Friday, April 21, 2006

Before I Forget

OK.

Time to break one of my rules.

About dumping linkage.

I'm tired and still kinda in a "black mood" about my gameplay.

But, time to clean out the linkage hopper...

I never had a Mattel Vertibird. I remember wanting one from the Sears WishBook. But I never had one. Imagine my surprise when Retrothing posted a link to the VertiSim--Mattel Vertibird Simulator. While you are at it, check out Whirlybird Central for more nostalgia.

Speaking of those Sears Wishbooks. Some crazy Canadian dude scanned in all the pages from the 1983, 1975, and 1979 Wishbook catalogs. Too bad I can't take a marker to these like I used to as a kid!

Seen recently on Drawn:

Behold the mad Photoshop/Illustrator skills of Bert Monroy--Digital photo-realist artist. Dude did an image of a Chicago rail station. Image is 40x120 inches. File size 1.7G. Almost 2000 hours. Over 15,000 layers and 250,000 paths.

The Anatomia Collection: 4500+ full page anatomical plates from 1522-1867. Selected from the Jason A. Hannah and Academy of Medicine collections in the history of medicine at the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, University of Toronto.

Hmmm. OK. Now if there only was a list of over 450 freeware utilities to pick from. Somewhere that would categorize and link some options. If only someone would take the time to...what?...there is?.... Oh. I want a Freeware Utility to ... 450+ common problems solved.

I've always taken a lot of grief over my handwriting. See, they taught me to write really big early in my education. Then they taught me to mix it up with cursive. Everything in school had to be written in cursive. So I graduate from HS with pretty good penmanship. (I said pretty-good, Mom.) Then I get to college. I have to take notes. So I struggle for a while until my print skills come back and then I figure out the smaller I write, the faster I can take notes. So eventually my print handwriting becomes pretty clear but pretty small. So now I can only seem to print very small again. Anyway. That's how I take notes--almost verbatim--small and fast. It's a gift.

If you are not so gifted in your note-taking skills, check out this article over at LifeHacker: Geek to Live: Take great notes. I really like the tips they have about laying out your paper into different areas for note management. Assorted bonus linkage can be found on the page as well.

More Defrag Options

Defragging your hard drive is supposed to improve (lower) drive seek time. Honestly, a drive has to be seriously fragmented before I can notice any performance difference. But it bugs me to know stuff is scattered around disorganized all over the place (ask Lavie and Alvis). Windows XP and 2000 have some adequate built-in defragging utilities. However, if you want to step it up a bit, here are some (mostly) freeware defragging tools you might want to consider:

DIRMS and Buzzsaw,
Contig (Sysinternals) and Power Defragmenter GUI (eXcessive Software),
O&O Defrag 2000 Freeware Edition (only seems to be hosted on Major Geeks)
Diskeeper Lite 7.0 (Freeware version hosted on Major Geeks--trial versions at DiskKeeper Corp.)
DefragNT
PageDefrag (Sysinternals) Specifically for defragging your paging files or Registry hives.

Ever hear about XP's Little-Known 'Rebuild' Command? I hadn't but thanks to Fred Langa of Information Week I do now! Thanks Fred! It might save you from the headaches of an XP system reinstall or full system repair.

Want to add categories to your Blogger page? There are quite a few "hacks" for this. However, a new service called labelr looks promising. I'll let you know more after I try it out.

A Grand Stream Dreams Net Flight Tour (tm) of Digital Photography (or how I found some awesome photos...)

1) RSS feed for Newsome.Org offered "Good News for Digital Photographers"
2) Kent then offered a link to Thomas Hawk's "10 Tips for the New Digital SLR Photographer"
3) (Pause here while I fight the urge to run out and pick up my dream D-SLR camera...)
4) Remember I haven't been over at the Flagrant Disregard blog of John Watson.
5) He has a beautiful photoblog, lightproofbox.
6) See he mentions starting a new photography tips and techniques blog called Photodoto and is offering some prizes (including a D-SLR camera.)
7) Decide to enter his contest.
8) Upload a picture or two to my flickr page.
9) Pick this one to toss into the photodoto contest pool.
10) Realize I am seriously outclassed (but had fun anyway)!
11) Finally I remembered where I had started and checked out Hawk's Flickr Stream.

Oooohhhh....Pretty pictures!

See you in the Skies!
--Claus

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

My Dearest Claus,
You know I love you with all my heart. You are my Prince!! So please know I say this with the most sincerest love, but I must say, your handwriting sucks. Yes, you can write in very, very tiny print, but it sucks.
Remember, I did not fall in love with you because of your handwriting.
Always yours,
Lavie = )
hehehe

Anonymous said...

Hi daddy,
It's me ALVIS, I'm sorry but I have to agree, but hey, at least I can read yours. Mine on the other hand isn't legible.
LOL, ALVIS :) :)