Showing posts with label technology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label technology. Show all posts
Thursday, February 27
Sunday, February 23
Delivery boys gone bad?
There's an article over at c|net about a Volvo/Ericsson program in which deliveries would be made straight to the trunk of your car.
I think this is a brilliant program that combines existing technologies. Delivery services are meant to be convenient and GPS and remote car access have been around for awhile (think OnStar). So it frustrates me to see the fearful comments on the c|net article, as if this were a new and untested technology.
Moreover, the comments sadden me, as the protagonist clearly trusts no human, and especially not strangers of a young age, working for minimum wage. He is suspicious of the demographic, and seems to assume primarily bad will come from this.
Is this a case of believing it into existence? The delivery boy has done nothing to earn the disrespect. It would seem to me that a complete lack of basic respect for another human being can only ensure an increase is wrongdoings.
Instead, I say we let the delivery boy rise to the challenge, embrace the work he has been given, take the chance that he won't rob you blind, and allow him to take pride in his work.
How does it make you feel when others believe in you?
Friday, February 21
In search of MSVCR80.dll
I only wish I had the same witch doctors at home. So, when iTunes, the treasure-bearer of my 4,000+ song catalog failed to launch, I felt the swamp waters of my psyche rise to a flood.
At first I tried to ignore the problem and continued with other computer-based missions, making sure to reboot the machine each night, hoping the iTunes fault was a mere fluke. Weeks of error messages belied that it was no fluke. If I wanted my music, I was going to have to seek out a spellbook of solutions.
Thankfully, after just a few rounds of search results, I came upon an article that accurately described my dilemma, and, miraculously, offered a step-by-step solution in layman's terms.
So, thank you, Tim Fisher, for your easy-to-follow juju, which has restored my mystic msvcr80.dll. Praise be to Ogun!
Wednesday, February 12
Fun with laser cannons (with or without cats)
I was disappointed to find out that the laser cannon pictured below is not military-grade. I had high hopes to cook up a house-sized batch of Jiffy Pop.
The ISS program is amusingly named, though, as it is about CATS in space. Unfortunately, it's only an acronym and the project is to gather data about airborne particles. I suppose it'll save lives 'n stuff, but the previous two assumptions are just so glamorous.
Read more about it on iO9.
The ISS program is amusingly named, though, as it is about CATS in space. Unfortunately, it's only an acronym and the project is to gather data about airborne particles. I suppose it'll save lives 'n stuff, but the previous two assumptions are just so glamorous.
Read more about it on iO9.
Tuesday, February 11
Little Bird Tales
Holly Gerla reviews Little Bird Tales as a kiddie educational tool (and what an efficient way to get kids producing!), but I'm also thinking it will probably be great for the elder generations - how great would it be for Grandpa to add some pics and narrate stories from his life?!
Monday, February 10
Saturday, October 19
(Re)Discovering MacPaint
c|net recently reported the re-emergence of MacPaint on CloudPaint.
Kids, this was cutting-edge when I was in elementary school! You just stuck a disk... that is, an oversized USB key... into the front of a whitish-grayish box with a teeny, built-in monitor and... voila! You were master of all matter graphic and capable of creating wonders like that which is pictured above!
Oh, how the memories flood back! At the time of this new technology, my mother taught part-time at the university and shared an office with Linda Rosenthal. Linda was clearly cutting-edge and had this magical device on the desk. On those random nights when I would accompany my mom to class and wait out the period in the office, is fiddled with these controls and created wonders from the seemingly unending palette of black-and-white offerings.
Someday I'll fill some pages with my love affair with Logo
What technology do you remember wowing you in your childhood?
Kids, this was cutting-edge when I was in elementary school! You just stuck a disk... that is, an oversized USB key... into the front of a whitish-grayish box with a teeny, built-in monitor and... voila! You were master of all matter graphic and capable of creating wonders like that which is pictured above!
Oh, how the memories flood back! At the time of this new technology, my mother taught part-time at the university and shared an office with Linda Rosenthal. Linda was clearly cutting-edge and had this magical device on the desk. On those random nights when I would accompany my mom to class and wait out the period in the office, is fiddled with these controls and created wonders from the seemingly unending palette of black-and-white offerings.
Someday I'll fill some pages with my love affair with Logo
What technology do you remember wowing you in your childhood?
Thursday, July 11
Tool tip: short URLs and QR codes
I use goo.gl, Google's url shortener, to create QR codes and shortened URLs (like bit.ly or tinyurl.com). The analytics are basic, but I enjoy having it as part of my Google suite of products attached to my Google account.
Thursday, August 18
Favicons
I just came across this on one of the education-related blogs I follow. I've idly wondered how to get a favicon in place!
Wednesday, August 17, 2011
Favicons
Here's a little something extra I found a while ago and have put to use in a few places where I publish online...
Favi-what, you ask? Favicons are those cute little icons that pop-up next to the URL of a website when you're browsing online or bookmarking sites. Recognize any of these?
They're TINY! And they get embedded in the HTML code of websites to customize them with extra cuteness. And recognizability...marketing is sort of important, I guess. Whatever.
Anyway, http://www.favicon.cc/ is a favicon generator, a site where you can create your own favicons! You can create them from scratch, or start with an uploaded image and tweak it from there. You'll notice the favicon for this site is the Charles Wright Academy crest. Or something like it. The actual upload looked like this:
Not entirely recognizable, but I did a bit of minor tweaking and then saved the .ico file to use in Blogger for this site (which is dead easy, btw). It's so tiny, it still looks like the Tarrier symbol we all know and love.
Similarly, I took the square logo from my other blog, and made a favicon for that site.
Looks crazy as a favicon, right? But when it's super tiny in your URL bar, it looks...close enough!Customize to your heart's content:
Tuesday, November 23
Insomniacial
It's my own, special word - somewhere between unable to fall asleep and losing one's mind from the inability to fall asleep. Actually, I doubt it's a special word... or a special "condition," anyway.
There must be thousands of other mothers up late at night reveling in the recent playtime with their young child, and wondering why they don't take more time for such carefree one-on-one silly playtime. I loved being my daughter's brief center of attention today as we posed for silly pictures - on our tummies in the snow, her on my back, me steamrolling her, us wiping the cold, dry snow off one-another when the portraits were taken. It was easy, it made us happy, and it's probably the goofy story she'll share with her friends at school after holiday break.
I'm pretty sure I have a doppelganger at nearly every workplace - someone who takes delight in the arrangement of good, clean data - someone who places in the numbers and ideas and wrings out attainable hopes for the organization. A person who sits back and reflects on what may be the "bigger picture," and adjusting standards to best suit immediate and future needs. And I'm sure she has trouble scaling the brain to "standby" as logic pours into her imagination, creating queries and refined exports... without her bidding, it keeps pouring.
What about all those Thanksgiving hostesses with food and entertaining on their minds? The end of November looks like a big, rising hump, with a steep ascent to its peak on Thursday, and slowly tapering off into the next holiday. The groceries are on premises, but there's prepping, timing, placement, and tasting. There's table-setting, plating, polishing, and dusting. There's games to lay out in the family room. The video games need to be hidden away. The cold beverages need refrigeration while the hot beverages need to be prepared and put on warmers. The turkey needs to start early (earlier than Monday's test bird, by far!) and the soup needs to go into the crocks. Bathrooms needs a quick scrub. Beds will need changing. Oh, and let's just hope everyone makes it on Thursday, because if not, we'll probably repeat this all at the next snow-free date when all family can assemble.
There are so many books I want to read. I'm in the middle of the latest Terry Pratchett novel, and I've just begun Freedom for our "book club" (FYI - those are air quotes). I have several Christmas holiday decorating books that beg for a leisure read. Those are pure fantasy for me; I don't have any intention on following up on the actual activities. Oh, I've sewn quilts and made many scrapbooks, but those weren't inspired by magazines - they were inspired by life itself. (Oh, how poetic!) (FYI - poetry is another unlikely craft for me.) So how many times do you hear someone lamenting that there's never enough time to read?
And then there's my job. OK, so I'm not sure "everyone" has my same complaint. Perhaps it's less of a complaint and more of a conundrum. I am grateful to have a good job, at a good place, doing good work that I enjoy. My difficulty is the work-life balance - my part-time status allows me the luxury of being available as a mama when my kiddo is out of school. What's lacking are the freedoms I had pre-job - school volunteerism, menu planning, housework, leisurely grocery shopping, and exercise. I satisfied myself for the last many months with an intent to return to these lesser-paying (OK, NON-paying) options when my project ends at the end of the calendar year. But it looks like it will continue, which is GREAT because I continue to be a valued-and-contributing member of society by measurable standards, GREAT because I will be working in areas of my strength, and GREAT because I'll continue to receive a paycheck and benefits. But, whiny girl that I am, I was really looking forward to starting at the gym... getting a handle on the cooking... making my face familiar at school again.
Hmmm... let's see... what's keeping YOU up late at night?
There must be thousands of other mothers up late at night reveling in the recent playtime with their young child, and wondering why they don't take more time for such carefree one-on-one silly playtime. I loved being my daughter's brief center of attention today as we posed for silly pictures - on our tummies in the snow, her on my back, me steamrolling her, us wiping the cold, dry snow off one-another when the portraits were taken. It was easy, it made us happy, and it's probably the goofy story she'll share with her friends at school after holiday break.
I'm pretty sure I have a doppelganger at nearly every workplace - someone who takes delight in the arrangement of good, clean data - someone who places in the numbers and ideas and wrings out attainable hopes for the organization. A person who sits back and reflects on what may be the "bigger picture," and adjusting standards to best suit immediate and future needs. And I'm sure she has trouble scaling the brain to "standby" as logic pours into her imagination, creating queries and refined exports... without her bidding, it keeps pouring.
What about all those Thanksgiving hostesses with food and entertaining on their minds? The end of November looks like a big, rising hump, with a steep ascent to its peak on Thursday, and slowly tapering off into the next holiday. The groceries are on premises, but there's prepping, timing, placement, and tasting. There's table-setting, plating, polishing, and dusting. There's games to lay out in the family room. The video games need to be hidden away. The cold beverages need refrigeration while the hot beverages need to be prepared and put on warmers. The turkey needs to start early (earlier than Monday's test bird, by far!) and the soup needs to go into the crocks. Bathrooms needs a quick scrub. Beds will need changing. Oh, and let's just hope everyone makes it on Thursday, because if not, we'll probably repeat this all at the next snow-free date when all family can assemble.
There are so many books I want to read. I'm in the middle of the latest Terry Pratchett novel, and I've just begun Freedom for our "book club" (FYI - those are air quotes). I have several Christmas holiday decorating books that beg for a leisure read. Those are pure fantasy for me; I don't have any intention on following up on the actual activities. Oh, I've sewn quilts and made many scrapbooks, but those weren't inspired by magazines - they were inspired by life itself. (Oh, how poetic!) (FYI - poetry is another unlikely craft for me.) So how many times do you hear someone lamenting that there's never enough time to read?
And then there's my job. OK, so I'm not sure "everyone" has my same complaint. Perhaps it's less of a complaint and more of a conundrum. I am grateful to have a good job, at a good place, doing good work that I enjoy. My difficulty is the work-life balance - my part-time status allows me the luxury of being available as a mama when my kiddo is out of school. What's lacking are the freedoms I had pre-job - school volunteerism, menu planning, housework, leisurely grocery shopping, and exercise. I satisfied myself for the last many months with an intent to return to these lesser-paying (OK, NON-paying) options when my project ends at the end of the calendar year. But it looks like it will continue, which is GREAT because I continue to be a valued-and-contributing member of society by measurable standards, GREAT because I will be working in areas of my strength, and GREAT because I'll continue to receive a paycheck and benefits. But, whiny girl that I am, I was really looking forward to starting at the gym... getting a handle on the cooking... making my face familiar at school again.
Hmmm... let's see... what's keeping YOU up late at night?
Thursday, June 25
Geek out
I love to geek out on cool apps. However, I should point out that I'm different from the typical gal who raves about apps. I don't own an iPhone. I'm not into pass-the-time handheld games and gadgets. I geek out on APPS in what I think of as the "original sense" of the name. Word processors, spreadsheets, publishing software, databases... y'know - computer applications!
Today's geek-out began with an MS Word merge from an MS Excel spreadsheet. I couldn't find the computer logic that was leaving out seemingly-random lines of data from my finished product. I'm still not following the logic, but I was completely thrilled when Di took up the challenge and found the solution*.
The day got better, too! Shortly thereafter I was faced with a task to prepare a contact sheet based on data in our massive database. I was under the impression that my login didn't allow access to query-writing; there's a hardcopy form we're expected to complete with our requests and submit 48 hours in advance of our needs. With the database administrator away for a week, I thought I'd at least poke around in the saved queries to see if anything suited my needs and... voila! I can create queries! The ability made me downright giddy and I set to work pulling and tweaking requests to get a sense of the procedures. I really look forward to getting my "formal" training in a few weeks!
Life is geekily good!
*Take note, MS Word 2003 users: the solution was to throw in a code and insert a duplicate line of merge commands.
Today's geek-out began with an MS Word merge from an MS Excel spreadsheet. I couldn't find the computer logic that was leaving out seemingly-random lines of data from my finished product. I'm still not following the logic, but I was completely thrilled when Di took up the challenge and found the solution*.
The day got better, too! Shortly thereafter I was faced with a task to prepare a contact sheet based on data in our massive database. I was under the impression that my login didn't allow access to query-writing; there's a hardcopy form we're expected to complete with our requests and submit 48 hours in advance of our needs. With the database administrator away for a week, I thought I'd at least poke around in the saved queries to see if anything suited my needs and... voila! I can create queries! The ability made me downright giddy and I set to work pulling and tweaking requests to get a sense of the procedures. I really look forward to getting my "formal" training in a few weeks!Life is geekily good!
*Take note, MS Word 2003 users: the solution was to throw in a
Wednesday, May 20
Things that make me drool: Part II
Are you ready for it? Get ready! Here it comes! It's... it's...
That's right, it's a copy machine.
It's really much more that a copier. It's my default printer for both color and black-and-white. It's my paper assistant that stores 6 drawers of paper so that I never run short on a job and I have easy access to 11 x 17 or letterhead at the touch of a button. It sorts and stacks and staples and duplexes.
It's also a fax and scanner! I scan my item and type my email address into the computer screen and it's instantly sent to my desktop with far more clarity than I've ever seen.
Along with the Dymo label printer on my desk, it's one of my favorite pieces of office equipment. And yes, I do dream about my favorite pieces of office equipment.
I think I'm in love.
That's right, it's a copy machine.
It's really much more that a copier. It's my default printer for both color and black-and-white. It's my paper assistant that stores 6 drawers of paper so that I never run short on a job and I have easy access to 11 x 17 or letterhead at the touch of a button. It sorts and stacks and staples and duplexes.
It's also a fax and scanner! I scan my item and type my email address into the computer screen and it's instantly sent to my desktop with far more clarity than I've ever seen.
Along with the Dymo label printer on my desk, it's one of my favorite pieces of office equipment. And yes, I do dream about my favorite pieces of office equipment.
I think I'm in love.
Thursday, April 30
Lost camera and photos reunited with owners
A friend just posted a link to ifoundyourcamera.blogspot.com on Facebook. If you a find a camera or random photos (on the side of the road, in a box of stuff from the thrift shop, etc.), you can email them to the blog editor who posts them every Thursday. Several have been rematched with their owners! What a good feeling this gives me!
(The New York Times had an article on this earlier this month.)
(The New York Times had an article on this earlier this month.)
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