The past few years, I have been using a combination of flickr (photo hosting), vimeo (video hosting) and WordPress (self-hosted blog) to share our family’s pictures and videos. I had a pretty good workflow going for a time there. But after waiting forever for flickr to allow more customization, I decided to consolidate everything to SmugMug. You can see the work in progress here at er-fans.smugmug.com.

I had been looking at SmugMug over the past couple years, but always felt that it was too “professional” for what I needed. But after looking at it again and with some ‘arm-twisting’ by Alex, I realized that SmugMug could host both our family photos and videos (with HD) all together on one site. And with a little bit of customization, I could get it to replace most of the functions of our family WordPress blog.

There were some tools that I was able to use to help migrate most of our pictures from flickr, but unfortunately, it didn’t handle transferring video very well. So I am still in the process of uploading all of our videos. And also, since SmugMug is not a blogging platform, I have had to transfer all the post content over to SmugMug manually.

For the photo and video side, everything works really well, considering that’s what SmugMug was designed to do. There are some things that I wish it did better, like how links are shared, but the great thing about SmugMug is that the developers are much more responsive to fixing or improving the website, with an active discussion and support forum.

The main downside of choosing SmugMug to host everything is that since it is not a blogging platform, the customization is not as easy to do and also the publishing tools are pretty limited. But there are some workarounds.

Let me know if you see anything that’s not working right on the smugmug site. I am still not completely sold on not using WordPress on the side, so I for now, I’m holding off on moving our family domain, ER-Fans.net.

We have also tried combining biking with geocaching which makes both activities more enjoyable, since biking makes the transportation part of hunting easier and geocaching gives purpose to our exercise. We have even recruited cousin Toby to join us in our Biking + Geocaching events.

When we first dabbled in geocaching about five years ago, we used a big black and white GPS unit and had to print out the geocache info ahead of time, which made it difficult to be a “spur of the moment” activity. In the intervening years, GPS and data technology has advanced to the point that paperless geocaching is readily accomplished.

Now, our Windows Mobile-based phones are equipped with GPS and mapping software via Google Maps. Couple that with a nifty geocaching software called GCz, we are able to download geocache entries and even do a simple search of caches nearby our current GPS location, wherever we are.

Here’s a geocaching.com badge link of what we have found so far:

We still need to work up to hiding our own caches. That will be the next level in our geocaching adventure.

Let us know if you ever want to go hunting with us. Who knows, there might be a cache right near where you are now.

Last year, I was talking to a friend of mine whom I’ve known since elementary school about my oldest daughter, Juliette. At the time she was in kindergarten, and I was mentioning to my friend how Juliette was one of only two Asians in her class. The parallel was that when my friend and I were in elementary school way back when, we were the only two Asians in our class. A couple of months later, my friend dug up this old class picture where you can see the two of us amongst our classmates.

And here is a picture of Juliette’s kindergarten class (just the girls) where you can see Juliette and her other Asian classmate. They are actually best friends and even though, this year, they are not in the same first grade class, they play with each other during every break they get.

While I was growing up, nearly all of my school classmates were non-Asians, which was in direct contrast to my friends at church which were practically all Chinese. Juliette is in a similar situation now except that our church is a little bit more diversified being predominantly Asian American.

I don’t know that I have anything specific to say other than observations and pointing out the parallels. My thought is that diversity is best accomplished as an ongoing process of person to person interactions. It is when we describe or assume in generalities that we take peoples as a whole for granted.

My friend and I actually have two other classmates from elementary school whom we still keep in touch with after all these years. It’s encouraging to see that Juliette is friends with lots of her other classmates as well. One of my hopes for my girls is that they will be able to enjoy as long a friendship with all of their friends as long as I have with mine.

I have been wanting to put down my normal photo / video sharing workflow so that I can review from time to time and see if there might be ways to improve the process. Unfortunately, I’ve been so behind in posting our family pictures since the summer that I was a bit embarrassed to do so. Anyways, I’m all caught up now to the day, so here we go:

1. Upload from camera
   this has become more convenient with my new Thinkpad since it has a built-in SD card reader .
2. Process and organize pictures and videos
   mostly just rotating and weeding out any bad pictures, now that there is no cost to taking a lot of pictures except of course for the time it takes to view and delete them.
3. Upload to Flickr and organize into sets
   ever since I’ve been hosting pictures on flickr, they’ve only been improving their service. The new web-based uploader is even easier to use and more stable. I just need to be less lazy in adding descriptions and tags to every picture. Too bad geotagging is still so manual.
4. Process videos in Windows Movie Maker
   before uploading, I cleanup the videos and stitch them together to get the right lengths and then save them as windows media video files, which shrinks them down a bit.
5. Upload to Vimeo
   they have also improved their uploading process, but I’m a little annoyed with some of the security settings that can’t be set as default. Similar to flickr with pictures, I should be making better use of the descriptions and tags.
6. Prepare post image using Picnik
   using an online photo editor, especially one that works as well as Picnik, simplifies the process without having to deal with an offline editor, and Picnik can save the modified pictures straight back to flickr, which eliminates a few steps.
7. Create and publish post on ER-Fans
   using WordPress to organize our family pictures has really worked well, because I can aggregate pictures and videos into a combined post for each event or set. Once the posts are published, wordpress will notify any email subscribers as well as updating the RSS feed to keep everyone up to date.

I have now made dinner on Christmas Eve for three years in a row. I think that finally makes it a tradition. Considering this is the only meal I make each year, I think this is a tradition that I can stick with. Unfortunately, I have to get in the habit of reviewing my past posts because I certainly would have benefited from looking at lessons learned from 2005′s cooking experience, since I repeated two of the mistakes that I made last year (meat thermometer and taking pictures).

This year, I decided to make stuffed breast of veal, spinach fritatta and mushroom, sausage risotto. I’ve been trying to do more shopping at Trader Joe’s (I just think it’s a cool store with interesting stuff and usually decent prices) and found most of the ingredients that I was looking for except for the veal breast. Unfortunately, I didn’t have time to head over to Bristol Farms (they have the best meat section in the area, of course at a price premium), so decided to check out Gelson’s (I went once before to the Newport Beach store, and wasn’t impressed, I should have learned my lesson). Suffice it to say, I was sorely disappointed with their selection. They most certainly did not have veal breast and they practically didn’t have any veal cuts at all. I finally settled on my backup and got pork chops cut in a row.

The risotto turned out fine, practice makes perfect, it’s just that since I only cook once a year, it takes a couple of years to actually practice . The fritatta turned out pretty good too, except that it was slightly burnt, since I nearly forgot it was in the oven on broil, just a bit overly crispy, but still good. As for the stuffed pork chops, the stuffing turned out fine (interesting use of raisins), but I think I still need practice cooking thicker cuts of meat with the bone in, because even though the meat on the outside was good, near the bone was still too rare. I did remember to sear the outside of the meat this time and that seemed to help to keep it juicy, but I think I need to let it cook longer at the end to finish the meat all the way through. Gotta get that meat thermometer and some better cuts of meat.

In the end, the judgment still lies with the ‘users’, the girls liked the risotto and the fritatta, and at least no one got stomchaches from the pork chop, which still tasted good, just should have been more done . Until next Christmas…

For those of you that don’t recognize the symbol (and for those of you that should, but have strayed from the Jedi path), it is the insignia of the Rebel Alliance [wikipedia].

Chronologically, this trip consisted of

• Our company convention in the first week [Day -1 0 1-4]
• 5 days in Singapore [Day 1 2 3 4 5]
• Another 5 days in Taipei [Day 1 2 3 4 5]

This trip started out a lot more stressful than previous family trips to Asia, for the primary reason that we were going back, our company convention in Singapore, which also happened to be on a cruise. And with Juliette starting Kindergarten at the beginning of September, we wanted to let her start with her class to help her with the transition, which meant that we were a bit squeezed for time to get to Asia a day before the convention started, so that I could take care of some last minute preparations.

Once in Singapore, I was very busy with work all through the convention, while Rebecca took care of the girls and enjoyed the cruise. In fact, when people asked me how my first cruise experience went (yes, I’ve been avoiding cruises because of my innate or inert ability to cope with motion sickness, thank God for “the patch”), I try to think back on what I actually remember from the cruise, and it was pretty much all work. So it’s probably safe to say that I have yet to go on a cruise as most people would think of going on a cruise, for the purposes and experience of relaxation and rest.

After the cruise, we stayed in Singapore, on a resort island called Sentosa, where we were able to relax and enjoy time as a family. One thing that we did that was particularly meaningful was to visit our grandfather’s former rubber plantation up in Kota Tinggi, which is just past the border into Malaysia. One of the churches that our grandfather started is now building a new sanctuary on land donated by our grandfather. It was really special to meet with the church coworkers and see this project which has continued as a ministry that our family is involved with. I pray that God gives us the wisdom to be good stewards of not just the assets and property but also the family legacy and spiritual intent that comes with it.

Our final stop was in Taipei, which was a much shorter stay than normal for us, because we had to get back so Juliette didn’t miss too much school. I worked for the first couple of days, but was still able to do some things with the family. And the last half, I spent with Rebecca and the girls enjoying the city and meeting up with friends and family. From my last Asia trip, I already started to realize that I felt the most comfortable while in Taipei, and granted it probably has to do with a much greater familiarity than other locales in the region. But I think that this time, I even started to miss Taiwan, the city, the people, the way of life (one of these days, I’m going to have to figure out where and how to go mountain biking in Taiwan!).

It’s interesting to note and telling that since Rebecca and the girls were with me on this trip, I didn’t make a single post. One primary reason is probably because I use this blog to share my thoughts and experiences and the one person who is most interested in those is Rebecca. And since she was right there with me, there was no immediacy to get my thoughts down (hehe, you thought I was going to write ‘on paper’, but that just wouldn’t make any sense, now, would it?) The second reason is because this trip was very packed with work, and then also helping out with the kids, so that there was not much time left for processing, evaluating or digesting all that was happening throughout the days.

Now aren’t you surprised that I was able to remember all of that one month after?!

We usually just give each other anniversary cards (handwritten, of course) and we don’t always exchange anniversary gifts, but this year, Rebecca gave me this crystal cross which replaces a gold one that I lost a couple of years back. It’s perfect, I guess I always felt something was kind of missing since I lost the original cross (not that there was any significant spiritual meaning there), but it was something that I had worn for a long time. And of course, Rebecca knew exactly what to get me and what I would appreciate. I love how as our marriage grows, we get to know each other more and more. Hehe, I guess it’s like port, it gets better with age!

Rebecca and I went up to Santa Barbara for the weekend (sans kids). It was a relaxing time where we were able to re-connect after my trip to Asia and refresh our relationship and catchup on paused conversations. Rebecca has posted most of what we did over on her xanga/winkipinki_mom. So I won’t repeat what she has already mentioned. Just fill in some of my own thoughts and details.

For my geeky story of the weekend (not the TV story):
While we were shopping at the outlets, I discovered one thing that the Sony store is good for (and it’s not to purchase any of their overpriced goods). For some reason, my list of restaurants did not get synchronized to my Exchange account, so for my last stop, I went into the Stony store and jumped online one of their computer display models and logged onto Outlook Web Access so that I could grab my restaurant list off of my Outlook notes and e-mail it to myself. Problem solved. Thanks Sony .Food
We’ve been to Santa Barbara few times now, and we have found some restaurants that we enjoyed. So this trip, we re-visited one, and tried two new ones:

• Opal: new American cuisine with some local Santa Barbara flavor. The food was good, they had some unique and creative recipes, and better yet, it wasn’t expensive. A nice touch was that I had made reservations for dinner, but we ended up getting into town a little late, so I called ahead to let them know. And they still saved us a nice table in front.
• Tupelo Junction: we have been to this restaurant for breakfast a couple of times before, and each time, the restaurant has moved to a different location. The food is country / southwestern, and there isn’t anything like it that I know of in Orange County. Yummy breakfast scrambles.
• Bouchon: we went to this restaurant after our day of wine tasting, which was somewhat unfortunate, because this place specializes in localized french recipes paired with local wines. Regardless, we enjoyed a great meal with some great service. And I don’t care what those food nazis think, the foie gras was delicious.

Wine
This was our first time wine tasting and we certainly enjoyed ourselves. We learned a few lessons and tricks along the way that we will be sure to apply in future tastings, such as you don’t have to drink all of the wine and bring our own cheese and crackers.

• Daniel Gehrs: this tasting-room was actually in the small town of Los Olivos where a lot of wineries in the area have their tasting-rooms so that people don’t have to drive all the way out to the actual wineries. This was our first stop because it just happened to be the first one along Los Olivos one main strip. The proprietor was very friendly and informative, especially as he showed us newbies how it was done. I also got my first taste of Port, mmmm-yum.
• Fess Parker: we decided to get out of town and go to some actual wineries. This is the biggest and one of the more well-known in the area. I figure since this was our first time, we might as well start out with one that was experienced and well-established. Turns out that it was nice but nothing spectacular.
• Zaca Mesa: this was another winery that I found in my last-minute wine-tasting research. It didn’t look like much was we drove up, but we changed our minds as we drove to the back and walked in. The proprietor was very enthusiastic about wines and helped us to understand the differences that winemakers emphasize in their own wines. This was the only place that we ended up buying a bottle, 2003 Z Three. We’ll have to think of a good occasion to enjoy this.