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Below are the entries I was working on before I start, the wildfire one is, of course, a bit out of date.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

Book Writing, New Trail & Bad Rules, Totman Gulf, Apple Picking & Applesauce Making, Tree Planting & Blog Action Day, Box Embeds & Canon Pics

Book Writing Possibility

Interesting. The editor of New York titles for Arcadia Publishing, a well-known publisher of local and regional photographic histories, contacted me and asked to talk to me about the possibility of me doing a book on historic Watertown. I assume she ran across me via my Jefferson County History pages. And this isn't one of those vanity presses where you write your book and pay them to put your book together. It's a legitimate publishing company. Very flattering that someone would think I might be able to write a book, even a small one.

Unfortunately I wouldn't relish the thought of the amount of research that would go into it, and the small amount of money that a history book would bring me for that amount of work. It's certainly something to think about.

Interesting nonetheless - in one week I've gotten a death threat and a possible book offer!

New Trail and Bad Trail Rules - No Pets, No Bikes!

I ran across a new trail, called the El Dorado Beach Preserve Trails (N 43'48.948 W76'14.163). Not a bad little trail, I added it to my trail's pages but what I don't like is the limitation of no pets and no mountain bikes. Definitely not recommended, as you can go over on the Black Lake trail or the Lakeview wildlife area trail. Sure, it's a nature preserve but sheez...

Some people have a real problem with mountain bikers. It's funny, there's some people who have a problem with letting mountain bikers on a trail but not horses. What could be more destructive to a trail then horses riding on it? And pets? Yea, if you let your dog run around and dig stuff up that's bad for a nature preserve. But so is a badly behaved kid, or a bunch of drunk teenagers...

Four Wheelin' and Totman Gulf
Many years ago I had a few friends who were into the whole trail driving, mud-trucking sort of thing. I went with them many times and it was fun, exciting, sometimes scary (like the time we descended a maddeningly very, very steep hill, what a piece of master driving that was to work the breaks, transmission and steering so we wouldn't started sliding, roll to the side, or go down too fast!), sometimes hard (when every one of the large big-tired trucks gets stuck in the snow or mud and everyone has to help to dig them out), and sometimes even boring (when something breaks down and you have to wait for repairs/parts/something to dry out).

But it was a great time, and there's very little that is like a group of friends going out in the middle of no where, grabbing a few beers, and sitting around a campfire and enjoying life. Simple things, but good stress-free memories nonetheless.

Sure, it's kinda 'redneck' - but it was fun and life's too damn short not to do things just because someone else might have a particular distaste for something and label it negatively.

I'm proud of the various phases of my life, the different things I've done (and of course there's sure many things I'm not proud of too), and the ways I've changed and grown and moved on from.

So on one of the last trips I ever took while "four-wheelin'" (as it was called by my friends - now that refers more to ATV-riding, I guess), I had met my future wife a time before this, and we were tooling around in my car. We came across my friend who was getting set to go for a trail drive. He asked us to go along.

So he drove us out to a large steep and deep gorge, I lost track of how we got there in the dark. He proceeded to work the truck down a rough ramp that had been created probably hundreds of years ago. It was a hairy trip down, with lots of sliding and slow going toward the bottom. The drop was around a hundred feet, give or take.

Once at the bottom a beautiful little stream ran through the gorge, the high shale cliffs towered on either side, and we stopped at a small natural dam with a little pool behind it, a waterfall coming down and feeding into it and the stream.

There were a few other people around, heading down on foot. And after a bit we got back in the truck and drove down the stream. It was pretty incredible with the shale walls on either side. After a few miles one side of the gorge got shallower until we reached a small hill and a trail leading out. My friend drove up onto it and we meandered along a number of other trails. Some with deep swampy water, streams, pools of water, and mud. It was a great ride, and I think my wife enjoyed it too as she probably had never been on a truck trip like this before.

After awhile he headed back on this gravel road. As I said we had went through lots of water and mud and the little Ford Ranger with the big tires didn't as much as skip. But as soon as we went through a moderate sized puddle on the gravel road it died, wouldn't ya know it...

We got out and took the distributor off, tried to dry it, with no luck. Wouldn't start. We did this a number of times, still no luck.

At that time (very early 90's) very few people had cellphones, most people didn't even know what they were. All we had was a CB.

But we were out in the middle of no where, and for those readers who are radio or electronic enthusiasts you may be familiar with 'skip' and atmospheric ducting. Basically, the radio waves are at such a frequency as to readily bounce off a certain layer of atmosphere. You can be hundreds, or thousands, of miles away from what you're hearing.

This makes for the citizen band channels to be sometimes nearly useless; overridden with 'skip' from all over the US and the world. Sunspot activity energizes the Heavyside layer and makes the regular low background skip magnify many-fold.

And sometimes it makes talking to someone hundreds of miles away easier then talking to someone a few miles away.

So there we were, the middle of the night, trying to punch through a call to someone we knew who could come and help us out. We were quite a distance from anywhere, and not really sure what the shortest way to walk out would be.

Finally, after hours - my friend got a call to someone who could come out and tow us. A quick tow and the truck started right up, no problem. Argh.

We made our way back, finding a phone as quickly as possible so my wife; then girlfriend, could call her probably very-worried parents and let them know what happened.

I'd always remembered that trip, despite the break-down, because of the beautiful gorge. I haven't seen my friend in many years so I have never had a chance to ask him exactly where it was and how to get back to it.

I had told my father about it and he had talked to some people from various areas locally, trying to get an idea of where it might be as it sounded interesting to him. A couple thought they knew where it was.

Finally, my father ran across one place that he thought must be near to where we had went into the gorge. He took a trip out there but wasn't sure. A few days ago I had business out in the area so he agreed to go along and show me the place.
Outside of Adams and a distance from Lorraine he took me down the Lemay Road. He had showed me the gorge there before, off from the Lemay Road, but I wasn't sure if it was the same place. It might have been. This time we drive further down the road, which had turned into a rough gravel road; and found the dirt ramp going down into the gorge.

We made our way down on foot, noticing the boulders that had been put across the access to it so people couldn't drive down in trucks anymore. My GPS showed that we were going down nearly a hundred feet. If you're interested the coords are 43º45.810N -76º0.172W.

It didn't really look familiar as the place we had taken the truck down, but then again it had been a long time. When we reached the bottom we found the ruins of an old bridge; possibly built a hundred; or more likely, nearly two hundred years ago. The ramp trail leading down into the gorge had another ramp, made of stone, leading up at an angle (see bottom picture). A space where a bridge span must have been, and then a large tall stone pylon with primitive concrete closer to the water (see top two pics at the left), far up on the other side, near the top of the opposite cliff, were more stones where the last span must have attached. The wooden bridge spans were long gone of course, but for the most part the stone foundations were still in place, except for the middle pylon. The span from the middle pylon to the opposite cliff seemed quite a distance for such a primitive work of construction.

On the way back up the main ramp to the top, I took a left and walked up the ramp that must have been the end of the bridge (I walked somewhat gingerly near the end of it).

It seemed they must have made the main ramp trail down the side of the cliff, then partway down built the ramp going to the bridge. The ramp leading to the bridge was built partway up the main ramp so that it must have been level or near-level by the time they were on the bridge itself, and it was high enough to be on the level with the opposite side I suppose.

The ramp leading to the bridge was narrow, my father mentioned that they must have blind-folded the horses to get them across. I think you'd have to blindfold me too, and bridges and heights don't bother me...

Further back up the ramp I found a few regular foot or ATV trails leading down off it, after making my way down them I found the pool and waterfall.

Back at the top we continued on the road for a bit until we reached a corner, and I immediately recognized the small gravel road we had broken down on many years before. Funny, I hadn't recognized the ramp going into the gorge as the one we had went on, nor the waterfall and pool - but the road I immediately saw as the same one. Funny how your memory works (or doesn't) sometimes.

We have a beautiful area, all times of the year, something that locals as well as new residents often forget or don't notice. There's so many people who have lived here for long or short periods or are just visiting (or return to here) and barely get out of the city of Watertown or off Fort Drum or where ever.

Like I said; we have a beautiful area - it's just some of the people who aren't so beautiful (inside and out, often both).

Every once in a while you have to get out and do something that's 'old school', something old-time North Country Traditional; yes, in capitals. Nothing wrong with that.

So we went apple picking last Monday, Columbus Day; at Behlings, in Mexico, NY. When I was young we had went often, but as I got older it didn't hold as much interest. Quite a few years back I went again with my wife (then girlfriend) and my parents when my mother was still alive. My mother always liked to get lots of apples and make apple sauce and such.

On that particular trip we decided to try making applesauce, using my mother's machine. A machine that you painstakingly hand-wind to squash the apples into applesauce. A lot of work and messy; but it did the job.

This time we thought we'd try a few easier methods suggested by people on the Internet.

We took my father, who enjoys doing things like this. I always feel so sorry for him now that my mother is gone, they enjoyed doing things together and now we has to do many of those things alone; though my sister and I try to include him as much as possible, my brother occasionally also.

The trip down to Mexico was foggy and it looked like we had picked a bad day as it might rain. On the way we stopped at a Ponderosa (not real big Ponderosa fans but we had coupons - cheapos that we are.)and then headed the rest of the way to Behlings. It was quite a festival atmosphere (in a small way) with rides and food and lots of people picking as well as perusing the already-picked apples and apple-related items and food.

Yea, it's nice to get out and do some of these homey, North Country, things-our-ancestors-did stuff. And it only sprinkled a bit until we left (at which point it was a downpour).

A few days later we tried a few methods of applesauce making but the best, by far, was using a blender as suggested by someone on the Internet. This is the easiest and makes the best applesauce (unless you like your applesauce chunky, I guess). I can't imagine anyone making applesauce any other way.

Basically we (and when I say 'we' I mean my wife) cored the apples, cut them up, and put them in boiling water to soften. Then I dumped them into the blender, and blended the crap out of them at low speed, occasionally carefully using a plastic spoon to make sure they were consistently pureed. I guess this is the trickiest part, as you don't want to get the spoon down where the blade is.

Wow, what a great job the blender did - and the best part is it was relatively easy and it didn't waste anything, including the skin which is a good source of nutrition (and you can't even tell the skin is part of the applesauce). Made a large amount too.

Planting Trees & Blog Action Day

Hmmm, Gore and his buddies won the Nobel Peace Prize.

We've planted a total of six new trees this year. Okay, so maybe they were more for landscaping, shade, and privacy - but we still keep in mind the benefits of doing so.

You don't have to be a tree-hugger or environmentalist to be aware of environmental problems and how things are going in our world. Unless you are fond of burying your head in the sand, of course. On October 15th is Blog Action Day - this year it's about environmental posting, if you have a blog or website check it out and post a little something on that day. It won't hurt.

Canon A570 IS Demo Pics

Box.net has a nice little feature where you can embed a directory of files (in this case photos) into a webpage or blog. With photos when you click them in the little box it blows them up (constrained by the size of the original box). Here's some of my favorite demo pics for the camera:

Death Threats, The Gran Paradiso Firefox and Vista and Human Nature, Web 2.0 and My Concession - Rounded Corners

Death Threat

Hmmmm, this is a first for me. Yea, I've had people threaten me before. Both online and off. Yea, maybe some has said they'd kill me once or twice, but that's just people being dumb and usually isn't serious. But I've never had anyone e-mail me telling me that a friend hired someone to kill me, over some un-named offense I did to them.

Sure, it's spam or crap or something (though I didn't find any references to it anywhere as yet), probably fishing for people who reply (irately) so they can harvest the valid e-mail addresses.

But it still makes you stop and think, in general. Is there anyone in your life, present or past, who would actually pay someone to have you killed?

Nah, I don't think so. Me neither.

There's been a few fanatical religious nuts over the years that I've pissed off - those people are whackos. A few really bad fights, some physical (though I gave up that idiocy long, long ago when I was but a youn'in). And lots of people on the Internet who I've royally pissed off (usually people who don't realize the difference between real life and the Internet). But nothing anyone would hire someone to kill me for.

It would be nice to think that maybe I'm important enough, or pissed someone off enough, for someone to maybe hire someone else to kill me. Heh heh.

I sent it along to the abuse resolution of the e-mail service it came from, examined the header info for anything (not relayed), and put it out of my mind. Doesn't seem important enough to call the cops or FBI over. Though I do have my personal 'abuse resolution' method close at hand...

Adding Stuff to Blogger

Anyway...

Blogger.com is great. Sure; there's a lot of free blog sites, free webspace you can install your own blog software on, etc. But Blogger is probably the most popular and there's so many options and customizability to it that it's hard to beat. If you install your own blog software then you have to maintain it, add plugins yourself, submit it to search engines, etc. Other services might not be as popular and have less features.

I wanted to add a custom random quote to this blog (see above). I couldn't find a free addon or plugin that served up quotes in quite the right way to fit what I wanted. For example - no limit to the number of quotes I wanted to add, no ads or extraneous stuff like graphics. So I used a little script that I had that I had previously done a little mod to for using on local webboards. (Interesting side note - it's a little PHP script that converts text to graphics. Good for circumventing the stripping of more advanced HTML code when posting on a webboard. Makes you wonder what an enterprising hacker could do with the same method.)

There's any number of ways to add a script fragment to Blogger. Either use the layout editing function and add some HTML code or to add it directly into the template (which I settled on because I liked it better visually).

Works well, and it serves up a random quote every time a visitor accesses the blog or an entry on my blog (try reloading and you'll see).

Blogger's great, and gotta thank them and Google for providing this for free. And while I'm at it I'll thank Wikipedia - while there's some issues there it's still a tremendous resource.

Gran Paradiso, Vista, and Humankind

Trying the newest Firefox, version 3 Alpha Gran Paradiso (named after a group of mountains in Italy). Looks about the same visually, so far not seeing much in the way of speed increases in the faster rendering engine. And iffy on whether it's improving the memory leak problems. But I just started trying it, so I can't give you a real review as yet...

Firefox - a great idea. Make something fast, compliant with WC3 standards, open source (an amazing idea), customizable as hell, and let it compete with Microsoft's tired Internet Explorer. Netscape and Opera just never got the market share that Firefox is getting, for whatever reason; neither did the original Mozilla suite.

But unfortunately, as happens with so many human innovations, great ideas get out of whack.

Firefox has been heading toward the inevitable bloated, slow, leaky application. Same with Thunderbird.

They're hard to beat, though. But some people see problems right now. Though I think some of the memory leakage problems (at least from my testing) seem to be from bad addons (extensions for you old-school Firefox users, of course) or interactions between okay addons and Firefox or with other addons.

But it's bloating, and there's alternatives based on the same rendering engines. Like K-Meleon (somewhat scaled down, faster, and a more tweaker-oriented version).

This is a direct parallel with the Windows platforms and it's development over the years.

Someone had a great idea for a GUI operating system, and someone else took it (stole it some would say - I'll leave that discussion to others) and improved greatly on it. Then turned around and made it a bloated, skewed, generally messed it up..., uhm, mess..

We, as human beings, tend to take great ideas and improve on them, then at some point screw them up.

But going back to the original idea of someone taking someone else's good idea and improving on it - who's the biggest innovator? The guy who has the initial good idea but can't quite implement/distribute/boil it down/make it come together in the best way, or the guy who takes that person's great idea and makes it workable and practical? I don't know, probably both.

Personally, I've rarely been the original innovator of ideas; but I'm damn good at taking a good idea and making it better and improving on it. Usually in my case I then hand it off to someone else and they sin turn crew it up.

At some point Vista is going to be fixed and supported and accepted. But right now there's a lot of negativity. Could Firefox go this way for new versions?

I remember when Windows XP came out, some of the same concerns about it were voiced by experts and normal users alike that are being put out for Vista, but on a much smaller scale. Now XP is a very stable operating systems and well-supported, for the most part. Vista's getting there, yet with some major problems along the way and issues to resolve.

I still don't have one computer system in my home office with it installed and, for the most part, I'm still recommending customers stick with XP unless they are buying a new computer (and even then in some cases not...).

I certainly didn't wait impatiently for Vista like I did with XP.

Yea, maybe I'm kinda a geek but when your field of work is computers something like the release of XP tends to make a lot of changes in how things work in that particular field.

And, in an only-slightly related note and fairly tangential note- I've noticed that many of the ones who call me a geek are usually the very ones who can barely get away from their computers long enough to work or sleep because they have to get back on the local webboard to create gossip/read gossip, or whatever. Fill in the blank - you know the kind of people. People living in glass houses, etc.

I try to be a fairly well-rounded person with many, many interests. Usually the ones who tend to throw out the term "geek" are a "geek" themselves, maybe not in computers but in some narrow band of interest. Ah, human nature again.

Fog

A quick shot with the Canon. My first couple shots came out a weird textured pic, because the fog was so dense the flash reflected off them. I didn't want to turn off the flash completely so I used the option to back it down a percentage - another nice feature.

Web 2.0 and My Concession - Rounded Corners

Argh. The whole Web 2.0 concept. It's basically a name for some Internet-related ideas that have been evolving for many years (many of the basic ideas of which have been around since the beginning). Many of the so-called concepts behind it have been things that a lot of us have been trying to do for years. For example - making websites less static and more interactive with the visitor.

I think a good symbol for naming something that's just an natural evolution - is the Web 2.0 logo creator. This started out as a joke and a spoof of the whole thought behind Web 2.0, only to get used by a large number of people who actually are putting these logos on their websites (not that there's anything wrong with how they look).

Funny, and again - goes back to human nature... We're such strange and funny little pieces of meat, aren't we?

Back to the point of my posting - my newest little concession to the whole Web 2.0 idea is on my Old Abandoned Buildings of Northern New York site. I converted all of the picture thumbnails from square thumbnailed pics to ones with rounded corners and drop-shadows. Looks nice, no matter what you call it.