Don's Patch #79 from http://www.don-guitar.com October 1, 2007 First word, from Don: Time has been flexing her wings lately and flying by while we scramble to keep up with but limited success. I'll be 59 in a few days, which means I'll be able to officially retire and start taking life easy in six years. Can you see that happening? Me neither. Still, an occasional nap couldn't possibly hurt. Maybe next week. It occurred to me that I should have recruited some of our talented readers to help us get this issue out but I didn't think of it in time to ask. If you'd like to gather up eighteen links (one section) and write descriptions for them, feel free. Maybe we can use them in the next issue, just be sure to include your first name (last name optional) and tell me where you live so I can give you proper credit for your effort. Don Don's feedback form: http://www.don-guitar.com/contactme.html Lisa's feedback form: http://www.don-guitar.com/lfefo.html Our personal news page. http://www.don-guitar.com/babbleon.html Don at myspace.com http://www.myspace.com/donguitar Don's blog. http://www.lockergnome.com/nexus/eldergeek/ Lisa at myspace.com. http://www.myspace.com/81825549 Lisa's blog. http://www.lockergnome.com/nexus/dirtgoddess Section One by Don. Hoodoo. http://www.mamiwata.com/hoodoo.html The West Virginia Division of Culture and History. http://www.wvculture.org/index.aspx UCLA Folk medicine database. http://www.folkmed.ucla.edu/ Zainab Jerrett's lectures on folklore. http://www.ucs.mun.ca/~zharuna/folk1000a.html Global public health and the electronic information superhighway. http://rice-edu-info.notlong.com Directories for technical professionals. http://www.tenlinks.com/ Folk medicine archive. http://www.earthclinic.com/ Lithuanian folk knowledge. http://ausis.gf.vu.lt/eka/EWG/ewgknow.htm This is where folklorists can go where no folklorist has gone before. http://www.temple.edu/isllc/newfolk/index.html This site is commercial but nevertheless interesting. http://www.russianfoods.com/ Bob Corbett's Haiti pages. http://www.webster.edu/~corbetre/haiti/haiti.html Arabic Folk Medicine and Magic: http://www.si.umich.edu/CHICO/amulets/home.html Purdue University's Department of Horticulture & Landscape Architecture. http://www.hort.purdue.edu/hort/ Native Hawaiian Healing. http://www.alternative-hawaii.com/hacul/wellness.htm Slavic Paganism & Witchcraft. http://members.aol.com/hpsofsnert/ Bush Medicine: Folk Cures with Chile Peppers. http://www.fiery-foods.com/dave/bushmedicine.html If you've ever worried about what would happen to your laptop if it got stolen, The LaptopLock is for you. http://www.wizard-industries.com/ A small collection of eclectic utilities from Mikhail Ranish. http://www.ranish.com/ End of Section One. This publication is only mailed to verified double opt-in subscribers, and is brought to you by me, Don Crowder, my wife, Lisa Miller, and http://www.freelists.org Section Two by Lisa Are you a brand-name junkie? There's hope. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/6977844.stm This media-intensive site features the art of Greg Martin. Wonderful. http://gallery.artofgregmartin.com/ Putting the person back in personal finance. http://www.financeispersonal.com/index.html For web designers & developers who are interested in web standards. http://webstandardsgroup.org/ Fashion through the ages. http://www.fashionencyclopedia.com/ The Encyclopedia of Myths. http://www.mythencyclopedia.com/ Beautiful, amusing or creative 404 error pages. http://404errors.notlong.com This commercial site has lots of merchandise for you or your geeky loved one. http://www.thinkgeek.com/ WEST- Women Entrepreneurs in Science and Technology. http://westaction.org/ Education, arts and resources of Africa. http://www.africaresource.com/ Students, age 13 through grade 12 can enter the West Point Bridge Design Contest. http://bridgecontest.usma.edu/ New perspectives on the American West. http://www.pbs.org/weta/thewest/ The Jewish Virtual Library. http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/ Lots of costless apps and tools. http://www.emm.ie/freeware/index.html HTML Kit is a full-featured editor for HTML, XHTML, XML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP and other text files. http://www.chami.com/html-kit/ Well-developed and informative site about the Native Americans. http://www.nativeamericans.com/ The world's interactive art gallery. http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/ Some of us need this. Top Alzheimer's Caregiver Sites. http://alzcare.notlong.com End of Section Two. At the time this issue was posted, the current subscriber count for this publication was 394. This issue's collection of news, magazine, and/or informational sites (chosen for maximum diversity regardless of "spin" ). http://www.homelandstupidity.us/ http://www.itwire.com/ http://www.eonline.com/index.jsp https://us.etrade.com/e/t/home http://www.eweek.com/ http://www.emedicine.com/ http://www.enature.com/home/ http://www.emagazine.com/ http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/egov/ http://www.e-journals.org/ http://www.e-polymers.org/ http://www.e-series.org/ http://www.windley.com/http://www.goob.com/ http://www.wunderland.com/WTS/Alison/ Section Three by Don. A small collection of interesting recipes. http://xrayvision.com/food1.html Open Source accounting software. http://www.gnucash.org/ All about beer. http://www.allaboutbeer.com/ Another interesting new social networking concept. http://www.trailfire.com/ An interesting fusion of commercialism and schtick. http://www.freerangerootbeer.com/index.html A version of Nero that is without cost. http://www.nero.com/nero6/enu/nero6_3.html This website looks like one of those magazines you see in the supermarket checkout line. http://www.popculturemadness.com/ Maria Muldaur. http://www.mariamuldaur.com/ Eclectic applications for unusual platforms. http://www.harmlesslion.com/cgi-bin/selectsoft.cgi Angus Johnson's homepage. http://www.angusj.com/ Dirk Paehl's CD burning tools. http://dpaehl.dd6338.kasserver.com/cdr/ The Ultimate CD/DVD Burner (scroll down). http://www.mispbo.com/burner.htm Still another odd social networking concept. http://www.rapleaf.com/ Lisa and I have been using Ron Wheland's Fone Book for several years now; it's an uncomplicated but effective little app. http://zigmax.tripod.com/Freeware.htm An image cropping tool. http://www.trivista.com/products/asquareimage/ A button making tool. http://deknop.sjfrancke.nl/index.html A garage sale search engine. http://zipgarage.com/ End of Section Three. If you'd like to help promote this non-commercial publication, please forward this ezine to anyone you know who might appreciate it. To spare them the forwarding carets (>>these things) I suggest you copy/paste the ezine to a new email window, or save the ezine as a text file to be inserted, or copy/pasted to a new email. If you've received this publication as a forward and wish to subscribe you may easily do so from online forms in these two locations: http://www.don-guitar.com/subsmanager.html http://www.freelists.org/list/donspatch Section Four by Lisa. Elder Rage--or, Take My Father, Please! http://www.elderrage.com/week10.asp Spreeder is an online speed reading training tool. http://www.spreeder.com/ A wonderful artist, Felix Stockwell. http://www.felixsockwell.com/index.php/ Alan Zisman offers tips, programs, links and tutorials. Thanks, Alan. http://www.zisman.ca/files/ An amazing resource of history and design, 100 Years of Illustration. http://giam.typepad.com/100_years_of_illustration/ Huge list of resources in design and assorted visual arts. If this doesn't keep you busy for a few weeks, let me know. http://www.jumpola.com/ Need a little mental vacation? Let Dancing Paul help you out. http://www.dancingpaul.com/ The 100 Mile Diet. It's a thought... http://100milediet.org/category/about/ A nice collection of costless and shareware fonts. http://elifont.com/ Digital camera information and news. http://www.steves-digicams.com/ K-12 Resources for music educators. http://www.isd77.k12.mn.us/music/k-12music/ Tips and techniques for creating your own Altered Book. http://www.altered-book.com/ 'Teachnology', resources for teachers dedicated to improving the education of today's generation of students. http://www.teach-nology.com/ Chuck Green offers a wealth of information, tutorials, design links, the Idea Book, blog, newsletter and more. Whether you're designing your own business card, printing a flyer, promoting your product or organization, or working with a firm to help you with your design needs, here's some info to quickly get you up to speed on you project. Thanks, Chuck. http://www.ideabook.com/ Make your own multiple-choice quizzes. http://www.questionwriter.com/free-quiz-software.html Victorian Living from Averyl's Attic. http://averyl.com/attic/ Text editor with syntax coloring and built-in FTP client. http://www.wolosoft.com/en/superedi/ A costless fractals generator, take a look at this gallery! http://www.chaospro.de/ End of Section Four. Our feedback form: http://www.don-guitar.com/contactme.html We welcome all comments, suggestions, or criticism. The form doesn't access your email client (it's a CGI form), so your privacy is assured. If you know of a website that would be a good candidate for this ezine, please pass it on via our online feedback form (link above). Section Five by Don. Pidgin is a multi-protocol Instant Messaging client. If that means anything to you, here's where you get it: http://www.pidgin.im/ If that means nothing to you, but you're curious, here's a two part series that tells you all about it. (1) http://fsm-im-part1.notlong.com (2) http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/articles/pidgin Larvalbug's garden page. http://home.att.net/~larvalbugbio/index.html Native Plant Society of Texas. http://www.npsot.org/ Plant answers. http://www.plantanswers.com/ Here's one more social networking site with blogging thrown in. http://www.vox.com/ Here's a pretty cool blog hosted by vox.com. http://practicallyperfect.vox.com/ A fairly massive recipe archive. http://www.astray.com/recipes/ Texas Beyond History. http://www.texasbeyondhistory.net/ Willie Nelson's site. http://www.willienelson.com/ In an age when corporations are becoming downright paramilitary about the protection and security of any sort of distributable media it's good to know you can also get music, legally, without any expenditure beyond the time you spend on research. http://music.download.com/?tag=navtab Info on AV media. http://www.mediacollege.com/ The Durham mining museum. http://www.dmm.org.uk/mindex.htm Need some help with your resume? http://www.emurse.com/ Resources for teachers from the Florida Education Association. http://www.yesiteach.org/ Noodleman's site is explorable. http://www.thenoodleman.com/ It's worth visiting the Internet Ray Tracing competition site once in a while just to see the cool images. http://www.irtc.org/ Info on supercomputers. http://www.top500.org/ Eudora is a once-popular commercial email client which has finally evolved to become open source and been renamed Penelope. http://wiki.mozilla.org/Penelope A small collection of electronics lore. http://ourworld.cs.com/gknott5413/ http://www.circuit-magic.com/basic_electronics_tutorial.htm http://www.broadcast.net/ http://amasci.com/ele-edu.html http://www.elec-toolbox.com/theory.htm http://www.can-do.com/uci/lessons99/electricity.html http://www.electronicstheory.com/ End of Section Five. Archives for this ezine are available online here: http://www.freelists.org/archives/donspatch/ The current issue is also available on our website. http://www.don-guitar.com/currentissue.html RSS feed is available via this link. http://www.freelists.org/archives/donspatch/feed.rss Section Six by Lisa. Start your journey on Nurse Williams' blog by reading the first part of this riveting true story. Don't worry, part two is also provided. They're all good, folks. http://nursewilliam.blogspot.com/2007/04/time-bomb.html http://nursewilliam.blogspot.com/search?q=time+bomb Interesting, informative site about colored gemstones. http://www.gemstone.org/ Wool Works, formerly known as the Online Knitting Magazine. Patterns, resources and more. http://www.woolworks.org/ Library of digital photography. http://www.shortcourses.com/ Beautiful, informative site about Madagascar, a fascinating place. http://www.wildmadagascar.org/ Candle and soap making techniques. http://www.candletech.com/ This commercial site presents an idea whose time has come. http://www.citikitty.com/ This site tells how to DIY the same procedure. http://kittipotti.notlong.com Search for copies of your page on the Web. http://www.copyscape.com/ ZIP compression component for .NET. http://zipnet.notlong.com The Live Lightly Tour, sustainable living in an RV powered by vegetable oil. How cool is that? http://www.livelightlytour.com/ Chicago Public Radio's "This American Life", each story is complete and unabridged. http://www.thislife.org/ Much ado about wine. http://www.koeppelonwine.com/Index.asp Poetry Out Loud, a National Recitation contest. http://www.poetryoutloud.org/ There's just something about Leon Redbone. Maybe it's just me. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leon_Redbone A very popular PIM. http://www.treepad.com/ Lots of costless apps, info and tools. http://thefreesite.com/ End of Section Six. The Linux Corner. I believe that Linux will soon be playing an important role in educational systems all over the world and there's ample evidence to support the contention. Here are a few examples. http://www.edubuntu.org/ http://linux.lorma.edu/main/ http://www.k12ltsp.org/ http://www.schoolforge.org.uk/index.php/Linux_for_Education http://laptop.org/ This is a very funny spoof. http://www.linuxgenuineadvantage.org/ Here's a nice article that compares Ubuntu with Windows Vista. http://www.darkreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=126001 Editorial commentary: There's something which articles like this one fail to take into consideration. Linux developers read these reviews and they go right to work on finding a solution to whatever problems are pointed out in the review. In many cases the specific complaints of a given reviewer are addressed, and corrected within a few months. That's an accomplishment which would be all but impossible for a large corporation. If you can't find a Linux distro which really suits you, check again in six months. IBM has joined the OpenOffice.org community. http://www.openoffice.org/press/ibm_press_release.html This is strictly a commercial site but I'm not pushing the product; I'm pointing out the concept. It's not news that advances in technology tend to make any given device become smaller in time but I still find it fascinating that an entire computer can be built into a device the size of a fat library book and make no mistake, before they're finished with this concept one of these things will be smaller, any perhaps only slightly more costly, than a pack of cigarettes. http://www.zonbu.com/home/index.htm I hate to install Linux software from source but that was the only way I could try this nifty little editor. http://eddi.sourceforge.net/ When you want to know about currently popular Linux distributions, here's where you should go. http://distrowatch.com/ If you feel there's one all-important application keeping you tied to Windows, take the time to check; there may be a way to use it in Linux. http://www.winehq.org/ Here's an interesting way to try Linux but I'd be afraid to try it with my only windows machine. Have you got an old Windows 98 machine? http://www.howtoforge.com/debian_windows_installer http://goodbye-microsoft.com/ Our friend Lee Parmeter is the driving force behind our local Highland Lakes Linux User's Group http://www.hllug.org/ Here are a few links he's posted to that list. The archives of Ubuntu's Full Circle magazine. http://dl.fullcirclemagazine.org/ Linux-magazine. http://www.linux-magazine.com/ Attention Linux users; stand up and be counted. http://counter.li.org/ From our web sibling Bill Lanoue. ( Bill's blog http://ncvietvet.blogspot.com/ ) Bill, or as I often call him, Beeyil (phonetic spelling of the traditional Texas pronunciation) is a newbie Debian Etch user and here's an online magazine he likes. http://www.linuxmagazine.com/ Thank you Bill and Lee. A Little Humor. http://www.sjnews.org/good_laugh.htm http://funny-blog-entry.notlong.com Tips for This Issue. http://www.helpwithwindows.com/ (all versions of Windows) http://www.cs.umb.edu/~alilley/tips.html (Win98 and NT) http://vlaurie.com/ (articles, presentations and tutorials) http://www.prbcorp.com/workshop/ws/full/Windows_XP_Tips/ Contributions From Our Readers. Links from readers are always welcome and you can even write your own link descriptions if you like. Guidelines are available here: http://www.don-guitar.com/descriptivetext.html Our web sibling Patrick Barden ( http://rrwbushangel.blogspot.com/ ) recently got some attention from the folks at Neatorama. http://patrickb-peacock.notlong.com From our web sibling Jo-Ann (Jo) Burton: ( Jo's site: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/sharinglinks2/ ) Mr. Gradgrind's literal answers to rhetorical questions. http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~brians/gradgrind.html Political graveyard. http://www.potifos.com/tpg/ For readers and writers. http://www.bookreporter.com/ Trade secrets. http://www.tradetricks.org/ Of and pertaining to the wee people and their cohorts. http://www.irelandseye.com/animation/explorer/leprechaun.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leprechaun http://www.unicorngarden.com/bkleprec.htm http://spunsilk.pair.com/treasure.html http://www.irelandseye.com/leprechaun/leprechaun.htm http://hometown.aol.com/niteowljw/stpat.html http://www.emigrant.ie/article.asp?iCategoryID=189&iArticleID=1463 Women make a difference in our world. http://www.nwhp.org/ http://search.eb.com/women http://www.wic.org/ http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/women/womensbook.html http://frank.mtsu.edu/~kmiddlet/history/women.html http://womenst.library.wisc.edu/hist.htm http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/wcf/wcf0001.html http://www.legacy98.org/ http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/naw/nawshome.html http://www.library.csi.cuny.edu/westweb/pages/women.html http://www.scottlan.edu/lriddle/women/women.htm http://departments.kings.edu/womens_history/index.html From our web sibling Vinette (Vi) DePhillipe: ( Vi's site: http://360.yahoo.com/vinette1 ) http://www.ussnewyork.net/ http://www.snopes.com/photos/military/ussnewyork.asp From our web sibling John Lepse. ( John's blog: http://hucknjim.blogspot.com/ ) For lovers of logic and language. http://www.grammarinfo.ca/ The life and times of an ER nurse. http://www.emergiblog.com/ Coping with serious illness. http://www.getpalliativecare.org/ Ashes and Snow. http://www.ashesandsnow.org/ In the Valley of the Shadow. http://valley-of-shadow.notlong.com Voices in Wartime. http://www.voicesinwartime.org/Home/default.aspx From our friend Terri Martin-Goin. An online games portal. http://www.notdoppler.com/ Thank you Patrick, Jo, Vi, John and Terri. Last word, from Lisa: It's been an adventurous couple of weeks, folks, then came an opportunity to slowwwwdownnnn. This past weekend, we had a little mini-vacation and visited a friend, waking up to bird song and river sounds in a little cabin on the Llano river. A vacation that requires little driving and almost no packing (one change of clothing and toothbrushes) can be better than the whole-shebang variety. We returned home with a renewed spirit. For the first time in years, I didn't know exactly what time it was for a whole day. This might be a good thing, to be done more often... Live, Love and Eat, Lisa Lisa's feedback form: http://www.don-guitar.com/lfefo.html Don's feedback form: http://www.don-guitar.com/contactme.html Lisa at myspace.com. http://www.myspace.com/81825549 Lisa's blog. http://www.lockergnome.com/nexus/dirtgoddess Don at myspace.com http://www.myspace.com/donguitar Don's blog. http://www.lockergnome.com/nexus/eldergeek/ Our personal news page. http://www.don-guitar.com/babbleon.html Don Crowder and Lisa Miller Monday, October 1, 2007 12:45 AM CST - Buchanan Lake Village, Texas, USA Served by the U.S. Post Office in Tow (rhymes-with-cow), Texas Privacy: We will never share, sell, or otherwise compromise your email address. Privacy Policy on our website. http://www.don-guitar.com/privacy.html Freelists.org Privacy Policy. http://www.freelists.org/privacy.html The most important people on the Internet, for you and I as computer users, are software developers. The world's coolest computer, without software, is like a car without fuel. It might look great, but what can it do? It doesn't matter who produces the software you love and use regularly, the developers of that software need your support. A bit of advice from Internet veteran Bayard J. Fox: New computer users are often in awe of the things you can get without cost on the Internet. There can be hidden costs for the unwary. Use a "throw away" email address to register, and be constantly on guard against giving away personal information. Use a firewall, and provide only the barest minimum of information on questionnaires. ___________________________________________________________ Subscription management for this publication is available online here: http://www.don-guitar.com/subsmanager.html or here: http://www.freelists.org/list/donspatch