I’ve released the latest version of the japan file. This time I’ve got a good readme and some overlays to go along with it. The file is a .zip file so head over to http://www.7-zip.org/ and download that free program to extract the file. If you already have an unzipping program then you don’t need to download that program. Okay enough babble heres the link to the zip file:
Let me know what you think.
-Curtis
A couple days ago i decided to go on a walk or bike ride once a day and take my camera. Then i would upload my favorite photo from the excursion to here and talk about it. Well I’ve done everything, but upload the photos for the past couple days so I’ll try to post a few pictures today.
I’ll give you guys more than one photo today though as an apology 
for not uploading a couple days ago. First my girlfriend and i went out to eat at Tommy’s 4th Street Bar & Grill. I wrote a review for them over at yelp. If you click their name above it’ll take you to their review page. Here’s a little excerpt from my review:
“Cajun fries where pretty good. I’ve never had fries like them before. Prices where about $2-3 more than what i think the food was worth.”
After that we walked around downtown a little bit. We went to the top of the Corvallis Towers, which are 6 stories tall! ha ha anyway it was a nice view so i think we might go to the restaurant sometime this summer. I’ll take my camera and get some nice night shots of the city.
We then started to head back home, but stopped by a Central park downtown. We had a good time 
with all the other little kid there. We slid down the slide, swung on the swings, and rocked on the spring rocker thingies. I’ve always loved going to parks, there’s just something about letting all inhibitions go and being a kid again. So while my girlfriend was swinging i took out the Sigma 10-20mm and snapped a photo of her. Looks like good fun doesn’t it? Man already this post is taking a while to type what with all the alignment of photos and such.
After the park we continued our journey onward. While walking we had been looking at plants in peoples yards and i was looking out for a good plant to photograph. We finally came across some stunning Iris’s. I decided to use the 50mm f/1.4 and tried to get the detail in focus and let 
everything else just fade out. What do you think? Does it work? I think it’s my favorite photo of the day. I really love the colors, even though it’s a sort of dark blueish/purplish and should give off a depressing feel it makes me happy!
WOW! i need to be a little more descriptive because it’s fairly hard to write enough so the photos line up well. This would be far easier with one photo, i guess this can be my motivation to make a post a day with one photo. Back to the story at hand. After wandering through peoples front yard looking around for good photo opportunities we went to Borders to have a nice read. I don’t know what you guys are like, but i love going to book stores and just browsing around. I’m a HUGE book guy and i own a fair amount of books, but i can always have more. I 
always want more information and books are a great source. Another reason book stores are fun is to watch people. You can look at people and guess what books they will read and they might surprise you by reading something totally random. Well this guy was reading what i would expect him to read. Manga. I’m not a huge mange fan, i do own a couple, but they are real Japanese versions for my own study i guess. I don’t know manga has never really captured me the way anime has. I think this guy would beg to differ though. Plenty of other kids and adults roam about borders reading manga too. It’s surprising to see how popular it is now.
Finally i’m on the home stretch! I can see the finish. Let’s see i guess i should tell ya’ll I’m a big drug advocate. I believe all drugs should be legal. I’m not just some young punk 
that wants to get wasted all the time. I just think drugs should be legal to use in the privacy of your own home on your own body. Drugs do not hurt anyone, but the user and in the “land of the free” citizens ought to have the right to use drugs. One of the sections i regularly visit when at a book store is the drug section. This visit i was reading Cannabible 3 By Jason King, which by the way was very interesting. While i was reading the book though i realized i was one isle from the kids section. I couldn’t believe they would put the sections so close together. I mean i don’t really think it’s a bad thing, but i would assume a company like borders would realize their book placement. At least some complainer would come along and yell at Borders for doing such an irresponsible thing, alas the books still remain though. I snapped the photo of the Cannabible one top of some kids books, but i used too much bokeh. Oh well i could have done better on the photo, but i still like it. Well folks that’s were this story ends. I hope you enjoyed the journey and please watch your step when exiting this blog.
Peace-Curtis
Found this on digg and it got pretty popular so i thought I’d put it hear in case you haven’t seen it.
Peace,
Curtis Barnard
Okay I’ve added a pretty good amount of stuff and i’m still working on it a lot. Download the second version of the Japan kmz file
Let me know of any dead links or incorrect information.
Thanks,
Curtis
I’ve released the 4th vLog, check it out and let me know what you think:
Peace,
Curtis
Tell me what you think, this is really just a trial run.
Click here to get your own player.
Peace-Curtis
Hey everyone how’s it going? Well today’s post will be of significance to anyone planning to move to, study, or travel to japan. I guess it’s really useful to anyone planning to travel somewhere period, but i’m going to focus this post on japan.
First of all if you haven’t heard of Google Earth then your really missing out on both a fun and extremely useful program. So go download it NOW at:
http://earth.google.com/
Ok now that you have Google Earth installed you can get nice an acquainted with the program. After your comfortable then you can download my .kmz file below:
I’m actually still in the process of creating this file. So i guess we can call it Version 1.00 So what is the file? Well it’s a file you open with google earth and it will show all the places of interest in japan i have marked. I’ve tried to get everything as close as possible to the real GPS coordinates, if you find something that is far from the actual location then please e-mail me or leave a message.
Cool Huh? Well i didn’t come up with this idea on my own. I have to give credit to http://www.findingjapan.com He also had a couple files which i downloaded long before i created my file. The first file is just for the Tokyo area and has all sorts or interesting locations and even a couple map overlays which i think are pretty cool and i hope to incorporate something like that in my file sometime soon. For the first file click below:
The second file i haven’t looked at very much, but it includes train lines and all sorts of stuff. Go ahead and download it here:
I think i’m going to go through those two files and see what things i like and I’ll probably add it to my file and that will make things a little more organized for you. Any feedback on the file or anything? Then e-mail me or please comment.
If enough people can’t figure out how to use these files with Google earth then I’ll probably create a tutorial video, if that sounds like a good idea then let me know.
That’s all for now folks…
Well i thought i would post up a link to a .doc file that i made a little while ago. It basically contains places by region that i want to see or visit while in japan. Go ahead and download it and let me know of any interesting places that i should add to the list.
This list is basically my super planning phase, i’m kind of like my dad. I like to make list and organize my thoughts a ton so i can get as much done when the time comes.
Oh yeah the file is hosted on http://www.filedropper.com. Some new site like rapid share, but it’s suppose to be better. Let me know what you think and tell me if there are any bad pop-ups or anything that come from the site. So far for me it works great. So yeah that’s about it.
Peace-Curtis
If your currently learning Japanese you might want to check this program out. It’s basically a a flash card program, but a little “smarter”. I’ve used it for about 20 minutes or so and i liked it a lot. Here’s the link to the site:
Instead of me trying to explain the program just go to the above link and download it. It’s a free program and it’s about 11MB in size. I would recommend this to Japanese students who have learned at least some of the basic Japanese grammatical structure as the program only teaches you vocabulary. So give it a try and let me know what you think and I’ll post up in the future and let you know how well it’s working for me.
ピスー
Curtis
The third in my series of vLog’s is up. Please let me know what you like and dislike!
Peace-Curtis