Jan. 2, 2012, world's still here but it's early.
Feb. 2, 2012, world's still here, time is passing.
Feb. 20, no rain all winter, driest in memory.
Feb. 22, 1/2 way through the worst played NBA season since who knows when (no one watched in the 50's) the Suns are 14-19 but only 2 games from the playoffs, the last spot is Minnesota's. ASU is bad in a bad conference, no one in the national top 35.
Feb. 29, snowed a little, I have a plan to pipe all my downspouts into Barbara's swimming pool, snow doesn't work well, it slides off onto the ground off the metal roof.
The conservative class war
'The conservative class war on the American middle class and poor has seen three stages, with each building on the previous one.
The first, begun in the late 1960s and early ’70s, involved the creation of a series of right-wing institutions to undermine the bipartisan establishment and recast its view of reality.
Next came a sustained and successful effort to rewrite the tax code to shift the burden away from corporate America and the wealthiest Americans toward the rest of us, together with the weakening of the case for government responsibility for programs that serve the less advantaged.
The arguments for these changes originated with the same think tanks and media organizations that were founded in (or helped guide) the creation stage.
Third came the final attack on the legitimacy of all groups in society that might prove to be impediments to the new right’s influence.
Members of the media, academia, the labor movement and the nonprofit sector were all considered targets, as they were seen to be advocates for causes and people deemed to be beyond the purview of legitimate government action.'
I usually avoid liberal media, because the liberals lost this war and they're depressing and whiny. But as you can see, it's 99? 90? 50? percent of Americans who are now loser-slaves to the rich in some form or other.
The big media are almost all owned by the rich, so you won't get any truth out of them. The next question is 'what to do'?
Speaking of massive overpowering forces, it snowed 17 inches on March 18, much shoveling of roofs ensued.
Wildland Chainsaw school was held at Embry Riddle, I got a bunch of discarded magazines, Aviation history, 'Falconer' which is published by Dassault Airplanes, Entertainment Weekly (they actually review books!) Fortune, Bloomberg, Windows IT PRO, the May 2009 issue listed these actual domain names:
teacherstalk.co.uk
dollarsexchange.com
accesstherapist.com
therapistfinder.com
whorepresents.com
powergenitalia.com
gotahoe.com
wtf.org
potsofart.com
speedofart.com
ipanywhere.com
penisland.net
Warning, this pool will flip over in high winds if you don't put water in it.
I'm going to change the black pipe to 1/2" it's more flexible. I got 40 feet of 3" rigid pipe I'm going to set up this drain spout with, just put a 90 degree elbow under the spout, set the pipe on sawhorses. I replaced the plastic can with metal.Only missing ingredient is rain. My neighbor Dave, the Garden King of Walker, runs out of water now, he has dozens of trees and bushes he waters. Also I just learned my other neighbor Ron is putting in a 14 foot diameter (!) water tank, his water is orange, so he has to buy it now.
March 11, just read world won't end until December 21, when the earth's magnetic field reverses. Will all the electric motors run backwards? Actually, this is just one of many Mayan 572? year cycles, apparently the world didn't end at the other ones, or how is it I'm typing this?
The Wacom pen is really a pain to use, so I got this light at Goodwill for $3.50, not big enough for a full page, and I had to cut a new piece of plastic, should work though. I priced them, $80 was the cheapest I found.
The idea is to have several frames 'onion skinned' so you can make the next animation
I installed the new Firefox, it really cuts down on the spam/unnecessary ads, I'm using Flash block, ad block, and noscripts add-ons. But some download buttons don't appear unless you allow scripts on that page. Firefox unfortunately puts almost every file in your cache in its own directory, so I have to use locate32 to find the flv movies, I search for files over 2 and less than 30 GB.
Now for .swf type files, go here
This firefox addon will put a little blue icon at the page bottom make sure 'view/toolbars/add-ons' is selected. it doesn't always download, but it does find the .swf file link, which you can then load into Getright or possibly the firefox URL address bar. It won't download it until it's actually loaded onto your browser, so be patient. Oh, if it has 'controller' in the file name, that's not it, there should be a second one that's the real one.
Then you can go to irfanview.com and open it with irfanview. You won't get any controls besides right-click 'play' and 'uncheck play'. Internet Explorer won't load them.
Yes, that's windows 2000 loading into my windows 7 machine, with Oracle's Virtualbox. It was actually pretty easy (I needed it to run 3ds Max 5), but not foolproof. It doesn't have a CD drive, only USB, which you have to pop in and out so each OS can see it by taking turns. You also need a bootable Win 2000 disk, I only have the original and making copies looks difficult. Update, I made Win 2000 boot disks with Nero Burning Rom, 15 day trial.
I needed a way to do internet in town/when we go over our Wildblue byte ration so I went to Big Lots and bought a Sylvania mini-tablet, total was $98. First off, they don't tell you there's a piece of plastic wrap over the real screen, deceptive, it looks just like a computer screen with icons, etc.
fake screen, although this might be preferable since it requires no further intervention by the user.
real screen, the start of your headaches
Second, the usb port doesn't connect to a computer, only to usb flash drives, mice and keyboards.
Third, you really have to buy a micro-sd card, an 8 GB class 4 is 8-$12. I'm thinking about getting the 16gb class 6 one at Costco for $22, since my Kodak camera doesn't have one now. SD cards less than 6 (almost all are 4) are too slow to take movies. Watch out when you take them out, they're tiny and spring loaded and can go flying.
It's difficult to type in anything. It says to use a 'stylus', not included, I use the plastic end of my proxabrush, or a fingernail. I had to print out all my passwords, no way to copy/paste.
Also, you need to download apps from the Android store, most of the necessary ones are free. I got a pdf reader, still looking for a text editor, and something like Audacity that will record music. Android apps for android phones don't necessarily work on tablets. You can't always download them to your PC, some of them say 'install' which means your tablet has to be on the internet, Which is stupid, since it's almost impossible to type anything like a web address on a tablet.
From wikipedia-'Android Market filters the list of applications to those compatible with the user's device. In addition, users may face further restrictions to choice of apps where developers have tied-in their applications to particular carriers or countries for business reasons.
Carriers can also ban certain applications, for example tethering apps.
I can't get flash movie player or Google earth, there's a very complicated process to get Android market, but it could kill the tablet, don't know why a free app like 'flash player' would be blocked.
It has a camera, still and movie,
Default camera output, doesn't have a viewfinder though.
The usb mouse works great, now I need a usb keyboard, ($10-20)and a usb hub.
Update Feb 25, bought a usb keyboard, (and another one for a dollar at the thrift store 3 days later) but you can only have 1 usb item at a time, a usb hub does nothing, so no usb mouse, not a biggie.
I DL'd a bunch of stuff from non-google market sites, a piano keyboard, a paint program, a program that actually shows where all the stuff I installed is.
Also bought a 16 GB class 6 micro flash card for $20 that's supposed to be faster for movies, I put in my $43 Kodak camera, didn't help the picture quality but didn't blur on fast camera movement.
The official Google Android site says 'You don't have any devices'.
When the hackers get fed up enough with Google, it's going to be ugly.
Time to start looking up 'alternatives to google' on, er..google.
Openstreetmap.org is better than google maps, I can save the maps and import them into Qgis.
There's a hilarious tv show called 'Shameless' with William E. Macy' on Direct TV 543 Saturdays/Sundays or thereabouts.
Warning: contains just about everything that would offend anyone, sex, violence, nudity, foul language. Of course, I only watch it for the incisive social commentary
From the NY times, Jan. 22, 2012. Health care costs,
MRI scan Britain-187, Canada $304, France $398, Germany $652, U.S.- $1,009
Bypass surgery-Br 13,998, Can. $22,212, Fr. 16,325, Ger.-27,237, U.S. $59,770
Percent who wait 4 weeks or more to see a specialist
Germany 16, U.S. 17, Britain 28, France 47, Canada 56
Worst war in history was World War 1, 60,000 British troops were killed on an August day in 1915, I think it was the Somme battle. 250,000 French troops were killed in 11 days in the Battle of the Frontiers.
For comparison, the Iraq war would have to last 96 years (5,000 killed) and the Afghanistan war would have to last 140 years (4,500 KIA) to equal the British killed on that one day.
I heard that the top 300,000 Americans have wealth equal to the bottom 150 million.
David Brooks NY times article on the spirit of enterprise.
'Money should go to people on the basis of merit and enterprise. Self-control should be rewarded while laziness and self-indulgence should not. Community institutions should nurture responsibility and fairness.'
'Right now, this ethos is being undermined from all directions. People see lobbyists diverting money on the basis of connections; they see traders making millions off of short-term manipulations; they see governments stealing money from future generations to reward current voters.'
'The result is a crisis of legitimacy. The game is rigged. Social trust shrivels. Effort is no longer worth it. The prosperity machine winds down. '
Chris Vermeulen's stock trading page, on the same subject.
List of Wu-Tazng Clan Affiliates
I don't think these people are Chinese.
Fabric with tiny holes, she can't scratch these.
Mamma kitty is obsessed with the bathtub
I remember back in the early 90's someone saying the internet wouldn't be all that popular, "nobody's going to be writing term papers on Mesopotamia".
The rise of groupthink
Probably why everything is so mediocre nowdays, when you mix people together, the lowest common denominator will win.
It looks like this skunk jabbed this rodent in the snout
Az Dept of Environmental Quality
Maps of AZ
I asked for 'azurite places' , there's one at the Victor Mine and one on Blue Jay Road.
Arizona Unified Repository for Informational Tracking of The Environment (AZURITE)
AZURITE is the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality (ADEQ) database that is used for environmental enforcement and compliance reporting to the Permit and Compliance (PCS) system and to the Air Facility System Universal Interface (AFS-UI).
There's a new encoder (file zipper) out there called dejavu, it compresses jpg's by 80 percent or more, I can't tell the difference
dejavu info
Djvu info
dejavu sourceforge
Djvu libre plus djview
Irfanview
This has a plugin viewer supports many other image, movie, audio files
All free of course!The docs say it's for compressing scanned books and graphics, it also saves to PDF also. The encoder asked me what the dpi was for poland_groom.jpg, irfanview says it was 72 (that's the dots per inch on your computer screen), but it output as 300, the default.
How to encode with Solo encoder
There's a video on how to do the DPI correctly.
The poland jct-groom creek aerial photo djvu
It looks as good as the 5mb jpg below but is only 1.1mb.
Jerome, the Bradshaws, Crown King, forgotten gold? The Jerome map includes Prescott, it ended at Montezuma then, and a road from hwy 69 that seems to go straight south along the mtn range into Walker, and also the Jerome part shows the railroad from Chino.
Speaking of maps, Google Earth has Walker aerial photos updated to May 14, 2011, (used to be 1992 and 2003) and the roads are in the right places now also, sort of, and most are named correctly. 1992 is also available.
Angela wrote a book! It's uh, 2 pages. She's written a really long one but the 'save in our weird format' butchered it.
You don't need a reader, most of these are PDF's, and Kindle and Nook have their own PC readers.
http://www.archive.org/details/Fantastic_Science_Fiction_Stories_Volume_9_Number_2_
This saved my butt from looking through 10000 CD's for the missing neighborhood files.
Free music, movies, audio, texts
Where the wayback machine lives
Wayback machine cont'd-Then you can find the missing pix by loading all the pages, then going to your web provider in 'statistics' and looking at the 404 not found log.
Someone bought a fake one for $17 million. This looks like fun, but where do you put it when you're done?
I'm on page 600 of David Hackworth's 800 page 'About Face' he's just left Vietnam. Apparently he never forgot a single thing. He went through Korea, The 50's 'nuke em' military, with AA batteries in Manhattan Beach, California, to Vietnam, basically confirms what any semi-sane person concluded, these were nationals fighting for their freedom from foreign invaders.
page 648 about face David Hackworth
'It was total disintegration. Throughout the fire base, amid the shit and the toilet paper and the machine-gun ammo laying in the mud, were troops who wore love beads and peace symbols and looked more like something out of Haight-Ashbury than soldiers in the U.S. Army.
All were low on spirit and a few were high, openly, on marijuana.
There was minimum security. Few men carried or cared for their weapons-most had let them go red with rust as they strolled around without them. Grenades weren't taped, and when a unit moved out, most of the gunners wore their ammo Pancho Villa-style, the ideal way to guarantee a weapon jam sometime down the track, when dirty, dented cartridges were inserted into their M-60s.'
David Hackworth's web site, he died in 2005
His blogs aren't showing up though. But see the 'wayback machine' link above, they show up there.
http://www1.salon.com/news/news961115.html
Only recent interview I could find
You can help buy them body armor
About face on Amazon
You can buy it for 20 cents used, plus shipping
December 29, weather is balmy, 40 degrees at 6 a.m. The dumpster parking lot is solid ice, need cleats.
Made from a 4x4 joist hanger, just ran some small screws through the bottom with a drill press, one size fits all.
Nobody's Fool
This is a really good movie, and now I know when it's on again so I can record it.
Remember when you could find great new songs to play on the radio? Then you must be very old or have decent radio where you live. The way I find them is with Direct TV, it has music stations in the 800's, my favorites are 840=8-tracks (old hippie) 838-singer songwriters (I've heard very few of these), 848 -coffehouse rock (heard about half). Others are 834 alternative ('underground') 839-New Wave 80's.
But 838 has the songs I've heard least/don't bite, Like 'guns and horses' by Ellie Goulding. You can record onto your computer with the right connector, a 2 'collared' plugs out of the satellite receiver going into 1 mini phone plug, like headphones have.
Set your sound card to 'line in', the default and use the free Audacity recorder. Or 'stereo mix' if you're recording off youtube. Then you can go to Ultimate-guitar.com and search her name, she has many songs. Sometimes the chords are even right. Rarely, you can get a .midi file of the songs, which you can play with Midi notate (which you can slow down) or another free Midi player.
My other music source is Undercurrents, a public radio program, but it's harder to identify the artists. One way is to type a few of the lyrics into google. I guess I could go to undercurrents.net and read the playlist. I never stream music on the radio, it's a bandwith hog.
"Lenovo fan speed controller is trying to access the internet".Why?
How do I unfriend or delete a facebook friend?
To unfriend someone: Go to that person's profile (timeline)Hover over the Friends box at the top of their profile (timeline)Click Unfriend
To unfriend someone:
Note: If you choose to unfriend someone, you will be removed from that person's friends list as well. If you want to be friends with this person again, you'll need to send a new friend request.
There are some people whom I haven't heard from in years on facebook, I wonder if they've just left or unfriended me. I unfriend the spammy dorks. There's one on there who must have tried to friend the entire internet, she posts every 11 seconds, invites all 2,499 of her friends to parties at her local night club, which is 3,000 miles from here.
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