The Fantastically Frustrating Facebook ...

Or is is "The Frustratingly Fantastic Facebook"?

Saw a note somewhere about the new profile look. Followed the instructions in the Facebook Developers area and set mine up. Looked cool!

There are a lots of parts to it, but I honed in on the photo section ... I know, quite a stretch for me:

There is a HORRIFIC photo of me showing that I never would have put on FB, but SOMEONE did and I am tagged - since it is the latest one, I am stuck seeing it. I look like a cross between a serial killer and a mortician ... it's THAT good. You might notice that we are standing around Mickey Mouse. Yes - THAT Disney Cruise. It is the ACTUAL night that found me running out of the auditorium ... Cinderella'esque-like sobbing and verbally (mostly) abusing Disney Characters and ship personnel - this just happens to be a few hours BEFORE that. Ah, but that is another story,(here) now isn't it?

So ... Facebook, I click on the photo section and it takes me to all my albums. Lets click on this 'Favorites' album ... shall we?

This takes me (no surprise here) to the photos in the album - lets click on the first one:

And it does as expected, brings up the photo:

You might have noticed the Map on the first page - I saw that and was hoping that I could, in essence, geotag my photos in Facebook. So I hit 'enter location' and started typing Denmark ... a few options popped up - as they do when you are tagging people, but as I typed they all disappeared. I put it in anyway and went to check my map and as I suspected, the photo did not show up. Went back and put in one of the options that it gave me: København which is how the Copenhagen'ites spell it (and pronounce it: 'shoe been hav en'). Went back to my map and there it was!

Show you that later - this is just the photo with the arrow pointing to where it displays the location.

Click on the location and since it is a hyperlink it takes you to a page:

Not surprisingly titled: "København". There is info here about the city and it is all very cool and wonderful ...

So if we go back to the profile page, lets click on the Map section:

Since I labeled all of my photos in my Favorites album there is more than just the one - and more than photos are marked.

Lets click on Denmark (where the arrow is pointing):

And here we are! Click on it again:

And it takes me to the first photo with that label:

Not the one we were playing with, so lets click advance and sure enough ... here it is:

And, again, we can click on the photo location and it takes us there:

Wonderful, yes?

Well, problem is I think the location that I was clicking on are 'Places' that people have entered and made. It is hit or miss on whether or not there is something made where your photo is located, not to mention that I don't know how all these unknown people feel about hitching my photo to their page!

There was no Maui, Hawaii and I have photos from there, so I decided to figure out how to enter a place - and then I could link my photo to it. I spent a few hours yesterday trying to figure this out and the only thing I could come up with was the 'Places' function included with Facebooks mobile app. You can click on it and enter where you are physically located. I could not find any way to enter a place where you were not there physically - ie - for my photo after the fact.

Bummer.


It could have been SO WONDERFUL! And still may be ... but they are keeping it a HUGE secret if it is the case since I scoured the web and Facebooks knowledge base and could not find a whisper about it. But then again, I could have been entering the wrong search words - I am very talented at doing that sort of thing ...


So ... MY DREAM FACEBOOK feature: Let me link my photo to Google Earth! Why not?

Click on my photo, click on the location - which I would probably be nice enough to list as: Copenhagen, Denmark and you would see this:

Look familiar from the København page? This is one pretty little town! And not just from the ground, I am particularly impressed with the Kastellet - the island where I took the photo of my sister taking a photo of a windmill.

See the arrow:

That is the island. Lets zoom in and look closer at where the arrow is pointing.

Starting to look like something!

Here ... just a sec ...

Let me twist it just a bit - I will show you why in a bit ...

Now, lets flatten it and see what we have:

Tell me I didn't find the location from where I took my photo from:

For comparison:

See ... how fun would this be with every one's photos? Zooming out ...

Oh! Wait, we are SO CLOSE - I've gotta show you something - just right over there where the arrow is pointing ... won't take but a sec ...

Hmmmm, tour boat coming in ... to nothing it looks like, but I promise ... it is there. Can you guess what it is?

Closer ... OK, I will give you a HUGE CLUE the ACTUAL NAME: La Sirenita de Anderson. SO EASY NOW!

And here she is! Hans Christian Andersons Little Mermaid. Doesn't look to hot (but looking from a location a bazillion miles above the earth ... not so bad!)

A little bit better: (and the front of her - we were hovering over the water looking at her and I have a very difficult time doing that to take photos ...)

OK, thanks for being patient ... zooming out again ... um, what do you think that weird line of things are? Funky looking:

Lets go see!

These windmills are HUGE! They are really spectacular to see all lined up coming in on a ferry from Norway, this is as spectacular ...

Well, that was fun ...

Um, y'all can go - just wanted to make my point that Facebook can make me crazy sometimes, but I really like it.

Well, that was the end of my Facebook rant, but I have decided to drive home. Well, home as of 2006! I get to take the bridge!

It is actually very beautiful:

Zooming in ....

And here we go!





And JUST LIKE THAT we are in Malmö, Sweden!

Zooming up and heading north on E6 ...

We drive by beautiful small towns - each with its own, beautiful, picturesque church.

We drive by fields and fields of bright yellow linseed plants making the place look just like heaven!

Soon we are in Göteborg, Sweden ... getting closer!

We stop at the Maximat in Svinesund, Sweden for meat and cheese. Why? There is a huge tax on both in Norway and we can purchase (legally) so many kilograms and take back with us.

Then ... over the bridge (off in the distance there if you can see it) and cross over into Norway!

Still on E6 heading North ... soon we arrive at a small town of Arungen with the prettiest little lake!

This warns us that the exit for E23 towards the fjord is coming up soon if we want to swing by Drøbak. A town once seen is NOT forgotten! This is where julenissen lives! Letters are sent to him here and there is a Julehuset. Lets just say that its sister city in the US would be Santa Claus, Indiana. Jule - means Christmas ...

Thus God Jule! is said here all year round (Good Christmas - as in Happy Christmas in England, or Merry Christmas in the US). Truly a fun, fun, place to come ... and shop!

Also was going to show that if you see roads that seem to lead to nowhere in Norway, not to fear! There are tunnels everywhere. I drew in the dashed lines for you where the road to Drøbak goes through a mountain:

Sadly, we pass the exit, and at the 'Y' continue on E6 instead of E18. E18 is lovely and stays by the water until it goes under the Oslo Fjord and comes out the far side of Oslo, but we are not going that far ...

Oslo suburbs come into view and soon, we are in the city. (To keep you oriented on the maps, I placed a crown with the middle, higher top point pointing to the Slott (or Royal palace):

A little closer and lets start to pan down ...

Zoom past the old military fort along side the fjord and into the city ...

And we are here! Downtown Oslo and on Karl Johans Gate (pronounced: 'carl yo hans got a' gate meaning street). This is Oslo's main street and where all the fun happens - parades, festivals, you name it - it is the place to be! And ends at the Royal Palace.

So, to summarize the map:
1)Stortinget - The Parliament building.

2)Rådhus - City hall

3)Nationaltheatret - See ... Norwegian isn't so hard - just shove all the words together and have them sort of familiar - this is the National Theatre ...

4)I'm sure the itty bitty crown gives it away or the part where the street dead ends there, but this is the Royal Palace just in case you could not figure it out.

But downtown is not our final destination, no - we just need to drive through it. See the arrow? We are heading up there ... it is is a bit of an up - the map doesn't quite show that ...

I am lost! I look and I look and something is wrong! Where are my landmarks, my signposts to show me the way home? Ah, there is one: even if you blow up the photo it is hard to see, but an itty bitty Tryvann Tower is sitting atop the hill the arrow is pointing at - and our house is right by it. The thing throwing me off? All that light brown area!

What in the world? And then it hits me ... oh, how sad. What it USED to be was the Holmenkollen Ski Jump - a beauty that we drove by to get to our house. Since they were chosen for the international Ski Jump Competition coming in 2012 and the Ski Jump was not in code having been built so long ago - they were going to have to build a new one. It had not begun before we left - apparently when these photos were taken it was well under way:

In better days:

And where is the BEAUTIFUL LITTLE CHURCH!?! Oh, man ... I wonder how the Royals feel about the church where they are all baptized and married surrounded by parking lot ...

And ... THE CHURCH in better days ...

And just like that, I am oriented and MY MOUNTAIN comes into view. I am sure that the Norwegians would take umbrage at my possessiveness, but that is just the way it is ...

Drive a little further, get a little closer and it is all there:
1)Holmenkollen Ski Jump and Holmenkollen Restaurant

2)Frognersetteren - another restaurant and, it seems, our sister house. Our house started out as a hunting lodge and was built in 1905 - come to find out this building was built in 1905 also and they look VERY similar ...

3)Around the corner and up, up and there is the beautiful little lake

4)And the T-Bane station (their train / subway combo transportation)

5)Turn and up some more and there are the condos we cannot see because of the trees

6)And turn yet a bit again and we are at the entrance to the 2 1/2 acres our house sits on! (OK, Hans might be a bit miffed that I call it 'Our House' but it SO FELT LIKE HOME!)
Oh! and the arrow? It is pointing to Tryvann Tower - my beacon to show me the way home ...

Close up of Frognersetteren:

Around the corner and a close up right before you get to our house - very isolated ...

Except for - arrow pointing down at the complex of homes owned by someone who we call Sam Walton. We were told two things about these people, never met them but could see their house across the way (a long way, thankfully). One - his name with was unpronounceable and we promptly forgot it and 2) That he was the owner of a big warehouse store there like Sam's Club - thus the name Sam stuck ...

The other arrow is pointing to the T-bane station - nice that we were so close (although we did have two cars - I would take it into downtown because parking was so bizarre there)

Here is top arrow: the condos directly beneath and behind our home, but we could not see them since there were a ton of trees between us and them
and the lower arrow is the location of the entrance to 'our property' ...

And here we are! I notice a few things immediately:

1)The trampoline is still there ... still where we moved it off of the grass

2)The sidewalk is still just a series of flat stones

3)The old garages we used have been torn down (as per Hans plans once we moved out)

4)The new garage has been built (also part of the plan)

Isn't it JUST BEAUTIFUL!?!

And here we go ...




OK, so I could not find this shot in the same season ... sue me:

And we were lucky! A photo from the top of Tryvann Tower of our house. Lucky because they permanently closed it while we lived there - so no more photos of the houses roof ...

And Tryvann Tower ... you would think on a rare, beautiful night with a sunset ... but (and this is not a lie - I am very serious) we had sunsets like this almost EVERY night! I don't know why, but we did.

And, it is funny, but I never got used to them or started taking them for granted. Every night, every time I was home, you could find me with my camera taking photos because they were just so beautiful ...




WELL!!!

Haven't we traveled! Tired? Yeah, I should be getting to bed - or at least doing something productive! But, boy - I had fun! Hope you did too!





Night All ....