After years of sanding/grinding paint off of boat bottoms, I've opted to have Encore stripped by professional soda blasted. In part due to limited time and the need to open up some gel coat blistering … and in part due to the hassle with the environmental prep requirements involved with stripping the paint on my own. Anyway, she looks great in the buff, ehh? (also put a coat of protection on the iron keel before it starts rusting again)
Knowing that email links can be dangerous isn’t always enough to prevent even a relatively experience Internet userfrom occasionally being suckered into clicking embedded links in emails. It happened to me yesterday morning with a bogus Skype Voicemail notification (below). Emails can seem legitimate and be over looked if you’re not paying close attention … or just get careless. “What was I thinking?”
Anyway, use my mistake as a reminder to check on your anti-virus protection. It should always be running on your computer (and other Internet connected devices) as well as remaining up-to-date with the current virus definitions. I can vouch for Avast as an excellent free product that runs relatively quietly in the background … most of the time. It certainly did its job this morning. Whew!
Manually checking emailed and embedded links: Hover over or copy the link that you are tempted to click and check to be sure the URL for the site is the site you want to go to. Read it carefully as some links are very close to what you might expect. Some email clients make this easy (Mozilla Thunderbird example above), other require a copy and paste method as a way to check.
An image of this morning close call. Thanks Avast!
Seriously folks, are we really suppose to see an economic recovery with incomes down $4000/year for the average family over the past 4 years and the cost of fuel and food up? At least with over the board inflation peoples paychecks rise a little along with prices … but not in this Obamaconomy.
The latest surge in gasoline is certainly taking dollars out of the economy … dollars that the weak U.S. recovery would be better spent on products and services. With that kind of spending we are at least creating jobs, but unfortunately all higher fuel prices do is to zap whatever rebound the current administration’s “hope and change” promises. I’m not saying Mitt Romney’s plan is a perfect solution or an overnight fix, but how can voters justify four more years of growing debt and stagnation?
Last week I started testing the new wireless Internet being offered by FreedomPop.com. The service is interesting because light data users can connect and use the Internet basically for “free.” Higher data use plans are available for those needing more, but requires paying for it, helping to build out the user base or completing offers on the marketing pages. I hoping to continue using it free of monthly charges, but increasing my data cap by “recommend a few people.” (hint, hint – click here and send me your email address and ask me to recommend you for the beta). I’m thinking the “free” service might make an acceptable replacement for my old Palm Pre tethered connection now that it is not easily do-able on my iPhone 5.
With this “free” claim comes a few minor caveats, but if it works where I currently travel and need it, it will prove useful.
You must purchase a refundable 4G modem (a couple options)
You are limited to 500MB/month
You must be in their 4G covered area (basically WiMax/Sprint for now).
So far so good as I opted for the Photon 4G “tiny” 8 device modem (USB modem and Apple device “sleeve” are also available — the iPod Touch sleeve might be great for teens.). It is claimed to offer 6 hrs of connect time, but will also charge and run with a micro USB plugin. The shipping was very quick and it came packaged as if it were manufactured under Apple supervision – ie. very nice. The build quality is solid and did I mention “tiny” above? It is a 2-1/2” square and about 3/8” thick. I attached a little patch of Velcro to mine so I could stick it to the back of my computer, iPad or on my car dash … where I’m thinking it may get used most unless hot sun bothers it???
Set-up was a cinch and I was running in under 5 minutes, but after running my first speed test when still charging found it to be painfully slow – was the inside floor location, I think. Once I move it to the window sill, I was at speeds that match my Time Warner “non-turbo” basic Internet package. As I traveled in the covered area, speeds varied from just okay to impressively fast for Wimax both up and down on my iPad. (right). The connect remain pretty good while driving around Cincinnati and enable my Wazer mapping app to update without a problem. Unfortunately the footprint is not going to give me coverage in most of Ohio or at the boat (according to the map). It would really be nice to have a 4G data connection in Florida.
It has been a positive weekend for our extended family as my nephew Justin Howard and his wife Keity (Katie Vogel) had their second child … a boy, Evan Mark Howard. I’d offer up the normal details – size, weight, deliver issues – but figure linking to Keity’s blog would be more appropriate – LINK.
In other upbeat news, the Cincinnati Reds won game one of the NLDS against the Giants in a late night west coast game – LINK … AND my daughter took her brother to one of the very few Ohio State “night” home football games in Columbus. They had a great time watching the Buckeyes beat Nebraska in a high scoring 101 combined points game. I enjoyed watching from the bedroom at home and enjoyed the final 63 – 38 score almost as much as they did. Now if the Bengals can win this afternoon I’ll have a bounce in my step all week! BUT … just to keep life in perspective, I’m struggling to keep roots out of my sump and downspout drains and nearly ready to put in a new pipe rather than repair the old one again.
Vintage Converse All-Stars from 1977 – note the untied shoelace before it became the style!
I was a “geek” before there were “geeks” … if being a photographer for my hometown newspaper and for my high school yearbook counts? Friday nights were spent shooting games and then zipping to the darkroom to “soup” the film before rejoining my buddies for pizza (prints would be made after the film dried). Fast forward to what was on my mind this weekend.
It was my 35th Sidney High School reunion (class of 1977), but as usual I didn’t put it on the calendar or make reservations. Still, after noticing a few Facebook comments, I reminisced on my own by glancing through a stack of old negatives that are stuck together in the bottom of a box. Nothing stood out, but then my ol’ photog eyes may have lost the knack of mentally flipping blacks for whites??? The trip down memory lane did get me thinking about how to scan in black and white film negatives into digital copies. (click for larger image, but be warned … this image is larger than usual)
I suspect there is a better way (let me know), but I tested converting some of my old push processed Kodak Tri-X negatives on my flatbed scanner. Although the quality if far from what I would like to see, I think it can be done.
Dust the negatives then place face down on the scanner. Put a white backer sheet or two behind the negatives.
Scan at the highest resolution grayscale setting your scanner is capable of and let the auto feature make the adjustment (I’ve tried tweaking with poor results).
Open the file in Photoshop, Gimp or something similar and look for the “invert” menu option. For Photoshop look under Image > Adjustments > Invert.
Adjust the contrast and brightness and possibly tweak sharpness.
The unemployment numbers were released this Friday morning and looked 4 tenths better than August (7.8% from 8.2%) drawing suspicion from those who suspect a political conspiracy. Since the numbers are generated in questionable ways including phone polls, who knows?
This is still good news for President Obama who will who will point to economic recovery due to his stewardship of the economy.
The payroll numbers are less encouraging from my point of view as a total of 114,000 jobs were created (104,000 in the private sector). Who really understands the numbers and how accurate our measuring methods are?
My casual observer view is that the unemployment numbers are lower because fewer people are losing their existing jobs and those long-term unemployed are slowly dropping off the list. What we do know is that they are not being rehired in any large numbers (chart above) and this is reinforced by the lowest number of Americans participating in the U.S. workforce in my working lifetime (link and graph below). So personally I would be careful in getting too excited about the numbers by just looking at the lower unemployment number (if it is even realistic), because it doesn’t reflect job growth and how most people see their personal finances if they are employed.
