canary | My Desultory Blog

Canary cam selfies, Taylor and his fraternity friends in the Bahamas and the passing of the UK’s Prince Phillip

RichC | April 10, 2021

It is that time of year again … spring, when the camera loving birds (1, 2, 3) sit and look at the Pool Garage camera. The downside is that every time they sit and look at the Canary cam, it triggers a motion alert to my phone. Taylor and Megan are on their way back […]

Category: Archive, Gadget, Nature, Obituary, Photos, Travel | No Comments »
Tags: bahamas, bird, Cam, canary, fraternity, harbour island, megan, obit, prince phillip, queen elizabeth, royalty, taylor, vacation

Tech Friday: Look what arrived this week – the Wyze Cam 3

RichC | January 22, 2021

It was back in November when everyone was Black Friday shopping for gifts or ording Cyber Monday items … that is when the inexpensive security camera company Wyze, sent me an email about their new camera and motion detection subscription. At the time I was struggling with way too many notifications after the company lost […]

Category: Gadget, Shopping, Technology | No Comments »
Tags: Cam, camera, canary, promo, security, subscription, tech friday, techfriday, wyze, wyzecam3

It feels like winter, but those pesky Stink Bugs are still here?

RichC | December 8, 2020

One of the irritations in using motion sensing security cameras (ani gif from previous post) at our house is that no matter how much I tweak the settings, they still detect motion and even declare “person detected” when it comes to movement. The biggest offender is slightly older Canary cam that I have set up […]

Category: Environment, Misc, Nature, Technology, Video | No Comments »
Tags: ani gif, anigif, birds, bugs, canary, cardinal, gif, insects, mp4, security cam, stink bugs, wyze

The Canary cam, another cardinal and a painted pry bar

RichC | April 24, 2020

A couple weeks ago I mentioned that our brightly color cardinal enjoyed “looking at himself” in our window’s Canary cam – he was probably looking for a mate. Now that he’s found one … he seems to be avoid her; she is likely checking his usual haunts and asking “where is he?” I suspect there […]

Category: Environment, Humor, Nature, Personal, Photos, Technology, Tools, Video | No Comments »
Tags: ani gif, birds, canary, cardinal, nature, painting, pry bar, tools, workshop

The Canary (cardinal) security cam alerts are driving me crazy

RichC | April 6, 2020

Thought I would add a late day animated GIF to the blog … partially because these Canary alerts have become a normal annoyance by sending text message alerts and partially this cardinal is cute. Hopefully he will grow tired of “looking at himself” and find a female cardinal who he can impress! Also while sending […]

Category: Art, Ideas, Misc, Nature, Personal, Photos, Social Networking, Technology, Woodworking | No Comments »
Tags: ani gif, animated, apartment, artwork, Cam, canary, cardinal, gif, idea, ideas, project, security, table

Tech Friday: Growing pains with “person detection” AI at Wyze

RichC | November 29, 2019

With the advent of decent quality inexpensive home security products and cameras, it has never be easier to keep an eye on “motion” that happens around a business or home. The key for most of us is to find the least expensive quality “small” product … in our case the Wyze cams have beat out […]

Category: Cloud, Computer, Technology | No Comments »
Tags: ai, cameras, cams, canary, detection, edge-ai, home, monitor, motion, security, tech friday, techfriday, wyze, xnor

It is cold and windy. Another layer of warm clothes please.

RichC | January 30, 2019

An ani-gif of our Canary driveway cam early Wednesday Morning – 1/30/2019 The … dare I say a hated and banished phrase … “polar vortex” has swooped down from the north and frozen everything. It is brutally cold, but then it is winter. Schools, of course, are closed and even mail delivery in Cincinnati has been suspended. […]

Category: Blogs, Misc, Photos, Weather | No Comments »
Tags: anigif, banished, boa, canary, cold, driveway, frozen, gif, lssu, polar, snake, snow, vortex, weather

One of our narcissistic doves seems to like taking a #selfie

RichC | March 28, 2018

We have a couple of Canary cams in our home and they constantly trigger for one thing or the other. I’m still having problems with one of them sending “Person spotted in Away mode” which usually means my iPhone has not been detected as being “home.” I’ve tweaked the setting, played with masks, double and triple […]

Category: Environment, Humor, Misc, Nature, Photos, Social Networking, Technology | No Comments »
Tags: bird, Cam, canary, dove, gadget, security, selfie, twitter

Most Recent Posts

05/06/21: Selling my May Fly lures inventory came back to haunt me #TBT
Whoops … an interesting Throwback Thursday #TBT flashback and mistake on my part … I received an order for MayFly Lures that I posted back in 2018 and sold a few and then sold my entire inventory in one lump in… »
05/05/21: Archive: A few saved family photos from the week that was …
Received an email from a friend who said, “hey, there are no photo of you in your last week’s vacation post?” Hm, true .. and realized that this panorama is the nearest photo I have of me relaxing on the beach.… »
05/04/21: Looking at New York City from the Empire State Building #pano
How many building top water tanks can you count? (you could spend hours zoomed in on this photo … and if that is not enough, there is a naked man somewhere in this “Where is Wally or Waldo-like”… »
05/03/21: Music Monday: The Beach Boys, "Fun, Fun, Fun" and some R & R
PLACEHOLDER It was a week of R and R for us with some sun and fun, so for Music Monday what better music than The Beach Boys and Fun, Fun, Fun from 1964. Brian Wilson and Mike Love wrote the song based on a party… »
05/02/21: It was good to get away to sunny Florida for a restful beach week
Although I know much of the country has lived locked down for much of the year, Brenda and I have probably done a little more than most. She has worked in the pharmacy without much of a break and since the COVID19… »
05/01/21: Struggling with Lenovo laptop, router and Internet connections
Either the Netgear Nighthawk R7000 router at our condo is glitchy, Xfinity is not giving my any upload speed or my Lenovo laptop is struggling to stay connected. No time to diagnosis, but I may end up chucking the… »
04/30/21: Tech Friday: Rumor says new Apple iPad and perhaps the iMac and Apple TV will be available on May 21st
On April 20th I streamed part of the the Apple event to see what was in the works for 2021. We already knew about the iPad Pro, but I was interested to know about the M1 iMac and Brenda uses the Apple TV for streaming… »
04/29/21: President Biden has a bold tax and spend plan for the US
Personally I don’t like using the word "bold" for taxing and spending by big government since it has a positive attribute (at least to my thinking), but President Biden’s Joint Address last night… »
04/28/21: Pandemic TV watching has shifted from people to their homes
Brenda and I chuckled the other day that while we watch television news interviews and participating on Zoom calls, that we find ourselves noticing, pondering and commenting on "backgrounds" since the COVID19… »
04/27/21: GE tops estimates, but share price is still suffering
General Electric‘s ($GE) first-quarter 2021 earnings were as they should be. Still, it wasn’t quite enough for investors. General Electric (ticker: GE) shares were down about 2.7% in premarket trading. S&P 500… »
04/26/21: Music Monday: The Foundations – “Build Me Up Buttercup”
A British soul band that was popular with a few late 1960s hits was popular before most of my music listening. The group was The Foundations and one of their hits was “Build Me Up Buttercup” released in 1968. It… »
04/25/21: Learning more about cryptocurrency with webinar #Bitcoin
Although I’ve owned a small amount of Bitcoin in a cryptocurrency account for a while now, I’ve been wanting to attend a primer on the subject. Thankfully Barron’s offered a free webinar hosted by Beverly Goodman… »
04/24/21: New Montana Brand countersink 4-in-1 countersink bits
There’s not much a tools and gadget guy like me likes more than getting something new for my workshop. After breaking a bit in my cheap-ish countersink a few weeks ago (probably imported from China), I opted for a new… »
04/23/21: Tech Friday: Evaluating my newsfeed & “waste of time” tweeting
I’ve used Twitter as my interactive Newsfeed for almost 15 years now and it has been a struggle to decide if it is worth it or not? BUT, like most people who start the addictive habit of using social networks and… »
04/22/21: Come on, it is late April 2021! Is Spring really in the air?
After just finishing cutting the lawn on Tuesday night and working on our landscaping this past weekend in anticipation of a cold front with some “expected rain,” it ended up coming down as SNOW! I mean, come on, it… »
04/21/21: Auto racing: Too close of a call for this flagman #video
Thankfully no one was hurt at this Sprint car race, but this is too close of a call for any flag person’s comfort. Yikes!… »
04/20/21: Are we teaching kids to focus on the color of their skin?
It seems like a lot of politicians and journalists on the left feed into and retain power by stoking racial unrest? It also appears that the leaders who are fueling the fire also have a Marxist/Socialist ideology, which… »
04/19/21: Music Monday: Not my taste, but definitely Bluegrass talent
This past weekend I saw what looked like an amateur musician in a college dorm or apartment video roll across my Twitter feed and thought, “this young man has talent.” It reminded me of a post from 2014 when Jacob… »
04/18/21: How do you dice and onion? Let’s check with Lifehacker.
Is there a better way to “dice” and onion? The Lifehacker “Hack or Wack” crew gave the UK tipster’s method a try … and I’ll probably do the same even though they concluded it was “wack.” Still, there… »
04/17/21: Yardwork and getting ready to freshen up our mounds
It’s that time of year … cleaning up, getting the landscaping mounds ready for new mulch and of course, Brenda has to burn something … decorative grasses go up fast. Let’s hope she doesn’t burn the fence… »
04/16/21: Tech Friday: A powerful Copy and Paste app for the Macintosh
If you use a computer for any length of time (my “go-to” is an aging 2012 Apple iMac), you’ll find yourself cut, copy and pasting things on a regular basis. Security experts do not recommend using the cut/copy… »
04/15/21: My new visual for the "blow your own horn [trumpet]" idiom
John Rowe, an automotive friend on Twitter, often shares a “ Today’s Useless Tweet” that I find entertaining. It fit with the idioms tag on MyDesultoryBlog and thought his “blow your own horn ” (see… »
04/14/21: When will Ford reinstate their dividend? $F
Since Ford once-upon-a-time paid a solid dividend, it was one of those stocks I felt comfortable trading in and out of or just sitting on for a while … but after the company suspended the dividend in March of… »
04/13/21: Experimenting with a Magnetohydrodynamic Drive demo
You can take the boy out of school, but you can’t take school (and learning) out of the boy ( or older man at this point). Over the weekend, I was talking to Brenda about how I’ve been following the NASA feed… »
04/12/21: Music Monday: Sheryl Crow and NPR Music Tiny Desk Concerts
Stumbled across a pre-COVID19 lockdown NPRMusic Tiny Desk Concert on YouTube when watching another video from an automotive friend of mine … and since I like Sheryl Crow “music” … I figured it… »
04/11/21: Celebrities Then and Now Photos (popular on social media)
Last week my sister-in-law shared an update on her Facebook page of some well-known Hollywood celebrities that I thought would be interesting to at to MyDesultoryBlog. I downloaded the 30+ different-sized photos,… »
04/10/21: Canary cam selfies, Taylor and his fraternity friends in the Bahamas and the passing of the UK’s Prince Phillip
It is that time of year again … spring, when the camera loving birds (1, 2, 3) sit and look at the Pool Garage camera. The downside is that every time they sit and look at the Canary cam, it triggers a motion alert to… »
04/09/21: Tech Friday: Innovative hearing technology on my wish list
Sometimes when my mind wanders, I shift from pie-in-the-sky dreaming (flying cars, mind control devices, AI/robotics (mp4), time machines (mp4), “beam me up” transporters, etc) to something that’s a bit more… »
04/08/21: Double spline miters, my granddaughters and early drives #TBT
With all the photos that I take, I can’t believe I didn’t snap a couple photos of the recent redwood framed games and puzzle woodworking projects I made for my granddaughters? Oh well, they turned out nice. I used… »
04/07/21: Books: Reading the updated investing classic "A Random Walk Down Wall Street" by Burton G. Malkiel
In keeping with a New Year’s resolution from “years ago” to read more non-fiction books and some classic literature still sitting unread on our new bookshelves, I’ve picked up a new edition of an “older”… »
04/06/21: Political corporate activism in Georgia, boycotts and investing
Democrats have been gaining ground over the past few years with their “hate Trump” blitzing supported by the leftists, big tech and mainstream media (one in the same from what I’ve seen), and continue to put heavy… »
04/05/21: Music Monday: Paul Simon (and Art Garfunkel) – Kodachrome
Last week on Music Monday the subject was Kodachrome and how an automotive social networking site that archives slides and one of Cripple Creek, Colorado that triggered a musical memory for me. After mentioning it to… »
04/04/21: Happy Easter 2021 – He is risen. He is risen indeed.
For Christians, there’s no more celebrated day than Easter … for without a risen Savior, no other day in Christianity would matter. He is risen indeed! BUT … why does the day always change? I mean, we’ve… »
04/03/21: Archive: Granddaughter catch-up photos from this past week
There’s not much of a question whether Annalyn and Ellerie had a good time this past week. The girls … and their mom and dad … are vacationing in sunny and warm Disney World in Orlando before heading further… »
04/02/21: Tech Friday: A now rare Internet connectivity issue & speedtest
We have not had many Internet connectivity issues since switching to Cincinnati Bell Fioptic fiber and then added a mesh network instead of traditional router (although the Netgear Nighthawk was pretty good – we move… »
04/01/21: An Akron/Canton CAK photo from my Palm Treo in 2006 #TBT
While cleaning up one of my old Flickr accounts where my Palm Treo 700p photos were backed up, I stumbled across one of the first photos with it I took and posted to this blog – June 2006. Even though the camera was… »
03/31/21: An etymology share: ‘What Time Is ‘Noon?"
When was ‘noon’ a time that was later in the day … like 3PM? Let’s check with merriam-webster.com: There’s something aesthetically pleasing about the word noon. Its palindromic spelling feels appropriate for… »
03/30/21: After 6 days, the Ever Given is moving and the Suez Canal is open
The news that has captured much of the of the world’s interest this week was the very large Ever Given container ship lodged sideways in the Suez Canal by 40+ mph winds (and perhaps some mechanical issues?). The… »
03/29/21: Music Monday: The Band and Kodachrome photography
Last week while talking with a couple car enthusiasts about old cars, old photos and photography, one of the guys mentioned an online social feed that posts Kodachrome images of old vintage car scenes. While sifting… »
03/28/21: Worked on some spring yard clean-up over the weekend
The 70 degree spring weather, and the high winds last week, begged me to load up the trailer with fallen sticks and starting a small burn pile (still too windy to burn the big pile). A thousand up and down stooping… »
03/27/21: Business change, server updates, an idiom & a friend’s new toy
This past week was an on and off work week. I’ve been struggling to update software and the latest Linux flavor on an old server while telling myself “I’m getting too old for this.” Right or wrong attitude, I… »
03/26/21: Tech Friday: What is the best smartphone for 2021?
The current opinion by many who review technology (and Consumer Reports) is that the best smartphone for 2021 is the Apple iPhone 12 Pro Max … although might be a bit larger than many are comfortable putting in their… »
03/25/21: Investing: Buying Vertex $VRTX for 2021 and hopefully beyond
For the most part, I’m a conservative investor, although a regular channel trader, and I rarely speculates on risky upstarts, IPOs, zero-profit tech stocks, pharmaceutical long-shots or the latest crazy …… »
03/24/21: Sticking with what I know: Bought my 4th pair of Vasque boots
The more I think about it, the “lamer” it appears to be talking about shoes … but truth be told, the Sperry Topsider reviews and shoe insole posts still are in the top ten when it comes to blog numbers. I’m… »
03/23/21: Weddings and Nice Weather indicates Spring 2021 has arrived
Besides what has become an annual photo of one of our lilac bushes pushing out buds, this past weekend was the first weekend of spring. Besides the new growth and greening lawn, we celebrated with our neighbors of 25… »
03/22/21: Music Monday: More Than a Feeling – Boston 1976
For this week’s Music Monday, mentioning the band Boston and their debut album of the same name triggers memories. Fond thoughts aside, the title song “More Than a Feeling,” is long overdue music for… »
03/21/21: Ancestry and two cute St. Patrick’s Day granddaughter photos
At one time I thought there might be a bit of Irish blood in my heritage mix, especially on the Corbett side, but an Ancestry.com DNA test in 2019 suggested that there was not. For some reason, I assumed the “known”… »
03/20/21: At what point do or can you start cutting ties with BigTech?
A technology friend of mine, Scott Bilik (who was considered my Twitter “Godfather in 2007), has recently wiped some of the mud from his hypothetical digital footprints and is systematically freeing himself from Big… »
03/19/21: Tech Friday: Apple expected to launch new iPad Pro in April 2021
Although I’m not in the market for a new iPad just yet, I am (or was) a multiple hours a day user back when traveling a bit more and interested in what a Thunderbolt and M1 chipped iPad Pro might offer. At least… »
03/18/21: Do you build or buy a new house this year or put it off?
Real estate has been on a tear in many markets as the coronavirus has people moving from cities to the suburbs and their own piece of land. In my opinion it is not just COVID19 related, but that fact that cities… »
03/17/21: Polished up our simple folding IKEA dish drying rack
At one time, I thought I was better at time management, but clearly after spending over an hour disassembling, de-rusting and polishing a folding IKEA stainless steel rack, I am not. In retrospect, buying a new one… »
03/16/21: A softening in attitude towards socialism for America
Support for socialism has been on the rise in America as I have previously noted and according to trend we have seen and the acceptable rhetoric/terms politicians have been willing to adopt this past decade. Liberals,… »
03/15/21: Music Monday: North of the U.S. border with The Guess Who
You might be forgiven not to know that the 1970 song “American Woman” (and album) was by a Canadian rock band … The Guess Who. According to Wikipedia, the Winnipeg, Manitoba garage band “originated as Chad… »
03/14/21: Weekend mailbox project update and Annalyn’s first haircut
Our old mailbox has lasted 26 years and considering it is cemented into a stone post that mostly matches what is in the neighborhood, replacing it with something else is not a option. A few people have repaired theirs,… »
03/13/21: Handy IFitIt tools for gadgets and Spring 2021 family photos
Last week I need a small socket and as usual went out to the garage only to realized that even the smallest 1/4” Craftsman socket that I own was too big and bulky. Then I remembered the IFixIt tools Christmas… »
03/12/21: Tech Friday: Life after switching to Mint Mobile has been good
Back in January I switched my “off contract” iPhone7 Plus over to Mint Mobile and a month later switched over Brenda’s iPhone7. The transition was smooth and pretty much glitchless. Service from our previous… »
03/11/21: Who doesn’t love the Gilligan’s Island TV show? #TBT
My generation grew up with a handful of odd, yet popular with kids, television shows, none more endearing that Gilligan’s Island … which shockingly is still loved by almost everyone in reruns still today. After… »
03/10/21: Backing up, updating Linux and installing WordPress 5.7
After having a server glitch and failed update this morning, it seemed like a good time to backup, updated Linux and test WordPress 5.7 “Esperanza” with a post today. For the most part everything has been… »
03/10/21: How to run email lists, sell your product and retain customers
After cleaning out my email in-box and “attempting” to unsubscribe to a bunch of marketing oriented email lists, it became clear that I chose to remain subscribed to the lists that do more than plug their products… »
03/09/21: Finishing a desktop bookholder project for my son Taylor
While finishing up a small black walnut book stand or bookholder for my son’s birthday later this spring, I decided to archive a photo since Taylor doesn’t regularly read my blog (watch this be the exception).… »

May 2021
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May 2021

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