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).

Olmstead Trail re-visit

Olmstead Trail Re-Visit

I decided to try out the Olmstead Trail once again (see my NNY Trails page about it here, with some more pics). I hadn't been on it for quite awhile, and I had heard that it was expanded. The trail, the last time I rode on it, was a pretty good trail - hills, some rocky parts, etc., and I'd explored all the trails branching out from it, including the ones that go around the perimeter of the zoo. I'd found the ruins of the original Public Square fountain that they were talking about restoring or something, and had even scared some Asian people who were out for a walk (the older lady actually picked the kid up and held onto him as I rode by). Actually, I'd been riding toward them so I didn't scare them so much as they were apparently scared of me in general, even though I gave them a wide berth as I passed. Oh well.

So my wife and sister and nieces were participating in a benefit to help an Alzheimer's walk by renting space at the benefit for selling their crafts. As we'd done the year before we loaded the craft stuff as well as my bike into Jenny's Pontiac Aztek Rally Edition (truly a versatile vehicle, as the ads used to mention before they discontinued this vehicle).

After I helped them set up the crafts and stuff, I headed out on some of the black-topped trails to warm-up, then down onto the Olmstead Trail.

It was about the same and, once again, I scared the crap out of someone. A lady was walking along, I could just barely see her through a curve and figured if I yelled she might not hear me so I waited until I got a bit closer. Unfortunately I got a little TOO close before I yelled a hearty "Hello!". She heard the bike; which to her possibly sounded like a stealthy approach by an attacker, at the same time I yelled. She jumped straight off the ground, did a little turn in mid-air, half-raising her hands in a purely instinctual-looking quasi-karate/quasi-defensive move. Oops, I should have yelled earlier. I apologized and she said she never saw anyone out there and hadn't expected me. I went on my way, feeling a bit bad but still stifling a bit of a laugh - I couldn't help it.

Finally I reached the place where the trail had previously stopped. It now continued on a single track sort of thing, lots of rocks and logs to jump and go over. Even a few places where someone made some nice mountain biking-style things to ride across. I continued on and it got challenging with hills, more stone and logs, and trees so close together that the handlebars of the bike barely fit between them.

In other words - a mountain biker's favorite riding. I'd say it was one of the best mountain biking trails in the area that I had ridden on.

I continued for what seemed like miles. I knew I didn't want to spend all evening and wanted to get back to the benefit in a reasonable time, but each trail leading back in the direction I wanted to go lead out onto the golf course.

Finally, I had spent a lot of time and had traveled down the hill a way, being able to see the ski area on Dry Hill, and getting further and further away. Some of the branching trails were badly maintained.

My bottles of water had even run out, I always bring enough water! Heading back would take even longer, going up the sometimes steep rough hills. And the trees were close together, cutting any bit of wind and making the trail hot as hell. I was soaked in sweat and getting kind worn out as I had biked full-speed through the whole thing to this point.

Jeez - I'm not actually 25 anymore - I realized. High time to head back.

So I took the next branching trail that lead toward where I wanted to go (popping out of the woods and onto the edge of the golf course I could see the water tower, quite a ways in the distance).

Unfortunately there were some older gents standing by and leaning against their gold carts, swinging their clubs around distractedly, and discussing something that sounded suspiciously like Big Business talk. Wow, even this cliche didn't impress me at the time.

They stared as I tried to give them lots of space, knowing I probably wasn't exactly supposed to be there. But, well, they weren't exactly going to catch me on their golf carts and I wasn't doing anything destructive.

I watched for flying balls, golf carts, trotting caddies, and the like. I made my way as quickly and unobtrusively as possible toward the treeline.

At the treeline I found a trail through it, thinking I'd come out at the obstacle course area. Nope, another field of golf courses. I headed off again, occasional people glancing my way. But they didn't seem to be awfully upset and I was keeping well away from anyone.

At the next tree line I passed by large coolers of water, possibly set out for the golfers? I wanted some real bad, being soaked in sweat as I was and no reserve water left. But I kept going, finally getting to the next treeline and finding yet another path through it. This time I was at the obstacle course and made my way back to the 'Tek.

Anyway, great trail but if you continue on it make sure you're in for the long-haul. Sometime I'll go back and ride the whole thing and find out where the end comes out. Across from the other overlook perhaps? Something for another time.