Today’s giveaway is something any computer user/photographer can take advantage of.

In most of the photos we post online, you can see our Copyright CarrieAndJonathan.com and the name of the place where we were when we took the photo.

Some people have told us that the watermark interferes with the pictures, but we have the originals, and the idea is to protect the pictures while giving them context.

(So while we could make our watermark smaller, we choose to keep it larger.)

Today, I’m going to show you how to watermark any photos you want using the exact same tool we use, and you can make your watermark any size you want.

The program we use is called Fast Image Resizer for Java (FIR4J) which is basically geek-speak for “really-cool-program-that-resizes-and-watermarks-pictures.” The program is free from SourceForge.

You can download it for free here.

Some genius built it.

So once you have the program on your computer, unzip and run it.

There are lots of options you can use within FIR4J, and I run through a few of the basics in the screen capture video below.

If you have ever wanted to watermark your photos in bulk, or watermark them in a simple way, I highly recommend fir4J.

It has saved us gobs of time (that’s the official amount of time – gobs) while sharing our travels with people via our website in the photos we watermark.

You don’t have to comment or anything today… because the giveaway is right here in the videos below. If you’ve ever wanted to know how to watermark images, these videos will be a big gift for you.

Basic Watermarking

How To Watermark Images (Advanced)

India is a country comprised of some of the most different cultures (different from us) we’ve experienced on our travels.

It is also a country where it’s easy to find a lot of people who are living and working for a dollar or two per day.

Here is a video where we met a potter:

The man who we saw making these pots would make as many as 30 pots in a day.

He would make, on average, $5 for those 30 pots.

After his expenses for clay and tools, he would make $2.00-$3.00/day.

He and his family (including 4 children) lived on that salary.

What’s even more amazing than the small amount he earns for his manual labor is the quality of his work.

Watching him work was amazing.

He was a true master of his craft, handling the clay and creating beautiful pieces of art by hand.

Looking at this picture we took reminded me of a bible verse I heard a lot growing up.

It’s a verse about how we are shaped by a higher power. This guiding of our lives can be seen in “the potter’s hands”.

And so I’ve turned one of the pictures I took there into a poster for today’s giveaway.

Here is what the poster looks like:

For this giveaway, Carrie and I will be paying for printing and shipping.

You get to choose the size of this poster (up to 36 inches by 24 inches).

Alternatively, if you would just like the picture, with or without the bible verse, we can do that as well.

Alternatively, if you know for sure that you would like to buy a print of this poster, let us know what size of poster (in inches), and we’ll send you a price. (Will be less than $20, depending on size).

All you have to do to be entered to win this poster is 2 steps:

Step 1:

Like this post on Facebook, +1 it on Google, or Tweet it.

Step 2:

Post one of your favorite bible verses, sayings, or a favorite quote using the comment field below.

(Make sure to include your best email address so we can contact you when you win.)

Happy 2012!

Today, we are announcing Giveaway Fridays!

Throughout 2012, Carrie and I are giving away something every Friday.

Each Friday, we will talk about something we have experienced or some helpful product we’ve used in our lives.

Each Friday, you will have the opportunity to enter to win something we really like.

We will choose a winner at random (from those who follow the giveaway instructions), and that winner will be announced the following Friday.

The catch?

In order to enter, you’ll have to share the giveaway with your Facebook, or Google+, or Twitter friends.

You will sometimes have to complete some small task in order to enter the contest.

Now that you know… stay tuned! Our first Friday Giveaway deals with a very unique Poster of Pottery.

Welcome to 2012, and happy new year to our friends around the world as well as in Colorado.

* Picture credit: http://www.valmg.com/index.php/2011/great-big-list-of-giveaways-post/

Carrie grew up in a small town on the eastern plains of Colorado called Holyoke.

When we were there about 2 weeks ago, the town’s newspaper, the Holyoke Enterprise, did a front-page report on our travels and experiences of the last two years.

The article was longer than I expected it would be.  They did a nice job covering our experiences from two years of travel.

If you’d like to see what they said, click the link to the Holyoke Enterprise, or read a copy of the article here on our site.

- Coming home to Touch Screen Everything -

3 years ago when I got my tablet PC (before we left on our travels), I was one of only two people I knew who had a tablet PC.

Coming home, we’ve found that everyone’s cell phones are touch screens, that everyone is talking about apps, iPads, and Android tablets, and some game called “Angry Birds”.

Carrie asked my aunt something at Thanksgiving.  A conversation happened, and she told Carrie she would just text it to her.  But Carrie doesn’t have a cell phone set up in the US yet.  It’s assumed that she would have a cell phone with a texting plan.  Further, everyone texting just touches their screens to type the message.

When we left America over 2 years ago, it was not this way.

Two years ago, people asked us for help for how to use their cell phones, because they didn’t know how to use them.

Two years ago, my tablet PC was a bit of a novelty.

It’s not that I feel slighted or like I need to have the latest and greatest devices.

It’s just that I am absolutely amazed at how rapidly touch screen technology has become the daily life of the vast majority of the people with whom we have spent time since returning to the US. 

I am also reminded (although it was this way when we left) at how ubiquitously accepted and expected it is that you will be carrying around an electronic appendage all the time (otherwise known as a cell phone).

Tonight it’s 5 degrees Fahrenheit.

For all of our Celsius friends, that is -15 degree Celsius.

You may wonder why anyone would live in a place where it gets that cold every year, sometimes staying that cold for the entire week.

I’ve wondered myself for a few seconds here and there over the past couple of weeks as I’ve re-acclimated to the first snow, doing things like driving on ice and shoveling the driveway, and experiencing the first really biting winter cold I’ve experienced in 2+ years.

But when I look around at the beauty of Colorado, I’m reminded (almost to the minute) of all the wonderful things that this part of the world offers, and I realize why I love it here.

Over the next few weeks and months (years?), I will share some of the things I love about Colorado.

I am going to do this partially in an effort to get our friends from around the world to come and visit us here, and partially to catalog and point out (for myself), some of the things I love about Colorado.

Stay tuned…

I love food. I love trying new things. (Tell that to my 9 year old picks-onions-out-of-jarred-pasta-sauce self.)

One of the best parts about our travels the last two years has been trying the local favorites. We’ve had some amazingly good food.

As well as some that I am happy to have tried once. So that I never have to again.

Here’s a list of my most remembered food from each country we visited on this trip.

1. Costa Rica – Pinto Gallo (also known as beans and rice)
2. Panama – Fried chicken
3. Nicaragua – Atol (kind of like a thick corn and cinnamon gluey soup)
4. El Salvador – Pupusas (delicious concoctions of a filled tortilla)
5. Honduras – really bad beer. Like really bad.
6. Guatemala – Hearts of Palm, Avocado, and basil salad
7. Ecuador – Cuy (guinea pig)
8. Colombia – some kind of fried sweet that we bought from a street vendor
9. Peru – Beer (they have a dark beer that was really really good)
10. Tahiti – Vanilla beans
11. New Zealand – Kumara (sweet potato)
12. Singapore – the Vietnamese food we had there. It was awesome.
13. Indonesia – (boiled vegetables with peanut sauce)
14. Hong Kong – dim sum
15. Macau – Natas (egg custard pastries)
16. Thailand – Chiang Mai Noodles
17. Vietnam – Bahn Xeo (a rice crepe filled with vegetables)
18. Cambodia –
19. Malaysia – Mee Gorang (egg noodles with spicy sauce and vegetables)
20. Brunei –
21. India – Matari Poha (rice with onion, peas, cumin and served for breakfast)
22. Italy – Gnocchi
23. Slovenia – homemade fresh wine
24. Slovakia – Segedin Goulash
25. Czech Republic – Rajkaomajka (simmered beef in tomato and cinnamon sauce)
26. Hungary – Goulash
27. Germany – Schnitzel
28. Finland – Reindeer
29. Estonia – Dark honey beer
30. Spain – Papas Brava

What do the last two years look like in numbers?

Check it out:

Number of:

• Countries visited: 30
• Months gone: 26
• Days gone: 772
• Currencies: 20
• Beds we’ve slept in: 119
• Car Rentals: 3
• Campervan (RV) Rentals: 3
• Flights taken: 47
• Long distance buses taken (6 hours or longer): 16
• Long distance Trains (6 hours or longer): 6
• Hotel cost: $9,536.74
• Apartment rentals: 8
• Apartment cost: $8,618.99
• Average Monthly Housing Cost (over 2 years): $698.29
• Flight cost: $14,898.84
• Total cost: $67,817.01

I know that that “total cost” number looks like a lot.

But, if you think about it, that is all of our living expenses, and traveling around the world.

How much does it cost you to live for two years?

Little Things Are A Big Deal (In America).

Since returning to the United States (we have been here 11 days at this point), I have come to the realization that in America, little things are a big deal.

This works for the positive and the negative side of things.

Positive Examples:

• If a floor isn’t quite level when your house is built, it *could* be considered to be a little thing, but in America, your floor will end up being level, because you will make it into a big deal until it is fixed. This is not the case in all places in the world, but it is good that it will get corrected in America.  Unlevel floors can be a safety issue, and having level floors is just nice.
• Every bathroom we’ve been in since returning to America has toilets that work, toilet seats, toilet paper, soap in the sink, paper towels or a hand dryer, and hot and cold water. In the big picture, these are small things, but they are very nice to be able to rely on.  Even the Wal-Mart bathrooms seem nice to me now.
• People have the ability to get anything at any time.  Wal-Mart is open 24 hours and stocks products from every part of our planet.  That alone is amazing.

Negative:

• It feels like (even if it’s not true) that people have to have every little thing… but they have so much stuff, they often don’t even know what they have.  (This may be the case in many places, but it’s especially visible to me in America.)
• If a child doesn’t get what they want in America (and most American children have a LOT already), many of them are instantly whining and in tears and fits. In many countries we were in during the past 2 years, children responded differently when they didn’t get what they wanted.
• On the news, graphics fly in, announcers make things huge and scary, and the news is unnecessarily overdone at the expense and misfortune of others.  (I have so many examples of this from just 10 days of news snippets caught here and there, but the radio news was talking about 3 girls who were almost crushed in the shaft of a faulty elevator “There were terrifying screams from the girls in the 911 call they made.  Listen to this…”). Dramatic stories are made even more dramatized, unnecessarily and at the expense of others.
• If something even the slightest bit abnormal happens (30 minute delay for a flight, power goes out for 30 seconds, phone stops working), it becomes a big issue that everyone around has to know about.

Someone suggested to me that this because Americans watch a lot of drama on TV, and they want their lives to feel equally dramatic, and so conversations become about 1-upmanship and drama.

When things don’t feel dramatic enough, stories about little things (even if they are truly little things) are designed to create drama for their listeners.  Also, it just seems that many people just want and expect every little thing to be “right”.

I think it is a good theory that people overdramatize small things because they want to be part of the drama.  (“You won’t believe what happened to me on my last flight.  We got delayed by 2 hours.” “Oh, I can top that…”)

Regardless of the reason, adjusting to (seemingly) nearly everything being a big deal has been a bit overwhelming.

Carrie and I have been doing some goal setting before returning to the US. 

Carrie asked me if I would like to have a best-selling travel book.

Contrary to what most people think, I know that “best-selling” means “best-marketed”.

This involves a significant amount of work, which goes way beyond just writing the book.

Writing the book is the easy part.

That’s not to say that writing is unimportant or insignificant.

Of course the process of having a best-selling book starts with having something valuable to say, and knowing how to say it in a way that relates to others.

But lots of people have hugely valuable things to say, and truly amazing messages.

Many of those messages are never heard because we live in a big, noisy world.

We live in a world where people believe that what they see on TV (especially on the news) is a true snapshot of the world (It’s not).

This is especially true in societies where “mass media” means “mass control” of the information people receive.

People believe what they see on the news, because it’s the news. 

The news has their attention because it’s had their attention their entire lives.

And attention is the most scarce (and therefore most valuable) resource in the western world today.

If someone has a message or product that is valuable for you, you should understand that it is highly unlikely it will land in your lap or on your iPad by default. 

That doesn’t happen very often (that an idea or product goes “viral” without someone aggressively promoting the idea or product).

In order to be heard or read, people with valuable messages have to be good at marketing.

People have to do everything that it takes to get (and keep) people’s attention.

So in having been asked if I would like to have a best-selling book, I had to be honest with Carrie and with myself.

I told her I wasn’t sure if I was ready to work that hard, or deal with the naysayers, in order to get people’s attention; in order to make the book become a best-selling book.

And that led to some serious realizations for both of us.

We have fears about putting products (and ourselves) into the world.

So do most of the people we share our ideas with.

They have fears for themselves, and they have fears for us. 

And those fears have come to us in various ways over the past 2 years of travel, and especially since returning to America and re-connecting with family and friends.

But there are simple responses to those fears.

I share these fears and responses here in a list I’m calling, “Get over it.” 

Fear:  It’s too much work.
GET OVER IT!:  Oh, like pushing a wheelbarrow filled with lychees for sale down the street, just 2 weeks after you’ve just given birth to a baby because you have no other option? (This is something we saw in Ecuador.  The woman was obviously in pain, and was carrying her baby slung across her front in an old blanket.  We talked with her.  She had no other option so she did what she had to do.)

Fear: I won’t be able to help all the people who ask for help.
GET OVER IT!: Yep.  You’re right.  So hire some people to help you, and then do your best.  And do your honest best.

Fear: I can’t serve everyone.
GET OVER IT!: Yep.  You can’t.  So what?  You can do your best.  So do your best.

Fear:  What if people view me as egotistical or bragging?
GET OVER IT!:  The people who view you that way, already do view you that way.  Many people view you that way before they’ve even met you.  There’s nothing you can do about those people.  You can do your very best. So do your very best.

Fear: I don’t know enough.
GET OVER IT!: You know more than 99.9999% of all the people who. have. ever. existed.  EVER!

Fear: Why would anyone want to hear what I have to say?
GET OVER IT!: Because people have already said they want to hear what you have to say.  Of course not everyone wants to hear you!  Who cares.  Do your very best, and let the rest go.

Fear: What makes me better/different?
GET OVER IT!: Every person on the planet has things which make them better at something than someone else. What makes me different is that I constantly find ways to share my unique qualities with as many people as possible, depositing the wealth within me into the world at large.

And yes, among my goals is to write – and do the work to market – a best-selling travel book.