Disable 'UAC is off' Security Center Reminder II - doesn't work, Opinions and Advice II, Remote & Voice-Activated Camera Picture Taking

Disable 'UAC is off' Security Center Reminder II - doesn't work!

A couple of people e-mailed me after my last entry, saying "Hey, your hack for turning off the Security Center reminder for a disabled UAC didn't work."

Uhm, yea, sorry - for me it worked after one reset but not after another (after I installed some other software and needed to reset).

A little extra digging seems to point toward the abbreviation "AUC" not always meaning "User Account Control", so the entry I thought I had found wasn't referring to the correct thing after all.

Sorry, the general consensus so far is that if you disable UAC then your Security Center is always going to show red. The only thing to do is live with it until a hack comes along for it, or turn it off completely - which is what I did. I disabled it directly in SERVICES as well as turned it off via it's own applet.

Opinions and Advice II

An e-mail from an old friend/customer about my entry (didn't even know he reads this) - apologizing for jokingly "criticizing" (his word) that my pathway from my driveway to the house had a few inches of snow in it. (BTW, my response was something like - "Dude, then don't wear sneakers in winter time!")

I hope that my previous entry didn't come across seeming that I don't welcome opinions and advice from anyone. I have no problem with people giving me advice or their opinions. That's one of the ways we learn things, both from strangers as well as friends and family.

My point is that I get peeved when someone's opinion is presented as indisputable fact and the person gets pissed when I don't take their advice or when I even question (GASP!) them about it, when the advice is unwarranted or obviously unwelcome, or when rudeness is coached in "a person's opinion" or their supposed "honesty" (the latter seems to be used as a great excuse for rudeness and lack of civility in general), or when someone wants their opinion known to you but won't say it to your face - resorting to games. The latter is low, very low.

So, to sum - don't hesitate to give me your opinion or advice if you think it is warranted; just don't necessarily expect me to take it.

Remote & Voice-Activated Camera Picture Taking

Anyway, on to other things...

My previous digital camera had a number of pieces of software, third-party of course, that would allow things like computer-controlled picture taking.

My new Canon has this as a feature of some software (ZoomBrowser I think it's called, a moderately-good and feature-filled piece of software for being stock) that comes with it (as a side note - this particular extra, interestingly enough, only works when you connect the camera through a USB 2.0 port, not 1.0 or 1.1 - don't know why. I have both on my computer).

And also there is a piece of (free) software for Canon's that allows this feature too - http://chdk.wikia.com/wiki/

This is some incredible-looking software, allowing many features your camera might not already have to be added, mostly in the form of scripts. Basically, Canon made it possible for the camera to boot additional software stored on your memory card. And if your Canon supports this you can get the software from this wiki to do it. Almost unlimited possibilities.

Anyway, I haven't tried this latter software as yet but a quick experimentation with the additional stock software allows this quite easily. I hooked the camera up to my laptop, set it in the other room, and remotely accessed it to take some pics - just for the geeky fun of it.

With my previous camera I occasionally used the computer-control to take very precise pics; like when even touching the camera might throw off it's position or when I needed to use both my hands to hold something in place for a shot but I didn't know how long it would take to get in place, thus the timer wouldn't work for it. In the latter case I'd use some voice-activated software like Voicenet and set it up to press the space bar when I told it to. A few times I was doing some 360 shots of items, or stop-motion for a customer or something, and just saying "take pic" after each movement was a lot easier.

Worked well and should be able to do it with this camera using one of the afore-mentioned softwares.

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.

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:

Canon Warranty Repair, File/Video Sharing Sites, Lossy Flash

Canon Warranty Repair

The Firewire on my Canon Zr500 camcorder works great. Or did work great. Or actually works great again.

Anyway, one day while using it (without going into specifics) - the Firewire stopped working. I even tried it on anther computer and with another Firewire card on my computer, and different Firewire cords. Nothing.

I was just sick. But fortunately, unlike computers and many other electronics nowadays; Canon has a good year-long warranty on their electronics.

After a quick look through the manual for warranty info I made a quick call to Best Buy (where my wife had bought the camcorder at Xmas time) - just to see what they say about warranty repairs. No extended warranty through them; so I had to send it to Canon themselves..

I called the number listed in the manual and got the location of the nearest Canon repair center, along with a reminder to include in the box the camcorder would be in: a) insurance b) a copy of my receipt c) my name, address, and contact numbers.

I dreaded sending it back, you always hear stories about people sending someone back for warranty repair; only to have the company tell them they damaged it themselves and it would be large $$ to have it repaired. I also dreaded the amount it would be.

Not long ago I had sent a dead laptop to a friend of mine in Toronto. He needed it desperately for parts and despite me sending it with no insurance and the cheapest rate it was still over $20 and it took weeks!

But the shipping turned out to be only $4.90 and with the insurance less then $10 over all. Not bad, not bad at all.

File/Video Sharing Sites, Lossy Flash

I'm not a real big fan of the video and file sharing sites that convert your video to Flash. It's lossy, there's no way to adjust the compression factor, and even if you try to counter it by uploading higher quality (i.e. LARGE) videos it still is negligible quality.

Sure, it's okay and sometimes necessary to keep storage space down and for faster transferring.

But when I want to show someone a fairly good quality vid I'd rather host it somewhere and embed it manually in the site or blog (like below, the WMV file is stored at Box.net). Or alternately provide a direct clickable ink to my original file stored somewhere - like this.

Launch in external player

Most video sharing sites like Youtube or Google Video and file sharing sites like divshare.com convert your vid to Flash and allow you to embed it in your blog or site. Easily done, but you loose quality and have no real control over it. Good for most purposes.

Tucker; in mid-jump, Flickr, Wayback Machine, Commodores and Modern ASCII Art

Another picture and playing around with the camera some more, Flickr

Another nice action shot taken with the Canon A570 IS. Continually impressed with the 570's features, quality, and quality of the pics.

Lots of interesting little things with the camer along with the bigger features - I discovered yesterday that when you're looking at previews if you tilt the camera is automatically rotates the images on the screen to keep it horizontal, kinda like the Iphone.

This pic is hosted on Flickr, and was posted to this blog using the integrated blogger poster. Works nicely. I've been a member of Flickr for quite sometime but never got around to using it much - there's so many photo hosting sites and places to set up photo albums...

Anyway, I recently got back into using it. Very nice; nice choice of uploaders, the ability to organize your photos via a JAVA drag and drop applet, and the EXIF info from your pics are read by the site and posted (if you want it to be). And you can make photos private if you wish, important sometimes. Also, lots of photos from the Jefferson County area by others.

Will our websites be archived for eternity?

I've often wondered and pondered if the stuff we write in blogs, the websites we make, and other things on the Internet are REALLY going to be archived forever, or such? Not just for a few years, or five or ten years, but a long time.

Sure, there's a lot of things that you maybe don't want being available "forever" or even for a long period of time (and sometimes for no period of time).


But what about that genealogy website you joined and painstakingly added your entire family to - will it be available to distant relatives a hundred years down the line? Will your artwork you posted on your website? Or your photos? Or a posting on a forum website for dog ownership that is what you consider to be the best philosophical statement you've ever made, something so deep you'll never be able to do better?

I think in the far future (if the human race is still around and still civilized) much information will still be available from our time period, though probably very patchy. Sites like the Wayback Machine are massive archives of websites, websites of many descriptions and various types. And not just the newest stuff but ranging over long time periods (at least "long" in the computer world). Google and other sites too (and if you listen to some people even your Google searches and the e-mail you deleted from Gmail are saved somewhere).

I think some data will be lost, some will never be archived in the first place, others will be archived but those archives will not themselves be stored permanently.

Commodores, ASCII Art

Maybe an occasional reader to this blog will remember the "good ol' days" of the Commodore and the burgeoning of the home computer, back in the 80's. I started out with the Commodore Vic-20, 5 whole KB of RAM! Wow. I had a tape drive, an 8k memory expansion (I even learned to do "high res" graphics), and some other accessories. I graduated to the Commodore 64, wore one out and bought another, then the Commodore 128 and wore at least one of those out too. I even started setting up businesses with Commodores and writing my own programs for myself and businesses. In fact, some people were still using databases and software I set up well into the mid-90's (hard to believe).

Hey, they were the thing at that time, along with TI-99's, Atari's, etc. But Commodore was the most popular, I believe.

At one time, even though bit-mapped graphics were readily available on these machines, ASCII art got kinda popular. Making pictures from the text on your keyboard. BBS's used it for their opening screens, etc (you don't remember BBS's? No, they were the things we used before the Internet started being used by individuals. I even wrote my own software and ran one for a bit - didn't everyone at that time?)

Here's a website that kinda brings that all back (though people never stopped using ASCII art on their computers) - Photo2text. Upload a pic and their computer automatically creates an ASCII text picture.

Here's an example - My photo. Kinda nice, you can also do it all in 1's and 0's, shaded text, etc.

The difference between the Days of Commodore and now is that the computer does it itself, back in the day you had to painstakingly create your ASCII art by hand.

Foot bridge over the Black River, messing with the camera, using Gmail & Inbox.com as spam filter

Footbridge over the Black River.

I wanted to check out the foot bridge over the Black River that was put into place to watch the kayaking competitions and such, but it was all closed off. It looks like it goes over one of the channels to the power dam, and overlooks the Black River on the other side. Kinda looks a bit discolored - possibly this bridge is "second-hand"?

BTW, at the end of the small park off Eastern Boulevard has a small display sign and large piece of equipment from the power dam (my father is leaning over it in the pic), the sign has the history of the building of the power plant with pics. Interesting.

Playing around with the camera a bit more.

Continuing to be impressed with this Canon A570 IS camera. I keep finding new options, settings, and many more manual settings to play around with. Including some pretty incredible stuff.

I've been playing with the continuous mode, which lets the camera recycle even faster. Below is a few shots in a series (thumbnailed of course); unlike my Olympus' "burst mode" this camera can take the continuous shots in full rez:

Also, the video setting is available in 640X480 and modes lesser then that and 30fps or 15fps. Very very nice. Small demo.

Using Gmail and other free mail services' spam filtering for your Pop/Imap e-Mail program.

Chris Pirillo of Lockergnome fame; for you computer nuts you'll know who he is.

There was an interesting article in one of his recent newsletters about using free e-mail services as spam filters.

Take for example Gmail (which is what his article was referring to). Gmail has some pretty good spam filtering, and it also can access external accounts e-mail through pop. And, of course, you can access Gmail via pop.

So why not use Gmail as a spam filtering service by having it get your mail from your pop accounts, spam-wash it, and then access Gmail from your e-mail program instead of your regular pop e-mail?

I've been doing the same for months now, but using Inbox.com and it works great (if I'd only thought of letting others know about it, duh).

There's a few advantages to using Inbox.com instead of Gmail (like privacy issues, Gmail's lack of more advanced spam options, and Inbox.com allows you to access the spam folder if you like, versus Gmail which doesn't) and a few disadvantages, but for the most part the two services are somewhat similar and work well for this purpose.

I just set this system up for my wife using Gmail. Her e-mail address had been in use for many years and has gathered a tremendous amount of spam. Gmail is chugging along quite nicely and filtering 99.9% of it by itself, with few false positives (which will decrease as time goes by).

New Camera - Canon Powershot A570 IS

Yea, it's been quite a number of year since I've gotten a new digital camera. Mine's old, positively antique, by today's standards.

But it's been a work horse and has stood up to lots and lots and LOTS of use. I usually take a number of pics every day, every single day. The Olympus D-460 Zoom, great camera but the serial connection is slow, clunky, and times-out if I use the computer for anything else when I'd downloading pics. The spring on the flash pop-up broke so I have to either hold it down if I'm tipping the camera ahead for a shot, or hold it up with one hand to use the flash. The plastic's peeling, the resolution is way behind in what is available today, and the protective piece that turns the camera on/protects/closes the lens is worn to the point where the camera barely comes on, and only after many tries and holding my hand against it.

I think I can fix this, by taking this piece off and fixing the worn track where the switch-head rides. Now that I have another camera I am going to do this - after all; it's still a fine camera that my wife paid a lot for and that we can use as a backup and additional camera.

So, I took an afternoon (that I didn't really have available to waste) and set out to buy a new camera.

After checking some manufacturer's websites and then review websites as well, I had a general idea of what I was looking for.

I checked all the local stores, some twice. Staples (no one offered to wait on me, even though I stood there looking around for someone, I'm not going to go bother to seek someone me out unless I see something I am REALLY interested in), Best Buy (a number of people offered to help, unfortunately the one camera I was looking at was so new the guy had to ask someone else every question I asked him, and they didn't really know the answers either), Kmart (only a few models, the lady asked me if I needed help but I didn't have any questions on them), Sears ( Sears bites in general but what the hell. Even fewer models, no specs shown under them, some with no prices! What the hell? Someone did offer help though.), Target (many models missing, salesperson wandered by, looked at me), Walmart in Watertown (many models, a few not working, didn't expect any help from salespeople, they were taking one piece of equipment away for fingerprints, huh?), and Super-Walmart near Fort Drum (also didn't expect help, many models).

After stopping at various free WIFI spots along my route, checking reviews and features against what I saw in the stores, (as well as prices) I headed back home, did some more research, made another trip to Walmart in Watertown (calculating fuel usage in my head as well as I could) with the idea of buying a Fujifilm S5700.

There were some downsides to this particular camera. One of which was the large size of it and another was the lack of an integrated automatic lens cover (which isn't practical on something with such a large optical zoom).

Both of these were minuses to me, pretty big ones. I'm always tugging my camera out or somewhere. The extra size and weight as well as having to take the lens cover off (or leaving it off and possibly scratching the lens) was a downside, for sure. I'd need a large case to carry it, it would be clumsier and awkard to take along, and hell - it was bigger then my digital camcorder!

But the camera was beautiful. It looked like a professional piece of equipment, felt like it too. And it looked like the kind of thing you could walk into any place and anyone would allow you to take photos of whatever you liked. The sort of thing that customers who needed photos taken would take you serious with.

And it had that 10X optical zoom, real nice.

But ultimately another camera won out.

The Canon Powershot A570 IS. This had everything the Fujifilm had (except the 10x optical zoom) and much more. I fell in love with it right away (though I knew I'd always have pangs of regret for my previous amore).

It was very similar to my Canon ZR500 digital Camcorder in the basic use of it - a fully automatic mode where the camera takes care of settings according to visual conditions, yet with the ability to tweak those to presets, and then the fully manual settings for all aspects of the camera.

I went ahead and bought it, plus 2 gig of memory (they give you a measly 16 meg chip for starting out).

The camera comes with a wrist strap, lots of manuals and software, a USB cable, plus a video cable (for plugging into a TV for showing the pics - a must for me), and even alkaline batteries. This only takes two AA's, where my old one took four - lots more backup in the battery department now. One of the disadvantages of some of the cameras I looked at were proprietary batteries.

It also has full 30 fps or 15 fps video with sound, audio memos on the photos, etc.

But the biggest features of interest to me were the image stabilization and the quality of the photos, the high ISO settings and the ability to change any setting manually if needed, while not having to mess with it if I did not want to.

I've played with a lot of people's cameras but this by far has the best pictures for it's price (hell, even for much more pricier cameras I've tried). The high ISO settings are great, as you can see from this picture of Tucker. Wow.

The 4 times optical zoom works well, and pauses right before it switches to the digital zoom (a nice feature, though some might want it more fluid - I think there is a setting for adjusting this to 'no delay').

It is 7.1 megapixel, nice for larger prints. It also has an automatic red-eye reduction (see how well it works in this pic), large LCD plus an optical viewfinder. I think I can take about 900 pictures with this per mem card.

It also has an amazing face recognition mode. It regognizes where the eyes and face of a person is, or even animals and other things, and shows a box on the screen, focusing in on it. Wow, the technology behind this is mind-blowing. It can, of course, like everything else on the camera, be turned off.

I need to take some time to learn all the features, but so far it seems quite nice and a good choice for $229.

Unzoomed, zoomed:





















Some specs (from the Canon website):

Maximum Aperture	f/2.6 (W) - f/5.5 (T)
Shutter Speed	15-1/2000 sec. (settable in Tv and M)

ISO Sensitivity
Auto, High ISO Auto, ISO 80/100/200/400/800/1600 (Standard Output Sensitivity. Recommended Exposure Index)

Light Metering Method	Evaluative*, Center-weighted average, Spot** * Control to incorporate facial brightness in Face Detection AF ** Metering frame is fixed to the center
Exposure Control Method	Program AE, Manual
Exposure Compensation	+/-2 stops in 1/3-stop increments

White Balance
White Balance Control	Auto, Preset (Daylight, Cloudy, Tungsten, Fluorescent, Fluorescent H, Underwater), Custom

Flash
Built-in Flash	Auto, Auto w/ Red-eye Reduction, Flash On, Flash On w/ Red-eye Reduction, Flash Off
Flash Range	Normal: 1.5-11 ft./45cm-3.5m (W), 1.5-7.2 ft./45cm-2.2m (T) Macro: 1.0-1.5 ft./30-45cm (W/T) (when sensitivity is set to ISO Auto)
Recycling Time	10 sec. or less (battery voltage=3.0V)
Flash Exposure Compensation	+/-2 stops in 1/3-stop increments

Shooting Specifications
Shooting Modes	Auto; Creative: P, Av, Tv, M; Image: Portrait, Landscape, Special Scene (Night Scene, Foliage, Snow, Beach, Fireworks, Aquarium, Underwater), Indoor, Kids & Pets, Night Snapshot, Stitch Assist, Movie
Self-Timer	Activates shutter after an approx. 2-sec./10-sec. delay, Custom
Wireless Control	N/A
Continuous Shooting	Approx. 1.7 fps

Image Storage
Storage Media	SD Memory Card, SDHC Memory Card, MultiMediaCard
File Format	Design rule for camera file system, DPOF Version 1.1
JPEG Compression Mode	Still Image: Exif 2.2 (JPEG) Movie: AVI (Image: Motion JPEG; Audio: WAVE (Monaural))
Number of Recording Pixels	Still Image: 640 x 480 (Small), 1,600 x 1,200 (Medium 3), 2,048 x 1,536 (Medium 2), 2,592 x 1,944 (Medium 1), 3,072 x 2,304 (Large), 3,072 x 1,728 (Widescreen) Movie: 640 x 480 / 320 x 240 (30 fps/15 fps) available up to 4GB or 60 minutes, 320 x 240 (1 min. at 60 fps), 160 x 120 (3 min. at 15 fps)

Playback Specifications
Playback Modes File	Still Image: Single, Magnification (approx. 2x-10x), Jump, Auto Rotate, Rotate, Resume, Histogram, Index (9 thumbnails), Sound Memos, Auto Play, Red-eye Correction Movie: Normal Playback, Special Playback

Erasing Specifications
Erase Modes	Still Image: single image, all images Movie: part of movie, all of movie

Interfaces
Computer Interface	USB 2.0 Hi-Speed (mini-B jack)
Video Out	NTSC/PAL
Audio Out	Monaural
Other	Memory card slot; direct connection to Canon CP and SELPHY Compact Photo Printers, PIXMA Photo Printers and PictBridge-compatible printers via camera's USB 2.0 Hi-Speed cable

Power Supply
Power Source	1. AA-size Alkaline Battery (x2) 2. Rechargeable AA-size NiMH Battery (x2) 3. AC Adapter Kit ACK800
Shooting Capacity	Still Image: approx. 120 shots (AA-size Alkaline Battery), approx. 400 shots (AA-size NiMH Battery)*
Playback Time	Approx. 540 min. (AA-size Alkaline Battery), approx. 660 min. (AA-size NiMH Battery)* * LCD screen on. The above figures comply with CIPA testing standards and apply when fully-charged batteries are used.

Physical Specifications
Operating Temperature	32-104°F/0-40°C
Operating Humidity	10-90%
Dimensions (W x H x D)	3.52 x 2.53 x 1.69 in. / 89.5 x 64.3 x 42.8mm
Weight	Approx. 6.17 oz. / 175g (camera body only)