Preparations & Blog layout changes

I've made a few changes to this page in preparations for the next trip. As you can see the background and color scheme is new, I find the black background helps the pictures stand out a bit more.

I also added a new widget on the right sidebar at the top. It now shows a live picture from the bridge of cruise ship we will be aboard. Notice a few things: The time shown is GMT, not local time aboard the ship - we will be crossing three time zones en route. Here are the offsets:
Iceland = GMT;
Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Poland = GMT+2 hrs;
Estonia, Finland = GMT + 3 hrs;
Russia (St. Petersburg) = GMT + 4 hrs

Also notice that just because it looks like daylight, doesn't mean it is daytime. I saw some pictures recently that were just after midnight and the sun was coming up! Recall that we will be very far north in the Baltic Sea and the nights will be very short. Also note that sometimes the webcam points off to sea in the direction of travel and other times it points back to the deck.

Right below the webcam from the ship, you'll see a Flickr slide show. These are pictures from my previous travels and other photos. If you click on that image, you'll open a new page showing my Flickr photos. From there you can browse through older photos and make comments too.

Maps and Locations: Below the Blog Archive, you'll see a box with links. One of the links says: Open Google Earth KML File. This will download a special file that is designed to be opened with Google Earth. If you have Google Earth installed, and you open that file, you'll see some of my photos loaded on the map, pinned to their location on the earth.

I may also be adding additional mapping data on the GPSed.com site, such as this one from a previous trip: http://gpsed.com/track/6062241368334142907. If I do I will post a new link.

One other option, which shows the location of most of my travel photos on Flickr is to use the Flickr Map link and navigate and zoom the map to see where the pictures are located. This map is based on Yahoo Maps, which may be more familiar if you don't use Google Maps.