12 Witnesses

I thought I’d pull out a few more pictures from our trip to Vietnam that were in the Photoblog, but didn’t make it to the main site. Just in case you didn’t make it over there when we were overseas.

First a message left on a swing at an orphanage in Hanoi, Vietnam.

Then another picture of the night train from Hanoi to Sapa, Vietnam. This one shows the contrast between the light in the train - the more blue, tungsten light - and the amber light that created an almost surreal atmosphere in the train yard.

Here’s the open market that Sapa is known for with all kinds of interesting things.

Here’s something interesting that you might find at the market: Marinating Chicken Feet. Yummy.

And finally, a stairway out of the market place to one of the main streets in Sapa.

So I thought I’d show you a few pictures from Vietnam that I had never uploaded before. Weird thing is, they are some of my favorites.

If you like ‘em and want to see more, then check out the photoblog.

At the top of this building is the City View Cafe in one of the night time hotspots in Hanoi, Vietnam.

This is the view at night from the balcony of the City View Cafe atop that building.

Standing in the middle of a swarm of traffic in that intersection, I caught this young boy crossing the street.

Finally, this is the Night Train to Sapa that I mentioned before, but never did get a picture up capturing the amber awesomeness of this transportation staple in Vietnam.

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So, I missed Phriday foto yesterday and today, between working on the power point for my sermon and playing frisbee with my daughter, I thought I would check out this new Web Browser, Flock. I am very interested.

I know, I know. I just got everyone to switch to Firefox!

True enough, but Flock is actually made by the folks that made Firefox, so I though I would check it out. The thing about Flock is that it is made for Social networking. Your Flickr, Facebook, YouTube, Photobucket, Magnolia… yes even Twitter… automatically plugs in to the sidebar application in Flock, so you the browser automatically interacts with whatever you are browsing.

It has a media tool bar, a feed reader and some other interesting gadgets I am exploring.

This post is a test of the blog post interaction. I have several ways to post what I am looking at from Flock. This is a picture I took in Vietnam of some future Soccer stars. The downside is that, although it allows tags, it does not post the tags to wordpress but embeds them in the post, it does not allow for me to post in a category you can choose only one category as you get ready to post or do any of the other SEO stuff I have been stressing lately. That means I’ll have to go back in the admin panel and fix it after it is published.

It does have a save draft function, but I am unsure if it saves it in Flock or to my blog. I’ll try and see… Nope. Save it to Flock, so I have to publish it and then rework the backside for Search Engines.

Also, since this is a picture from my flickr account, flickr will get the link rather than when I host it on my own server.

Nevertheless, while blogging from Flock may not be ideal, social networking through Flock seems promising. I have added all of my flickr contacts to “favorites” in the media bar, and when they post new pics, it will let me know with an orange media button and I can click it and surf.

Oh, it also has an rss feed button that will find the feed of whatever site you are in and let you click it to subscribe. The drawback is that you must subscribe in Flock rather than Bloglines, Google Reader, or whatever else you are using. I think this is true. I’ll look for a way to change the subscription default.

Anyway, check it out. You might like it.

Tags: foto, pic, picture, vietnam, soccer

Be on the lookout for a massive Link Load coming today and if you like these fotos, you can see more on my Photoblog.

Today I am combining several things into one mighty Phriday foto: My tech series on blogging and Wordpress, my pictures, my trip to Vietnam and a tribute to Joe Kennedy, whose photography I love - especially the pictures of food. No. Not because its food and I’m fat. Because of the texture, perspectives and colors.

That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.

So, I am uploading these pictures, after compressing them with Faststone freeware image viewer as mentioned in Better Blogging: Search Engine Optimization (SEO), with Wordpress 2.5 media uploader. The media uploader was giving me some problems, but David Phillips helped me to to install the Flexible Upload plugin and that has settled it down. It only works on pictures though, but if I were uploading video or audio (the other options) I would use Podpress, so I don’t need it for anything else. *Note to David, who is very busy - I’m not tinkering. I promise.

One of the options of the Media Uploader is that you can insert several images and it will create thumbnails and an intermediate picture. The other option, on display here today, is the insert gallery function, which will create a gallery of thumbnails through which you can navigate, like a mini-photoblog on your post.

Rather than give you the rundown myself on how to do it, I’ll link to Matt Mullenweg, a fellow Houstonian living elsewhere in the world (California, where there is no decent BBQ), telling you all about Wordpress 2.5 media upload at WordPress.org. PS - Matt is one of the first ever bloggers and is (one of) the creator(s) of Wordpress, which is to say, he’s had some help, but he is the primary cause of its existence. He might know what he’s talking about.

So here it is a picture gallery of food from Vietnam, created in Wordpress 2.5: (click on a thumbnail for the full size picture)

[Show as slideshow]

Since I gave you a Phriday foto a day early and it wasn’t even really my pic, I’ll give you one that is.

This is a Hmong Girl tending the fire at a restaurant in Sapa, Lao Cai, Vietnam. I took it on our last night in Sapa when we dined with another church who was there working with the Red Dao People at Ta Phin.

You can find more of my pictures at my photoblog.

The view when standing and talking among friends in Sapa, Lao Cai, Vietnam.

Check some of my other photography at my photoblog.