How To Post Pictures

Hello Everyone,

I hope you are happy, healthy, and productive. The site is slowly taking form. It’s nice to see. Gabriela, Jiyeoun, Justine, Mark, Peter, and Linda have all joined. Jason, Mark’s brother, just sent me an e-mail saying he wanted to participate. So he should join any day now. And, most importantly, Mark Peter, and Gabriela have posted even. It’s a good start.

I have a feeling that some of the technical aspects of the site — posting in general and posting pictures in specific — are discouraging people from participating. I know Justine was hours away from put up a photo essay of her recent trip to Peru, but then didn’t/couldn’t do it. So, I’m going to quickly outline how to post pictures to the site below. Hopefully this will clarify some of the questions you might have. If you’re looking for answers to other questions click here. One of the drawbacks of Blogger.com, the service we’re using, is that posting pictures is involved. One of the benefits, is that its online help section is thorough and concise.

Downloading Hello:

1.You need a special program. It’s called Hello. You can download it here. It is free, doesn’t contain ad-ware, and they wont send you spam when you register your e-mail address.

2.Click on the “Download” link on the left hand side of the screen.



3.The link will take you to this page. Create a username and password and enter your e-mail address. Then hit the submit button.



4.The page below will appear.



5. Then a download dialogue box will appear. Press the “Open” button. The program will download and run automatically. Follow the directions that appear online.



6.The program should open automatically after installing. But, if it does not go to Start > All Programs > Hello > Hello to open the program.



7.When the program opens, you should see a tab on the left hand side of the screen that says “BloggerBot”. Hit this tab. You may be asked to enter your blogger ID and password.



Sending Pictures:

1.To start sending pictures hit the “Send Pictures” button at the top left side of the screen. A “Locate pictures using…” dialogue box will appear. Press the “Use explorer button.”



2.Another dialogue box titled, “Send Picture” will open. Locate the picture or pictures you would like to send. Select them and press the “Open” button at the bottom right hand side of the box. (You can open more than one picture at once.)



3.Another dialogue box titled, “Select the friends to send pictures to” will open. The “BloggerBot” tab should already be highlighted. Hit the “Send” button at the lower right hand corner of the dialogue box.



4.Another screen will open. The picture you selected will be at the left side. A message box will be at the left. At the bottom of the message box will be a smaller box with the title, “Enter a caption for your photo here.” Enter a caption for your photo and press the “Publish” button at the lower right hand corner.



5.A message, “Uploading image (this may take a few minutes”, will appear. When the image is uploaded the relative collective site, with the image you just uploaded will appear in a separate window. And, you’re done!



6.If you want to add more text to the picture, you can go to the blogger dashboard and editing the post.



I hope this helped. If you have any further questions, blogger.com has an excellent help section. The section on posting pictures is here. And, of course you can send me an e-mail and I’ll do my best to help.

I hope this encourages more people to post. I’m really looking forward to Justine’s Peru pictures!

Best, Isaac.

Busan Christmas Photo Essay

Hello Everyone. Well, even though I've gotten lots of encouraging responses, people have been pretty slow in joining and posting to the site. So, I thought I'd push things along by putting up the first extended entry. It's a photo essay about the trip Jiyeoun and I took to Pusan during Christmas. Sit back and enjoy and then post something of your own. Post damn it!

So Pusan is on the southern tip of the Korean peninsula. It's South Korea's second largest city and biggest port. It's a 45-minute flight from Seoul.



The trip was meant to be lowkey. We reserved a swank hotel room in a 5-star hotel right on the beach and planned on laying in bed, getting drunk at the bar, and walking on the beach. It was more of an end of the semester celebration and a change of atmosphere than a Christmas celebration. Christmas is a modest holiday here. It's more significant for the accompanying days off work than for the things like exchanging gifts and meeting family that Americans know it for.

We flew down early Christmas morning and were in the hotel by 9:30 a.m. Here's Ji in front of a Christmas tree in the hotel lobby. This is about as Christmassy as it got. The boxes of presents are empty and there are no name tags on them incase you're wondering.



Here's me in front of a traditional Korean Christmas painting. The waves symbolize God's wrath and the sun represents God's furry when he smote Cain for killing Able... I'm kidding. There's no such thing as a traditional Korean Christmas. Christianity didn't come to Korea until the 14th century... But the Lilly pads do represent Het-ban, the traditional confectionery King Wang-gun ordained all Korean children eat on Liberation Day in celebration of his victory over the Japanese army in 1349... No I'm kidding again... Ha...



Here's Ji in our room. Those two picture windows overlook the ocean. They offered some spectacular views. More on that later.



Here's Haeundae beach on Christmas day. It was beautiful and sunny, but a little bit nippy. It was much warmer and less polluted than Seoul, so we were happy. Haeundae literally means turtle mating beach. For thousands of years hundreds of turtles have returned to this beach to mate and lay eggs each June... Ha! I'm joking again. No matter how many times I do that it never gets old... Ah...



Jiyeoun looks happy enjoying the sun, sea, and sand. Beatific smile.



We came across this sight on the way back to our hotel. These aging Church mothers were playing Christmas tunes – Rudolph the Red Nose Rain Dear and Frosty the Snowman – on Korean versions of a pan flute. It was surreal and cute. I guess you should expect that when you go to the beach for Christmas.



This net full of balloons was behind the stage the Christian grandmothers were performing on. They were waiting to be released later in the day - the balloons that is, not the Christian grandmothers.



I took a long nap.



Then we headed to happy hour. It ran from 6-8 p.m and was included in the price of the room. They weren't stingy with the alcohol either. Here's me enjoying my current drink of choice, rum and coke. Notice the huge smile. And, I'm not even on the beach.



Here's the view from our room at night. Gorgeous.



The next morning Jiyeoun and I went to the Pusan aquarium. It's right on the beach and is one of the best aquariums I've ever been too. Not that I'm an aquarium connoisseur.

Jiyeoun and a penguin. (Jiyeoun is wearing glasses so she can see the animals better.)



Scary lobster



Scary jellyfish



Scary tiger fish



Scary tiger fish from the side



Not so scary blow fish



Arrrgh it's a shark look out! These half-ass aquariums letting the sharks just swim about waiting for unexpected otters to gobble up. Really, you'd expect more for 10-dollars a head.



Look Jiyeoun, I found a fish! Look! You're not looking...



This is the view from our hotel room the next morning.



We got up early and went to the Chagall exhibit at the Pusan Metropolitan Art Museum. It was huge. There were approximately 100 of his paintings along with a photo history of his life. I was really impressed. But, we couldn't take pictures inside the exhibit. So you're going to have to be satisfied with this poster.



But, we were allowed to take pictures in the rest of the museum. This was part of a crazy instillation art exhibit. Jiyeoun had a blast... Settle down Jiyeoun. You're going to get us kicked out with your rambunctiousness.



Whoo, shinny exhibit.



Look out Jiyeoun there's some kind of crazy pink, stuffed saw-ax falling from the sky! I don't know Officer. She was just standing there. I was taking a picture of her and all the sudden this pink fabric saw-ax thing just came crashing from the sky. I mean, isn't there someone we can sue. There has to be a law against this. What kind of godless country is this that they don't have laws against pink fabric tools...



Here's my attempt at art outside the Pusan art museum. It's a metaphor of man's existence: a child caught in a maze, running back and forth, always ascending to the heavens but never knowing it because he's trapped in a world of gray tile and cement. The pain! I'm selling prints for $500 a piece. E-mail me if you want one.



Well that's it. The rest is just more of the same. More drinking. We ate some sushi and bought some books. Walked along the beach. Slept a lot. Went to the sauna. There were too many naked old men and it was too wet to take pictures. I know you're disappointed.

Hope this has encouraged you to post. See how much fun it is?

Best wishes, Isaac.