New Meta Tag Function

Hello All,

Just a quick note to let you know that I have added "Meta Tags" for keywords and description to all fotozon home pages. Click here to edit your home page and add the meta tags.

"What are Meta Tags" you ask? Well they are just some hidden tags in the header of most pages that tell the search engines something about your site. Up until now I have been generating those automatically based on your home page text. Now, you have the option to fill out whatever you want there.

Best Regards, Keith Grey

PS: Thanks to Taiwan Photographer Pazza Studio for the idea.

Cabin Fotos Taiwan

Wooden House in Taiwan Another great photo set by Pazza-Studio

This month has been very busy as I install new servers and start up new web sites. What a world we live in! Every day, another project. I hope to hear from all of you and I wish you a very happy and blessed holiday season!

All the Best, Keith

Pazza Studios

Hello All.

That Pazza Studios over in Taiwan is taking some really great shots.

Also, a big shout out to Dennis - the best electrician in Edmonds, WA .

Later,

KJG

March

Getting old is not fun. I've just turned 40 and I'm afraid I might be doing something wrong... Why is life so tough? There's all these trillions of dollars just floating around, why must I work so hard just to get a few thousand of them?

Lately I've been interviewing with some companies to try and find a regular full time job with benefits, and it is probably just as well I didn't get the job with SEOmoz, because their product is a waste of money anyway. Why would I want to work there and try to believe in something that I don't really have my hear into?

Anyway, keeping my hopes up. Tomorrow is another day.

FotoZon Premium

Cool Apples. Back in the US of A.

We are pleased to present the Fotozon "Premium Foto Pro Websites"! Our first customer Pazza Studio is online and ready as the first demo site. Check out his awesome studio shots including the one on the left there of the apples and bubbles set up.

Be the best.
jg

Taiwan POD FlickR Group

Hello Everyone!

Recently we have been monitoring the Taiwan Picture of the Day Candidates FlickR page. We are cleaning it up and eliminating a few of the extra entries. Please, if you are submitting photos to this group, make sure to include only your best shots of Taiwan so we can select them for the daily picture. We are currently in the process of further automation and editorial review. Remember, this is for you - the Taiwan Photographer - to get some exposure to your work.

Thank you for your Support,

Keith

Picture Layout

Just another manic Monday...

Working now on a page full of nice cabinet pictures. Lucky for us we were able to upload all of those good looking pictures, but now we need a little nicer layout. If you have any ideas, let me know. Please let me know.

Taiwan Daily Facebook App

Greetings!

The Taiwan Daily Facebook App is up and running again. Now they have changed around their system and you don't have all those boxes in your profile page. It used to be that one of those boxes could show the Taiwan Daily Picture if you add it to your profile page. Now that part of their site has disappeared completely, so I had to redo the whole thing using their javascript sdk / jquery. It wasn't easy, but following the laborious yet successful completion of LinkMan, this one turned out to be much quicker. Now, I guess I need to figure out how to post one picture per day, or a weeks worth, on the user's streams. I wonder how many people want to get one picture per day on their facebook stream.... I guess we'll find out soon.

New Application

Dear Folks,

I recently set up a new facebook application to save your facebook links. Please add it and let me know if you have any trouble with it. This is important because facebook only displays your links 6 at a time now and it takes a long time to go through them if you have more than a dozen! Also, it is very difficult to capture the source html they are using, so I made it easy to copy the html including the image location in one go. FBML is getting deprecated, so I wrote the new app completely in Javascript on a normal html page. No more php sdk. Less load on the server.

I re-learned their entire api system since it had totally changed since I worked on the Taiwan Daily App. Now, I see that one is totally out of date so the next step is to start working on that and get it back into tip-top-shape.

Quick One

Notice our New Header! I'm not sure what happened to the last one, it was somehow drastically reduced in size, but you miss it, here's a link to the general image:



On FotoZon Pages, I added a new javascript feature to "listen" for the press of left and right arrow keys for navigation between pictures. This was a ridiculously easy to do and I should have done it earlier. I'm thinking about adding some more instant key press features.

Stanwood Car Show July 2010

I just love making little improvements, so I can look at my fotos more easily on my web page. Why didn't I set this up before ? I used a really easy javascript to listen for the left/right arrows to be pushed and navigate forward or backwards through the pictures. Try out this car picture while looking at some shots from the Stanwood Car Show July 2010.




For even more old car pictures, check out our trip to the LeMay Musem in Tacoma.

Back in the PNW

Hey Everyone!

I am back here in America and visiting family in the great Pacific Northwest. This view is of Lake Diablo up in the North Cascades Mountains on the way back from Eastern Washington.

Not much doing here, just staying out of the rain and working on my personal Keith Grey BIO page on the ole JayData website. You never know what you may trawl up on the internet.

Take it easy, All for NOW, Keith JOE Grey

An Old Steam Train in Newhalem Hwy 20

Little Liu Chiu Island

Little Liu Chiu Island (小琉球) is South-West of Kaohsiung in the Taiwan straits. The very small island is easily reached by passenger ferry from Dong-Gang (東港 - East Harbor) . See Google Map.

Freeway 3 is the easiest way to get down there. Just drive to the end and turn right. Turn left just before the big red bridge and park in one of the lots there next to the boats. We arrived just in time from central Taiwan and caught the boat at 12:35 on the Saturday after Christmas. Our friends Andrew and Sarah were there waiting for us, saying "Come on! We're going to miss the boat!" ... So, we got on the crowded little ferry boat and made the quick 25 minute trip to the island. Our helpful hotel manager met us at the dock with a sign and the keys to 3 scooters. She led us up the narrow winding streets to the hotel just near the harbor.

Life is slower on Liu Chiu and almost nobody wears a motorcycle helmet.

The harbor was completely full of fishing boats crewed by Indonesians, Filipinos and Taiwanese.

We took a wonderful trip on the under-sea boat.

An urn for burning incense near the best beach on the east side of Liu Chiu.

A hermit crab crawling out of his shell.

Liu Chiu Island is completely made out of coral. There are all kinds of interesting coral.

The view from the "Black Ghost Cave" temple.

Sunset on Little Liu Chiu island as seen from the Black Ghost Cave temple.

A beach completely made of busted up coral.

The Famous "Liu Chiu Rock" . "Held Up" by a beautiful model.

All in all, we only spent about 26 hours on Little Liu Chiu Island It was totally worth it. We barely made the ferry back with seconds to spare and again it was totally full on a Sunday. Thanks to Andrew and Sarah for the great idea. We are already planning our next trip to this pretty little island for some more beach combing on the coral sands.

Broadcasting Worldwide on Sunday Night

I am back in Taiwan now after being gone for almost a month back the USA. I was back there just in time to watch my 89 year old grandmother pass away after a fight with brain cancer. It was so sad. It sort of bothered me though that there was no real ceremony like the elaborate drawn out one they have here in Taiwan. I got to witness that earlier this year when my wife's grandmother passed away. It has been a bad year so far.

Anyways, on to new beginnings. Here is a web site a friend is promoting to do world wide translation for online communities. It is an interesting concept web site. Although it is still sort of a work in progress in the early stages at this point, it is totally functional. The neat thing is when you make a post, it is immediately translated into 10 different languages. Go check it out if you get a chance.

Til Next Time!
Joe G.

Colors and White Balance in the Forest

To any readers following this blog, I have been busy recently with another trip back to the USA to witness the death of my grandmother. It was a sad experience. I sought solace in the woods around my family's compound in Northern Washington State. While there I discovered something on the settings of my Nikon D50 camera. Here is the first picture I took at this trail junction with automatic white balance:


Notice the greens are turned blue - maybe the camera thinks they are fluorescent lights? I'm not sure, but when switching to white balance for bright sunlight, the photo came out much better:


I leave you with a picture of a big Douglas fir tree with my hand on the trunk and the height accentuated with my extreme wide angle. I love trees and the forest.

Ciao.

Joe

New Lens.

A new lens, the 10~20 mm Sigma. I It shoots so much wider than a regular lens. I call it "super wide". On a recent trip to Port Townsend USA, to visit my good friend Jim - Custom Instrument Maker, I came across this beauty and plunked down the coin to make it mine.

A real estate agent's dream, an interrior lens to be used with shutter speeds as slow as 1/15th second. I hope to capture the whole gamut with this little gem.

JG



Here is the lens with its own separate carrying bag and lens hood in the bottom right corner.

Construction in Taiwan

It seems that in Taiwan, there is always construction going on. New roads are built, new houses, gigantic new concrete and steel buildings culminating with the Taipei 101 tower. What is it that causes such continuous construction? There seem to be plenty of abandoned old houses, and new ones are going up all the time. Leading some to conclude there is a serious housing bubble in Taiwan. It seems the the inexpensive labor, low interest rates and high savings rate combine to continually push building of new houses. The recent return to power of the KMT may also have offered a stabilizing force. Many of the units are purchased by speculators and stay empty for years. When I first came to Taiwan 12 years ago, somebody told me that rent was cheap but buying was not. It seems to be even more true today.

Since my Dad owns a construction company back home in Stanwood, and I have been marginally involved in the industry for quite some time, I'm always interested in the processes and scenes that are involved in the business. I sometimes carry my camera with me and snap scenes of construction to show the folks back home. Here are a few shots, and more can be found on my photo web site under scenes of construction in Taiwan.


Now this is a good idea. Instead of paying a flagger to do the dangerous job of facing traffic and warning about the big hole in the road, a dummy is dressed up as a worker and holds a flag!

It seems that ready-mix is not used in Taiwan. Small batches of mortar are mixed on the spot.
A road being re-paved. It was previously dug up with trenches leading to a new housing project.


This "concrete" does not cure hard, it just provides a base for the road above. And it can be easily dug up again for the next project.

The steel skeleton for new high-rise residential buildings in Taichung.

Joe G.

Connections between Australia and Taiwan

Taiwan ... and ... Australia

There seems to be an inevitable connection between Australia and Taiwan. I was reminded of that recently while reading the story about Clare Wang on the site of my favorite blogger from Taiwan who also happens to be from Australia! Maybe I'm also thinking of a local photographer from Australia or the website Taiwan in Australia that is a strong supporter of Taiwan Pic of the Day. Heck, maybe I'm even reminded of the bottles of "Yellow Tail Wine" I see at the local hyper market, or the "Australian Beef" that seems to be more popular than ours. Anyways, just pointing out this fact on a Saturday night. Good luck to Clare Wang!

Check in soon,

Joe

Kaput

This is an awfully suspicious picture in my opinion. I mean look at the way the hand is gently pushing up from the bottom. "T.U." pretty much sums up where we are though huh? The thing that also strikes me is the change in direction in 1995. What happened back then? That's probably where the trouble started.

What are these 2 little words that could kill Microsoft? Could they be "Net-Book"? What else could it be... I mean "Apple" is only one word.. I'm seriously looking into the net book business right now. Most of them are manufactured here in Taiwan, so I am in the right place. That's probably the reason why I haven't been working on this here blog lately. If anyone out there among my loyal readers is working on these little mini computers, let me know.

---

A new Lens

It is such an exciting pleasure to buy new camera gear. This new lens for my Nikon D50 camera is pretty cool. I bought it especially for people shots. The blurred background with the low f-number comes out incredible.






Well, that's all there is to report at this time. I know, not that much eh?

I'll do better! I never knew I would be so busy.

Until the next time,

Joe Gray






Woman riding bicycle through Rice Field. Yuanlin.



Top of KRT Station in Kaohsiung



Cherry Blossoms at WuLai

Balcony

Right up there with the ever popular "Cleaning the Fan" blog entry entry - this time it is cleaning up the balcony. I like to think of it as my "backyard". It is just outside of the kitchen. I know it doesn't look like much in this picture, but you should have seen it before. Dirt and grime was built up for years. I spent more than a whole morning scrubbing and even ran a small 1/8" water line from the kitchen faucet to spray it all down when I was done.

After I was all done, I mounted a little piece of plywood rescued from the cabinet shop next door to keep out the wind. A few little stools and you've got yourself a nice little place to sit outside. I was thinking about getting a few plants or something to stick out there, but it faces north and who's going to water them if I go on vacation more than a few days? Now maybe if I can hook up an automated drip irrigation system ... ok, maybe next year.

View from the balcony in the late afternoon.

Later, I played with some legos and made this house.