Stage two, oh yeahhh…

After an unexpectedly lengthened stay at home, today I booked my flight to Thailand. I fly out from London on May 8th, stop over briefly in Delhi, and then finally touch down in Bangkok the day after. Woo.

I anticipate this part of the trip being more difficult for a variety of reasons.

For a start, I wasn’t too intimidated by Europe or (obviously) America and the potential language barriers because English is pretty prevalent in Europe wherever you go, and somewhat prevalent depending on where you go in the US… Anyway. This is not the case in SE Asia so much. I can point and, you know, speak loudly and stuff, but that’ll only get you so far.

Secondly, this is a much more alien and less developed part of the world than Europe and the US, for the most part. Now that doesn’t really bother me, as such, but it adds to the intimidation when being thrown into that alone. I actually knew an acquaintance who’s been out there for a little while who I was going to meet up with for a day or two to act as a buffer, kinda, but that’s fallen through as they have to move on elsewhere. A friend from school who I previously travelled the US with was gonna be coming out on holiday and meeting up for a brief amount of time too, but other commitments have led that to fall through also. Neither of these were remotely solid plans, outlines and sketches of ideas at best, and I wasn’t relying on them, so it looks like I’ll be travelling alone again. Cool.

And C, I actually have people (other than family) at home that I’m going to be sad to leave behind and miss an awful lot this time.

I repacked my backpack today, and managed to cut out a whole load of stuff from the packing list that I took last time. The benefit of experience and being able to confidently say “I never used that!” while throwing a roll of duct tape over my shoulder (though I’m actually still taking that because, well, you never know.) My pack can now be comfortably lifted with one arm, rather than being the two-hand-requiring monstrosity that it was before. I am aiming to get it down to airport carry-on luggage size if I can, but I reckon I’m aiming a bit off the mark with that, sadly.

There are no solid plans other than “land in Bangkok” so far. There are lots of interesting little counties sprinkled around Thailand in easy reach, so I’m going to try and add to my collection of one-for-each-country bracelets (left to right: Croatia, Italy, Greece, Bosnia, Tunisia, France, Slovenia, and America).

And on that note, I’m going to head to bed. Expect more updates soon. Oh, and I’ll still be keeping up with my duties over at Two Photos a Day, so do keep checking for awesome pictures every day!

Picture update, mostly…

As the title says, this is mostly just a heads up that I’ve finally removed my opposable digit from my rectum and worked on some photos and posted them up on the companion blog over at Pictures of the Long Road to Nowhere

The recent ones posted were all from several day trips with a friend of mine from LA – the same person I’m doing the Two Photos a Day thing with.

Bottles was taken in an old skool candy store in Pasedena while we walked around the Old Town for a few hours one afternoon. We saw the Cheesecake factory where Penny from The Big Bang Theory apparently works. It looks nothing like it’s portrayed on the show. I felt cheated. I did not feel surprised, but they could’ve made it at least slightly close to reality, no?

Santa Monica Pier, Santa Monica 3rd Street Prom, Pier Couple and End of Route 66 were all taken on a day trip to Luxembourg. No, wait, that’s not right. Santa Monica, sorry. Easy mistake to make – they’re right next to each other. They were all taken at night, hand-holding my camera with no tripod or rests at all. Given that, I’m pretty impressed with how clearly they came out. I also haven’t played with B&W photography for a while, so they were fun to edit.

It also occurred to me that should someone, for some reason I cannot fathom, want to contact me about this blog at all, they have no real way of doing so save for leaving a comment on a post, which lacks privacy and finesse. On that note, I have created a Contact Me page up at the top should anyone need to. Also, I’m serious about the smoke signals.

Publicity…

This is more of an update and FYI than a post with any actual content.

For those of you who pay attention you will have seen I have included a Where on Earth have I been? page at the top of the blog. This is a more detailed list of the countries I’ve visited and most of the places in each country, with handy links to all of them if you want to get a bit more info on any in particular. Please do take a look – it’ll make the effort of writing that list out and creating the links one by one seem worth while.

Secondly, and for those of you interested, I have created a Long Road to Nowhere Twitter account (@LRtNowhere) and Facebook page. This is mostly to make it easier for people to receive updates when I post things here (instead of RSSing the blog, or receiving email updates), as I’ll likely not post much on them at all specifically (though occasionally), but they will receive auto-updates when I post here. Please do follow or like as you see fit.

And probably lastly, you may have noticed that several of my posts have had pictures included recently. This is likely to become an on-going thing. For a start, it makes large walls of text more interesting to look at, but more importantly since I started tagging and categorising all my posts, they appear on the WordPress global tags listings pages, and posts having a picture makes them much more attractive to the eye when browsing said lists. Here’s one coming up now:

In the above picture, taken from the reader stats page of the blog, you can see the difference tagging posts has made to the number of page views. This, and the different methods of increasing readership and publicity is good. I’m not trying to make money or anything like that. It’s more that if I regularly have people reading this who have no idea who I am or what my story is, it’ll encourage me to a) write more often, b) write posts with actual interesting content rather than just my own personal ramblings, and c) write better. We shall see.

Oh, and this is a test to see if the auto-publication to Twitter and Facebook works properly. EDIT: It does.

Busy day…

While I have predominantly spent it sitting, today has been quite a busy day. I have made a fair few changes to the blog here which I shall now highlight for you.

For a start, I have filled out an ‘about this blog’ / info page, entitled What On Earth is This? You’ll find it constantly available at the top of the blog just under the header image, but for your convenience click the link in this paragraph.

I have also added a Quotations page, which contains some inspirational or otherwise thought-provoking quotes. If some of them seem a touch cliché or trite, well, screw you. Write your own damn blog. You will find this page sat all cozy next to the above mentioned What On Earth is This at the top of the blog.

Depending on how you view the site, you may notice some changes and additions to the information on the right hand side of the posts. If you receive updates via email or RSS, I’m not sure if you can see this information or not, so bookmark and visit the actual site from time to time. I have changed the ‘links’ section to have descriptions to the sites they link to, I’ve updated my reading list, and I’ve added a category list as well as a tag cloud (more on that momentarily).

While I’m talking about the links, I have edited and updated all three of the maps that’re listed on the Maps page. I discovered something pretty nifty with that today – if you load up any of the maps, say the Total Trip one, and then click the play button, it’ll take you on a nice animated tour of the whole journey, complete with accompanying (and fitting) music. Try it for all three. It’s fun.

So back to categories and tags. I spent a large portion of the afternoon going through and adding categories and tags to most every post I’ve made. One by one. The categories are somewhat larger over-arching subjects that a post may be about, a theme it’ll fall into, shall we say. The tags are smaller or more specific subjects that may be contained within. On the right hand side of the main blog page you’ll see a category list and a count of how many posts fall into each category (which so far are Travel, Introspection, Miscellany and Photography), and a tag cloud below that (which represents how often each tag appears by the size of the word). You can click on any of the categories or tags to filter and show only posts pertaining to that particular subject. Oh, TIL stands for Things I’ve Learned, by the way. Each individual post will detail which categories and tags are attached to it at the bottom of the post.

I don’t imagine any of this will make any difference to anyone going forward – it was mostly for the sake of proper organisation. That said, it will allow newer readers to easily go back and read posts on certain subjects or places easily without having to scan through every post. For instance, if you want to read all the Things I Have Learned, just click the TIL tag, or all the posts about or relating to Italy (warning, bad language…) then click the Italy tag.

Also updated is the About page over at Pictures of the Long Road to Nowhere, though that’s really a minor addition.

You will find, should you view each post’s page individually (such as via email or RSS feeds), buttons at the bottom of a post allowing you to share said post via Facebook, Twitter, StumbleUpon, WordPress, Google+, reddit, and indeed email itself, should you feel the post entertaining or enlightening enough.

I think those are all the changes I’ve made to the blog so far, though I have a couple of other things in mind as well. Feel free to leave feedback on any of the above should you care enough.

Heh…

I just wrote four posts one after another. That’s 1800 words in the space of maybe an hour? And people complain about having to write college essays of a thousand words. Pft.

Also, updated PotLRtN a lot, and updated the Photodump a little.

I cannot think of one, so instead, badgers…

This will have absolutely no relevance to badgers whatsoever. Ha!

I’ve updated the Photodump with a couple of photos I took while I was in La Crosse. I’ve also updated PotLRtN with another picture I took while in La Crosse.

Also, here is another fun thing I did while in La Crosse. I was staying with an awesome friend of mine, and one of her friends, also a friend of mine, is an entertainments and technical director at his local church. Except in the midwest they do church big style. They’ve just refitted one of their halls with a hi-def projector and full cinema sound system. We took an X-Box and played some games. Naturally.

Another thing we did with my awesome friend and a couple of her friends was going to a pizza place called Pizza Doctors. Pizza Doctors experiments with pizza toppings, rather than just sticking with the old standards (although they serve them too). For instance, they have a Big Mac pizza, which is, as you’d expect, a pizza with beef, lettuce, pickles, and that special Big Mac sauce (which no one knows what it is) – that was delicious. They also had macaroni and cheese on a pizza – delicious too. It didn’t stop with normal pizzas though, because they also had dessert pizzas. I don’t remember the exact toppings on those, but think cake base, with marshmallows, whipped cream, chocolate chips etc.

Om. Nom. Nom.

Updates…

Updated the Photodump (there is even a sleeping dog – I let it lie).

Updated Pictures of the Long Road to Nowhere (and just in case people aren’t aware, if you click the actual images you get a lovely high-res version, which is how they’re designed to be viewed).

Updated the header images of Long Road to Nowhere.

Intentions…

This post is called intentions for several reasons.

First, my intentions RE this blog’s immediate future. I intend to write up a post about people. Not anyone specific, but rather a post detailing thus far my experiences with people and groups of people, what I enjoy and do not enjoy, and my personal findings. There may be graphs. This might take me a while and I’ve not had a period of time in which to do it yet, but I do want to. I have a night to spend in an airport soon, so that may help with motivation. I also need to update on my general activities.

Second, I need to update the Photodump with a whole load of pictures. I need to wait, however, until I’m somewhere with a decent enough ‘net connection that I can do so. I also need to master those pictures first. Along the same lines, I need to update Pictures of the Long Road to Nowhere with a few images I’ve got in mind. This may take time, but it’s coming, so don’t worry.

Thirdly, my intentions for the continuation of my trip. I have, so far, four ideas. One has already been ruled out, so really three I guess. I’m detailing the forth just so y’all know where my head’s at. I emailed the hostel I stayed at in Dubrovnik to see if I could go work there for a few weeks once I get off the yacht, in exchange for room and board, but since it’s coming into off-season now, they don’t need the help. Alas. Second idea – do some WWOOFing somewhere in Greece for a little while giving me time to work out what to actually do. Third line of thinking – find the cheapest possible flight to the US that I can get, and couchsurf my way through America for a few months, maybe as far as Christmas. Forth idea, I guess, is fly to SE Asia somewhere – this one is well outside my comfort zone, and thus I am putting it off ’cause I’m all scared an’ shit. I also contemplated flying home for a week or so, but I don’t think I’m going to do that.

So… yeah. That’s what I’ve got in mind. Coming soon…

Explanation…

Ok, so it ended up being the day after tomorrow. I was in the kitchen of the hostel yesterday after making and eating dinner and some guys and girls were heading out to somewhere and invited me along, so off I went. Didn’t get back until gone 2am and hence didn’t want to wake both the other people in the room by typing up a post or two.

Anyway.

Welcome to Pictures of the Long Road to Nowhere (PotLRtN from here on out). It’s linked over there on the right hand side (Kitty, see?).

Now let me explain the point and the difference between PotLRtN and the Photodump. It was requested by a friend of mine that I have an album somewhere to shove a variety of pictures from my travels into without any real effort or thought put into them, so that updates and pictures could be seen without the annoyance of having to wait for me to post-process or work on them. Thus, the Photodump was born. I use it to upload low quality, pretty much bare pictures from my travels into an all-in-one album to give people a taste of what I’ve been seeing.

But, one of the main reasons I like taking photographs is the effects I can give them in post-processing and how I can get them to end up looking. PotLRtN is a photographic blog I’m going to use to put up high quality,  larger resolution pictures that I’ve actually spent time post-processing and working on. I would hope, dearly, that the difference in quality, or certainly stylistic design, can be seen when comparing the Photodump and the PotLRtN blog. I’m not sure how often I’ll update it – I guess that depends on how much of a chance I’ll have to work on photos. Either way, RSS it, or email subscribe and enjoy.

Pictures of the Long Road to Nowhere…

Ahem.

Explanation tomorrow.