Bell Tower News

Different Twitter Update

2008-11-17T21:00:00.001-05:00

There is a low key Twitter update on this Blog’s sidebar, but, because so many more of my online comments are being drawn away from the the Blog to Twitter, I am thinking of removing the current script and replacing it with this one:

Home made Fish Stew for dinner. Aaahhhhhhh....... about an hour ago
Why is EVERYONE so keen on telling me Google Sketch - up is available?? It seems to be almost every other RSS selection. about 2 hours ago
SlyDial Ap for BB http://is.gd/7TJI is tempting me: but giving them my personal information is giving me the willies. I type it in & close about 2 hours ago
Decided to take back roads home. about 4 hours ago
If I hear the phrase cut costs uno mas I will start worrying. 'Til then the cows have yet to return home. Do I swim in the Egyptian river? about 9 hours ago

follow me on Twitter

And placing it higher up on the sidebar. This won't be an impulsive decision, so maybe you'll see and maybe not. Stay tuned.

LiveJournal Tags: Twitter

Sometimes a Twitter Isn’t Long Enough

2008-11-17T06:42:00.001-05:00

I was trying to fit into the 140 characters allowed a comment about the CBS 60 Minutes interview we all watched last night with the President-Elect and his wife. She was referred to at least once as the First Lady-Elect. Not quite accurate. But really, who cares?

In comparison to the 30-minute infomercial produced for the campaign, I believe the Obama we saw last night was closer to the real product than we’ve seen in the past two years. However, what I would like to see is the previous interview, where Obama was filmed making a sandwich and walking down the street.

It was also noticed last night that flecks of silver are showing in his hair. A comment was made that he will be totally gray by the end of the first four years. We can only hope and pray.
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The End/Beginning of an Era

2008-11-01T17:05:00.001-04:00

During the 1920’s, the nation had a choice between Herbert Hoover and Al Smith. Mr. Smith was a charismatic go-to Governor, a man of the people and well loved in his own surroundings.

He was also Catholic.

It is generally believed by historians that he lost the election based on this one condition. Until John Kennedy, this could be called the Al Smith Effect, meaning Catholics should not bother running for President.

Now we have the Bradley Effect. That is what is believed to have stopped Mayor Bradley from winning the Governor’s office in California.

Will this effect the results this coming Tuesday? Yes. The question is will it overwhelm the chances of Senator Obama from winning? I hope to god, no.

This is not an endorsement for either candidate. It is a plea irrelevance not be a factor when each and every voter makes that final mark, flick, tick, twist or whatever other action that will be called a vote.

VOTE!

LiveJournal Tags: Al Smith Effect

Destroy the Libraries? The words of a complete and utter idiot!!

2008-10-23T21:09:00.001-04:00

I won’t give energy by providing a link to the imbecilic ranting of a computer sub-geek who wrote that it would be a good idea to destroy the libraries of the world now they’re no longer needed.

This is a person who most erroneously believes that all of the world’s knowledge and information can be retrieved from the laptop he brings to Starbucks.

Google and Wikipedia are the fonts of all wisdom in his small and stagnant brain.

Google and Microsoft, along with many school libraries are busy transferring information from books, but have barely touched the surface of the books held by universities. Even so, even if every book in the world had been scanned, would it still be a reason to destroy the libraries? Of course not.

If this person had bothered to visit a library recently he would have seen that public book stacks are the thin skin made visible. In geek language, they are the Favorites.

I won’t go into a long defense of an institution in its many incarnations, but will invoke the ghost of Andrew Carnegie and direct him to this man’s front door. I am sure Mr. Carnegie’s shade will know what to do next.

LiveJournal Tags: Book Burning

If You Vote, It Just Doesn’t Make Sense to Avoid Opera 9.61!

2008-10-21T16:55:00.001-04:00

The point to make here is anyone who doesn’t use Opera Browser, now in version 9.61, is about as smart as an undecided voter.

You may have thought the Blog heading would be followed by a political statement. The only political statement I can make now is that undecided people should not be allowed into the polling place.
I am forced to use Internet Explorer at work and Mac OS Safari where I volunteer. Both are so completely cumbersome it can be painful at times.

There was a time you couldn’t drag me away from Firefox. Then one day I discovered I was no longer using Firefox as a browser but a place where I can store extensions.

More of my usage time was spent waiting for the extension to load and look for updates and then reading every RSS feed where newer and better extensions could be found.

Also, I was using Google Reader as my RSS source, Thunderbird as my email program and a variety of others to manage downloads. All of that activity can be conducted inside Opera loaded with its default features.

When I first started to reuse it, (more on that in another post,) I found myself looking for add-ons, widgets and the like. Than, epiphany time, every feature I used the most was already part of the program.

Dropping the extension addiction took a monkey off my back. Let Opera help you break your extension addictions as well.

LiveJournal Tags: Opera And Voting

People Can Be Found

2008-10-19T16:59:00.001-04:00

People can be found in the weirdest places. I was looking for something about acoustic waves for my son when Amber MacArthur’s name flashed by my eyes.

It was in an article found it, of all places, a web page called Guitar Wave. It promotes itself with the phrase: A place for guitar enthusiasts with emphasis on equipment and tutorials

I am a large fan of Amber.

First seeing her along with the guru of gurus Leo Laporte on Screen Savers, I’ve watched her share her love of all things computer - right up to her present incarnation on commandN.
Each week I try to comment in the episode’s page.

Expect nothing profound in our comments. The episode before this found us commenting on the dog-tag style earrings. It also took us a while to get use to the low-key style of Will Pate, her current co-host. Before him was Mikey.

If you went out of your way to find a personality polar opposite of Mike Lazazzera, you must find Will.

I hope you come to commandN in a less oblique way than a search for information on sound waves, but when you do get there, expect yourself to start looking at older episode for no other reason than to watch the few weeks where her hair went native. This careful warning before you go there, it’s addictive.

LiveJournal Tags: Amber MacArthur

Combing Palin and Kipling – An interesting recipe…

2008-10-08T09:46:00.001-04:00

LiveJournal Tags: Palin and Kipling

In today’s NYT, Mr. Cohen brought together the written word of Rudyard Kipling and the quoted words of VP candidate, Gov. Palin.

At first, I thought this was going to be quite a thin stretch. However, it did connect, however tenuously.

Each year, on his birthday, I read the poem If by Kipling to my son. Each year I ask him “Now, what does it mean to you?”

Each year he puts a different slant to his answer, showing a broader understanding of the world.

He will be able to vote in not this but the next Presidential election. Perhaps now I should have him read all of the poems, especially those quoted in today’s Op-Ed Column written by Mr. Cohen.

The Debate as an effective window into the candidate’s mind

2008-10-07T22:55:00.001-04:00

When you hear of the famous Lincoln-Douglas debate, you hear of resounding oratory, playing the emotions of the crowd, exciting them to condemn or support the issue at hand.

This evening I watched two men who answered questions with prefabricated sound bites.

The only moment I found interesting is when the Democratic candidate said Warren Buffett would be a possible choice for Secretary of the Treasury. This exclamation was soon followed by a series of names and generalities that said, he would, of course think of other candidates for the job before appointing Mr.. Buffett.

I wouldn’t call it a bad taste, but I’ve a feeling it will take some flossing to remove the platitudes and sound bites from my brain.

LiveJournal Tags: Debate

Autumn Was Nice

2008-10-05T07:59:00.001-04:00

What there was of it.

One morning all of the trees on the way to work were vibrant green.

Then the weekend passed.

The next Monday the colors changed; orange, red and still the constant evergreen.

Then the weekend passed and here on this Sunday morning we look out on the front yard as the glassy grass reflects the first rays of the sun, refracting parts of the rainbow with the blade’s ice crystal coating.

The ice will melt and it will be shirtsleeve weather for most of the daylight hours, but with the sun’s setting the frost will once more slide down from the surrounding hills.

LiveJournal Tags: Frost

Then another weekend will pass and the frost will no longer leave with the sun, but be our guest for the long winter.

Trying to install Live Movie Maker

2008-09-19T22:19:00.001-04:00

LiveJournal Tags: Live Moviemaker

I have the original MS Movie Maker on my computer, but it is not working well with the AVI’s from my FLIP camera. I was hoping the LIVE version of it would have better luck. Unfortunately, though I went to the link from MS Live, Movie Maker and Clicked on install, when the box popped up, Movie Maker was not on the list of available programs.
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2008-09-14T14:44:00.001-04:00

I just don't want to have the only Blog in the world that doesn't have a link to this SNL Skit.

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Is Twitter Draining Blog Content?

2008-09-14T09:41:00.001-04:00

Listening to Amber MacArthur on last week’s Net@Night, I heard her make the remark that Twitter is draining content away from blogging. I went back and looked at the number of Tweets that I’ve made in the past few months, 714.

At least half of those comments would have made it into one of the blogs in the Famous Grazing Series.

Is this a good thing or a bad thing?

I don’t think there is a judgement call on that.

Half of those comments may have bloated the content of the Blog, burying the more important news and opinion. Not that anything mentioned in any of the Famous Grazing blogs could be considered of national or international importance.

On a completely different note, tonight Tina Fey is scheduled to portray the current Republican candidate for VP. The buzz around this reminds me of the way the nation felt each night the Show of Shows would come onto TV.

Perhaps the nation will come out of its slumber for a few moments and actually see what is being given to them as a choice in November. It is a very scary thing that should not be entered into somnambulant .

LiveJournal Tags: Twitter vs. Blogging

Live Writer Updated While Away

2008-09-13T14:08:00.001-04:00

I thought there was something different when I started Live Wire to make a blog entry this morning. I noticed the Wave 3 translucent tag pop up and go away with the splash screen.

When Microsoft automatically updated the operating system, it seems to have updated the Live files I downloaded a while ago. Now we need to look at Live Movie Editor and see if that’s been upgraded as well.

I guess this is better that finding quarts of sour milk on the doorstep under the newspapers.
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LiveJournal Tags: Live Writer

Off Vacation

2008-09-02T23:03:00.001-04:00

We were on vacation for most of the month of August. This time we wanted it to be a real vacation and not a “working” one. To accomplish this we took ourselves mostly off the grid.

We’re now back and browsing with Google Chrome. Tomorrow, after browsing a tad more you’ll get a better review, but for now, the only place we couldn’t get it to work was on the Evernote site. It handled the drag and drop with no problem but locked up when trying to bring up the individual notebooks.

I guess we can say, no browser’s perfect. -30-<a

href="http://technorati.com/claim/h4p5ps33z2" rel="me">Technorati Profile

It’s Been a Long Week

2008-08-17T23:09:00.001-04:00

Our Summer Vacation begins on Tuesday Afternoon. To allow for that time off, I worked six & ½ days this week.

Because of all of the above, I decided to go technological hermit today. Here it is forty minutes from my bedtime. The Sony headset is in place, Pandora is playing Norah Jones singing Lonestar.

So much for free music. This is the third song I’ve bought from Amazon Mp3.

The question that just came to mind, is my mind. Is it seeing this as a restive isolation from society? Or, on the opposite side, does it see it as constant interaction with all sort of society?

A little of both, I suspect.

The day is over for me now.

The moon is gone, the rain has begun.

A good time to sleep.

-30-

LiveJournal Tags: Norah Jones

Fired up Firefox to Help Miro

2008-08-15T23:04:00.001-04:00

Just installed the Miro Amazon.com application in Firefox. It was a request made when installing Miro. I haven't used Firefox for a while, but I figured it couldn't hurt to install it.
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Web Cycle of Discovery

2008-08-10T01:51:00.001-04:00

Using the native RSS reader in Opera 9.5** I came across a reference to Evernote. I had looked at earlier in beta and found no use for it then. Reading the blog entry in RSS, it sounded as if the program, as well as its interaction with its online base, has become more mature, sophisticated and thereby useful.

It is now integrated in my computer use, along with Texter and Spell Catcher Plus. While exploring the RSS feeds further, in the blogs about AIR applications, I came across a reference to TweetDeck.

This was another case of not being initially impressed but, through prodding and discovery, found many new and useful features. It would take an entire blog entry to extol its many wonderful features. Perhaps tomorrow.

What stood out the most was the ever changing cloud of Twitter word usage in TwitScoop. Wanting to share how this looked with the rest of the world, I copied it to Evernote, created a public “book” and pasted a freeze-frame of the word cloud here.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

In between all of this I finally managed to finish William Russell’s first hand account of the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857-58 and the consequences of the British reprisal/revenge. He was nearly killed during the Siege of Lucknow.

Tomorrow I pick him up at the beginning of the American Civil War. He goes to Washington and is introduced to Lincoln by Secretary Seward. What drama is about to unfold!
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LiveJournal Tags: Evernote

Aurora Demo Very Complicated

2008-08-09T13:41:00.001-04:00

I just watched the series of vimeo demos of Mozilla’s Aurora interface.

Very clever and very complicated. It’s shown as an interaction twixt what appears to be a Yuppie farmer and someone who predicts profits in agriculture based on loosely gather data on the Internet.

The strangest part to me was the graphic of usage icons diminishing in size to the horizon according to there place on the “Z” time line. It has the feel of a galactic cloud of cosmic dust, only not as inspiring.

What was most interesting about the demo was the space station mouse the woman was using. It looked like a globular wheel combined with an inter-lever joy-stick.

I have a feeling this woman runs a high tech winery. If you have read the news lately, they are growing a lot more than grapes in some of these northern California boutique wineries.

Perhaps with hands-on experience I would be better able to critique the interface itself. This is more a comment on the demonstration.
I felt no connection with the characters used to represent the end-user.

Mr. Jobs does a better job of clearly showing how we may use a product in our day to day lives. This demo did not.

LiveJournal Tags: Aurora

commandN Coming Along Nicely

2008-08-09T13:36:00.001-04:00

In last week’s episode of commandN, there were a few glitches, especially in the sound.

All of that has not only disappeared in this weeks offering, the overall quality of the podcast has improved drastically.

It was not only the technical aspects of the podcast that improved. The content was all of highly interesting quality. This one definitely wasn’t called in.

While a topic was being explained a professional feel was generated by the embedded active video.

I was worried that commandN, one of my favorite podcasts, was starting to run out of steam. This worry was put aside after view episode 143.

LiveJournal Tags: commandN

Has Twitterfeed Been Tweeting Blog?

2008-08-06T22:00:00.001-04:00

We set up Twitterfeed a while ago and forgot about it. Need to check back and see if they’ve loaded. –30-

LiveJournal Tags: Twitterfeed

Lightning Strikes – Groups of People Hit

2008-08-03T18:20:00.002-04:00

In reading the news of late, there seems to have been many stories of groups of people conducting themselves in an unsafe manner. Has common sense left the collective intelligence of the human race?

In a previous life I witnessed a woman clinging to a tree at a ball field get killed by a strike. She was told by those around her not to hide under the tree during a thunderstorm. She brushed them off with a comment about the low risk of getting hit.

LiveJournal Tags: lightning

The Vinecast Has Returned – Ho Hum

2008-08-03T07:58:00.001-04:00

If you want to waste an hour and half, listen to the inane conversation at the new Vinecast.

This experience was similar to my recent read of the latest David Sedaris book.

I unfortunately had just reread The Innocents Abroad. Expecting to follow this with more wit and humor mixed with bitter irony, I was instead given the mediocre revelations of a mediocre life, the highlight of which was to go to Tokyo with the express purpose of ending a decades long smoking habit.

Twain wrote about quitting the awful habit several times. Each time was with a combination of irony and humor that was totally missing from the Sedaris book.

I will compare TWiT with Vinecast. On the TWiT podcast, intelligent and well informed people discuss issues surrounding their chosen topic. With the exception of a fascination with Twitter, the talk mostly stays focused to the issue at hand. It is moderated by Leo Laporte.

It would be correct to identify the moderator of the Vinecast here, but there really wasn't one. It wasn't until the broadcast was several minutes old before the speakers were even identified.

It would be the right thing to say that I listened to the entire podcast. It would be the right thing, but it would be a lie. My email icon popped up and I decided to read SPAM instead of continuing with the podcast.

That about says it all.

LiveJournal Tags: Vinecast

A Day For Trying Other Blog Editors

2008-08-02T12:32:00.001-04:00

LiveJournal Tags: Blog Editors

It has been a while since we’ve tried blog editors other than Live Writer. This is primarily because Live Writer does such a dang good job of getting the message out. It is also because our blog writing has taken somewhat of a hiatus during the summer.

The entry below was made with Zoundry Raven. Of all of the editor we tried today, this came the closest to the convenience and design abilities of Live Writer.

Closest but not quite there.

Bleezer made all sorts of promises and delivered on none of them. When I could get the interface to open, after several obscure “404” error messages, the final interface was almost as obscure as the error messages themselves. It would appear that it is trying to be a standalone version of Scribewriter.

I say appear because I couldn’t get it to load after the bevy of error messages. On top of this, after closing it, it left its flash screen on my desktop. This required a warm re-boot to remove it. It is in version 0.96. If I go back to try it again, it will have to be at least 2.0.

Off-line editor for VOX?

2008-08-02T10:28:00.000-04:00

This is a first blog entry using the new off-line editor Zoundry Raven.

In the set up, it seemed to bring the settings for Trounce Ally in the VOX server with no problem. Considering the difficulty we have had getting a VOX based blog working in an off-line editor we will be very surprised if this works.

No bells and whistles with this entry, with the exception of the -30- HTML code.

The Other Distraction: Audible Dot Com

2008-07-26T21:04:00.001-04:00

In an earlier entry I mentioned the distraction brought about by the plethora of information made available, most of it interesting, when using the RSS reader in Opera.

The feeds found themselves into the reader’s list because the original page was of some interest, the information flowing from their feeds naturally stays in that direction.

The VLC media player, combined with sites like OurStage.com, Hulu.com and AOL Radio bring an endless flow of entertainment.

The final distraction has become Audible.com.

When I first started using it, at the behest of Leo Laporte, it was with the intention of copying the recordings to my Kindle, and then to listen to the books in the car during the morning and evening commute. Though this is primarily its use, I have discovered, because so much of my free time is spent sitting at a computer, the books can be listened to directly from the the Audible file manager.

While I have The Palace of Illusions by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni playing on the Kindle for the commute, I am listening, directly from the manager, Stephen Fry read Eleanor Updale’s Montmorency.

LiveJournal Tags: Audible.com