uneventful Big Bear will force
few distractions in the way of getting it all down on paper (Err? that is
down on silicon). It sounds great to say you are writing a book, but like
my philosophical musings, I really just want to see what I've learned and
writing it all down provides the discipline I need to do that.
This "postcard" is the first of the new series and serves as
my beta-test for the series. First, let's make sure that all
the parts of cyber-technology work together and that those who actually want to
see my stuff don't inadvertently let their bulk mail filters shuffle it
off into limbo. In the future your address will be hidden in the bcc:
field to keep the header clutter down and to minimize the work I have to
do in frequently confusing cyber-café settings. Second, the picture
part of our new "postcards" has taken a quantum leap into
sophistication. Initially, I'll be using both a 35mm film camera and a tiny digital
PenCam with remote processing and posting of picture albums on the
Internet while I am still traveling. Third, I have developed an extensive
website with links to material I will need while out in the field, some of
which you may find interesting. My travel logistics site is located at this
link,
and is a good place to start learning about the advanced planning I did
for Africa and how I have migrated
my office activities to cyberspace. The opening page offers a starting
itinerary for those of you who like to put thumb tacks on a map.
This URL gets you right to the album page. My alpha testers made me
realize not everyone will know to "click" on the thumbnail
images to see full screen high-resolution pictures. There is a slide show
button on the opening screen of each album that allows the entire photo
sequence to be briefly displayed along with my short captions, as well
as buttons to move forward or backward in the collection. I chose
ofoto.com (now kodakgallery.com since its acquisition by Kodak) from a field of thirteen well researched and tested contenders.
I think you will agree they are a good choice for our unique requirements.
Well. This is much too long for a postcard. So I will stop the finger
dancing and get on with the posting process... and then proceed with the
last minute preparations for for this brash enterprise.
Cheers,
Fred Bellomy 17 January 2001
Enter Czech Republic
