My Desultory Blog

Posted By RichC on January 11, 2018

While eating out on January 9th, I stealthfully pick up the check for a local police officer just as I’ve seen others do in the past. I find a gesture like this is a polite way to let street officers know we have their backs and appreciate them for the tough and often thankless job they are expected to do.

The conversation at our table turned to the challenges law enforcement officers face in dealing with not only the criminals, but the “political correct” and in my opinion overly soft approach they are expected to use when dealing with uncooperative hoodlums. It is hard enough for officers in the US to do the job when having to overthink when to use physical force … but it would be so much worse to be expected to function as law enforcement in the UK (video snippet below) where criminals know the police don’t even carry the tools (let alone have much political backing) when the use of force becomes necessary. I’m thankful most communities around me back our police give them what they need to keep themselves and the public safe in most encounters.

Category: Misc, Politics, Video | 1 Comment »
Tags: blue ribbon, bluelivesmatter, british, cops, enforcement, law, police, video

Posted By RichC on January 10, 2018

Bits and pieces are still arriving from my Christmas shopping. Sometimes I forget that not every company/individual doing business online is shipping with the efficiency we become accustom to with Amazon and other big online retail sites.

In any case, one of the gifts I assembled was an emergency kit that included survival items we hope never to need, but that would be nice to have if public services are unavailable for any length of time. After doing research on a water purification set-up, besides including water purification tablets, I opted for the Sawyer Mini Filter to Smartwater bottle hack  – because Brenda still buys plastic water bottles, against my protest and grumbling).

(more…)

Category: Archive, Health, Misc, Shopping, Video | No Comments »
Tags: amazon, ebay, filter, hack, prepper, shipping, smartwater, video, water, youtube

Posted By RichC on January 9, 2018

Category: Automotive, Social Media, Video | No Comments »
Tags: driving, facebook, snow, tesla, towing, truck, winter

Posted By RichC on January 8, 2018

Our Amazon Echo Dot Christmas gift is the gift that keeps on giving now that I’m learning new “skills.” There isn’t anything earth-shattering it is currently doing, but the “easy” interface to Amazon’s cloud server for content and function may be limitless … at least looking into the future. It is an impressive device; perhaps other “voice assistance” gadgest are just as impressive?

Music playing is a core function of the Echo, but that would be too simple to mention in this post — but it does a fine job of finding and playing Amazon Prime Music (we are Prime connected). Frankly I still prefer Pandora and the Echo is well connected to my 50+ channels. Surprisingly, this Amazon device plays Pandora (free) without commercials just like Pianobar on the Raspberry Pi (nice), unlike my iPhone, iPad and computer. iHeartRadio works well too. Spotify … nope, not unless you subscribe to their premium service.

Back to today’s MusicMonday connection. One of the connected Alexa “skills” that my son-in-law sent me happens to be a bible study podcast that I enjoy call Truth for Life by Alistair Begg (he was our pastor at Parkside Church when we lived in Hudson, Ohio). It is excellent for those quiet times reflecting and studying the word of God. I tried it out on Sunday and enjoyed following along in another of my new gifts, the Alistair Begg edition of Spurgeon Study Bible (thank you Katelyn, Drew and Annalyn).

Alistair, who has the obvious accent from growing up across the pond, closed Sunday’s podcast with a reference to The Beatles and their title song from their album Help!

How apropos for Music Monday.

Category: Alexa, Audio, Music, Raspberry Pi, Technology | No Comments »
Tags: Alexa, alistair begg, amazon, beatles, bible, christian, echo, help, music monday, musicmonday, spurgeon, study, truth for life

Posted By RichC on January 7, 2018

After tweaking WordPress last week with AMP plugins, I noticed several posts were missing their schedules. I added a Schedule Post Trigger plug-in that corrected that issue, but never deactivated it after removing both AMP plug-ins.

This past weekend, scheduled posts were not triggered at the correctly dated times so am testing with this post after deactivating.

Category: Blogs | No Comments »
Tags: plugins, test, testing, wordpress

Posted By RichC on January 7, 2018

This content is restricted.

Category: Archive, Personal, Photos, Video | No Comments »
Tags: annalyn, drew, family, granddaughter, john deere, katelyn, Photos, video

Posted By RichC on January 6, 2018

Filling space with a 22 second video clip and testing “autoplay” and “loop.”

Category: Video, Weather | No Comments »
Tags: ocean, sports, surfing, video, waves, windsurfing

Posted By RichC on January 5, 2018

In order to improve efficiency on WordPress sites (my customer installs) I often experiment with updates on my personal MyDesultoryBlog first since very little on this site really matters for paying customers. So over the Christmas and New Years holidays I fiddled with a few highly recommended updates to the LAMP server and WordPress installs.

First I tried a couple different cache options and installed Cloudflare – they were not helping with speed even if they detected suspected hacking intrusion attempts. In any case I’m back to the existing DNS and Comet Cache. 

Next was a return to the Accelerated Mobile Plug-ins (a couple different) which optimize both content and ads for mobile devices. Again as before, I remembered why I stopped using them: AMP optimization eliminates formatting, homepage links and content as well as much of the video, slideshow and contact form info. Neither the simple versions of AMP, Better AMP or the pay for more customizable version of AMP for WP could be tweaked to get the content to satisfy me on my iPhone or iPad.

So after all that, we’re back to square one and a non-optimized WP pages …which works fine the way I use it, but as content goes to mobile devices, AMP is something I’m going to have to embrace.

Category: Blogs, Cellphone, Computer, Software, Tablet, Technology | No Comments »
Tags: amp, blog, cache, cloudflare, comet, mobile, mydesultoryblog, speed, webpages, wordpress

Posted By RichC on January 4, 2018

The new year has certainly started out cold in Cincinnati. We’ve been below zero every night this week and now that the frozen pipe is behind me (I hope), I was able to get back to some sense of a normal routine since I put off meetings and a pile of work until after the holidays.

Of course we are not the only ones dealing with winter weather, those on the east coast and down in the southeast are getting both cold temperatures AND snow. Our Florida friends, who moved to an area outside of Savannah, Georgia last year, are probably ready to head back south. Mark sent a few photos from their yard on Wednesday – of course I couldn’t keep from laughing and thinking they have more snow than we do!
 

Category: Friends, Photos, Weather | 1 Comment »
Tags: cold, darlene, friends, jones, mark, Photos, snow, weather

Posted By RichC on January 3, 2018

Before sending another check to the guy I have doing some bottom work on Encore, I really need to inspect the work. I don’t want him to stop working, but I don’t want bottom paint slapped on the new epoxy fiberglass repair before double checking the layers, fairing and keel work and epoxy barrier coats either, so I’ve been checking airfares daily – yesterday I spotted a cheap flight that should work.

Of course I’m not sure when the work will be to the stage of checking, but mid-January was a"target date." Between work and scheduled activity, I’m not sure, but this $25 fare back to fly back from Fort Lauderdale after driving down was the only one on Southwest had left in January so I grabbed it. Gas for the drive down will cost far more than airfare, as will the Uber ride to get to FLL. I only wish the bill for the work on the boat was going to be that inexpensive! It’s a good thing I’ll be saving money staying at the "Jones Motel" on the drive down … their hotel rates never change! (it is great to have such wonderful friends … I can’t wait to see Mark and Dar!)

Category: Aviation, Friends, Misc, Sailing, Travel | No Comments »
Tags: dar, encore, flights, florida, friends, jones, mark, southwest, Travel