It's News to Me

The phrase «television worth watching» is almost an oxymoron nowadays, but this week PBS is airing «The War,» a documentary about World War II co-produced by the team of Ken Burns and Lynn Novick.  Last night, I saw the first of the seven installments and that was enough to convince me that it is worth my time to watch this documentary.  If you'll visit this link you can click on «PBS Previews: The War» to see a 26:49 minute overview of the series, giving a glimpse of its goals and some insights about the making of the documentary, and if you bother to watch that 26+ minutes worth of introduction, I'm confident you too will be inspired to watch the series.  The next installment is presented here in the Eastern Daylight Saving Time Zone tonight at 8 PM on the local Public Broadcasting Station.  For more information about the series, you can check this PBS web site.

Keep reading →

If you are like me, you have a few friends who rely on you to help them out occasionally with using their computer.  I often find myself talking with these folks by Skype both because it saves money and/or minutes on the calls and because I enjoy being hands free when I'm talking with them.  In addition Skype offers the ability to chat while you are talking which frequently proves useful for sending links to explanations or other resources that can help resolve the issue I'm working on with them.  But sometimes words fail me and it would surely be nice to be able to show them what I am talking about.  That's where the Jing Project comes in.  It's called a project because it's not yet a product nor is it a beta, as the FAQ explains.  This video explains in less than 2 minutes just what it does.

Keep reading →

Watch this seven plus minute video and prepare to be amazed at what an application called Photosynth can do. It's architect, Blaise Aguera y Arcas, demonstrates and describes the technology and what lies ahead. (Link courtesy of Michael K. Bergman of AI3.) It's so amazing, I almost want to begin exercising just to ensure I stay around long enough to see where all this is leading. Wow.

Keep reading →

If you've been a reader of this blog for any time at all, you'll have seen me mention my friend Paul Moor, whom I have known now since the early 1990s, almost 15 years. 

Keep reading →

I virtually never take a vacation, last year's cruise to Alaska with Carole being a spectacularly notable exception, but I do take virtual vacations. For instance, I am participating in two vacations, vicariously and virtually this Memorial Day weekend, with my son Mike and his extended family at Ft. Walton Beach, FL, and with Andy of Yellow Swordfish and his wife, as they visit the American west and southwest from the British Isles. (Also see Andy's posts here and here.) The beauty of virtual vacations is that I can switch quickly from the beach to the Grand Canyon and I don't incur the shock to my bank account of having to stop every 300 or 400 miles to get soaked at a gas station, nor do I have to leave the familiar surroundings or the comfort of my own computer. All in all, I'm glad I'm here rather than there.

Keep reading →

I went to the doctor to have my eyes examined on Monday the twenty-first. It had been two years since I had had an exam and it was time, if for no other reason than to check for glaucoma. As it turns out, my «dress» glasses, meaning the ones I wear everyday when I go out of the house, the trifocals without the lines, weren't working for me as well as they used to. I need them to see things at a distance while I'm driving, to a restaurant for instance, but once I get to the restaurant those same glasses don't work as well as they used to because I now find reading the menu to be difficult. So I was due for an eye exam for that reason as well. It turns out that I do need a new prescription, which I am having filled ... for $480.50 (ouch!).

Keep reading →

I spent much of yesterday trying to help my son Mike free up some space on his laptop.  He has an old HP Omnibook XE3 that only has a 20 GB hard disk and suffers from a defective DVD drive so that he can't use it to burn CDs.  Hence, he doesn't have any means of archiving the material he has on his HD.  His new Canon Digital Rebel XTi is a 10.1 megapixel camera so when he offloads his pictures onto his computer, the hard disk fills up pretty quickly.  Because he had used about 99% of his available space, I brought the laptop to my house so I could copy his pictures to my system and burn them to CD for him.  As I've written before, copying the pictures over to my computer takes a long time and is tedious. 

Keep reading →

I described the problem I experienced in finding a place to upload a large AVI file in this post the other day. This morning I've discovered another alternative.

Keep reading →

This morning I visited with my friend Tucker Childers at the hospital where he had to go this past Thursday because he had pneumonia. While there, I shot a video message from him to share with some of his concerned friends online. Using my Canon Powershot S2 IS, I shot 57 seconds in an AVI format that turned out to be 115 MB in size. Most of the free hosting or sharing services online such as Mediafire, where I have an account, everybody's favorite, YouTube, and Netscape impose a 100 MB upload limit. So my video was just above their limit, and I had two choices of how to proceed.

Keep reading →

This post will probably be temporary because I am making it only to test whether I can activate the lightbox component of this template. If successful, clicking on the graphic below should use the lightbox javascript to display an enlarged version of the image «above» the post with the web page still in the background.

Keep reading →