My internet connection gets switched off this Sunday, as I leave my apartment here in Nagano for three weeks of travel before I head back to Seattle.
Despite the fact that my phone forces me to change each and every character I type from uppercase to lowercase, making an already tedious method of text entry almost unbearable, I plan to post occasional (short) entries during those three weeks of travel (thanks to Kevin Cameron’s Mobloging For Other People).
So, I’ve been sitting here trying to think of an appropriate icon or tag line for use with entries posted from my mobile. But then I realized that labeling the entries as such is really more of a “gee-whiz” reaction to new technology. In the end, it doesn’t really matter how the entry is posted.
However, if you’re interested, entries during the next few weeks that are only one or two sentences are likely posted from my mobile. Either that or I’ve got a lot of time on my hands. A longer entry probably means I’ve found an internet cafe.
3 thoughts on “Ready To Go Roaming”
Comments are closed.
Mike-
here’s a tip from the moblogging wiser: your phone should have a place for “text input”, ie a place where there is stored a bunch of handy catch phrases like “ohayou gozaimasu,” “arigatou,” etc. You can add your own, and even delete and replace the standard ones. As it gets boring to constantly email my wife “I’m coming home” I just created a text entry and call it up from my email app’s submenu. I also do the same for certain things I know I use when moblogging, such as “br” tags, “i” tags, “a href=””” tags (i’m using quotes rather than angle brackets as I’m not sure how this will render when I post it). You could also create ones like “I’m posting this from [blank] in [blank] prefecture,” etc. (oh, and don’t forget to create one of these for your MFOP password too)
anyway, one thing that will speed up the process and give your thumb a break :) (sorry to waste bandwith if you’ve already figured this out)
ps. sorry to see you leave Japan
I don’t like the way “moblogging wiser” reads… one other thing, probably too much work for ya at this point, but there’s probably a way using the MT Macros plug-in (http://www.bradchoate.com/past/mtmacros.php) combined with the above tip to save even more time!
Kurt — Thanks for the tips. I’ll need to check if I can store customized phrases on my phone. I seem to remember not being able to add new ones on my phone, which is so seriously lacking in handy features it doesn’t deserve to be called a handyphone.
I haven’t quite figured out how to process leaving Japan in terms of my online life. Even though I’ll be just as connected to other Japan-based bloggers from any other part of the world, it still feels as though I’m leaving something behind. And this is all apart from the conflicted feelings I already have about leaving the country after just one year. But it’s a mobile world, after all. Japan is closer than it ever has been.
It would be inappropriate to use a quote from Gen. Douglas MacArthur, so I won’t.