[donspatch] 2008-02-01
- From: Don Crowder <don@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: Donspatch <donspatch@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 01 Feb 2008 00:13:35 -0600
Don's Patch #87, February 1, 2008 from http://www.don-guitar.com
Online version: http://www.don-guitar.com/currentissue.html
Archives: //www.freelists.org/archives/donspatch/
First word, from Don:
I'm trying to figure out why is that if I don't think about my blog for a
day
or two it turns out to have been several weeks since I've posted. I think
this may be a heretofore unknown extension of Murphy's infamous laws.
http://www.murphys-laws.com/murphy/murphy-laws.html
Or, maybe it's just the fact that time seems to pass more quickly on the
web, have you noticed that? A year on the web seems to be more or less
equivalent to seven years in the "real world". Yes, I'm saying the web
runs on dog years. That's how it seems to me anyway...
go figure.
Lisa and I had a wonderful time making holiday calls to as many of
our friends and web siblings as we have phone numbers for but when
the bills came in we decided that it'd be a real good idea to persuade
everyone who has a fast connection to download Skype...
http://www.skype.com/ ...which is, of course, available for Linux,
Mac or Windows (and has the potential to save us large sums of
money *grin*).
Don
Our feedback form (goes to both of us):
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Lisa at myspace.com. http://www.myspace.com/81825549
Lisa's blogs.
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http://thedirtgoddess.blogspot.com/
Section One by Don.
According to the BBC my brain scored 25 on the Female
side of the chart. Are they calling me a sissy?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/sex/
I correctly interpreted 16 out of 20 smiles.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/mind/surveys/smiles/
Personality-wise I'm a "Supervisor".
http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/mind/surveys/whatamilike/
If you haven't had enough, there's more here.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/mind/
Web security for multi-user networks. http://www.opendns.com/
A Martian computer utility for Win2K or XP.
http://martianutility.notlong.com
A child-safety portal. http://safetynet.aap.org/
Family guide book. http://www.familyguidebook.com/
A large, ad-supported, family-friendly portal.
http://www.worldvillage.com/
Focus on the family. http://www.family.org/
The official web site of the British Monarchy.
http://www.royal.gov.uk/output/Page1.asp
I have very mixed feelings about sites that offer essays and term
papers. They can be learning tools or crutches, depending on the
student who uses them. That's what bothers me.
http://www.123helpme.com/
http://www.sociologyessay.com/
Devoted to the principles of free enterprise, limited government,
individual freedom, traditional American values, and a strong
national defense. http://www.heritage.org/
Statistics on specific locations in the U.S.A.
http://www.zipskinny.com/
Paper CD cases work ok but I found them very difficult to fold.
http://www.papercdcase.com/
The commercial office of Peru in Taipei (oddly interesting).
http://www.peru.org.tw/peru/main.php?language=en
Mountain ecosystems of the Arkansas river valley.
http://www.scsc.k12.ar.us/LachowskyR/
A useful Firefox extension for viewing jpeg exif data.
http://ted.mielczarek.org/code/mozilla/fxif/
This is where "jpeg" came from. http://www.jpeg.org/
Windows users, what do you know about WGA?
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070226-8922.html
End of Section One.
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Lisa Miller, and //www.freelists.org
Section Two by Lisa
A. A. (Adam Alexander) Milne was most famous for
Winnie-the-Pooh, although he wrote prolifically on many
subjects. Not "inordinately fond of children", he
nevertheless achieved his greatest success from the
Pooh books. http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/aamilne.htm
The "Household Physician", c.1910, online for your
viewing pleasure. http://householdphysician.com/
Mini-feature on manners.
Miss Manners column http://manners.notlong.com
International etiquette http://www.cyborlink.com/
Emily Post http://www.bartleby.com/95/
YouTube video http://vidiquette.notlong.com
Interested in your BMI?
http://www.halls.md/body-mass-index/bmi.htm
Comprehensive and interesting site about living
with disability. http://www.disabled-world.com/
Ideas and resources for sustainability.
http://www.thegoodhuman.com/
Stuart Haygarth makes beautiful lighting from
surprising materials. http://www.stuarthaygarth.com/
A beginners guide to Linux for those with
little or no computer experience.
http://linuxreviews.org/beginner/
Moving a relative beginner to Linux.
http://www.geek.com/moving-a-beginner-to-linux/
One thing that kept me from experimenting more with
GIMP was the inability to dynamically resize the brushes.
Turns out I hadn't Googled enough. Yay!
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=105466
A master photographer who is most generous with
his art and his knowledge, Norman Koren.
http://www.normankoren.com/
Sometimes, the best way to "get" fractions
is visually. http://www.visualfractions.com/
This YouTube video shows how far you can take a harmonica.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBMAsWncpXA
Thrifty Nickel online. http://www.thriftynickelads.com/
Lots of costless utilities,
For Windows http://freeware-utilities.notlong.com
Open Source http://opensutilities.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" ).
Section Three by Don.
A collection of Skidboot films. An incredible dog
who's gone but not forgotten.
http://www.skidboot.com/movies.html
The U.S. Coast Guard Historian's office.
http://www.uscg.mil/history/
The U.S. Naval Historical Center.
http://www.history.navy.mil/index.html
The logical extension of the wiki concept and an
impressive collection of video, sound and images.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
Normandy Battlefield Tours (interesting in a gruesome
sort of way). http://www.normandybattlefields.com/
D-Day. http://www.6juin1944.com/en_index.html
Island Farm, prisoner of war camp: 198
Special Camp: XI, Bridgend, South Wales.
http://www.islandfarm.fsnet.co.uk/index.html
Saving Private Ryan Online Encyclopedia.
http://www.sproe.com/index.html
Larry's collection of police amd WWII military images.
http://www.military-collections.com/
The Mid-Atlantic Air Museum. http://www.maam.org/
Omaha Beach. http://www.omaha-beach.org/
W.W.II Army Amphibs. http://www.armyamphibs.com/
Bjoern Clausen's family military history, military images and
models. http://www.howitzer.dk/
In-flight photos. http://inflightphotos.com/
History in film. http://www.historyinfilm.com/
A tutorial on Remote Sensing, as is used by NASA.
http://rst.gsfc.nasa.gov/Front/tofc.html
A good reference site for DIY drywall.
http://www.drywallschool.com/protips.htm
Dialing 1-411 for information, these days, is a toll call but it's
still possible to get information that costs nothing.
http://www.google.com/goog411/
End of Section Three.
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Section Four by Lisa.
Remove sensitive data from your hard drive.
http://www.tolvanen.com/eraser/
http://www.killdisk.com/
Don't just sit there, crochet something!
http://learntocrochet.lionbrand.com/
Do you want to say "I'm sorry" but aren't sure how?
http://www.perfectapology.com/index.html
Is Goth a lifestyle choice?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A473924
How to say nothing in 500 words.
http://nothing500.notlong.com
How to blog for Google.
http://betabloggerfordummies.blogspot.com/
A discussion of the Imposter Syndrome.
http://theimposter.notlong.com
Measure and compare countries on a wide range of
information. http://www.nationmaster.com/index.php
Remember these great spy TV shows?
http://www.manfromuncle.org/
http://www.wouldyoubelieve.com/
http://missionimp.notlong.com
And then there's Bond...James Bond.
http://www.jamesbondmm.co.uk/
Solve your math problem. http://www.webmath.com/
Choosing optimism as a philosopy.
http://optichoice.notlong.com
How to make good PDFs.
http://www.dynamicgraphics.com/dgm/Article/28824
Costless royalty-free stock photos.
http://www.adigitaldreamer.com/gallery/index.php
Worldchanging thinking. It's a start.
http://www.worldchanging.com/
End of Section Four.
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Section Five by Don.
A DIY playground. http://www.curiousinventor.com/
Supercomputer statistics.
http://www.top500.org/project/introduction
A kids site. http://www.kidsturncentral.com/
Windows goodies. http://winbyte.net/
Wikia search. http://alpha.search.wikia.com/
My neice Genie's photoblog.
http://genierobinson.blogspot.com/
Encouraging words. http://www.bestinspiration.com/
Occupational Outlook Handbook, from the U. S. Department of
labor. http://www.umsl.edu/services/govdocs/ooh20002001/1.htm
Got something to say about a corporation or product?
http://www.my3cents.com/
Applications for thumb drives (I expect they'd work from a CD
as well). http://portableapps.com/
World's largest website for best and worst lists.
http://www.bestandworst.com/
An ostensibly caring social network. http://www.care2.com/
Terry Fox was a proud Canadian, a heroic human
being and an exemplary citizen of our planet.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terry_Fox
http://www.terryfoxrun.org/english/home/default.asp?s=1
http://www.terryfox.org/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZF8k8hpyp_A
http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/fox_terry/
Who's your hero? http://www.myhero.com/myhero/
End of Section Five.
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Section Six by Lisa.
Modern conservative political site.
http://www.enterstageright.com/
Costless CSS templates.
http://www.freecsstemplates.org/
Hundreds of costless calculators.
http://www.calculateforfree.com/
A friend just asked me if I could find a costless
batch printing utility. Here are two;
http://www.brothersoft.com/printconductor-37170.html
http://batchpr.notlong.com
Metacritic- a summary of entertainment criticism.
http://www.metacritic.com/
Tips for taking tests. http://www.testtakingtips.com/
Itty-bitty bugs. http://www.cellsalive.com/
Classic books, plays, and short stories.
http://www.classicreader.com/
There are at least 18 ways to make a baby.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/baby/
A bunch of cool online games.
http://www.thegamehomepage.com/
Math sorted by grade level. http://www.aaamath.com/
A very different kind of ranch.
http://sculptureranch.com/index.htm
Old postcards are "snapshots" of history.
http://www.oldpostcards.com/
Noteworthy people, both living and dead.
http://www.nndb.com/
A collection of science and mechanics magazines;
Yesterday’s tomorrow, today.
http://blog.modernmechanix.com/
Really nice doggy site. http://www.modernpooch.com/
American panoramic photographs.
http://panphoto.notlong.com
End of Section Six.
The Linux Corner by Don.
Linux from a USB drive. http://www.pendrivelinux.com/
A Linux server on a USB drive. http://www.linuxonastick.com/
Programming voice recognition applications requires access to an
enormous database of recorded audio in as many voices as possible.
Until now the lack of such an audio database has inhibited the
development of open source voice recognition engines. Voxforge
is assembling just such an audio database. Lisa and I have
contributed by reading and recording text which they provided.
You too can contribute. http://www.voxforge.org/home
Open Source and Linux Forums. http://www.linuxforums.org/
Wubi is an unofficial Ubuntu installer for Windows users that will
bring you into the Linux world with a single click installing or
uninstalling Ubuntu as you would any other Windows application.
http://wubi-installer.org/index.php
Our good friend Charlie Beierle said of the XO...
http://laptop.org/laptop/
...that "if it does nothing else, it has changed history" and one of
those changes has clearly been the advent of more affordable
laptop computers. U. S. catalog giant, Sears, for example has
entered the fray... http://sears-laptop.notlong.com
...and our friend Lee Parmeter posted this link, to a product
offered by Walmart, to our local Linux User Group...
http://www.everex.com/
...and that's hardly the end of it. Both ASUS and Intel have
similar offerings.
http://eeepc.asus.com/global/
http://www.intel.com/intel/worldahead/classmatepc/
I think these are only the "tip of the iceberg" when it comes
to small, affordable laptops. Meanwhile, the XO has a
substantial technological lead in both hardware and software.
Lisa and I are convinced that further developments will be
interesting to watch and the end result will surprise us all.
Stay tuned (we certainly will).
This enormous collection of desktop wallpaper was assembled for
the benefit of KDE users (like me and Lisa) but hey, wallpaper is
a multiplatform comodity. :) http://www.kde-look.org/index.php
What's gnew in gnome 2.22?
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=980&num=1
Seems like every day there are still more sophisticated ways to get
Linux. http://lubi.sourceforge.net/
My friend Herb Cee has had a frustrating time trying to install Google
Earth on his Ubuntu system. He sent me this link to a site entitled "How
to Install Anything on Ubuntu". http://monkeyblog.org/ubuntu/installing/
Office 2007 fonts in Linux. http://msofficefonts.notlong.com
A Little Humor.
Not everything in the Jokes and Comedy section of David Brown's site
is family friendly but most of it is very funny and there's also more
to explore. http://www.davidpbrown.co.uk/babel/index.html
Tips for This Issue.
Once upon a time, when I listed some desktop wallpaper sites, one
of my readers wrote to point out that such sites are common sources
of "bad stuff" that gets into computers and I should list them only
with strong warnings. Of course she was right, always be very
cautious about downloading wallpaper and I've made a special
effort to carefully screen the sites I list. That being said, here
are a few good places where you can get wallpaper.
http://www.mywonderfulworld.org/wallpaper.html
http://www.osu.edu/download/images.php
http://www.parks.wa.gov/wallpapr.asp
http://nationalzoo.si.edu/Animals/ZooAnimalWallpaper/
http://chandra.harvard.edu/resources/desktops.html
http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/wallpaper/winpaper/index.html
http://www.postalmuseum.si.edu/activity/8d_wallpaper.html
http://www.admissions.ucla.edu/Bruincam/wallpaper.htm
http://www.virginia.edu/uvascreensaver/wallpaper.html
http://wallpaper.ua.edu/
http://heritage.stsci.edu/gallery/wallpaper/index.html
http://www.unc.edu/wallpaper/
http://wvudownloads.wvu.edu/wallpaper
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
From our web sibling Patrick Barden.
( http://rrwbushangel.blogspot.com/ )
Wallpaper from Patrick.
http://www.don-guitar.com/romanrw.html
It's called "scambaiting" and it amounts to giving the bad
guys back a little of their own. http://419eater.com/
Artwork from one sheet of paper.
http://www.darkroastedblend.com/2006/11/one-sheet-of-paper.html
http://www.petercallesen.com/
What kind of world do you want.
http://www.whatkindofworlddoyouwant.com/
Montage-a-google.
http://grant.robinson.name/projects/montage-a-google/
From our web sibling Jo-Ann (Jo) Burton:
( Jo's Yahoo Group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/sharinglinks2/ )
Stats on states. http://www.netstate.com/states/index.html
Puzzles. http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/puzzles/
Not exactly a blockhead. http://www.michaelbach.de/ot/fcs_mosaic/
Games for the brain. http://www.gamesforthebrain.com/
One billion mazes. http://www.onebillionmazes.com/
Kaleidoscopes.
http://kaleidoscopeheaven.org/
http://aleph0.clarku.edu/~djoyce/java/Kaleido.html
Survival toys (silly but cute). http://gosurvive.blogspot.com/
How popular are your names? http://www.namestatistics.com/
An illustrated museum of lucky charms, talismans, and protection
amulets. http://www.luckymojo.com/luckyw.html
Graham Barker's bogus names. http://www.feargod.net/names.php
Odd names. http://f2.org/humour/language/oddnames.html
Probabilities in the game of Monopoly.
http://www.tkcs-collins.com/truman/monopoly/monopoly.shtml
All about the Ken doll. http://www.manbehindthedoll.com/
Gallery of paper dolls. http://www.paperdolls.com/pages/pdgallry.htm
Our friend Linda Cartwright says "Watch for potentially malicious
email this month. http://www.snopes.com/computer/virus/valentine.asp
Jerry Fox says this is funny. http://oldboomers.notlong.com
Vicki Hartsfield sent this "unbelievable but true" email. After a little
research I decided that it's merely unbelievable.
http://www.thefleecingofamerica.com/credibility/index.htm
http://credited2uk.notlong.com
http://www.wibble.co.za/blog/unbelievable-true
From our web sibling John Lepse.
( John's blog: http://hucknjim.blogspot.com/ )
What do you think of thinkbig? http://www.bigthink.com/
John bought a new Vista machine and wanted me to pass on the fact
that he found this tool very useful. http://www.pcdecrapifier.com/
Terri Martin-Goin and Bill Lanoue asked me to mention that, while
they aren't "bikers" they've proudly joined the Patriot Guard Riders.
http://www.pgrny.org/
Our friend and neighbor Steve Scott says it's fun to make an M&M
of yourself... http://www.becomeanmm.com/
...and he sent me this interesting story...
http://www.news.com/2300-11397_3-6227262-1.html
...about which, after a little research, I was able to find a second
opinion. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fiHVwX6iMhw&NR=1
Dan Urban sent us this link to Chris Pirillo's blog post on guitar
care. http://chris-on-guitar-care.notlong.com
Last word, from Lisa:
We've had a busy couple of weeks, in some ways that's
the best kind. I've had a tough time keeping up with
my blog at Blogger, but it's one of those things that's
quite addictive. Among working, taking care of Don's
mom, keeping up our correspondence, and researching for
the ezine and many other activities, there doesn't seem
to be enough hours in the day.
What really counts is to love what you do, and we do.
'Til next time,
Lisa
Our feedback form (goes to both of us):
http://www.don-guitar.com/contactme.html
Lisa at myspace.com. http://www.myspace.com/81825549
Lisa's blogs.
http://www.lockergnome.com/nexus/dirtgoddess
http://thedirtgoddess.blogspot.com/
Don at myspace.com http://www.myspace.com/donguitar
Don's blogs.
http://www.lockergnome.com/nexus/eldergeek/
http://don-guitar.blogspot.com/
Our personal news page.
http://www.don-guitar.com/babbleon.html
Friday, January 1, 2008
12:10 AM CST - Buchanan Lake Village, Texas, USA
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