This is how things stand with me as of this moment: I have applied for one job (well, apply is too strong a word. Lets just say I may have a job soon.) I may start next week - I'll find out tomorrow evening.

Fiscally speaking I have enough money to see me through a few more weekends like the one I just spent in Germany, but I will have to lay down some cash for the house pretty soon so that will dry up very quickly.

At this moment I sit in a dark loungeroom at 2am, about to play a computer game before my eyelids fail me. I am essentially trying to take it easy after the last few weeks, and before I potentially start work. But this doesn't signal the end of my holidaying, as evidenced by:

... my travel plans! October will find me (for a long weekend at least) in Spain with Mostyn, Melle and 8 other good souls, including Shaun. Barcelona in particular. Thanks to the magic of Melle our flights and accommodation are already booked and I need not put further thought into the whole affair until I'm sitting with a sangria in hand trying to decide between paella and tapas.

November will see the arrival of Kris, with whom I plan on jumping across to Italy. Probably on his first weekend here, as my other brother Matty arrives in London soon after. Since I've been to Rome I'm thinking perhaps Florence or something, but such concerns will have to wait till Kris has had his input...

Then, December. I plan on spending Christmas with the crew here in Wales, soaking up the snow from some kind of spa-ridden resort hosted by some kind of Michelin-star chef, who will incidentally also be picking us up from London. I believe this has also already been paid for, but I may be wrong there. In any case, I'm looking at it as locked in. New Years is still unspoken-for.

I plan on staying at this house for the forseeable future - anyone who wants to visit or travel somewhere in Europe with me only need ask, and I'll do my utmost to make a party of it.

And this web site now contains a full selection of my Japan (I added four new sub-albums: return to Tokyo from Kyoto, Gunma, Kusatsu and back to Tokyo a third time) and Germany photos, though I have not yet added witty little comments to the German ones. I still want to transcribe my Japan travel diary (well, it was really a 'Hello Kitty' notepad) here for my own personal satisfaction.

Come this Wednesday my Internet troubles will be over. Then I'll be home again.

Till then, sorry for not replying to emails or whatever. Soooooon.

Now that I have some time I decided to upload photos. There are brief explanations on each.

These photos are from the first few parts of my journey - Tokyo and Kyoto. I won't write more about them yet because I gotta get ready to head into Takadanobaba to meet Lance and his mates.

I'll hopefully upload more photos soon.

Lance has written a brief summary of some of the events of the last few weeks.

This month, Israel goes absolutely bat-shit murderous crazy raising international concerns about oil prices, Syd Barrett dies, North Korea fires a bunch of missiles as the world holds its breath (consequently Japan decides they are probably friendly enough to have a standing army again) - fortunately oil prices are not affected - and Paul Cechner announces that he will soon migrate for time unknown, to destination known.

I realise that I have made no official announcement anywhere, sent no spam email and notified no newspapers - August the 11th marks my last day in Australia for the foreseeable future[1].

I have outlined my itinerary in great detail thusly. Perth->Sydney on August the 8th, Sydney->Tokyo on the 11th, then Tokyo->London on the 25th.

One pictures a massive benefit concert, an undulating crowd of friends riding the wave of a going away-rave, culminating in a crescendo where our enigmatic host disappears after some stunning yet brief announcement, never to be seen again. Guests would still have a good time after he left, but probably not as good a time. Of course this scenario is precluded by a lack of willing participants and a well-known lack of organisational ability.

So I find myself with three remaining precious weeks, busily divesting myself of my worldly possessions. Some know of my convenient automobile disaster - an unexpectedly serendipitous moment that solved a bunch of problems at once, providing both a $4,700 windfall and a sudden dependency on my car-wielding friends. A poorly organised tax portfolio ensures a hefty return on unnecessarily paid HECS contributions (for more information please refer to this dissertation on my modus operandi.)

Other than the car, I have a bed, computer and computer desk. These aren't going to be a problem.

I am freaky excited about every part of my coming trip. If leaving the country is wrong, I don't want to be right.

Footnotes
[1] From the Paul dictionary:
The Foreseeable Future(n) - not necessarily a long time, given Paul's inability to foresee more than a matter of minutes into the future.

I know a guy by the name of Tim Merks. Old Merksey[1] is an animator, and a damn good one at that. He works with his very talented girlfriend Rosey making more awesome animations. He has been likened to Hayao Miyazaki[2]

Anyway, he has an experimental webcomic Vicious and Faust that is also cool.

[1] I presume he likes to be called 'Merksey'
[2] by himself, when he said "I'm no Hayao Miyazaki"

Work in progress (TODO: put animated image of construction guy here)

Since early days I have said that the Internet will only be useful if it can provide me with these three things. It must allow me to:

1. easily share my emails between computers,
2. easily share my bookmarks between computers, and
3. store events, dates and notes straight from my email client

The Internet's greatest potential for me is in the ability to de-personalise a personal computer so you don't have to carry your data around. If I can log into an Internet cafe in Germany and chat to my friends, read my emails and check my calendar exactly the same as if I were at home, then the Internet has done its job for me.

I look at the points I outline above as watermarks; not so much a complete list of functionality as an indication of how useful it is for my needs.

Share emails
Web based email has been around for a while, but it wasn't till Gmail came along that it became useful. Gmail doesn't attach ads to all your emails, the interface is sweet, and of course it offers a good sized mailbox.

Plus, it integrates with Google calendar.

Share bookmarks
There's always del.icio.us, but it seems directed more towards the whole 'social networking' angle. I'm sure that it probably does what I want, plus a whole bunch more that I haven't bothered finding out, but I just haven't taken the time to look into it.

As of yesterday however, I have started using the Google Browser Sync firefox extension. This approach actually modifies your browser's bookmarks, history, passwords and all that stuff directly, instead of providing you with a web-page. No matter how simple and awesome a web page is, it can't be as useful as updating your web-browser directly.

Events, dates and notes
Google calendar is currently the best solution I've found for tracking events. It still lacks a few things - allowing you to simply click on any date in the body or subject of a Gmail email to create an event from it would be sweet - but it makes up for it in the group organisation features (shared events allow users to see each other's comments, for example.)

Kiko seems pretty feature-complete, but its a big chunk of Flash that goes slowly and is buggy. If Google calendar took a few of its contacts and mail client integration features onboard though, it would be an unstoppable force.

There is still no decent note-taking device, but I believe Google has one of these in the works as well.

I feel really uncomfortable in shilling for a company like this, by the way. It just so happens that Google provide all the pieces of the puzzle I'm after. I'll be the first to jump off the wagon when something better comes along.

Every secret she whispered is forgotten
Every drop of ink she ground into paper will drift away in ashes
Theres no such thing as wasted life, so Ill save my pity for myself

Fed up with Blogger, I decided to try a new system. This will allow me to have categories, allowing me to separate rants from events/happenings/short ramblings, from news (like this, although ironically I am posting this news entry in the rants section. way to go paul.)

Not liking it so far, but I'll see what it looks like when I've changed it around.

The old rants page is still there, with all the old rants and images: http://paul.cechner.com/blogger.html