Instant Winter!

One of the disadvantages of listening to music, via iPod transmitter, in your car is you don't get weather bulletins. To make up for that, I do get NWS bulletins in my email, but, that requires reading them.

So, you can imagine my surprise when driving south on the Interstate this afternoon to find myself, just about instantly, on a road, unsalted, and blanketed with snow.

Before Exit 20, brown grass and evergreens, after Exit 20, winter wonderland. It was that fast.

Normally snow creeps up on you, or it's there in the morning when you rise. This was more like somebody up there said, "Whoa! Forgot to install winter and I have train to catch." DUMP! "There, that should do it." In the words of my philosophical guru, "I kid you not!"
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Live Writer Has Arrived!!

Now that Live Writer is a usable blog editor you are guaranteed to see more entries at Random Grazing Space.  The other active grazing blogs are rooted here in Belltower News.  The catchall blog is Other Grazing on Live Journal.

On WordPress we have Grazing Portal and Grazing Press= our last hosted blog.

While at a trade show in British Columbia we set up the Vox blog Trounce Alley.  Because of the lack of off line editors that support this blog and its connection to a social connection portal, we don't count it as an active blog. It does serve as a good place to test programs which tout themselves as all-over blog editors.

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The Patriot beat the Guaranteed Pittsburgh Steelers.  

Technorati Tags: Live Writer and Spaces

The Patriots vs. Pittsburgh

I know we have gone on and on about Google Reader.  There is one thing more powerful.  The New England Patriots.  There is no way, at 1615 this afternoon, I will be anywhere near this laptop at kick off time.

The rest of the world my hate the Patriots, but this is New England.

Expect comments after the game.

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Google Reader-a deus: Drug of Choice

In a previous blog entry, I bemoaned the time taken up by defaulting to Google Reader as the Firefox home page. 

It used to be Google News.  Google News took up enough time to get me somewhat informed.  The occasional dive from a Google News New York Times link to other NYT stories was no where near as time consuming as the links out from the dozens of RSS feeds that now reside on my Google Reader. (One of them being the NYT RSS Feed)

What would Betty Ford do?

Technorati Tags: Google Reader

Google Reader Free Software Feed

In the right hand column of Belltower News is a box.

This is the Google Reader share box. It only displayed the last five links shared from the the Google Reader.

But, if you click on the Read more it will take you to the entire list of shared items. The latest dozen or so are software items available at CNet.

Each is either in use here or on the desktop in the office. All of the listed software is very usable and totally replaces their professional counterparts.

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I Have Been Swallowed by Google Reader

You may find the items in the Google Reader box in the lower right column to be very up to date, whereas the entries to this and the other Grazing blogs have fallen off in quantity. Blame Google Reader. Where we would have come back to the blog and made mention of site of wonder, now we just hit the SHARE key in Google Reader and it appears in the aforementioned box in the lower right column.

A good example of this is the link to the blog entry about the blog entry about the $40.00 eyeglass phenomenon.

You would have seen my own evaluation because I bought six pairs from one of the companies mentioned to my own great satisfaction. But did I have time to tell you? NO! Because I was too busy being dragged from story to story, blog to blog, news bit to news bit by Google Reader.

The line from the fortune cookie:
"Help! I am being held hostage in a fortune cookie factory!"comes to mind here..
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First Zoho, now Live Writer!

LiveJournal Tags: writer

First we discover that Zoho online writer will post to Blogger, LiveJournal and WordPress.  Now we learn that Windows Live Writer has come out of beta as 1.0. 

It has to be said up-front, I am no fan of MS.  I am not a fan of the way they try to sneak their not free software and services into the installation of this blog editor.  When I was automatically taken to Windows Live, I discovered Microsoft Dollars!  I felt like I was walking through a carnival, near closing time...

But, the writer is good.  It does what I want and off line.  Of course, now that I will post it, the "data" that I did not give MS permission to gather will be placed on some obscure file in the bowels of Windows until MS gets me to give permission by some other nefarious means.

All in all, ScribeFire is still the most convenient of the bunch.

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Blog One

This is being written in Zoho Writer.  The question is, can a blog be published from here? We shall see.

• There are some features here like indenting and

                                      
 Graphics as well.

  There is also highlighting and Links.

  As well as change in fonts.

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Zoho Notebook

This is an amazing tool. I have been told it can be used to publish to blogs. I haven't tried it yet, but if you are interested in Zoho Notebook, going to this page will bring up a YouTube link to an excellent demonstration of some of the thing you can do with it.

I paid close attention to the Share parts because I work with four other colleagues spread all over New England. If we get up to speed with this, it can be very helpful.
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Happy Thanksgiving

This was just one of the three tables covered with food.







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Amber and the Dalai Lama

This page is worth a visit just to see the Dalai Lama out of the spotlight for a few minutes and to see him shake hands with Amber MacArthur. I met him in San Francisco many-many years ago. He doesn't seem to have aged a bit.
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Railroad Stove

This is from the Flickr Yahoo Widget.

Railroad Stove
Originally uploaded by sgtret.

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Web 2.0 Comment

We just left a comment at the ZDNet "Web 2.0" article regarding Mozzilla's Firefox memory usage. It implied that anyone really understand "memory leakage." It has been explained in so many contrary ways, we believe it to be a cyber-myth that explains a law of physics with a colander cum punctured tire comparison.

In out comment we mentioned that Firefox runs fine on a laptop, this one, with 42 extensions, including the one with which we are writing this blog entry, running simultaneously.
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Sony Reader - Report of short Honeymoon

At this link from 43 folders, also saved in the Google reader box in the Belltowernews right column, you will find a story from a disgruntled user of the Sony Reader PRS-505.

This saddens me to a great degree. I was ready to go out and buy one with the understanding I could copy my Adobe pdf files, hundreds of which I have for work and the other work.

If this short story is to be believed, and I see no reason why not, they the Sony Reader has not evolved as much as is hyped. Alas!

It makes me sad that a gadget over which I have sinfully coveted, turns out to be a shadow of its promised self.

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::w.bloggar

Okay, this is the NEW, I mean really new ::w.bloggar version 4.02.

I haven't fully explored it yet, but I do know it is still the only one that instinctively uploads entries into SquareSpace. Unfortunately we didn't want to pay for a weblog when there is so much out there, such as this blog, that are, relatively, free.

What will I do with three days off?

After a visit to the doctor today I was told some stuff that wasn't fun.  I have the next three days off to think about it.  The question is, why would I want to waste three days off thinking about bad news?  I think it's time to veg and swim in the Egyptian River.

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Computerworld's Worst Firefox Extension

This is being written using one of the extensions condemned in this article. They say there is no reason for a blog editor when the online blogs all have their own editors.

The reason is you can do just what I am doing now, comment on a web page without having to go to the blog's website, sign on and go through the steps of bringing up the online. This is much easier.

So there!

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Scottish Censorship, kinda!

There was an article in this morning's Scotsman.com regarding some silly drug related "scandal" involving a member of the Royal Family.

It basically says there is a court order prohibiting them from mentioning the name of this Royal. Some other bright person, it would seem the article says, tried to blackmail said unnamed Royal and got caught. It goes onto say, though the court says they can't tell you the name of the person, there a picture of him signing a book in the Italian Newspaper IL repubblica.it

Not being able to read Italian, I am afraid this person's identity or what this person is alleged to be accused of by the blackmailer is unknown to me.
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Whew!

The surrounding tension in New England has lessoned, but not dissipated. New Englanders have become spoiled, with the World Series and all of the record book numbers surrounding members of the Patriots. They won the game, but few points, but, as it said by Patriots fans, a win is a win.

The Colts didn't score the highest against New England, but the spread was much shorter. That seems to mean something. Don't ask me.
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First the Nor'easter and now the Colts

Today we sat around in the morning waiting for the promised Nor'easter. It came. There was wind and rain, fallen branches and a power outage or two. Pretty much as expected.

Tomorrow everyone will be sitting around waiting until 4:15 in the afternoon. That's when the Colts should be running out on to the field. I honestly believe most of the people here in New England are worried more about tomorrow than they were today.

We're used to Nor'Easters. Where not that used to having out team play an undefeated team, going in undefeated ourselves.

I wish I could ignore it. Not being that big a fan of organized sports, you think I could. It would have been easier to ignore the windows rattling and the trees falling today, all day.
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