Nepal and The Trek

Putting together the story of the past three weeks has been a little patchy at this end. For this I apologise. If you go to the Nepal link on the right you can follow the story - apologies that the time line is a little haphazard - I will rectify this and add photos as I am able over the next couple of days.

Michael

From Michael 2 April 2007

I have made a modest change to the layout of the blog - mindful that not all of us are on broadband and some may have been a little put off - especially when there are a large number of photographs in view - by the time it takes for the home page to download.

Now instead of the latest 10 posts I have reduced (downsized?) the home page to the latest 5. Your enjoyment of the blog will be unchanged - just follow your nose when you get to the bottom of the page to find older posts.

A little house keeping

To keep the flow of the blog as simple and straightforward, as is possible, we decided that we would post in NZ times. This seems to be working - with the postings timed as they are received here by e-mail. In the head of each post you will find the corresponding local time. Any mistakes are mine.

Those of you familiar with blogging will realise that we are doubling the workload somewhat in that everyone could be posting straight to the blog. We decided against this for continuity sake - and to give the travellers a little breathing and creative space - so as to not have to worry excessively about such small editorial niceties as spelling and grammar - along with the researching, and inclusion, of links - which is my job.

Karen's camera is set to NZ time and the posting of individual photos reflect this with the local time, once again, in the header. Karen is new to the exciting world of high tech SLR digital photography and is bringing us some really neat images - so far only a couple have needed a little PhotoShop help.

The cross-referencing (Blogspot calls them labels) categories (down the right-hand column) are being kept to a bare minimum again for simplicity's sake. It will be possible in the future to add further cross-referencing should this seem appropriate in hind-sight. I hope you are enjoying the journey.

Oh and one other thing the label earthlimited.org appears in each post both so we can see at a glance how many entries there are (you can count back to where you read to last time) and as a branding exercise for the software that tracks blog entries across the Internet.

Michael

on being blog savvy & joining us for the ride

This post was most recently edited at 3:30PM Wednesday the 7th of February.

For those of us arm chair travellers following the Kenny family on their most excellent adventure here are a few notes to help better enjoy the experience and - perhaps - improve the on-line reporting of our project. Yes, you most certainly can help! And you may wish to come back - to this - my first editorial - from time to time to familiarise yourself with the points I am making.

Our blog, bought to you by the Google folk, is one of millions on the Internet. Google's Blogger (the software) and Blogspot (the Internet address) together are one example of on-line publishing software freely available for anyone who wishes to tell the world about themselves, their lives and activities. A quick and straightforward definition of blogs and blogging can be found here on the wonderful Wikipedia site. Just a note - of parental guidance - going to a specific blog site that you have been told about offers no dangers - BUT randomly searching the blogs (as with Yahoo or Google searches) will return results which MAY require monitoring.

While I have learned sufficient skills to set up this blog, to edit and update it - not a difficult task - I am still learning the ropes. Any comments from the more web savvy or innocently insightful among us are encouraged. We really want your involvement.

Knowledge of both the software and blog publishing is made no easier by the relentless refining of both the software and the way different Internet communities link - often with the advent of newly created technologies or 'widgets'.

If you find a link - on our blog - you may, or may not, find something on that subject, place or person under discussion to interest you. In the main I will keep those links unrelated to the task in hand to a minimum. With this in mind I have set up some complimentary functions which, hopefully, will help our blog find a wider audience.

Our blog has a 'live feed' which you will find at the bottom of each page - this comes as part of the Blogger software. This is a touch technical to implement but well worth the effort. Depending upon the browser you are using this can be a doozy or mightily frustrating. There are three popular browsers in use: Internet Explorer (which all Windows users know) FireFox - the feisty new kid on the block - and Safari which comes with Apple Macs. Internet Explorer is now in it's 7th version. Most of the world is currently looking at the Internet with Internet Explorer 6.0 - which does not support web feeds - Internet Explorer 7.0 does. FireFox, my browser of choice, has a built in live feed function as does Apple's Safari. Other names for this function are live bookmarking, RSS feed and News Feed ( You can see this in operation on the NZHearld, Stuff and New Zealand's premier blog Public Address sites ). With this in place, when using your computer online, a simple drop down menu gives you the latest from our blog right here and now without the need to go to the site.

In the bundle of toys you get when you sign up for a Google Account (please ask if you want an invitation to sign up) is a lovely photo management package called Picasa. This has an on-line gallery component which I will link to from time to time. Here is our first link.

Technorati is a blogging aggregation website - which I am still getting my head around - help!! - which if you look here - will give you a feed of our blog - for added profile. Again, here is our Technorati link. The Technorati Ping for our blog is here.
( oops I have the feeling that you need to be logged in to view all of this ).

And lastly at the bottom of the right hand column you will see a little link. This surprisingly agile function tells us who is visiting our blog where they are from which pages they have visited and how long they spent with us.

Help - there are other Google Toys (my term) I would love to implement but will only do so as time allows - again if you have the time and inclination - help!!.

One of these is Customised Google Search. We can help Gavin - and family - in his quest to inform and inspire us. Essentially we can build a searchable database of websites, articles and links which relate back to the core objective of our project.

If you have the expertise (or a willingness to research, discuss and encourage) and the inclination to help with any of these more arcane aspects of the Internet please tell us. The same goes for registering with Del.icio.us another community doing the much the same thing. And Weblogs as well (I think). There is also something called DigIt - all can be used to aggregate information and hopefully draw more visitors our the site. Lastly, but not least, if you have a website or a blog feel free to link to us and spread the word.