Web Publisher's Greetings
	Welcome or welcome back, as the case may be Bucketheads beware: You may find some of what follows amusing Then again you might even if you're only a honorary buckethead like me
| What and Why | Newt Notes | For the Future |

No, except temporarily Donkey Jim has not suddenly become Buckethead Jim. And, yes, this remains Jim McPherson's Travels site. So no, I haven't got around to moving it to a sub-directory of www.phantacea.com as yet, but that's mostly because I'm already running out of space on that server.

Have to say that, after I mount the latest graphics for this installment (a good-sized sample of which can be found on this very welcoming page as well), I'll be a whole lot closer to running out of space on this server, too.

As for server three, as per here, pH-Webworld has had its hardly limitless expansiveness clipped back a number of times by now.

(Which accounts for why the other two are getting so packed. Some of what goes away there comes back here — or that other there. That and the fact that I keep adding to them, it should go without saying.)

As to where the previous update went, that'd be here. For the completists amongst you, a list of lynx to all the Welcoming Pages thus far presented is here.

Donkey Jim is so past tense, as in so Egyptian 2000. Besides, I've only declared myself an honorary buckethead for this Travels update. Last time up I was, after all, Pumpkinhead Jim.

(Which, I've just realized, I neglected to mention in this space back then. Ah well, like I've said many times before, I'm not losing my memory, it's full. Maybe that applies to my mind as well.)

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It's been nearly a year since I updated this site. If you're counting, that's four seasons and two mini-novels on the shelves — ones to go along with the two mosaic novels no doubt already on your shelf. (And, if they're not, here's how to correct that unfortunate omission.)

Over the years I've collected many, many more pictures of my travels than I have stories to go with them.

It's not so much that I have dull trips as I like to keep the Good Ship Me on a steady keel. After all, I only get the one ship and it won't do me any good if it goes down due to sloppy sailing, let alone anything else.

So it is that I collect my own shelves worth of albums containing pictures I took and postcards I bought while elsewhere.

Then I got a digital camera and took even more pictures than I used to when I'm away. I consider many of them nifty or neat, deserving of wider dissemination.

(I'd say wider public exposure but, as per here, I got in trouble for calling my travels site jmcptimps and wouldn't want to re-attract attention from the same, um, critics.)

I tried using Flicker but didn't feel like scanning in albums of prints or boxes of slides. Neither did I feel like knocking down the file sizes for all the digital shots I wanted to mount over there.

The result is still here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/phantajim/ and, yes, I ran out of free space there almost immediately.

Then I saw this cartoon (double-click to enlarge) in a local newspaper.

I immediately realized I had to unleash my own inner buckethead. Rather, put more accurately, I had to release a stack of shots I took above Boquete, Panama, when I passed through there in 2009.

Except of course they're not all of bucketheads. Some, like the raggedy guy further down this panel, would appear to be coconut-heads. (I've a growing collection of just that on my wall of masks — which is not to suggest they grow there, just go there to roost after I've bought them wherever and brought them home.)

I took these pictures in a quirky (to say the least) private garden called El Explorador (double-click for a spectacular view from it). Private as it is, it's nevertheless open to the public for the outrageously exorbitant fee of under $5.00 USD.

For whatever reason the owners and the gardeners who do the actual work have, in their irresistibly named 'Faerie Mine', turned all kinds of junk – shoes, bottles, TVs, watering cans and, yes, buckets – into planters. And not just planters either. If the Scarecrow of Oz died and went to, he might end up here.

As odd as they are, they're hardly the only odd shots I've collected over the years. And that made think of setting up a webpage, one that will dedicated to just that — oddities. Or, as I'm tempted to dub it, fay-saying in the sometime spirit of the PHANTACEA Mythos: 'Peculiarities Preserved for Preposterous Posterity'.

As for what else I'll slip onto the new webpage, hey, only time will tell. A dino-zone featuring the likes of cat-curious is one idea. (It'd be an addition to the collection of styrofoam Saurs I put on Flicker last year but I've been doing dinos since grade school so plenty to mine.)

A new home for the House Head Museum is another idea. Indeed, though I've threatened it before without issue, that will probably my next Travels assignment.

First off, I have to fly off to amass even more shots, hopefully without tipping, or holing, the aforementioned Good Ship Me.

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So, where am I going next — physically, not web-wise? As noted last time up, Australia remains unchecked in terms of the list of places I really wanted to see while growing up. So I'm happy to say, knock wooden head, that's about to change.

Five weeks down under may not seem like much. Not unless you're a calf and it's down udder, in which case you're in cow heaven. (As opposed to cow pie, though you're likely in that too.)

But it is 5 weeks more than I've been before. Besides, inclination, health and finances cohering, I can always go back.

As per usual, down in the graphics table are notes on most of images found on this page. Quite intentionally, some of them provide lynx to other webpages on this website.

Feel free to click merrily away. I've been doing online travelogues since 1996 so there's plenty to read and look at in terms of on-the-spot shots.

And while you're at it, do pop over to www.phantacea.com and/or pH-Webworld for even more free stuff online.

(Stuff that's almost as lavishly illustrated to boot, though I wouldn't recommend kicking your computer. Of course drop-kicking your cell phone, if that's how you get there, wouldn't hurt so much, especially not economically.

(Do ask the buckethead you boot it into to open his or her mouth first, please.)

Feel free to open your cheque book as well as the website(s). As I've said many times before, the more sales I get the merrier, and more travelled, I become. JMcP

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