Dual Monitor Set Up, 19 inch CRT versus LCD, Book Cataloging

Dual Monitor Set Up

I've been wanting to try a dual monitor or multiple monitor set up for myself for quite some time, and finally got the chance to on my home system.

All I gotta say is - if you work with graphics, programming, webpages, etc or you're just a power user, it's something to consider. Or maybe a must-have.

Basically, with my set up, I am extending my desktop across two monitors. I can move my mouse cursor from the right screen to the left seamlessly. I can drag programs and windows there; graphics, text, anything. I can copy and paste from one to the other.

So far I don't always start the other monitor, but when I need another window open or more space it's great. See the short video above. The vid shows moving a window with a high res satellite/GPS mapping program from one monitor to the next. Each display can have different resolutions, or you can even set the second monitor on it's side and have the display rotated for page-like editing. On mine I keep both monitors at the same resolution, though one is slightly smaller in physical size then the other.

I could also add a third (or more) if I wanted to, but each display uses video resources, of course.

A minor annoyance is my dock program (Rocketdock) sits over on the top of the second display, and no matter where I try to dock it it stays on that monitor until I switch off the dual set up. Not a big thing, as it's a quick matter to jump the cursor from the right monitor across to the second one and drop the dock down.

I've tried this set up with editing a photo pixel-by-pixel in the right window, and having the full-size photo with the changes showing up in real-time in the left. I've monitored the upload and set up of a Wiki in the left while I read my mail and wrote e-mail replies in the right. And kept real-time track of an approaching Nor'easter via NEXRAD in the left while working on a website and doing research in the right.

I haven't been able to get Flight Simulator 2004 to work with the dual monitor set up. I cursorily read a quick blurb on setting it up and I need to do something extra for mine. When I get time I'll check it out.

And I haven't tried it in Slackware Linux as yet (I loath trying to set anything new up in Linux ;().

Like I said above - I don't always have both displays enabled, but that may be more of just getting used to working with multiple windows actually being displayed rather then using Window's task-switching or the taskbar to switch from one thing to the next.

Interesting also; doing a screen capture captures both screens in one long rectangle (like widescreen). Excellent for graphics. Pretty interesting.

19 inch CRT versus LCD

I recently picked myself up a 19 inch CRT monitor, which I've been wanting for a long time.

you say. A CRT? But that's so 20th century. Why would you; a computer guy, want that?

Well, a couple reasons.

Firstly, CRT monitors aren't much in demand now so people, businesses, and computer places are unloading them as quickly and cheaply as possible.

Secondly, I LIKE CRT's. Maybe I'm the only person, but I tend to like CRT's better then LCD's. There, I said it.

I like the look of the colors.

I also like the scanlines, the shiny texture of the screen, how they smell and look, the static that comes off them when you touch them and the dust that gets attracted to the aforementioned static, and their weight. Okay, maybe the latter list is tongue-in-cheek, but I do think CRT's display colors much better and vibrantly then LCD's.

But frankly, I don't care all that much either way - I mostly wanted the 19 inch rectangular monitor. I'm not adverse to having an LCD, but I still prefer a CRT.

Anyway, this 19 inch is great for working with graphics, though I still do a lot of switching back and forth (via a simple click in Rocketdock) between 800x600 and 1240X800 and higher.

In the dual monitor set up I use the 19 inch as the main (of course) and a 17 inch Compaq CRT monitor as the secondary.

On a side note; can you imagine how many CRT's are being thrown out every year, every day for that matter? I have a bunch of them sitting in my garage that I can't even give away.

I have a thousand books. Yes, a thousand.

No, no, that's not exactly correct - I have over a thousand. I'm not exactly sure how many over a thousand any more. Because, you see, I used to keep a meticulous database of each one but in the last 5 or so years I've gotten behind, by a lot.

So last weekend, while my wife was at a football game in Buffalo (I don't watch football - my sports interests run more for mechanical-related sporting events; if it's got wheels I'll watch it).

While she was gone for the weekend I set out to find some way to catalog my books easier, and update everything with more updated data.

Awhile back I had run across a freeware program (I can't tell you what it was, I didn't keep it - usually I keep a copy of any interesting piece of software I come across, or at least the links to it but for some reason I didn't) which accessed the Internet to update books as well as CD's and movies in a collection.

After lots of research (when I was younger I wouldn't mind spending a whole weekend alone, but I've become 'too' attached to my wife and miss her when she is gone, so I have to keep real busy;) I found a number of programs; both free and commercial, which will scan Amazon, the Library of Congress, and any number of other sources for info on the books I enter and automatically fill out the entries for me.

Some search only by book title and author, some have that option or search by ISBN (International Standard Book Number, the long sequence of numbers that are on pretty much any book you buy, usually in the copyright page and on the barcode on the back cover). A few will even use a hand scanner, a flatbed scanner, or a special barcode scanner to quickly scan the books.

Some will queue up as many books as you want to enter and then do the searches in en mass, then letting you choose or combine the various entries you want to include, including book covers.

I haven't tried the bar code scanning but entering ISBN numbers via the computer keypad and queuing up a number of books works great. Book covers, titles, authors, synopses, categories, notes on what series the book is from, and all sorts of miscellaneous info are available. Exactly what I am looking for.

The biggest thing is choosing one. Oh, and entering the ISBN's for over a thousand books...

Neelix (cat) Fetching, Flash Video Quality Again, and Human (Technological) Evolution and Computers

One of our kittens consistently fetches toys. Geordi (one of our other cats) and Katie (my father's cat) will do this also, but they get sick of it quickly and they were more into it as kittens.

Neelix will do it over and over for long periods, and will even drop it when told to. His brother picked up on what he was doing, by watching a few times and did the same, but rarely will most of the time. Their sister has no interest in fetching whatsoever, only playing with what I throw.

See video below (excuse the slight mess, we're still cleaning up after the remodel of the other room so we still have a few things scattered around).





The more you play and work with a cat (or any animal) the more and quicker they seem to be able to learn. Hmmm, just like humans.

This morning we saw a story on chimps that could consistently remember numbers flashed on a screen much better then an adult human (the researchers mentioned that children would probably be able to do it better then adults). Makes you think.

But I do think that a possibility is that this may have to do with a more specialized part of their evolution, possibly survival-related, that makes them better at this particular thing then the sign of a larger ability and intelligence. Just playing devil's advocate.

Flash Video Quality

As mentioned in a previous post, video quality suffers when converting to Flash video and the high compression involved in it.

The original high-res video the size was around twenty-three megs, conversion to mono audio with a medium bitrate, and medium quality video in Windows Media Video format knocked it down to about 1.32 meg.

After uploading here using Blogger's video upload and hosting the quality suffered immensely.

Again, I still prefer to host a video directly, instead of via YouTube, Google Video or (as I did here) Blogger's video storage. But it's quick and convenient to do so when the video doesn't have to be high quality.

Human (Technological) Evolution and Computers

I sometimes wonder though - are complex and moderately complex things like recording a video, connecting the camcorder, camera, or phone to a computer, and then uploading and hosting it on the Internet increasing the intelligence of humankind?

I'm a history buff, and it seems to me that some simple advances in primitive technology were so ludicrously basic that any modern kid would be able to have figured out better ways of doing things. Maybe it's just hindsight, it's easy to say that. But I suspect not.

Gene Roddenberry took this idea to a new level in a way that maybe some SF and Star Trek fans may not notice or realize and critics passed off as "bad science" or just a story vehicle.

If you watched the episodes at all you might notice that a number of his characters; adults and children alike, in various episodes of the all of the series - were able to almost intuitively use both alien instruments as well as those they weren't familiar with in general, or from the past or future. It always bothered me a bit.

But, even on a small scale, I'm able to sit down at unfamiliar software, computers, and other devices and figure them out in a short while; almost without thinking and on a intuitive and subconscious level. I've always been able to do that with machines and electronics, and I know others do also. And you see kids doing it all the time.

Can you imagine human evolution and affinity for technology evolving over hundreds of years? There's really no imagining what the species will be like or what it can do, maybe ol' Gene had something figured out there.

If you look at modern kids, even very young ones, they are able to make leaps of logic (when it comes to technology) that I wouldn't have been able to at their age, nor most of my peers. Yet some of the other life decisions of young people might be more questionable to those older then them.

I often wonder though, if the giant strides we've made in computer technology have meant that we haven't made consistent advances in other fields of human evolution, as well as other areas of technological evolution in general.

Where's our space habitats, our space-base manufacturing and zero gee medicine. Why are we still using internal combustion and burning fossil fuels when we have massive amounts of more energy available - solar, wind, geothermal, hydrogen, etc - to power the US without using a drop of oil (except in the manufacture of the plastics and polymers for doing this)?

I wonder also, in some fields of computer-related items - why are some still very behind? Is it because something like artificial intelligence really is hard to achieve, or because money and immediate demand drives research and innovation?

Think of personal aircraft. What's needed to make this happen? I believe that computer control, both of the individual aircraft as well as a network of traffic control would have to be in place for this to even begin to happen. Computer controls both in using the network (able to make automated decisions outside of what the network is telling it to do - like an uncontrolled aircraft heading in it's direction, or emergency procedures) as well as when the personal aircraft must be under the individuals own control. Big uphill battle to make any of this happen.

Busy, Finished the Dining Room, Theresa Birdfeeder Webcam, Black Friday, Logitech Orbit Webcam, Voice Thing from Vozme, Firefox 3 Alpha, XNView

Busy

It's been kinda a hectic couple weeks, as mentioned in a previous post. Hell, a hectic month come to think of it. With Xmas coming and I'm getting ready for that, then there was Thanksgiving, Black Friday (we never miss it), and all this month and next customers will be getting ready for Xmas and gearing up their businesses for it. Throw in the remodeling of our dining room... yea, I haven't had much time for blogging or much of interest to blog about.

Dining Room Remodel

Our house is OLD. Yea, OLD in capitals.

It's so old that even the historical department of the Watertown Daily Times and library couldn't find the original date that the house was built, or any references to when it was built or who built it (they did do a story on it many years ago).

Some say that War of 1812 soldiers were served in the serving window downstairs, and that their food was made in the very large cellar fireplace and dutch oven. Newspapers were found many years ago in the walls, from the 1812 period. The construction and how the stones are cut is certainly more primitive looking then the other stone houses I have examined, including my friend's up the road.

So who knows exactly how old it is. BTW, the pic at right is an old picture from a remodel that was done and before the house was in any kind of livable condition; well before I was born, it shows the dutch oven. I don't have a recent pic because it's hard to take one, as the modern furnace I put in a few years ago is right in front of it.

It has great character; people say. I'd love to own an old house, other's quip.

But it's also a lot of pain-in-the-ass trouble.

Like when we're remodeling the stone and original wood part. Nothing's straight.

And before you say that's true of many houses, including new ones, this is beyond that. Oh believe me - it's not your run-of-the-mill f'ew degrees off' or 'few inches off'. Very hard to make anything come even close to being right. It's so nice to work in the new addition that we put in - like night-and-day.

We've remodeled all the rooms in the house (except the third bedroom which is going to be a storage/craft room) and the dining room was last. We went with a bit of a rustic look, to cover the problems that would have taken major demo and reconstruction to fix. It's just a dining room after all, we walk through it and that's it.

The Pergo floor looks the best of anything we've done, I think - it was extremely easy to do, just as I suspected, but time-consuming due to all the cuts. The walls had to be patched, completely skim-coated and redone, and I had to rip off years of stucco and concrete and plaster from the fireplace, and cover and seal up everything. Then we built a closest, trimmed doors, leveled floors, added new support legs in the cellar, and a host of other things. Long, time-consuming.

But it's finally almost done, except for a little trim, a little touch-up, some tweaking, and such.

Theresa Birdfeeder Webcam

If you like webcams from around the area, or like birds or like to keep track of the weather - I have a webcam up.

There's a couple webcams in the area like the one overlooking Public Square in Watertown.

But I just ran across another birdfeeder webcam in the region, right in Theresa. You can find it here. It's hosted by a company called Wildbirds.net and even has a streaming webcam. Nice. The owner tells me that they are starting a new website up called NNYNow that may compete with Newzjunky. Should be interesting.

For more local webcams go to the webcam page Courtesy of Northern-NYS.com.

Black Friday

Black Friday is crazy. Crazy and exciting. You have to have a certain stomach for it, sure; and a certain attitude toward the whole thing.

There's certainly some good deals. If you don't mind waiting in line, the crowds, pushing, shoving, and such. And if you don't mind doing the same sometimes. Despite what some people say it's not junk or cheap crap (well, some is), you can get some great deals.

And it's a great way to observe human interactions at some of their most primitive (shopping ;).



Logitech Orbit Webcam

One of the things I picked up was a Logitech Orbit webcam for $19 (though I suspect the price will continue to drop on this, the whole face-following part didn't seem to catch on). The things sell for way over $100 normally.

This is not your normal cheapo webcam, the video and still quality is excellent (go to my webcam page and click the fav pictures link to compare the quality of the current pic with that of previous ones).

Plus it has a long cord, an optional stalk the head can be mounted on, is zoomable, has a built-in USB mike, high-quality optics, high resolution, and does pretty good in the dark (like my old Connectix/Logitech Quickcam). But perhaps the most interesting features is that it is motorized with servos and will follow your face as you videoconference and use a messenger program with video capabilities.

I only needed a new and better webcam to repalce my outdoor one, though I do videoconference with a group of web-designers and computer dudes once a week, so it'll be used for this also.

The face-following works well, though a bit jerky and the motors are loud (the cats are alternately scared and fascinated). The software that comes with it plugs into various messenger programs to allow you to use the face-following feature (say that five times real fast), and has some other okay options. Including using avatars instead of your real face. The avatars are freaky (see the one at left), their lip movements and expressions follow your's. Creeptastic.

I've been playing around with some third-party software that allows extra things to be done with it, and some examples of hacks. Like following the color red instead of a face. Lot of potential for interesting experiments and hacking with it.

Voice Thing from Vozme

Interesting little audio/voice applets from vozme.com that allows you to add the ability for a visitor to your website or blog to hear the text spoken in a a fairly good synthesized voice. The applet below allows you to swipe some text and hear it, but there's other options available like voice greetings and such when you enter a page.

Firefox 3 Alpha

Still evaluating Firefox 3 Alpha occasionally, and keeping up on some of the nightly builds when possible. The memory usage seems to be getting better, but there's still some leakage I think.

My ongoing thought is that many people who will update when the final version of the release comes out will be disappointed that it doesn't visually look different. It will probably be a letdown for some people, but rest-assured under the hood there seems to be some differences.

I've yet to test the malware, anti-virus integration, and better phishing filter with anything substantial. But the speed with the new rendering engine may be faster. It's so subjective sometimes with net-lag.

XnView

I do a lot with graphics and photos, sometimes hundreds a week. Displaying, editing, evaluating for websites, etc. The Windows XP graphics viewer is nice, and M$'s add-ons for it greatly enhance it. And when something heavy-duty is needed I got to something like Paint Shop Pro, Gimp2, etc.

But many times you just want to quickly look at something, or maybe just as quickly fix a red-eye, do a little editing, resizing, or such. I ran across XnView
and after trying out various other display programs I am happily using this. Previously I used Irfanview and frankly this is very similar, but with many more options.

At the top of alternatives I tried was Fast Stone Viewer, a close second when it came to this sort of program. It's downfall for me was the program allowing only once instance of itself to run. Many times I want to compare pics side-by-side, I couldn't seem to do that with this program. Otherwise, the interface was nicer and it may have have had a few more tertiary options. But it read only about twenty file formats.

At the other end of the spectrum was programs like Picasa from Google. Gahk, nothing like making a program tailored to the lowest common denominator when it comes to computer users, though it's excellent for cataloging your photos.

Xnview can use Adobe Photoshop/Paint Shop Pro plugins, can do four hundred file formats, does lots of conversions, has many specific plugins and addons for doing various things, can edit EXIF, has lossless rotating and cropping and all the regular basic photo and graphic manipulation, simple editing, ability to load other programs of your specification, has batch conversions, imports TWAIN and clipboard items, is drag'n'drop of course, and generally does a good job of replacing the standard Windows graphics and fax viewer.

And it's free, can't beat that. Give it a try if you need a graphics viewer.

Kittens Playing

Finally got around to trying the blogger's video upload. Let's see how it works, with this video of the kittens taking turns playing with a toy.

Remodeling Delay, Rocketdock, California Wildfires and Natural Barriers, Very Old Coin

Remodeling - Blog Delay

Not much in the way of blog entries here for the last while. We're taking some time to remodel the last full room we are going to do - the dining room.

Below are the entries I was working on before I start, the wildfire one is, of course, a bit out of date.

Rocketdock

You guys with Mac's have one thing that I really love - the program dock.

I tried a lot of dock programs for Windows - Sideslide, Rk_launcher, Objectdock, Mobydock, Y'z Dock, etc., and finally settled on Rocketdock. The website says "The single greatest piece of software" and that's not far from the truth.

It seems to take up the least amount of resources but has the most features I want. RK_launcher is very similar but uses slightly more resources, and doesn't have as many options and abilities. Sideslide is rather unique, in that you can have a workspace or desktop right on it. This was the closest runner-up for me.

Rocketdock also uses Objectdock docklets, SysStats plug-ins, and is completely customizable and skinnable. I like using YAM and KKMenu on it - to access the Start Menu as well as storing installed program shortcuts without taking up resources by having them on the ol' Windows Start Menu, but you can run any program or add-on, pretty much.


California Wildfires and Natural Barriers

Amazing about the wildfires in California, over 320,000 people at this point! Even incredibly dangerous tornadoes caused by the fires.

This is another case of humankind not being aware of the natural barriers to disaster. Another good example - the Army Corps of Engineers' years of messing with the natural system in Louisiana, destroying much of it to the point that they made the flooding much, much worse then it could have been. There was a lot of blame to be had, from the president on down, but the ACE probably did the most damage over the years preceding the hurricane.

Old Coin, or Whatever It Is...

I thought I would post a pic of this old coin or medallion or button. My father found it out in his back yard when he first moved into his place many, many years ago. The emblem on it seems reminiscent of the Grange, Freemasons, Masons, etc. If anyone has any info we'd sure be interested.

Playing Hookie - A Bike Ride on the Lakeview Wildlife Trail and Beach

Finally got a chance to type this up. The week before last week the weather reports seemed to be pointing toward there being an extremely nice day, so I decided to just do something for myself and take a few relaxing hours to myself. I always feel guilty; there's so much to do, so much work to do, even on weekends I'm thinking about what I could be doing. Anyway...

So the day came and it was looking overcast, and like it might be heading toward a rainy day but for the time-being it looked good.




So I attached my bike carrier to the car, secured the bike to it, grabbed lots of water and a small easy-to-carry lunch (and my camera and GPS, of course!), and drove down to the Lakeview Wildlife area. The beginning of the trial is on a small lake, and the trail curves around this and then out through the protected dune system and finally to the open beach.

Only one truck was there in the entrance parking lot, and no sign of anyone.

The trail itself was nice, cool, and the day was good for riding. The trail itself is fairly good riding, a few ruts, lots of leaves this time of year but not hiding anything big but the occasional stone.

Once through the wooded trail it was over the elevated walkway and onto the beach.

I headed down to the very edge of the water, and rode right along the interface between sand and fluid. Incredible, something I guess in the back of my mind I had always wanted to do - though I thought perhaps it would be ocean I'd be riding along.

Next time we take a trip to the ocean I'm taking my bike...maybe.

The sand was nicely packed away from the sand dunes and easy riding. I went right first, until I reached one of the Southwick Beach parking areas and then rode back in the other direction - passing where I had exited the elevated walkway.

After riding for a bit I found another elevated walkway (pic below, right), I hauled to bike up the short steps and rode down the short walkway until I reached the other end - a small very-low-water-level lake (or large pond) called Lakeview Pond. After a long look along the shore of the other side I picked out the canoe ramp and then the truck and my car in the parking lot.

I hauled the bike up the stairs and rode down and back to the beach again. Propping the bike up I took a few pics, and unstowed my lunch and sat on a large fallen tree and sat back to unwind. When was the last time I'd taken a real vacation? Years. This wasn't the same of course, but nice for a few hours.

In the distance, in the direction I was heading, I could see a person and a dog getting closer.

After packing my lunch back up and back into my bike's pack, I headed out again. After a bit I passed by the guy with his dog, a polite wave and a glance from the dog. He had walked quite a long ways from the Southwick Beach area or the Lakeview trail.

I continued, at times, speeding up, other time's barely crawling. Even the seagulls didn't really mind me, I rode through the middle of them a few times and they just skipped away without much fear or concern.

Further down I ran across a place where someone had had a fire and likely a party, from the looks of it.

Above this place balanced a piece of wood on another tall piece of wood, an old tree stripped of it's limbs or something. I messed around with it, trying to figure out how it was balanced. It spun, but didn't fall off. Someone must have nailed it on, and then set the whole thing up. Strange (see pic at bottom).

Finally, I had biked far enough, I could have went miles from the looks of it. The day was perfect, not too warm, not too cool, overcast but not dark, and the water was misty enough so that I could only see a short distance - not even the Oswego nuke plant could be seen.

On the way back I rode even slower for the most part, and stopped at the walkway to the small lake again.

After getting back to the main walkway I took the dogleg left toward the Southwick Beach area, biked that, and then headed back.

It was one of those unexpectedly relaxing days, and I neither bike enough nor relax enough so it was certainly welcome. A nearly perfect trip (after packing my stuff back in and on the car I got in and went to adjust my mirror, which promptly dropped off. Now I have to get some mirror glass glue for it, ergh).

Nice day and trail and ride, and if you have a bike I highly recommend it.

Exploring the Old Anthony Farm Near Perch River Dam

Exploring the Old Anthony Farm Near Perch River Dam

I'm interested in history and old structures, especially in the North Country. You can find my history page here, my abandoned buildings site here and more related links in the column to the right.

One of the things that's of interest to me right now is the old Anthony farm on the road going to the Perch River Dam.

This farm was on the gravel road that goes to the Perch River Dam, the road is off from Parish Road. At one time, many years ago, this was the largest barn in Jefferson County and was of a unique design that probably isn't any where else in the US (see photo at top of this entry).

The people who built the barn built it between two high hills, so it spanned the entire valley between them. Some accounts put it at two hundred fifty feet - a large barn for those days. See the photo at right; I took this from the left ramp, high on the hill and looking over the valley. If you look close you can see the the opposite ramp which would have been the end of the barn on the other side.

The cows were at the very bottom in a stable, and above them was the hay loft. Above that was another floor with open sides or open spaces. On either end of the barn was a road going up the hill where the horses and a wagon with hay could be brought up, the horses and wagon would then be taken into the end of the barn and onto the upper floor, where the hay could be thrown off into the hay loft below.

An interesting and innovative design. Nearby was the house and a spring house (photo at left - more photos here), which also was used for cold storage.

There was also a large cistern behind the barn, and what I was told was that water was caught from barn eves and went into this cistern. The cistern in turn would be available to water to cows. Another reference mentions that there was some sort of system for providing this water to the house too.

Under the barn was a large drain.

All of this made out of limestones.

Some local people also make note of some other nearby things connected or loosely connected with this farm. Like a machinery barn nearer the dam (though I've never seen any traces of this). And another house nearby, also long gone, which at one times houses some Indians who helped with farming in the area.

Nearby is the limestone foundations of another house, a short distance down the road. I've always been curious about it as my father hadn't had any info on it (when he moved here the Anthony farm was still standing and the farmer there took care of some of his heifers so he knew it well).

A person who does metal detecting contacted me via my webspages awhile back about the Glen Park amusement park and caves and such, and he contacted me again about the old Anthony Farm and the stone house nearby.

This guy takes metal detecting seriously, does lots of research and puts a lot of thought into it. I know some of the local historians probably aren't too keen on this sort of thing, but oh well...

I told him about my work in trying to find out any info about the old house and we agreed to meet down there along with my father and his family, to do some looking around and possibly for him to get some idea of good places to metal detect down there.

So my father and I met him and his family down there. Eric and his entire family are good people, and we spent quite a few hours looking around down there. We went over the old stone foundations (photo to the left - more photos here), climbed the hill to the right ramp that went into the barn, found the foundations of the barn itself (which was new to me, see pic at very bottom of this entry) as well as the cistern (See photo below - more photos. The cistern was in a raised hill - either natural or man-made, near the center point of the barn) and drain (both also new to me). The cistern was massive, possibly 40 feet long and eight feet wide or so. It was mostly pushed in by the state or had fallen in but there were replaces where you could climb down in if you wanted to.

I wanted to go over to the other ramp which, when I was young, could easily be gotten to as the road to it was still open. But now that area is packed with dense brush.

My father mentioned the other old house on the other side of the road but he wasn't quite sure of where, so Eric took a quick look around without finding it. Later my father talked to a local woman who explained about where it was.

Later I went back by myself and trekked over to the ramp (pic at right, below). I put on an old t-shirt, packed my camera and phone in an old backpack so I'd be fairly "stream-lined" and threw on my shooting glasses to protect my eyes. The brush was so dense it took me the better part of an hour to make it there. I looked around the base a bit and found a rusted out old hand saw as well as a moss-encrusted piece of wood, which I assume was part of the barn.

At the top of the ramp the brush was even worse until I got near the edge of it, where it was completely devoid of brush and only had a little grass. It was a great view, and looking closely I could see the opposite ramp - a long way across the valley. The trees and brush were thick enough where I couldn't seethe foundations of the barn below me.

I tried to bring both the old saw and piece of wood back, thinking that I would leave it laying somewhere that Eric would find the next time he came down to do some metal detecting, but the brush was so dense there was no way I could carry it out easily. I could barely get back out myself.

There were some differing measurements having to do with the length of the barn and I had intended to bring my GPS but forgot it. I thought I could grab the coords from both ends, making sure I had the best accuracy, and estimate the length down to 15 feet or so. Ugh, I hate to make another trip through the brush but I probably will end up doing it.

Meeting People in Person, Natural Heritage Area, Backing Up Your Blog, Finger Stick, Camera Attached to Telescope, Dining Room Remodel

Ema Capite Ad Calc

Blog Action Day seemed to be quite a success, according to the website over 20,603 blogs participated. Not bad. There was a good amount of press coverage too, which helped.

A good blog I found on the Blog Action Site that might be of interest along the lines of recycling - Items You Never Thought To Recycle.

And if you live in the local area check out our FreecycleWatertownNY list for giving away items you don't need or want instead of throwing them in the trash. You can also ask for items. If you live elsewhere go to Freecycle.org and find a local group near you - chances are there is one, or you can start one yourself!

Oh yea, that death threat thing I got? Some sort of scam that's circulating. Apparently the scam is e-mailing people and trying to get them to pay off the contract on them or some such. The one sent to me didn't ask for anything though. It seemed to be just my friendly neighborhood hired killer letting me know he was going to kill me.

According to a recent study 43% of the US is in drought conditions. And this isn't a study by a whacky tree-hugger group, this is by the National Climate Data Center. Wow. Isolated to this year, or sign of Global Warming? If the latter we are in trouble...

Is Wal-mart trying to stick it's big, cheap, Chinese-sweatshop-product-created thumb in everything? A recent article shows Wal-Mart and Hughes satellite hooking up to deliver broadband Internet via a dish. It won't be any cheaper (still about $70 per month and a high cost of equipment, slow uploads and a throttled connection) - it'll just have Wal-Mart on it instead of Hughes, heh.

And if those are enough signs that the world is in trouble - Cheney and Obama are related? 8th cousins, according to Cheny's wife while researching their family tree.

One of Obama's spokesman said -"Every family has a black sheep." [Guffaw]

Yea, I see the end coming.

Giant Dog and Photoshopping

Giant dog, wow.

I've done a lot with trying to find fake photos and are moderately good at using various techniques to find them. Once in a while though, you come across ones like this (or the giant cat one from previous years) that you know are fake; but you just can't find any mistakes with. It has come to a point where even the pros can't tell the difference sometimes, an issue when it comes to using photos in legal proceedings for evidence. And it's only going to get worse.

New York's latest Natural Heritage Area?

If you've ever went on any of the trails down near Black Pond, Lakeview Wildlife Management Area, or the El Dorado Preserve & trail area you might know that this is the one of the largest inland dune systems in the eastern Great Lakes area - there's protected white sand dunes, lots of preserves and wildlife.

The DEC is proposing making that 17 mile stretch of land and making it a Natural Heritage Area.

What does this mean? Apparently the protection of wildlife and the environment in this area will take priority over other things related to and on this state-owned land. I take this to mean that any high-risk area may be shut off from the public, and there may be some constraints that we are not seeing down there right now.

Meeting People in Person Versus Over the Internet

People are sure funny, uh, people sometimes. I've noticed that with many people seem to automatically trust someone they meet in person, especially the older crowd may be more likely to do this. It doesn't matter if they have known the person through chatting over the Internet, on a telephone, the CB (many years ago when it was popular) previously and just met them. It doens't matter if everyone else online says the person is a scumbag. With some people if they meet them in person it's nearly an automatic trust, face-to-face.

I find it amazing. Sure, some people are better at reading others in person - but how many people are really experts at this, or even knowledgeable enough in human interaction to do this accurately? I've seen and heard this happen over and over, and it causes a lot of problems.

In one case I know of a child-toucher was called an honorable person and 100% believed valid over legal evidence as well as what many others (both online and in person) had said.

The ability of humans to be snowed by a simple face-to-face meeting is amazing. On the other hand, as I'm sure we all know, there's so much misdirection and dishonesty when dealing with people over the Internet.

Then again, the same goes for those in person.

Backing Up Your Blog

The only satisfactory way I've found to back up my blog is, well, to just use Firefox's SAVE PAGE AS function (under FILE). You can do the same with most any other browser.

I use Backstreet Browser often, as well as a number of other pieces of software along the same lines. None seemed to do the job as quickly as just saving the page.

I don't need the labels saved, or the searches. Just saving it saves all graphics and text for the particular entry, which I can then edit if I need to. Comments can be saved via clicking the Comments themselves and saving them.

There's a lot of different ways that people are backing up their blogs, but the simplest seems to do the best for me.

And remember - backup your template too, if you've made changes to it. Just go to your Dashboard, click LAYOUT beside your blog, and then EDIT HTML. Save this as plain text.

Damn Those Neighbors For Stealing My Wireless, I'll Get Them

This guy's right long my line of thinking. He found that his neighbors were stealing his Internet by connecting to his WIFI signal. Instead of just locking his system down he split it into two networks; one for himself, one for the neighbors to connect to. He then ran that network through a transparent proxy and had some fun. One time he redirects every link to kitten sites, the next he uses the proxy to intercept the graphics and flip them, another time he makes all the graphics fuzzy. Hilarious.

Finger Stick

I took this down at the above-mentioned Black Pond trail. At first I thought a real finger had washed up on shore, but it was only a piece of driftwood. ;)

Lens adapter & Experimenting with the Camera and Telescope

Wow, check out this lens adapter for the Canon I570 IS. You can basically attach pretty much any lens to it.

Experimenting with mating the camera to my telescope. Check out this pic (below).

This is the warning beacon light on the top of a fairly tall cell radio tower. I need to work on a better tripod system for holding the camera still, as I was somewhat steadying it with my hand. Also, I need to play with the manual focus on the camera. Not bad as a first effort though. And this is with the telescope at it's lowest power.

Another reason I wanted this particular camera over the one with a high optical zoom - no protruding lens to scratch when I'm experimenting with using it on my friend's telescope or mine.

Starting Remodel of Dining Room

We own a very old limestone house. It might seem interesting, the personality of an old building like this and such. But the headache of working on it and maintaining it can sometimes be overwhelming.

We have most of the rooms remodeled at this point, but some not quite to my satisfaction due to floors not being quite level and such. Not much can be done (I've done a little jacking up of the floors but you can only do so much of this before something else breaks, and only very small amounts over long periods of time).

Anyway, here's a quick shot of the dining room. As you can see there's a lot of work to be done, the first being adding supports under the floor in the cellar and adding beams to the existing ones.

Alternate Energy, Global Warming, Blog Action Day

Alternate Energy, Global Warming, Blog Action Day

I don't understand it. So much emphasis and controversy is being put on why Global Warming is occurring and whether to blame humankind or a natural phase that the Earth goes through (though fortunately the focus has shifted from whether it's happening) instead of how it is going to affect us and what to do when/if it does, maybe even reverse it?

It IS someone heartening that people are at least getting aware of problems with the world's environment (sometimes they have no choice in the matter).

The big thing this week is the possibility of getting solar power from satellites. The idea has been around for many years, used in science fiction since it was proposed, and has been technically feasible almost since the idea was created (though it's being treated as a new idea). Of course, there's always the concerns of high frequency radiation. A big concern despite the assurances.

What about the other more safe options - like wind power and ground-based solar? Why aren't we working more on increasing the relatively low efficiency of solar cells? The wind turbines that likely will be built in the Cape Vincent area will generate more output then the Maple Ridge ones - but I wonder about the maintenance cost?

My thought has always been that as crude oil increases in price it would force the government, the manufacturers, and the public to work toward alternative energy - improving it, perfecting it, bringing the price of implementing and maintaining it down, and mainstreaming it. This doesn't seem to be the case for the most part.

What should we do, wait until it's too late? My father thinks we need to save and do without, or will have to. I don't agree. Why should we take steps backward when there's plenty of plentiful, cheap, and non-harmful-to-anyone sources of energy all around us?

And remember - today's Blog Action Day, this year the subject is the environment. So write something about the environment - you don't need to be a tree-hugger!

I guess it's like everything else - don't be a fanatic or an extremist; but be aware and do your part.