Sometimes I find myself funnily ignorant about a certain thing that most people would know about very well. One of such things is, cameras. I think I've stayed away from the small device all my life. I'm even scared of using a foolproof camera. So, if you can use cameras comfortably, you'd be my instant hero.

I left the heroic role to my wife last Saturday. We went to the Asahiyama Zoo. Here are some of the photos she took there. Enjoy!

Hey, what a philosophical look, Mr.Rhino!

A miss shot? Well, don't care about the round object seen at the tiger's behind. *cough*

My favorite one, though nothing to do with the animals!

Posted by Kiyo at 11:16 AM | Permalink

My wife likes to walk. Ah, more precisely, she likes to walk with me. Me? Well, I'd rather stay home...shh....

Joking aside (!), it's really refreshing to take long walks in the beautiful scenery. We went to Todowara, a tourist attraction, yesterday. Oh, incidentally, yesterday was a national holiday: Respect-for-the-Aged Day!

Oh, and one of the few kinds of flowers whose names I know!

Hokkaido is such a cool (and cold) region.

Posted by Kiyo at 12:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Ever wondered why hard drives begin with drive letter C?

Recently, as you know, I bought a new PC. The PC came without a floppy drive. Yeah, it's my option because I can't remember when I used it last and I don't think I need it any more. So, my PC has no "A:drive" for the first time. Wait... After A comes B, then comes C and.... That's what I teach to my students. Where in the world is "B" in my computer?

I searched the Net and found this one:

Why is it that computers never have a "B" drive?

Wow.... I started using computers in 1995. (I remember the year because I started with Windows 95 that was just released.) And I've taken the "C:drive" for hard drives for granted. Interesting!

Now I think I -- ひとつ賢くなった. (hitotsu kashikoku natta: I've learned one new thing, and got wiser accordingly.)

Posted by Kiyo at 10:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

My latest news (Who cares, huh?):

• Caught a cold

  Nothing special, but how I got it was kind of interesting. At a class, a student was frequently sneezing, with his nose running. I had a foreboding. At the end of the class, I realized that I had already caught his cold.

  I feel much better now.

• Got a new PC

  My old PC went on the blink. It's always exciting to have a new, powerful one. How long this excitement lasts is another thing, though.
  

  Posted by Kiyo at 10:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Everybody has their own great talent for something. The trouble is, most of you (including me probably!) seem not to be aware what it actually is. If you found one in yourself, it would certainly be a really great moment for you.

When I was a kid, I once thought I might have a talent for painting. The thought started after I won a prize in a painting contest or something at school. Funny enough, the prize-winning landscape work was an unfinished one because I forced myself to wait to go to the bathroom and couldn't concentrate when painting. Nature called me, but there was no place to do my business in the nature around.

Maybe, the painting happened to look artistic because I did it in a fog. And now, I know I'm not artistically gifted. ;)

So, folks, here is a girl who is beginning to draw out her artistic talent. Nora, a former student of mine and so called in class, is finding herself in the field of art. She was a cheerful, eager student and has kept in touch with me even after entering college in Tokyo. She's a senior now. Wow, time surely flies.

Nora, or Megumi as her real name is, is giving a small exhibition of her paintings titled "What are you looking for?" at a cafe in Tokyo as part of her study in college. If you stay around Tokyo, please go and see them.

Nora, gambare! :)

* Oops... The photo is blurred. So, you know, I think you'd better go see the real one to make sure how good it is. ;)

Posted by Kiyo at 3:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

When you create a blog, one of the things you care about a lot will be your blog's look. Even though you know it's the contents that count in blogging, you want to make a stylish site. Um, yes, I'm talking about myself.

Movable Type comes with its default templates. The earlier styles, I should say, didn't look good to me. In fact, when thinking about changing blog publishing systems from Blogger, I was torn between MT and Greymatter only for their default styles! Wow, come to think of it, that was back in 2002. I wanted a simple but neat design. So I tried tweaking the templates to my taste. You know, I was, and still am, not well-versed in HTML and stylesheet things. It was like solving a tough puzzle, doing a 5000 piece jigsaw, building a card tower, making a sandcastle on a beach, or...zzz....

So, the result was the one on the former site, which many of you are used to seeing. The only part left from the default design was the top blue border line of the title frame. I was pretty, no, very satisfied with the outcome, even though I didn't know exactly why the page looked that way! I knew there were a bunch of unnecessary codes, but I wouldn't redesign the site any more for fear that one code rewriting would mess up the whole site. Whew!

And this time, I was going to copy the design as it was. I imported the entries and rebuilt the site, and was about to copy the templates from the former site, but...wow, the new default style looked just...fine! It was updated and improved to a modern look, which made me have second thoughts. I decided to redesign my blog site based on the templates of the latest version. And, yeah, there may be some important or useful codes in the latest ones the functions of which I will never know! Ha!

There are still some more parts that I want to change now, but do you like the new look, guys? ;)

Posted by Kiyo at 11:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)

So, this is it. The moving hassle is now over.

What I had in mind before the move was to reproduce the original site as faithfully as possible on the new server. Very simple. Export the entries. Install Movable Type. Import the entries. Copy and paste the stylesheet and HTML codes. Rebuild the site. And that's it. It should be very simple. Yeah, it should be, should be....

Well, I had forgotten a simple fact then. That is, this kind of stuff can't go as smoothly as planned, at least for me! Haha!

Now I'm glad the site has settled into shape. Really? -- Maybe.

Seems like while I was sleeping, there was much progress made in MT -- comment authentication, plugins, and such and such.... I need to figure out the new features. Mmmm. But, you know, it's always exciting to learn something new.

Anyway, uh, welcome to the new kec-journal.com, folks! I think I have to get out of the state of Urashima Taro in this blogging sphere as soon as possible. ;)

Posted by Kiyo at 8:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)