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Facebook or website blog?


So for some reason we have not posted any pictures to Facebook on Curie. There were reasons we didn’t do it when we found out and ever since then we just haven’t been very public about it. Somehow the privacy makes it more personal, and more special, but at the same time we want to tell everyone what is going on (if you are interested). The people who come to this site to see our pictures are already in the know and so we don’t really need to post it elsewhere. However, I do know how much more convenient it is to post on Facebook and get a news feed right away. In fact, we really do need to make an announcement about Curie there for the friends and family that we have not directly let know. It is also much easier to update Facebook than this blog, though pictures will remain largely here since I post a lot of pictures :). What do you think? I know of one person at least who reads this blog but is not on Facebook and another person who recently stopped her Facebook account. So what do you think, do we post milestones here on on Facebook? Write us a comment to let us know.

BTW Curie started grasping things two days ago and just now (which prompted this entry) began to track us visually. It is pretty exciting, and those of you who are parents know. Those of you who are not, well, it is like watching home movies or slide shows, you can tell it is exciting for us, but you may be bored. 🙂 Oh and she outgrew the preemie clothes.

Oh Curie is four weeks old yesterday/today, which I thought to be one month, but people are telling me it is the calendar month, so tomorrow is her one month birthday. Wish her a happy birthday! 🙂

 

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Urban Hiking in Japan: Ramen Hunting

The concept of urban hiking is not new. Where hiking is usually planned out over trails through a wilderness, urban hiking can be more about wandering relatively aimlessly to see as much as you can.

Erin and I visit many cities and take the time to explore them without a tour group, and many times, without a map. We usually wander the city and hunt for food. In New Orleans, it was blue crab, in New York it was our 9 restaurant crawl, in Chicago, well, there was the Taste of Chicago, Lawry’s, and Heaven on Seventh.

While in Japan, we realized that we urban hike, so much so, in fact, that we wore hiking shoes specifically for the purpose there (they are not the most stylish, but they were functional). We carried pedometers to see how far we walked (Personal Training Walking for the DS) and realized that we are going to have to start carrying GPS Data Loggers for people to see our maps.

We had two days in Japan and walked 30,000 steps a day (the daily goal is 3,000 on the Personal Training Walking for the DS). In Japan, we had 5 bowls of ramen in one weekend, each very different and each very good. The picture above is of my 5; both full when served, and after I had finished each one (in the movie Tampopo, you are supposed to finish all of the soup to tell the owner that it was good, the Kazuki one was huge and it was very hard to finish). Erin will add to this article about each of the ramen, and what made each of them so good. Next to each bowl is the front of the restaurant and next to that, the owners at work. The last one there is Erin covering her bowl so you can’t see she didn’t finish; I use this because I forgot to take a picture of the owner.

To see the different stands and restaurants including the one featured in the New York Times (we had discovered them on our honeymoon before that) by the fish market, be sure to go to our photos (once they are up – at this initial writing, they are not up yet 🙂 ).

Chuka Soba Inoue Ramen at Tsukiji Fish Market – Shoyu

Kouryu Ramen at Akihabara Station

Nadai Fuji Soba in Ebisu

Hakata Tenjin Ramen in Shinjuku – Pork Bone Broth

Kazuki Ramen in Ebisu – Tonkotsu

From our Honeymoon:

Kagoshima Ramen in Aqua City Odaiba – Kagoshima

November 2010 Urban Hiking: Ramen Hunting in Tokyo

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Erin Becomes a Photographer

Erin got a D5000 for her birthday and has become quite the photographer. Her equipment is a D5000, 18-200mm Nikkor VR 3.5-5.6 DX, and  Nikkor 35mm 1.8 DX. So far she has exclusively shot the 18-200 zoom. What she likes, live view, the articulating LCD, the small camera, zoom, and the sound the camera makes. She comments that now she understands why I always bring my camera. See Erin’s photography in our “photo blog” by clicking on the picture above and going to 2010.

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Cheese, Picture, Postcard, or Poster?

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I have often wondered who comes to our site and who looks at our pictures. We recently found out that some of our family and friends keep up with us by looking on our photos. I said to Bernard, “I wish people could comment on our pictures, because it would be interesting to see what they are thinking.” He said, “Sure they can, that is just a module you have to turn on.” And I felt stupid.

So the comments feature is now on in our photo blog, and we would appreciate any comments you might make. To use it, you have to click on the comment link on the left to leave a comment (if you do it on an album, the comment will be about the album).

Recently people have been telling me how much they like the pictures and if I am going to do something with them. I am thinking about showing them and perhaps decorating some of our walls. A picture that you would show friends and family are often not the ones you would hang on a wall.  Pictures that you would dismiss as uninteresting, all of the sudden become interesting if you are going to put a frame around it or collect it in a series. I am interested in peoples’ opinions.

As you may know we have over 16,000 pictures on our blog, and we could make a coffee table book just on the pictures of clouds or the flowers that I take. So what is a good picture and what is a postcard (which is also a good picture, but not what you would want to hang)? I am randomly taking a bunch and putting them up as examples, but if you ever have the time and/or have a picture of ours you really like, please take the time to put a comment next to it. I would appreciate it. Cheese, Picture, Postcard, or Poster?

Update: Erin thought I should put up some instructions:

  1. If you click on the picture of the rain at the top of this post, you will be taken directly to the album with the sample pictures (you are not restricted to these pictures though).
  2. She says you should look at them individually instead of as an album and hit <next >in order to look at them objectively.  You need to comment on this level to associate them with the picture.
  3. The link to comment is in the left hand menu.
  4. You can object to someone else’s opinion and leave a different selection.
  5. To view other people’s comments easily, you can click the “view latest comments” in the left hand menu. When you mouse over a picture there it gives you a larger image.

Thanks to everyone who participates; I am working on getting better, and building a style, but am also interested in what people like.

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New Pictures are up

I bought a D700 recently and since then we have been to Colonial Farms, went on a walk near our apartment, shot a fashion show, took Jared’s Flat Stanley to to the museums and the monuments, and been to the Woodley Park Zoo with the Hoaglands.
The osprey is from Ft. Belvoir where we shoot archery, and the others are from the National Zoo at Woodley Park.
The osprey is from Ft. Belvoir where we shoot archery, and the others are from the National Zoo at Woodley Park.

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We’ve finally updated our page

So I have been procrastinating changing our page. Today I got around to doing it. Instead of being mainly about our wedding, we now have an archery link. Many of you know we take a lot of pictures and we have been using that instead of blogging. We now call it our Photo blog and you can get to it from the Our Pictures link on the lower right hand side. We’ll be adding more content soon.

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