I'm looking for a few people to help me write some Tech Tuts or Tech blogs over at My New Blog.
Anything from site tours, to HTML & CSS, product reviews, step-by-step software tutorials, etc.
If you're interested, let me know in a comment or send me a message. You can also email me directly by visiting the new blog and clicking the email link.
In an attempt to come back and be comfortable here at MySpace I've been lingering for a few months now. Eh...
So, I'm moving. Really, I only enjoy writing tech blogs now anyways, and there are only a handfull of MySpacers interested in that kind of stuff. I have set up shop in a new world now.
It will be all tech blogging. The same sort of stuff I've done here in the past, only with a higher frequency, as hopefully the interest there will be higher.
So, if you enjoy reading (or watching) my tech blogs, then head on over to My New Blog at Blogger.com
I’m not sure how many, if any, of you have heard of Google Street View. But, if you haven’t seen it yet, you’ll want to. You may love it, like I do, but assuredly many of you will hate it. Many of you will think it should be illegal, especialy if your house has been uploaded! I on the other hand think it’s brilliant, novel and a fantastic use of technology. Google never ceases to amaze me. Many of may not even realize all of the things Google has to offer.
So, what is Google street view? Essentially, Google strapped 360 spherical cameras to fleets of vehicles all across America. As they drove, they took pictures. Google then stitched them all together and overlayed them on the Google maps application. You can ride along with the car, at street level and view the surroundings with amazing clarity.
Chances are, if you live in a major city in America, then your neghborhood is on Street View. The cmaera icons designate all of the cities that are done so far:
If you live in Detroit, or the suburbs, then you’re probably on the map. You can drive right to my work and to my front door. You can even see a blurry picture of my wife’s license plate...woo creepy. Good thing we don’t have that van or that license plate anymore.
Best I can tell Detroit was shot last summer around July. My particular area was shot on a Friday about noon.
Since Detoirt was added they have added many mroe cities and I have to assume that they will be adding many more!
If you really want to have some fun, check out San Fransisco. Why? Google used their own vans and cameras in that city and they reportedly used 11 megapixel cameras. The pictures are stunning. If you zoom in, you can see thongs on shoppers. Very cool.
We are trying to buy a house this week, but we haven’t had the time to drive all around the area like we would like. So what did I do? I toured the entire city in Street View! And, I got to see what it looks like in the summer, rather than late March. Again, very cool.
So, why haven’t I linked you yet? Because you would’ve clicked it, gotten caught up cruising America in a Google car and not commented on my blog. So comment First!!! Then, CLICK HERE! Then click the Street View Button on the right. Select the city you want, drag the little GoogleMan to a blue street and have a blast!
One of the Funniest Stories you Will Ever Read!
Category: Life
I was reading through Snopes, as I normally do when I’m bored, and I came across this "blog" about a deer attack. I laughed my ass off the entire time I was reading it, so I thought I would share it with you:
I had this idea that I was going to rope a deer, put it in a stall, feed it up on corn for a couple of weeks, then kill it and eat it. The first step in this adventure was getting a deer. I figured that, since they congregate at my cattle feeder and do not seem to have much fear of me when we are there (a bold one will sometimes come right up and sniff at the bags of feed while I am in the back of the truck not 4 feet away), it should not be difficult to rope one, get up to it and toss a bag over its head (to calm it down) then hog tie it and transport it home.
I filled the cattle feeder then hid down at the end with my rope. The cattle, having seen the roping thing before, stayed well back. They were not having any of it. After about 20 minutes, my deer showed up; 3 of them. I picked out a likely looking one, stepped out from the end of the feeder, and threw my rope. The deer just stood there and stared at me. I wrapped the rope around my waist and twisted the end so I would have a good hold. The deer still just stood and stared at me, but you could tell it was mildly concerned about the whole rope situation. I took a step towards it...it took a step away. I put a little tension on the rope and then received an education.
The first thing that I learned is that, while a deer may just stand there looking at you funny while you rope it, they are spurred to action when you start pulling on that rope. That deer EXPLODED.
The second thing I learned is that pound for pound, a deer is a LOT stronger than a cow or a colt. A cow or a colt in that weight range I could fight down with a rope and with some dignity. A deer; no chance. That thing ran and bucked and twisted and pulled. There was no controlling it and certainly no getting close to it. As it jerked me off my feet and started dragging me across the ground, it occurred to me that having a deer on a rope was not nearly as good an idea as I had originally imagined. The only upside is that they do not have as much stamina as many other animals. A brief 10 minutes later, it was tired and not nearly as quick to jerk me off my feet and drag me when I managed to get up. It took me a few minutes to realize this, since I was mostly blinded by the blood flowing out of the big gash in my head.
At that point, I had lost my taste for corn-fed venison. I just wanted to get that devil creature off the end of that rope. I figured if I just let it go with the rope hanging around its neck, it would likely die slowly and painfully somewhere. At the time, there was no love at all between me and that deer. At that moment, I hated the thing, and I would venture a guess that the feeling was mutual. Despite the gash in my head and the several large knots where I had cleverly arrested the deer’s momentum by bracing my head against various large rocks as it dragged me across the ground, I could still think clearly enough to recognize that there was a small chance that I shared some tiny amount of responsibility for the situation we were in, so I didn’t want the deer to have it suffer a slow death, so I managed to get it lined back up in between my truck and the feeder - a little trap I had set beforehand ... kind of like a squeeze chute. I got it to back in there and I started moving up so I could get my rope back.
Did you know that deer bite? They do! I never in a million years would have thought that a deer would bite somebody, so I was very surprised when I reached up there to grab that rope and the deer grabbed hold of my wrist. Now, when a deer bites you, it is not like being bit by a horse where they just bite you and then let go. A deer bites you and shakes its head — almost like a pit bull. They bite HARD and it hurts.
The proper thing to do when a deer bites you is probably to freeze and draw back slowly. I tried screaming and shaking instead. My method was ineffective. It seems like the deer was biting and shaking for several minutes, but it was likely only several seconds. I, being smarter than a deer (though you may be questioning that claim by now) tricked it. While I kept it busy tearing the bejesus out of my right arm, I reached up with my left hand and pulled that rope loose.
That was when I got my final lesson in deer behavior for the day. Deer will strike at you with their front feet. They rear right up on their back feet and strike right about head and shoulder level, and their hooves are surprisingly sharp. I learned a long time ago that, when an animal — like a horse — strikes at you with their hooves and you can’t get away easily, the best thing to do is try to make a loud noise and make an aggressive move towards the animal. This will usually cause them to back down a bit so you can escape. This was not a horse. This was a deer, so obviously, such trickery would not work. In the course of a millisecond, I devised a different strategy. I screamed like a woman and tried to turn and run.
The reason I had always been told NOT to try to turn and run from a horse that paws at you is that there is a good chance that it will hit you in the back of the head. Deer may not be so different from horses after all, besides being twice as strong and 3 times as evil, because the second I turned to run, it hit me right in the back of the head and knocked me down. Now, when a deer paws at you and knocks you down, it does not immediately leave. I suspect it does not recognize that the danger has passed. What they do instead is paw your back and jump up and down on you while you are lying there crying like a little girl and covering your head. I finally managed to crawl under the truck and the deer went away.
Now for the local legend. I was pretty beat up. My scalp was split open, I had several large goose eggs, my wrist was bleeding pretty good and felt broken (it turned out to be just badly bruised) and my back was bleeding in a few places, though my insulated canvas jacket had protected me from most of the worst of it.
I drove to the nearest place, which was the Co-Op. I got out of the truck, covered in blood and dust and looking like hell. The guy who ran the place saw me through the window and came running out yelling, "What happened?"
I have never seen any law in the state of Kansas that would prohibit an individual from roping a deer. I suspect that this is an area that they have overlooked entirely. Knowing, as I do, the lengths to which law enforcement personnel will go to exercise their power, I was concerned that they may find a way to twist the existing laws to paint my actions as criminal. I swear... not wanting to admit that I had done something monumentally stupid played no part in my response. I told him "I was attacked by a deer". I did not mention that at the time I had a rope on it. The evidence was all over my body. Deer prints on the back of my jacket where it had stomped all over me and a large deer print on my face where it had struck me there. I asked him to call somebody to come get me. I didn’t think I could make it home on my own. He did. Later that afternoon, a game warden showed up at my house and wanted to know about the deer attack. Surprisingly, deer attacks are a rare thing and wildlife and parks was interested in the event. I tried to describe the attack as completely and accurately as I could. I was filling the grain hopper and this deer came out of nowhere and just started kicking the hell out of me and BIT me. It was obviously rabid or insane or something.
EVERYBODY for miles around knows about the deer attack (the guy at the Co-Op has a big mouth). For several weeks people dragged their kids in the house when they saw deer around and the local ranchers carried rifles when they filled their feeders. I have told several people the story, but NEVER anybody around here. I have to see these people every day and as an outsider; a "city folk". I have enough trouble fitting in without them snickering behind my back and whispering, "There is the dumbass that tried to rope the deer!"
Some of you who are using Vista may be familiar with the voice control function. It allows you to navigate your operating system by speaking into your microphone. It’s actually very cool and extremely accurate. As far as I can tell it’s the coolest part of Vista.
But, what about those of you not using Vista? Try Typle!
If you have a microphone, then you can control your computer. Instead of navigating with your mouse, you just tell your PC what to do. For instance, you could say "Open FireFox" and FireFox would open and load your home page. You could say "Quit Excel" and the computer would close Excel.
Probably not the most usefull piece of software you’ll every use. But, hell, it’s fun and novel and a way to impress your friends and family.
Typle is not as responsive as Vista’s voice control, and needs to be told what to do as opposed to learning for itself. So, if you have Vista, go to your control panel and try the voice control, you’ll be impressed. And, if you don’t have Vista, go download Typle for free and give it a try!
Be sure to come back and let me know how it goes!
PS: if you have Office 2003 or higher, you can also use your microphone to dictate as you speak. Go to "Tools" - "Speach".
Vampires are sucking your blood! Well, they’re sucking your money and our natural resources anyways...
Have you ever walked around your house at night with all of the lights off? Stand in the middle of the room and look around. You’ll see little red, green, blue and orange lights everywhere! These...are vampire lights. The experst say that these account for about 20% of your electric bill.
That little light that blinks day and night on your computer monitor...
The light on your surge protector...
What about the timer light on your coffee pot...
The stand-by light on your stereo...
Your cell phone charger may have a light on it as well.
All of the these devices are sucking power from your energy jugular 24 hours each day, 365 days each year. It’s amazing the amount of lights you can find that would fall into the category of vampire light. Last night I was talking with my wife and just from where we sat on the couch we could see at least 7 of them.
So, what can you do about it? The biggest problem is that these devices usually let their light be shown as long as they have power. The only way to dim most of them is to either disable the light, or remove the power source. There is a company that offers a product; Green Switch. Although, I might say that most of you probably won’t be running out to purchase new outlets and re-wire your homes.
There are some simple things you can do though. Turn off your computer monitor when you go to bed. Shut down your computer. Get rid of frivolous lights, like that cell phone charger that you never unplug. Does your electric razor really need to be plugged in all the time? Your entertainment center could easily be put on a surge protect power strip and switched off each night. That would take care of a lot of little lights; cable box, dvr, dvd player, vcr, video games, etc.
At 20%, which admittedly I think is slightly inflated, your energy bill and overall consumption will be greatly decreased. If your energy bill is $100 each month, then you would logically save $20 each month, or $240 each year. Not to mention you could save the power plants from having to produce all of the electricity.
Many manufacturers have started to become more aware of these issues and they are taking steps to help. Unfortunately for us, not all of the things in our homes are brand new and they are not built with the same care.
Could you imagine if the entire country got rid of vampire lights?
Here’s a very simple, low-tech way that you can use a web cam to watch your house. I read a DIY article about this on some website, unfortunately I don’t remember which website, so I can’t offer them credit.
But, if you have a web cam, or the $10 to buy a cheap one from NewEgg, then you can watch your web cam at home for free and on demand.
First, connect your web cam to the computer you would like to watch. If you’re like me, then you have a computer in your living room. Next go download Skype, it’s free. Skype is a very cool IM program, and more.
Now, go to the computer you will be using to watch you web cam, your work computer for instance. Install Skype on that computer as well. Instead of logging in on your first Skype account, set up a new account.
Now, back on your home computer, go to Skype’s Options and set it to automatically answer incoming calls, and to display video automatically. Be sure to set the preferences to only allow your other account to access the web cam. You don’t want just anyone to call and watch what you’re doing in your living room.
You’re all set. When you’re not at home, leave your home computer on, but the monitor off, and make sure you’re logged into Skype. All you need to do is add your home computer as a friend and call it. A live video feed will show up on your screen and you can watch it as long as you like. If you have a microphone, sound will be streamed as well.
Hey, I’ve provided the information, it’s up to you how to use it. If you catch your spouse nailing the neighbor, or something equally devious, don’t come back here and blame me. I am just the messenger!
