oblivious dragonfly

On By snowzoneIn blogsLeave a comment

This week I had to wrack my brain to find something in the house that people ask about when they come over.

first problem is that we have very few people actually come over. so, nobody to ask about anything.

so kind of a twist, something we have hanging on the wall, and i think it was my brother-in-law (who’s an artist/art teacher) pointed it out to me:

Copy ink

so excuse the glare/reflection. i wasn’t taking it down off the wall, or out of it’s frame.

this is an india ink drawing of another painting, i don’t know who the original artist is so can’t credit them, but this drawing is a copy of that original and  was done by my sister.

looking at this photo, it’s obvious now, but when you look at it on the wall it’s not (well to me anyway). it was hanging there for years before i was told there was a  dragon fly “hidden” in the drawing. going over to the wall now it’s not nearly as obvious as it is in this image (which is an HDR shot).

zooming in shows there’s quite a bit of detail. but i was oblivious to it.

this one is asked about also. My sister was in Bangor, Maine, and took a photo of Stephen King’s house (apparently everybody does it).

this is a free hand  india ink drawing of that photo (ignore the bad shot, the detail is there.)

King

She also did a pencil drawing  of the “Changes One” Bowie album cover, that you’d be hard pressed to tell from the original.

Chromebooks

On By snowzoneIn Uncategorized3 Comments

I have been using a chromebook off and on for a few years now. Part of a “cloud” initiative for work.

I didn’t use it exclusively, of course.  There’s still a few things I need to do on a regular computer.

One of the things I’ve tried to do, is get my workflow “cloud oriented”.

Ok, quick aside: this will be useful to most people, especially millennials  (you spell cloud this way: c   l   o  u   d). I think it’s about 15 years ago, I started seeing “internet” related diagrams, using a cloud graphic to designate “the internet” somewhere along the line, an executive who hadn’t had his knuckles broken probably thought it was clever to call the internet, “the cloud”. seems to have stuck, because in the corporate world that’s all you effing hear.

there  are cloud books, cloud apps,  could initiatives (HELLO!), cloud recipes, cloud targets, cloud backups, cloud infrastructure, private clouds, on premises clouds, clouds as a service,  cloud projects, cloud-op ((dolphin laugh, Julie, Darcie,  I can explain it later)  in-joke to my Canadian military friends)).

The reason (for me anyway) to be as “cloud oriented” as possible, was I had a number of internet connected devices: phone, tablet, work computer, home computer, etc.)

Knowing that I could get at my internet content was very empowering. All I needed was an  internet connected device (millenials: AND the internet).

To help me with this I already had a Gmail account with Google Drive, but subscribed to Dropbox,  Roboform, Outlook and Onenote (free so far), WordPress, twitter, facebook, instragram.

With the exception of some photo/video  processing I do on my Macbook Pro (a now ancient model that will remain that way), I can do almost everything on a chromebook.

So, this is a few years ago, my boss wanted me to get a chromebook for evaluation purposes.  If our department (a tech oriented networking department) could make it work, then surely a good part of the rest of the company could also.

After some research, I found a Samsung 11″ chromebook,  The lists of the things I couldn’t do was much smaller than the list of things I could do. Some very specific networking software, and obviously gaming excluded of course. For a very reasonable price.

For a chromebook, the only real thing wrong was  that keyboard. If I had to guess, I’d say it was designed by a millenial (huh? the millenial said with the finger  their finger stuck up to  third knuckle in their  their nose)

(Darcie, you  know you are excluded from this)

I don’t want to get into GUI or hardware design, but the “Enter”  key needs to be wide from side to side not tall from up and down)

One of my bosses ( I have 5) complained about the same thing.

At the beginning of June (milennials: Google “months”)

I started using the Samsung chromebook almost exclusively, making changes to my workflow as needed.

Full disclosure, I mean my home workflow.

I found I could do almost everything. There were a few issues.

I needed a bigger screen, and a much better keyboard.

I already knew about the ASUS touchscreen chromebook, I wanted a 14″ screen if I could get it.

I found the HP touchscreen 14.

Why do you need a touchscreen?

For the Android apps. (iphone users: that’s  the phone you really want, but Steve says you can’t have)

I was impressed enough with the specs and the reviews to buy one.  Kind of a jaw dropper to use your favourite android apps on a “laptop”  type device.

It’s almost easier to tap the icon for your favourite service rather than going to the web page. For something like The Weather Network and Onenote it’s much better. There’s probably dozen’s of other examples,

[Later]

I let the battery get down to 6%. After (all told) 9 hours of using it, and 72 hours of standby (closing the lid). the 72 hours were over 4 days, and using it about 2 to 3 hours each day.

As I type this, I’ve been using it for a little over 2 hours, and the battery says I have another 11 hours to go. For me the battery life is a little better than advertised.

I’ve already recommended it to three people already. I would’t even hesitate to buy it again.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Harlan Elllison

On By snowzoneIn books, SF4 Comments

On June 28, 2018, Harlan Ellison passed away.

I feel little sorry for whatever entity has to deal with him now 🙂

He was one of the first writers (I won’t call him an SF writer, he didn’t like it 🙂 )  I had ever read.

To give some of you younger people some context. He was the writer for the script for the classic Trek  (think Kirk) ep called, “The City on the Edge of Forever”. Considered one of the best Trek ep’s ever made.

He worked on consultant on the 80’s revival of The Twilight Zone, and had stories submitted for and was involved in a  a magazine of the same title back then also. He was also  a consultant on the SF TV series Babylon 5.

He wrote a story a long time ago called “Soldier” that was the basis for the movie “The Terminator” (the “I’ll be back” one)

He’s written a ton of stuff. Most of his books don’t get reprinted because they are mainly  short stories and short story collections tend not to get re-printed unless they are from a very popular writer (Stephen King being the only one I can think of offhand).

He’s won pretty much every major writing award.

The very first story of his I read was “Along the Scenic Route”. I also read “Doomsman” and I don’t remember liking that very well. It turns out that novels weren’t really his forte. Short stories and TV screenplays were.

He was on the leading edge of what they were calling back then “new wave SF”. He edited  a book of SF short stories called “Dangerous Visions”. That anybody is a real SF fan has probably heard of AND has a copy of.

He is one of few writers whose books I will pick up unseen. I would add  Richard Matheson,  the big 3 (SF, look it up) to that list.

One of my favourite quotes is from Harlan Ellison himself:

“You are not entitled to your opinion. You are entitled to your informed opinion. No one is entitled to be ignorant.”

So yeah, that elminates  95% of the people who post on Facebook. Hmm, I think I’ll also  post this blog there.

 

 

 

How Users are Ruining the Internet

On By snowzoneIn internet stupdity, techLeave a comment

So there’s this little online networking thingy.

You may or may not have heard of it.

When people first discover it, they can’t believe it’s been around and they never heard of it. Or they heard of it and just didn’t care.

When they first get on it they are amazed at the wealth of information that’s out there. They  find they that they can interact with other people with common interests, sometimes live interaction, but a lot of times on a msg forum.

They find that they can send mail, even get replies. This thing is incredible. What bunch of nerds thought this up?

And then….and then they get stupid. Everyone has opinions, they started arguing about their opinions. To the point where they start insulting the person they are arguing online with. Eventually they will be subjected to Godwin’s Law. If the argument goes on long enough.

Look it up…can you think of any recent examples?

There will be bullying. Bullying by people who know better, but do it anyway. They get caught up in it. Almost seems like it’s subject to a mob mentality.

When it gets bad enough, the police, or lawyers can get involved.

This is done by ordinary people. People you know (or don’t really know like you thought you did, that’s always an eye opener)

I can’t find it quick enough for this entry, but there was a study done lots of years ago, that had two groups of people asked to do a particular task or project. One group was in the same room and asked to work together. The other group were not in the same room but interacted over a network via keyboard.

You guessed it, name calling, arguing, threats, happened within hours. I think that was the timing but how long it took doesn’t really matter. The fact that it did happen does.

When a certain amount of anonymity is involved, it will go sideways.

Wanna guess the network?

Wrong.

Gotcha!

I’m talking about Fidonet.

Never heard of it have you?

You probably haven’t heard of CIX, BIX, Genie, Prodigy, or Compuserve either. You probably have heard of AOL. (although you might not know what the acronym stands for. Millennials, you  may have to look that up…and the word “acronym” for that matter)

What I described happened on everyone of those networks. To be fair they didn’t have nearly the degree of saturation the internet has, but the stupidity was just as common. Just shows you only need a few rotten apples to ruin it for everyone.

My point is: get people together, let them be a little anonymous (or even not, nowadays) and they get stupid.

Need some examples?

Log on to Facebook. Like minded bullies like to hang out there.

Log on to Twitter. Like minded bullies like to hang out there.

Log on to Reddit. Like minded bullies like to hang out there.

Read comments on Youtube, Slashdot, Digg, Instagram. You find these asshats everywhere.

Everybody complains about it. Nobody calls out the bullies, specifically, by name and shames them. Or revokes their online privileges.

If you ever said anything uncharacteristically negative to another person on any network. Clap yourself on the back, you are part of that club.

If you ever did it on purpose…well go eff yourself, karma is a bitch. Wait for it.

T.REX – Greatest Hits

On By snowzoneIn music, T.REX, vinyl1 Comment

We used to have a regular indoor mall where I live. They turned it into an “outdoor mall”.

This is just a theory, but I have this idea that, City councils, city planners, and architects get together every once and while, and design, plan and execute the stoopid effing dumb things they come up with.

No matter how often we vote out the wasteoids, the replacements do the same thing.

One of the greatest hits (see what i did there?)  they came up with was a massive facelift to one of our regular indoor malls

.

So instead of strolling around the mall, maybe take your coffee  to one of the many tables or benches that were scattered throughout, maybe look over your purchases that day…or just hang out, you don’t.

The outdoor mall concept kills that. And replaces it with stoopid dumb effing parking.

So anyway, way…waaaaay back when it was a real mall, it used to have a store called “Tape Mart”. I gather from the name they intended to specialize in cassettes (millennials look that up….and it’s relation to the pencil),

[as an side, i liken that last comment to giving a dog a cracker with peanut butter on both sides to keep it busy while the adults talk]

I probably went into the store maybe twice, it didn’t really have a good record selection which could be why it went out of business before the mall did it’s magical stoopid transformation.

After I had picked up a copy of the The Slider i was on the desperate hunt for T.REX albums. I knew there was more because of that  Encyclopedia of Rock book, but I knew they were rare.

It was the summer and suddenly I remembered that this Tape Mart place had a T.REX album I didn’t have. I scrounged up a lot of change and ran to the bus stop just down from where I lived.

Ran into the mall and into the store, and tada, there is was. The last copy, now my copy, pictured below:

T REX GreatestHits2R

This was a double album set. And while it contained T.REX hits (current up to the release of that album) it had Tyrannosaurus Rex “hits” also.

Before Marc Bolan shorted the name, the band was an flower power acoustic duo with Tolkienesqe themes for songs. I had never heard any of those songs, and to be fair they are an acquired taste, some are catchy, but back then Marc Bolan was doing a Mungo Jerry style of vocals, that doesn’t really appeal to me.

[sigh, millenials look up Mungo Jerry in the summertime]

ok sorry, in joke dolphin laugh there.

One of the things that Marc Bolan did, was that he would not release singles (aka 45’s at the time)  of songs that could be found on the currently released album. So you literally had to buy the 45’s if you wanted those songs. You wouldn’t feel ripped off by buying songs you already had on the album. Of course later albums, like the one pictured above would gather the various singles and put them on the 33 but you had to wait for that.

One of the other things Bolan did was put 3 songs on a 45, most releases have one song on Side A, and one on Side B. T.REX singles had your main release on Side A, and 2 other songs on Side B. He probably drove record companies crazy doing that.

Marc Bolan didn’t want to rip off the fans, record companies be damned.

So that one was my third T.REX album. I was in the lead.