A Glimpse Through the Blindfolds
We peered through our internet blindfold today and took a quick look at our web page. It's something we don't get to do very often. In fact the last time we were able to see any of our changes was almost two months ago.
Access to the internet in New Zealand has been difficult. We've only been able to find one pubic access terminal and that was available hourly by reservations only at the Auckland Public Library. A few other libraries and coffee shops on the North Island had access, but at $5 per 15 minutes, we kept our distance. Consequently most of our web page is being written in the dark. But the curtain was temporarily lifted today and it was all because of a few T-Shirts.
John and I wanted to have T-Shirts made for my parents. A way of saying thank-you for all their hard work on the web page. Any picture on a shirt just wouldn't do; it had to be a picture of Fargo. After all, what can compare to his smile beaming across white cotton? And it couldn't be any old picture of Fargo either; it had to be Fargo in front of the Fargo clock in North Dakota.
Luckily Queenstown's T-shirt shop, 'CoverShot', had just opened two days earlier. With a digital camera in-house and the Adobe Photoshop program, 'CoverShot' could produce just about anything. But getting our image over the wires from our Boston-based server posed a problem. Our PC palm-top computer has only a flash drive; the MAC at the store has a floppy drive. We had to find someone with a PC who would allow us to link our computer to his and transfer our file to a floppy. What were the changes?
The chance turned out to be a bloke named Noel. At the Queenstown Motor Camp John happened to glance through a open window and saw Noel pounding away on a PC laptop. The next thing I knew John was asking me where our linking cable was. "I found a PC," he said.
Noel, it turned out, was gearing up to start his own web page. He and David, the owner of the park, want to set up a New Zealand tours service and advertise through the web. David loaded our URL onto his desktop computer and, in exchange for a short tutorial on how they could get started, we finally got to see our page. I have to admit it looks pretty good.
By the way, the T-shirts came out great. It took the three of us (Me, John and the T-Shirt man, all Photoshop novices) a bit of work, but we produced a one of a-kind breast emblem of Fargo at the clock, a giant print for the back displaying Fargo's pearly smile with the words "How Far Will Fargo?" and our URL address. Across the sleeves my parents' managerial functions were emblazoned in black and light green: Production Manager for Big Al (aka: Dad) and Manager of Editing and Punctuation Restoration for Mom.
Wash warm, tumble dry low, iron lightly if needed and enjoy!
