What a Quiet Weekend

I watch and read the news and it looks like there is nothing but violence and religious turmoil all over the world. This is not true of course, but merely the focus of the News organization. It's the "man bites dog" syndrome.

At the moment the most annoying thing in this area is the sound of high powered lawn mowers.

The question to ask is, why shouldn't that be the most annoying sound in the rest of the world?

It may seem a naive even simple question, but if you think about it, what is it all of these people are fighting about? Simple: My point of view should be your point of view. If it isn't and you say so, you are my enemy. This is stupid.

Just so stupid...
-30-

And no it's not about oil...

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Dreaded Blue Screen - Gaaaaah!

Do not install SoundTaxi if you have a machine running an AMD processor. I was going Blue Screen all over the place until I started uninstalling recently installed software.

It was SoundTaxi.

If you're in your sound software, in this case MediaMonkey, (THE BEST,) and you go blue screen, and you have been getting a weird message trying to install new hardware where you haven't added any hardware, and SndTDriverV32 is somehow involved, start

uninstalling software immediately.

I got Blue Screened twice. In the old days, that meant it was time to go out and get a new computer, new software and turn your old machine into a doorstop. This time it was just telling me something major was happening and I should fix it NOW.

Good night! -30-

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Creative Commons.

We just added this Creative Commons license to the site. If you click on the icon below, it will explain how this works.



This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License.
-30-

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Politics

It is almost time to pay attention to politics in this country.

Most of the candidates I have looked at on both sides are talking heads to me, except Ron Paul.

Without taking into consideration his tenuous ties to the Republican Party, he seems to be the only one who actually has his own, not yet totally canned personality. He reminds me in many ways of Eugene McCarthy.

Again, not in political or philosophical beliefs themselves, but in that he actually has political and philosophical thought unique to him and not a party line. As with Eugene McCarthy, he has strong support in the individuals and not the masses. As with Mr. McCarthy as well, this will, I predict, lead to his not being nominated.

I was in Chicago at the convention that threw Gene in to the woods for the wolves to devour with not so much as a please or thank you.

It was there I became apolitical.

I saw the machine of the "party of the people" choose its representative against Richard Nixon. I also saw Mr. Nixon win in a landslide victory. In the broader picture, this was Karma paying him back for JFK's father stealing the previous election from him, and not Humphrey being defeated, in my elderly opinion.

Ron Paul - The Caucus - Politics - New York Times Blog

This is not an endorsement of anybody. I am not even sure I will vote in the national election. These things are so fixed I don't want to waste my carbon footprint on the drive to the high school and back. There may be local issues on the ballot. For that, I will go.
I just put this here to get your attention. It's for those of you who scan blogs for pictures before you will read the entry. I am guilty of that as well. I believe we all are. I promise not to become a pundant and fill the entries with long winded attempts to influence you in any way. I am just here to speak my mind.
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Let's See if This Works...

Luciano Pavarotti sings

[via FoxyTunes / Luciano Pavarotti]

Still playing with FoxyTunes...

I should go to bed.

-30-

Whoa, It's Amazing What Can Happen...

When you click on things in FireFox.

I have the FoxyTunes add-on. I was listening to the Traveling Wilburys Tweeter and the Monkey Man.

Just for the hell of clicked on the lyrics name traveling across the bottom toolbar. .

Bam!


Traveling Wilburys - Music on FoxyTunes Planet

foxytunes planet popped up with a copy of the album cover, links to You Tube and, best of all, a copy of the lyrics from LyricWiki.

With Bob Zimmerman singing, sometimes it's a good thing to have a copy of the lyrics handy.

There is also a link to Flickr, Google, somethings called Hype Machine, Rhapsody, Wikipedia and Amazon.

This is a very helpful feature.


-30-

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Another One Goes Down

A friend of mine, and fellow former Marine, died today suddenly from a blot clot dislodged from his leg. This was a man who loved to walk and has been known to do twenty to thirty miles a day. He was also almost exactly a year younger than me.

-30-
One less Marine down here, one more guarding the streets of Heaven.

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A Headline That Sounds Good, but...

House panel approves legal shield for bloggers | Tech News on ZDNet
Further down the story reads: the revised bill attempts to exclude the "casual blogger" from reaping those benefits by stipulating the protections apply only to those who derive "financial gain or livelihood" from the journalistic activity, Boucher said Wednesday.

That broad rule could, however, include part-time writers who receive even a trickle of revenue from Google Ads or Blogads.com.

So, it might be a good idea to sign up for one of the advert links that you
can add to the side of your blog, as can be seen to the right of the
Belltower.com messages. A lot of money is not derived from these
links, but now, if the bill passes both houses and is signed into law,
these links may be buying you added protection.

Wait a second,
do you remember The Untouchables? Wasn't "buying protection" something
rackets did to increase the numbers of their bottom lines?

Hmmmm.

Time to go to actual work and earn a living. -30-

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Spoko's Brain Younger than Belltower News!`

But not by much. His first entry, using a very similar blog style, was in July of 2004. Ours was in May of that year. Because of connection problems, we had no entries in February and March of this year, but we did carry on at Grazing Press until we could get this blog back up.

For those of you who haven't heard of Spocko's Brain, it's a blog that has made International news, most recently on Al Jazeera's English version web cast. The report can be found on You Tube.

This report tells of a David and Goliath struggle between Media Giant ABC and this poor Blogger. ABC won the first battle, but that win became a Cause Internet when EFF picked it up and decided to defend the blog. It's a story all bloggers should read, whether they agree with the tactic used by the blogger to get advertisers to pull out of financing the talk radio the blooger found offensive.

There are enough links here for you to fill out the story. I need to go to bed.

-30-

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ScribeFire got better.

ScribeFire, the blogging addition for FireFox has become MUCH better.

There were a few glitches unique to the Blogger uploads that seemed to have disappeared in this latest version.(1.42)

It also isn't displaying the high ASCII code for double space when I do that out of habit between sentences.

This is a good thing.
=30=

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Did you see the latest?

Did you see the latest Dr. Who on SciFi? There is a scene allegedly shot from what was Bedloe's Island in New York Harbor. It is now called Liberty Island in New Jersey. If you saw the scene of New York Harbor in the 1930's I swear the boat in the picture I took from Ellis Island last month that caps this blog for now.

Almost as good as a Moleskine spotting...

=30=

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Hot weather sucks...

when the air conditioner in the bedroom breaks...

=30=

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Harry Potter Done!!!

Read The Deathly Hallows.

WOW!

Best book of all of them. She did it! (Zen Moment!)

That's all I will say.

One more WOW!

-30-

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Saw It!

I can say this is the worst of the Harry Potter films so far.

The editing was very choppy in places. It felt like the movie was trying either to get on with it, or these were the nasty bits cut out from the American audience.

Most of the main characters had walk-on rolls. The Minister who takes over the school has far too great a role and the actor who played her just didn't play the character as I imagined her to be. More like Chucky from horror genre.

The Ron character hasn't aged well at all. Either that or they should update his hair.

The House Elves were given short rift compared to their roll in the book. The Black family house elf was depicted as this grumbling floor sweeper with no connection to anything.

It reminded me of the total exclusion of Tom Bombidill from the LOtR series. Tom represented the only character in the series connected to Reality and therefore not effected by The Ring. All three movies together seemed to be a decade in length. He should've been included.

As for The Order of Phoenix, I wouldn't rent it to see it again. That about tells it all for this Potter film.

I can say of the books so far, The Order of Phoenix was my least favorite as well. At least the film is consistent with that.

Unless there is a radical change in Director, I don't think I will go to see the next one so close to its release.

-30-

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Harry Potter Movie - Ducking Spoilers

So I can safely browse the Internet, I have to go see the latest Harry Potter movie now.

It's the only way.

I know the story, but I don't know how it was represented on the screen. I can't look through any of my news indicia without seeing a little bit of Harry Potter this and Harry Potter that.

I never thought I would go see a film in self defense. -30-

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Superstitions

I waited until it was past midnight to talk about superstitions.

At a meeting in a hospital on Thursday something was said about something
surely turning out right. There was some subtle tapping on the table
with knuckles. Then one of the meetings members stood up and said to
the presenter that she had to find wood quickly on knock on it. This
was one medical professional to another.

The presenter thought about it for a moment, then walked over to the
wooden door and whacked it loudly a few times. There was a general
sigh of relief in the room.I would say knocking on or, as it is in the UK,
touching wood is probably to most commonly practiced supervision
immediately around me.

Contrary to the opinion of some, this does revolve around me. I write
about what I see, read, feel, touch, hear, taste and so on.

Most people I see knocking do it unconsciously and subtly.

Sit in a bar during a sporting event and say something good about the home team.

Then observe how many people, both men and women, will knock without saying
anything, or in the extreme, moan and knock.

Now what is the second most commons superstitious act around here? I’ll get back to you on that one

-30-

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Sat in an Un-airconditioned Meeting

Along with 47 other people we sat through a community meeting in a large hall with ceiling fans pushing the risen hot air down on our heads. The humidity was palpable.

The meeting was long, with many questions asked for the sake of the questioner hearing their own voice.

All the motions on the warrant were passed.

The one motion from the floor made to speed things up took an extra hour to be voted down. No wonder we all took the summer off before air conditioning and went home at night before electric lights. Now, before Blackberrys and PDA's, how did we function?

Amazingly well.
-30-

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Welcome To GMail

A very good friend of mine has found Gmail.

My sister and Niece have found Gmail.

I Beta tested Gmail and now the entire world has found the best way to send, receive, archive and best of all share, share alike.

I have used 38% of my Gmail storage. I didn't think that would be possible.

A favorite phrase in Worcester County is "Back in the day."

Back in the day I was a sysop in a small California village called San Francisco.

Back in the day, email was for the elite. Now it is for the many.

Come the revolution, we used to say. The revolution has come and it's nothing like we thought it would be.

Where are the clowns?
-30-

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Booger Contemplating The Snow

Thoughts on a 90 degree day.

On a hot day, like today I like to think about this shot that I took two winters ago.

That's our cat, Booger. If you saw his nose you would know why we he acquired that name.

Booger thought it would be a good idea to go for a stroll in the garden. He's originally from Florida. What is in front of him is four of feet snow.

The impression on the snow is the imprint from the door.

Booger decided not to go for a walk.
-30-

Heroes Like Bobby

There are heroes in this world who get medals. There are heroes in this world who get parades. Then there are heroes like Bobby here.

Bobby sees a wall and wants to know what's on the other side; how to get over it, under it, around it. If needed, knock it down.

Bobby thought he would take on the Hudson River. The river welcomed his attention. The people on the river welcomed his attention.

When you have heroes like Bobby, you can sleep at night.

When you have heroes like Bobby you know you live in the right country, on the right side of the country.

-30-

Lots of Talk About Talk

Each morning I peruse the Google News Site.

Some stories, especially in the Tech and Celebrity sections can run on forever.

The one about a study that says women do not talk any more than men has been going on for three days. The latest on TIMESONLINE goes into more detail than most of the other news services. It brings up a reference to The Female Brain by Louann Brizendine that says women's daily word use is an average of 20K compared to 7K for men in a day.

If I was inclined to use more words, I'd explain why that confuses me.

The news is also telling me I should be upset about the pope bringing back the Latin Mass. Oddly enough, I can't get riled up about it, considering all of the rest going on in the world.

-30-

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Missing Months

If you look at the archive listing for this blog, you will see it goes back to the early days of blogging in May of 2004.

If you examine the list carefully, you will also note that February and March of this year are missing. This is because of two major reasons.

I was working so hard that I was diagnosed with clinical exhaustion. Secondly, Registerfly.com, the original registrar and server for this blog did a melt down. I had to change my URL's to other ISP registries.

This time I did not follow the advice of Mark Twain to watch the basket, but spread the names from here to there and back again.

If you were wondering what blog entries I did make during that two month hiatus from Bell Tower News, go to the Grazing Press Blog.
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See If You Can Pick the Window

Thirty eight years ago I spent the night in one of the apartments whose window you can see in this shot. We had attended a party of people who had worked on a failed political campaign.


I woke to the smell of coffee brewing and cigarette smoke.


I sat up and found I had been sleeping on a couch when my feet hit the back of the person who had slept on the floor in front of the couch.


That's the way it was in mid-town Manhattan - thirty eight years ago.

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Happy Fourth

This is a photo I took of the Statue as we sailed around it on the way to  Ellis Island.

On Ellis Island we saw the name of my son's great grandfather etched into plaque 122.


We also saw the parts of the building that look so well built from the outside, yet obviously rotting on the inside. Whether there was poetic symbolism here, or just a sample of things the way they are, I couldn't say. I took a few shots of the broken windows with feral plants reclaiming the land.


Whatever it all means, we still live in the greatest nation on the planet.


Now instead of trying to export that greatness though force and foolish evangelism, we do it by just living the good life and make people want to emulate or emigrate, the world may one day, a few lifetimes from now, but one day, get it.
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Hero Died Today

Admiral Eugene B. Fluckey died today. He was a great hero of World War II.

I just thought it worth mentioning.

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Back in Focus

Coming back to the first blog makes sense. For various reasons, some of the financial and some merely because construction and maintenance, even though almost wholly in my hands, wasn't worth it. It is no longer a toy, or a gadget. It is now something where I will get back to writing for the sake of writing.

Of course, my Moleskine takes care of most of that, internally, but there are just some things that need to be shouted from the rooftops, echoed in the valley and whispered in the check out line at Hanneford's.

This week should be called Limbo Week. Not for the Caribbean dance, but for the place betwixt heaven and Hades, or the time it takes to get an operator to fix the problem with the credit card. No, not that bad, but close.

Meetings are being canceled, moved, shortened,etc. Why don't we all just admit nothing is getting done and take the week off.The weather could be better for those who enjoy that airy thing you need to walk through to get to your car. I like it just like this.
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It's Monday Morning or the July 4th Weekend

As I sit here at my home desk getting ready to leave for work, the thought occurred to me, is this the July 4th weekend or is next?  I asked my wife and she, in her wise way, said "Neither.  This is the July 4th week."  Ah!

She may have something there.  It sounds suspiciously French, but still worth creating an Institute or at the very least, a congressional committee to study.  Instead of putting holidays on a Monday, to create the three day weekend; put them on a Wednesday to create the holiday week! 

Pure Genius!

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Look Into My Eyes

The last photo depicting the sock dumping was posted using the Live Writer Software. The problem with that is it can't upload photos to the Google server, except through FTP settings that are too complicated for this late at night.
I have been using the Picasa settings for uploading photos, but forgot that it was done from the installed software and not from the web album. The two have become so integrated that I am not sure if I am working online or on my own laptop.
The new Google documents have become part of my workday. I write all of my drafts on them, in Word style or using the spreadsheet software. I have several collaborators who also share the same workspace even though we are continents and oceans apart. =30=

Photo Post With Live Writer

This is an attempt at writing around a posted photograph of this sock dumping in   Croton-on-Hudson. Sock dumping is the traditional greeting god-daughters giver their god-mothers. 

It is believed this custom started with the Dutch settlers who adapted it from the local indigenous people's custom of dumping flowers.  Originally the Dutch tried it with their wooden clogs, but after a few unexpected fatalities, the switched to socks, clean socks.  This is the tradition that follows us today.  Though it was used in the City of New York until the late 17th Century, it is only in Croton-on-Hudson it is actively used.
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Okay, Now That We've Setup w:Bloggar

In a little side note in the help file mentioned in the last entry regarding w:bloggar, there was a comment regarding Windows Liver Writer.  Being always willing to experiment, I installed it. 
The only problem I was having was with the site URL.  It was totally my fault.  I was putting in the dashboard URL instead of that for the blog itself.  Once I corrected that line, the rest of the installation was automatic.

Let's see how it looks when published...
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Thanks to Samishra - w:Bloggar on Blogger

If this posts on Bell Tower News, it will because of Samisha at his website that explains how to get w:bloggar to work with Blogger Beta. Being that it is no longer beta, I would have thought this problem at been worked out at both the w:bloggar end and the Google end.

The only way to find out if the tip works is to post this message. Here goes.....
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End of Grazing Blogs

For now. The experiment of going to all the possible sources of blogging has come to an end. We will no longer support the many Grazing blogs that were created in the last few years.

Bell Tower News will now be our primary blog. We also have Rye Cake on Blogger and Artistic Grazing but have given them over to other users for specific topics. The broader range of blog topics will stay on Bell Tower News. =30=

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Wikipedia's Censors - High School Sophomores...

This morning's NYT has an article about Wikipedia's 'editorial staff' that anyone interested in how it works should read.

Don't read the author's credentials until you finish the article. =30=

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Scribefire High ASCII Test

I am writing this with the Scribefire WYSIWYG editor and then will view it in the HTML editor, both of which are included in Scribefire.
That was a non-breaking space and this's an apostrophe.
Let's see what all of this looks like in the HTML editor...

It didn't show up in the HTML editor.

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ScibeFire just upgraded

ScibeFire just upgraded itself.

I wanted to see if it was still adding a few lines at the bottom of each message and if it would retain the password for the blogs to which it can publish.

Uh, oh! I just noticed it's replacing the apostrophe and non-breaking space with the high ASCII abbreviation. Now I need to check the settings. It may be the laptop's keyboard, though it isn't doing it when I use the online Blogger editor. Hmmmm...

=30=

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We Only Have One Day

We only have one day off this week, but it is a glorious day.
We just returned from a nice picnic at the Rich Folks house.

Once a year they open their estate for us poor folk to visit.  Some take umbrage at this.

I say, if I only get the one day it's one more than those who don't take advantage.



A well know Town Politician didn't make it because he died last night. I had said good night to him a few weeks ago after a town meeting, but didn't know it would be the last time I saw him. He had lost a lot of weight, but I attributed it to his being healthier.



Impressions can be SO wrong. =30=

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Safari For Windows

The computer experts are putting Safari for Windows down as just another browser, late in the game, full of bugs, etc. |

I've been using it all day. It might be wishful thinking, but it is working very nicely for me. The only problem I have had is with my spell checker. It is not working well inside this message window. It is producing all sorts of weird results when I try to use the single quote. It is bringing up arbitrary words and putting double letters in the front of corrected words. That is a bug for the spell checker.

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This is Fort Popham in Maine. What they are calling “The Patriot’s Day Storm” brought up the piles of driftwood you see along the lee shore.
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Who is this Alexa?

If you Google Belltowernews.com you get something called Alexa Liquors.

We know nothing about this company and has nothing to do with this blog.

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Google Editor Taking Away From Blogging.

After making an entry on to my virtual Moleskine document in Google Documents it occurred to me that there is a lack of entries in the blogs because I have kept a daily account there. It also explains the lack of entries in the real Molesting. 



I need to go back over those entries and see which belong in a blog.=30=

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One of those days...

It has been one of those days. I needed to get to somewhere early to set up. Did that and then spent the rest of the day moving people from one stage to the next and then back for evaluation. The last time, when I just took part without organizing, it was a circus.

This time it went smoothly, but was long. In the background was another low key crisis that kept reigniting itself spontaneously.

That's all I can say on a public blog, but it was good to get it off of my chest.

=30=

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Media Monkey and Foxy Tunes

I stopped using Foxy Tunes when I stopped using iTunes and switched to MediaMonkey.  Then I discovered Foxy Tunes is not limited to iTunes.  If you click on the player choice you will see if covers most of he major media players now used in Windows.

Not a profound statement, considering the state of the world, but it was what was immediately on my mind when I opened ScribeFire.  =30=

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Registerfly flown

There is all sorts of weirdness going on at the company where belltowernews.com was registered. We are at this moment trying to move it all over to PowWeb, Tucows registry and hosting service. 



If Belltowernews. com no longer shows this blog but some sort of weird portal advertising house sales or the like, we are losing the battle.  For now, it seems like we're only halfway. 



The photo you see in the heading is not the photo it's supposed to be.  It's something weird at brdk.net, our other battlefield. 



This is very tiring.  =30=

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Scribefire Blogger Editor

The rock star formerly known as Performancing in is now called ScribeFire.  This is my first attempt at using it to write to Belltowernews.



It seems to have inherited the settings that were already up for Performancing.



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Firefox Media Plug In

For a while I have been getting a "Plug-in missing" message when MS Mediaplayer files are embedded into a site.

I wanted to see the demo for Phrase Express version 4, but was stymied by this problem. I went to Firefox plug ins and the Extension Mirror for the same with no results.

Then I googled the problem, and came up with this link. I followed the instructions and now the media at least play outside of Firefox in the MS Mediaplayer itself. Not elegant, but I can see the demo now.

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Performancing Gone

The Performancing Firefox extension was causing all sorts of crashes, so I not only disable it, but deleted it from Firefox. Now I am looking for another extension to take its place. The lack of blog entries demonstrates how dependent on it I had become.

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New Grazing Site

We went over to LOL, Leo LaPorte’s Vox blog to leave a comment about his leaving Toronto. To leave the comment, we had to join Vox. So, the latest Grazing blog is Trounce Alley Grazing.=30=

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This May Be My Last Performancing Entry

That is not to say my last blog entry, no by far.



I just learned from watching the latest podcast at CommandN.tv that it has been sold to some company called Pay For Post. I do not want my entries regarding software to be in any way associated with paid announcements. I call them as I see them. =30=

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Ditch iTunes for MediaMonkey

I have been using iTunes from the day it was made available to humble endusers. Then I stumbled upon MediaMonkey.

In the profound words of Chandler Bing's love interest Oh My Gawd! For those among us who like to know where all of those music tracks we've downloaded from various sources, MediaMonkey will solve the mystery, organize and then, best of all, reorganize your iPod, (if you like.)

In the latest issue of Popular Science, RockBox was mentioned as the add-on for your already becoming out-dated iPods. Before you jump into that, look at MediaMonkey.

Since I found Skype, I haven't been this enthusiastic about an online related service.
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The Cook Give Directions

This photo comes from Flickr by way of Performancing.

I just added the Flickr add-on, read the directions and was able to go to the Flickr site and grab this shot of The Cook Give Directions."

There is a MySpace blog editor add-on as well. It's a little more complicated, but if you blog to MySpace a lot, and you use FireFox 2.0, you should get it.

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Open Office 2.1

I downloaded Open Office 2.1 from the OpenOffice.org site. To quote their Home Page:

OpenOffice.org 2.1 is recommended for all users, as it represents a significant improvement over all previous versions. Among other things:

• Multiple monitor support for Impress
• Improved Calc HTML export
• Enhanced Access support for Base
• Even more languages
• Automatic notification of updates

If you're going to use OpenOffice.org, and you should, go right away to the templates page here.
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Black & White

This is the MS Zaandam at the cruise pier in Victoria, British Columbia. This was a dark, color

Black & White
Originally uploaded by sgtret.

photograph that I converted to black and white and brought the background light to the fullest.

I like it.

First we had to figure out how to get the photos from Picasa to Flickr. Then we had to figure out how to get the photos from Flickr to the blog. Basically its the Google server to the Yahoo Server and then back again to the Google server. All that to get better photo position in the blog and the neat captions.
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Black & White

Black & White
Originally uploaded by sgtret.

Black & White

Black & White
Originally uploaded by sgtret.

I Love Lucy at the Wolf

I Love Lucy at the Wolf,
originally uploaded by sgtret.

From the left, Sam, Eli, Sarah and Ben as Fred, Ethel, Lucy and Ricky in a tribute to the 1950's sitcom I Love Lucy.

Picasa to Flickr

I have been neglecting my Flickr account because of the ease of use Picasa has brought to uploading photos to Google photos. What I was also neglecting was the huge archive of photos I had already uploaded there along with the associated community of people with common interests in the groups to which I subscribe.

This was especially noticed when I was looking further down in this blog and saw the Flickr.com photo strip along the right side. It had photos from out trip to Alaska in May on the Zaandam.

Time to upgrade. The photos in the strip as of today are from Thanksgiving.

The point here, is the way to get the photos, as they've been finished by Picasa into Flickr it to email them directly from Picasa into Flickr using your Gmail account. Simple as that.

If you Google Flickr into Picasa you will find one solution and another that involves program language and DOS commands. I am not in need of something that sophisticated. Email to Flickr from Picasa, slam-bam-thank you Mam!
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Ben as Ricky and Sam as Fred

Sam and Ben do a number from their version of I Love Lucy,
with Ben as Ricky and Sam as Fred. Sarah played Lucy and
Eli did a wonderful acting job as Ethel.

A grand time was had by all.

Go to our Google photos site to see more.



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Donna Bogatin vs. Google

Just out of idle curiosity, what horrible thing did Google do to Donna Bogatin to make her hate it so? Did they make it difficult for her to be one of the first on her block to gain access to GMail?

There is a comment on one of her attacks on Google's Gmail calling her a yellow journalist. I don't think she's that important. I just think she's having a hard time to come up with topic for her posts so he rehashes the same theme.

Poor thing!

=30=

Picasa is Back Up!

I downloaded the recommended beta version from the help forum, returned the IE7 settings to default and BINGO! We're in busines. This is a picture of Thomas and is first tooth loss.

From 7th Birthday ...

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Picasa upgrade- BAD!!!!

If you use Picasa, don't upgrade. I hit the upgrade button automatically and lost all ability to upload to both this blog and my Google web albums. Alas. It was right afer I paid good money for more storage space as well!

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Up and Running!!!

The good folks at RegisterFly.com finally were able to correct the URL redirection and bring Belltowernews.com back up.

We were never really gone, the Blogger.com address was still working.

It just wasn't the same without the anchor URL.

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Belltowernews.com still down

Registerfly.com is still working on bringing the belltowernews.com URL transfer up. For now we just need to go to the blogger address http://randomthoughtgrazings.blogspot.com/ for now.

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If you came looking for us...

If you came looking for us at belltowernews.com, and you came upon a page with links to steeplechasers, wine and drugs, it is because of a difficulty we had with our domain registrar. There was a message in our e-mail early this morning saying all was better. Now we shall see.

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Thanksgiving 2006

This Spalding women group hug demonstrates the general feelings surrounding the family gathering last night. A daughter, mother and two aunts celebrate the meaning of family or, more likely, are goofing around while subconsciously celebrating.

The turkey was splendid, the side dishes superb, the company heartwarming and the evening to be remembered.

The kids are all taller then their mothers now, the nests are are less empty, but this flocking together a few times a year allows for evaluation of the efforts of the past to allow days like this to occur.

It is for this we are all thankful.
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Dr. Adams

  

iLike.com and Mary Foster Conklin- A good thing!

Mary Foster Conklin on iLike™

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Firefox 2.0 Up and Running!

No surprise there. I was disappointed that some of my priceless extensions weren’t ready in time for the grand opening. The beta has been out for quite a while. Most of them are quickly being updated, but one of my favorites, colortabs, still hasn’t been fixed

In the theme department, avoid MiniFox. It kills the ability to jump from theme to theme. I had to go into about:config and go to skins to change the MINIFOX entry to DEFAULT to get back the ability to change skins.

No big deal, but I think it poor form to take our configuration ability when designing a skin. That isn’t an error of omission but an overt act.

As has been said in most of the reviews I’ve read there are no startling changes but the feel of it is much smoother and there is less incompatibility with some of the more IE oriented websites.

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Words of Power on a sad Sunday

My friend Richard Power has a blog going at Words of Power.

If you want to dive into a world with a whole lotta words, all of which are full of Power, this is the place to go.

I will admit to being somewhat overwhelmed by the amount and intensity of this blog. It crosses many causally directed paths, not all in the same blind direction. The environment and the current political atmosphere seem to be the paths most trod.

My only word of caution is this is not a cheerful blog. This is not a cheerful world; so if you’re looking for a quite, calm and careless place, avoid Words of Power.

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RIP

Good bye, dear sweet man, father and joy to the world.
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Over the Shoulder

Were you ever taking a picture of one thing when something else caught your eye from the side? That is what happened with this picture. I was focusing on a tree planting for a moment, looked to my left.

There were Andy and Bob focusing on the same planting.


Their look alone will tell you how important this moment was to everyone.



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Looking Down

This is a picture of Julie looking down into a hole she and a large number of people took part in digging last week.





Into this hole was planted a dogwood to commemorate the birthday of a dear friend, John.










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Itchy soles

I am imbedded in Fire in the Mind, the detailed but well written biography of Joseph Campbell. He is currently in Paris, it is 1927 and Sylvia Beach is walking him through the writings of James Joyce.

Looking deeper into the life of Sylvia Beach it was pure Parisian. She even had a man recreate her bookstore and was left the store’s name in her will. He named his daughter after Sylvia. Though I am not a bibliophile, I am an avid reader in all media. I do, on occasion like to be in the company of people who love books for books sake.

The Zen saying about reading being the same as scratching the sole of another’s shoe to relieve an itch on your own foot still hangs over me when I get too into books alone as an escape, rather than an entertainment.

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Hegemony on on line

Not sure what is going on here.

Google seems to be taking over the world. First my Writely account and now the Blogger. Is there not a non Google tainted online application out there? The next thing you know, they’ll take over YouTube!

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POPURLS

Go here if you don’t like to spend hours looking at various sites with film and RSS content.

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Amber Mac Goodbye Video

Though it probably won’t rank historically with General Washington’s good bye to his troops or Douglas MacArthur fading away in front of the U.S. Congress, or Edward Windsor’s goodbye for the lady he loved, Amber MacArthur’s quickly spoken good bye to TechTV-G4 was important to the geek culture.

Her CommandN videos are part of my weekly online read. So, her leaving G4 serves mostly to diminish the station in my eyes. G4 is a gamers stations with little of interest to a geek who doesn’t game. Their Borging TechTV killed it.

Though I doubt I will be watching the Toronto news station who has wisely picked up her talent, I will see what feeds they produce once she comes on board.

The bloggers at Grazing wish her the best for her life and career!

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The Angst of September...

Taking a moment to reflect historically on this time of year, as September starts to rev its engines during the Labor Day weekend and "Summer” officially ends.

Today is the day Japan signed its surrender, yesterday is the anniversary of Germany’s invasion of Poland.

It was mentioned on NPR yesterday that September was the month in which couples are most likely to argue. Then of course, there in 9/11. As a native New Yorker, this is a scar that will never heal.

On top of that, there’s the start of school. The angst for this is compounded in the parent.

The general human angst level is high.

I believe this is a good time to take the month off from the news. This is extremely hard to do, considering from the many corners of our surroundings news now leaks into our conscious and subconscious.

In my youth, if you wanted the news, you picked up the newspaper. Either or both the morning and evening edition. There was one nightly news program on either ABC, CBS or NBC.

Then, in NYC, 1010 ‘all news-all the time’ started the trend for constant barrage of stories. It was addictive. CNN is its television incarnation.

Now, needless to say, you turn on your laptop and headlines flash across the bottom of your screen, Google homepage, My Yahoo even Wikipedia have news portals.

I only pick up newspapers if I arrive early for an urban appointment and need to spend 30 minutes or more at a Dunkin or Starbucks. Here, this habit of many years is being replaced by the blackberry.

Desert islands would look good right now if it weren’t for satellite phones and GPS devices...
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Careful on the Templates

Last night in a fit of curiosity, I reformated the template for Rye Cake with the new templates offered with Blogger Beta. It looks fine, but it erased all of the secondary bells and whistles, especially to Flickr bar and the Amazon pay link.

Before you use the new formatting tool, back up the old template.

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Blogger Beta Desktop via Google

When I signed on to my Gmail account the option to sign into Blogger was presented. That’s a good way to inspire people to make at least daily entries.

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Switched to Blogger Beta

Like Flikr requiring the use of a Yahoo account number, Google is requesting a Google account sign in. Soon all the world will be gained access to through one or two access portals. Like Mark Twains egg basket, guard that portal!

I haven’t taken a grand tour yet, I just wanted to see how easy a quick enty was to make.

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Too Many Changes?

The "new" Blogger is starting to look like the other commercial blogging software. I was happy with the Blogger interface the way it was. It was mostly because I never used it. I did all of my blogging using software designed to work with the inteface as is. Now I can almost be certain all of that convenient software, for some of which I plopped down dinar, will either need to be retooled, or leave the scene entirely.

I will report here the progress of the new interface, still in beta.



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Whence flew the Summer?

Whence flew the Summer? It is starting to get chilly at night.

This is bringing back memories of shoveling the car out of six feet of snow to go to work. Only now I work much further into the sticks, down a steep and curving hill.

Oh, lordy! Mosquitoes or Winter?

There’s a name for what I am doing now. I will stop doing it and go read a book.
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Words of Power

Words of Power
A very interesting blog by a man who has been full of power as long as I’ve known him, and that is a very long time.
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I changed 20 to 6.

An entry or so below called the 20six blog Twenty Grazing. I changed it to Grazing Six
It just looked better on the graphic header.
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Oh, Yeah, the Lyme Disease

After three weeks on antibiotics and Vitamin C (500mg), the fevers are gone and the symptoms are minimal.  We are on wait and see mode now.  The “we” being everyone I’ve told about this, which is, not counting the blog, around 2 and a ½
dozen people.

If there are additions to the med bulletins, I will place them here.
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20six Famous Grazing Blog

Though I didn’t think this would happen for a while, one more famous grazing blog has been opened.  It is called Grazing Twenty.  There has been little design work to it, or content included for that matter.  It looks like a fairly simple interface.  I have found the off line editor for it yet.  I tried the easy method with Performancing, but it is not a default blog, unfortunately.  Perhaps ::w.bloggar will have settings for it.  We shall see.
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Spambots suck

Fight Spam! Click Here! This blog has been the subject of two to three hundred spambot attacks a day. I am considering taking it down. Give me a good reason not to.

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Oh, Great!

The news that I have Lyme Disease came to me last week.  I need to deal with this before I get much else done.  Hold on.

Barry

Passed a Man Building a Boat

If you are in New England, you are wet.  Though the rain hasn’t come with hurricane winds, it has certainly come heavy and steady for several days.  It has done this continuously since the beginning of May.  There isn’t a dry field in the county or a pond or lake not full to the brim and overflowing.  Wet, indeed!

A dear member of our family is recovering from severe burns in a Boston Hospital. If anyone is expecting me to pay attention to petty minutiae for the next few weeks, dream on.  It is not only this family member requiring support.  It is the parents and siblings as well.  Consider me busy.
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Back in The Swing

It has been a stressful week at work and at home.  Friends have been hurt and my job could change or worse not change in the next week. I was reading Gideon Strauss’ blog this morning and thought I should get back into making morning entries.  It is a beautiful morning in New England.  The sign is shining, the birds are singing and the mosquitoes are breeding.  For what more could you ask?

Be Cool Cartoon!

Sam put together this Be Cool cartoon.

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You don’t see too many people sitting in the lounge chairs as you cruise along the Inside Passage along the Yukon/Alaska coast. One of the reasons is there are so many places inside on other decks of this Holland America ship where you can sit in comfort, with a beverage and a companion and watch the wonders of nature pass. As is clearly indicated by this photo, I spent a good deal of the time on the open deck. For those in need of meditative solitude, where better could you find it?
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10 Flagrant Mistakes

Wondering through the net trying to find a way around the endless menu at Signal Insurance’s Customer “Service” I came upon the ZDNet UK page on “10 flagrant grammar mistakes that make you look stupid“ I can be honest and say I do make at least two of the listed mistakes all of the time.  I won’t tell you which two.
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I was going through my Picasa library and came across this picture.
I have no idea of its origin. I could see some people thinking it quite
provocative.
Let’s see what else I have...
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This is what the Pelson Center looked like this morning seconds before the crowd piled in to watch the school’s closing ceremonies. There wasn’t a dry eye in the house as the child of one of the school’s founders and after whom the school is named, graduated.

He handed over the gavel to the man after whose family the Pelson Center is name. One namesake to the next. Very touching.
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Monday-Monday

This was the first Monday back from vacation. Of course vacation was over two weeks ago, but last Monday was a holiday, so it didn’t count. I don’t care for Mondays. I call them the hang over of weekends. On Sunday nights I debate the wisdom of returning to work the next day or to continue the sabbatical that was interrupted by this spate of work.

But then, I survive the Monday and come home to dinner, a family + and a new puppy. I guess I’ll continue with the working for a while at least.
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Mosquito Trap

The most deadly sport, in that more people die playing this sport than any other: Golf
The most deadly creature on the planet earth: Mosquito.

The preventative action against golf is easy, don’t play.
The preventative action against Mosquitoes is don’t go outside at all. This is much harder. When kids and a back yard are concerned it’s even harder.

Yesterday I made an attempt at getting one of the propane based mosquito killers.  My wife nixed it as too expensive. $279.00. How expensive is EEC or Malaria? I asked.

Still didn’t get it. With most things like this I did a little research and found a similar device for $200.00. In a review of the item the two comments against it said a $10.00 bat box was as effective. There’s the rabies and guano side of that equation. The second comment mentioned an almost free invention of a school class in Asia that involved a plastic soda bottle, sugar water, yeast and black paper.

Will try it.
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Taken from the bus

This was taken from the window of the bus on the way to the photo safari.

It was a shot I took to test the veracity of the driver’s claim that the windows were specially designed to allow photography with no return glare. I would say it was a good claim.

Another thing I liked about his shot is the word “AlaskaCo..” in the lower right corner. A self captioning photograph!
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Browster- A Very Userful Firefox Extension

I found Browster in an emailed article from ZDNet.

It is rare for ZDNet to recommend an extension so roundly. I am glad they did.

Though it claims no spyware connections, the agreement does state it collects information that cannot be linked back to the user. Uh huh. Having very little information anyone would find useful on this computer; I have no compunction about using it, and it is fun.

What it does is pop up a small lightening icon, similar to the one found in Word. When you click the icon next to any link on the Web site browsed, it pops up the window attached to the link without leaving the page being browsed.  This make browsing much more intuitive.

Try it, if you don’t like it, uninstall, no harm done. Except the part where they will probably know by the end of the day what brand toilet tissue you use. (Charmin!)

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Upgraded Firefox AND RoboForm Almost Simultaneously!

In the bad old days, whenever Firefox updated there was a wait for up to a week for RoboForm to come up to grade and reassume its compatibility.

Today I upgraded Firefox to the latest version and it automatically upgraded the RoboForm extension with two reboots.  A minor act as life goes, but a pleasant way to start the morning.
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