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I’ve moved

Surely receiving an ulcer for my efforts, I’ve finally changed web hosts. No wonder I’d waited so long to do it, despite paying way beyond current market rates for hosting (OLM/Webaxxs) and despite putting up with rather shoddy customer service. At any rate, the nameservers have been redirected and at least from here, the domain is pointing to the new hosts (TotalChoice Hosting).

Stuff is broken here and there, namely the Photo Gallery running on Gallery 2. Who knows when I’ll get this up and running. At this point, to stave off a complete greying of my hair, I may well just pony up for someone to install it for me (installing is not the problem actually, just getting it to see the database and writing out correct URLs).

And I’ve decided, with a somewhat heavy heart, to jettison Movable Type as the software that powers this blog in favor of the leaner and somewhat easier-to-use WordPress. It’s not really worth going into the reasons for the move, but I’ve used WP before and am very pleased with it.

One of the nice things about WP is the ability to change “themes” very quickly, as well as access to a host of themes created by others. It sure beats mucking about with template tags and css, but it does tend to lead to a raft of stale looking sites, this one included. For now I’m just going with the standard “Kubrick” style, with some slight modifications to the CSS (props to the Firefox extension EditCSS). Not happy with it, but everything in its due time I suppose.

I’ve gotten rid of the “Moblog” (old one here, with images broken!), which I hadn’t updated since last December anyway after MFOP2 went down. Flickr, while not being a site I’ve fully embraced, does have a very nice moblog implementation which I will continue to use to post “mobile” entries to the main blog. And, as will become obvious, I’ve integrated my old “links blog” (here) into the main blog as well, in a blatant ripoff of Kottke’s Remaindered Links.

If you use RSS to keep up with my very sporadic postings, please make sure you’re now using this feed.

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It was 4 years ago today…

Wedding photo, March 14, 2002

…that Naoko and I tied the knot. Given that we lived together for some time before actually getting married, the actual marriage day doesn’t seem all that significant or resonant to me, especially as the “tying the knot” part involved just a few hanko stampings and nary a justice of the peace or any witnesses. On the other hand, because we married the day after we moved to Japan (well, moved back in Naoko’s case), I always view these anniversaries together, which at the very least helps me remember one or the other. And it falls on White Day, which helps out in the gift-giving department (ahem).

Interestingly, on a mailing list for mixed Japanese/non-Japanese parents that I belong to, there is a thread now entitled “Would you do it again?” with respect to the particular trials married international couples face. Hmmn…

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Hiroo Kikai’s “Persona”

If you’re in Tokyo then you really should try to catch the Hiroo Kikai photo exhibition of some of his “Persona” series, portraits taken over the last 10 years in Asakusa, showing at the Nikon Salon in Ginza (free, until March 11). I’m not usually a big fan of portraiture but this work has something. The photos are also accompanied by lovely, somewhat wry captions.

If you’re going to be in the area this week then you should also see the medecins sans frontieres photo exhibit Democratic Republic of Congo: The Forgotten War,featuring photos of Congo taken by 5 members of Project VII, including James Natchwey, Antonin Kratochvil, and Ron Haviv. This is at the Shinwa Art Museum (also free, until the 5th). Particularly striking were the color photos of an MSF run clinic for sex workers by Joachim Ladefoged, which somehow managed to straddle a dangerous line between the sensuousness of the color and tragicness of these womens’ situations.

UPDATE: Peter Evans tried to post the following comment but my comments were broken (my apologies):

I second your recommendation of Kikai’s show.

The longer I look, the more fascinating these photos become. This lady who started photography when close to 80 — and on whom an Olympus OM looks as big as a Pentax 67 would on me — appears in a different photo in the book _Ya-Chimata_. And she’s not alone: Kikai doesn’t simply recycle the photos he has already displayed, but digs up variants. That aside, these are photos that really benefit from size.

Kikai’s books have short print runs. (Just 5000 even for the new and very reasonably priced _Perusona_, I hear.) I guess people prefer to pay for and thumb through the prettily vapid (in color).

Peter also sent along this well-annotated Wikipedia entry on Kikai.