Crossroads-2009 International Quartet Champions
Just thought I’d share some great accapella music with you. Real Barbershop talent.
General
Good Grief! UK being PC…
Ex-soldier faces jail for handing in gun
Ex-soldier faces jail for handing in gun
Tuesday, November 17, 2009, 12:15A former soldier who handed a discarded shotgun in to police faces at least five years imprisonment for “doing his duty”.
Paul Clarke, 27, was found guilty of possessing a firearm at Guildford Crown Court on Tuesday – after finding the gun and handing it personally to police officers on March 20 this year.
The jury took 20 minutes to make its conviction, and Mr Clarke now faces a minimum of five year’s imprisonment for handing in the weapon.
To my friends who believe the ‘Liberal Media’ never reports good news…
Armed Robbers Apologize to Army Reserve Victim – ABC News
The 21-year-old University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee sophomore, who joined the Army Reserve a year ago, said he was walking home from work early Tuesday morning when four masked men forced him into an alley at gunpoint.
After ordering him to the ground, the reservist said the men took his wallet, keys, cell phone, and even an energy bar wrapper from his pants pockets.
But when one of the robbers started going through the wallet, the reservist said the hostilities immediately ceased.
“They found my military ID which stopped them dead in their tracks,” the student, who asked not to be identified, told WTMJ-TV. “What I presume to be the leader said, ‘We can’t do this. We’ve got to give him his stuff back.'”
Google Translate Upgrade
I happened to use Google Translate recently and realized they have changed its face since my last visit. If you don’t know about this service visit the link. When you visit a website in a language you can’t read just visit this site and put the link in the form.
If you have Google Toolbar installed it can have a button or right click link to automatically open the translated page.
I don’t use it often, but each time I am reminded how limited I am knowing only one language well. I am grateful for my family’s effort to have tried to teach me French as a child and for my father’s teaching me to understand etimology listings in Webster’s Dictionary for each definition. We red necks don’t consider how much of our American ‘English’ is based on other languages.
Springtime in Oregon
This is the most common view here in Oregon and I like it. But it’s causing some friction with my sun loving wife and friends who are ready for the California style spring. So we wait and watch things turn green and grow long and hope sometime we’ll be dry enough to go mow the lawn.
Best SEO tips I’ve read for some time
15 Tips to Drive Traffic to Your Blog
Those who know me know I consider most SEO (Search Engine Optimization) a waste of time. There is no substitute for real content on your website or blog to get you up in the rankings of the search engines.
Period.
But once you have some information or posts on your site there are things you can do to increase the odds you will be well placed or noticed at all by search engines and the linked post here spells them out very well in my opinion.
To all my hosted and serviced clients I recommend reading this linked post.
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Google Streetview oddities
Street View Gallery > Top
If you haven’t looked at Google Streetview yet you likely at least have heard of it. Google is now using web cameras to display 360 degree views of streets and has them displayed for a number of major cities already. Yes it is likely coming to your home too soon.
But what happens when you cruise around with a camera capable of viewing all around as you go? You find nude sunbathers, accidents, folks entering porn shops who may not really want a picture on the web. But here it is, 500 curiosities from Streetview…
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Google Free 411
Google Launches Free 411 Service
When I was young directory assistance was free, a human, and very good. I used it a lot and maybe folks like me are why Ma Bell dumped it.
But there is a good reason to keep information flow free and apparently Google agrees with me. What they have done now is created a robotic voice 411 service for businesses and it is free, call 1-800-GOOG-411
I’ve only begun to try it but it looks like a keeper to me.
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Get out of Cell Phone contracts?
CellSwapper Solves A Very Annoying Problem
What an idea!
I *HATE* cell phone companies. The whole Reagan revolution meant the downfall of customer service and cell phones debut in the same period led the way in customer NO-service.
A major part of the NO-service was the inclusion of terrible contracts for long time periods with exorbitantly high cancellation fees. So along comes this site, CellSwapper, which tries to mate folks trying to leave a contract with others looking to get into one.
There are many reasons to change services, poor coverage, poor sound, etc. can mean you want to change but if you are stuck, this just may be the way to go.
Have a look. Here’s hoping you don’t find it necessary, but most likely… well, good luck.
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Vyew.com Revisited
From my PC Users Group to the church meetings I attend I am always looking for good “cheap” meeting software so that folks can attend online as well as in person.
The best I have found is GoToMeeting.com but it’s not cheap and for non-profit groups it’s over the top.
Newer on the scene is Vyew.com 2.0 which, at least while it’s still beta is free.
To make use of all of its features requires a simple registration the visitors to your meetings are not required to join the site.
Unlike the GoToMeeting.com service Vyew is less involved with computer sharing, although it is now able to do so in a limited way, but it is great for collaborating on documents, file sharing, presentation design and the like.
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CrossLoop
CrossLoop – Simple Secure Screen Sharing
All I can say about this is… WOW!
For someone like myself who is a geek and is often asked to help others with computer use problems this *FREE* program lets others allow me access to their computer over any broadband connection.
I use UltraVNC and TightVNC which are the foundation of this program, but this simplifies it so it works past firewalls and does it quickly.
Consider this a five star rating from me after it’s first uses!
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Captioned Fractals
Blue Oyster Spiral Fractal Zoom – Google Video
This is an interesting demo of two nice items.
First this is from Google’s new “Captioned” videos they have available. I am listing this one because it is a relatively short show, but you can also see full programs and movies more than an hour long now at Google and hitting the “CC” button now lets you have closed captioning with it.
This show is a dive into a Fractal. If you aren’t a mathematician it may not sound like anything interesting but if you read up on what fractals are and how they were “discovered” this show is like a jump into infinity. Well worth the experience.
From the author:
No matter how deep you go, there’s always more. This movie took quite a few days to calculate.In 1993, when i first made a poster of the
image i call “blue oyster spiral,” which is a zoom at about the 100
Billion X magnification level inside the Mandelbrot Fractal, it took 34
computers 3 days to render it. today, the same poster can be rendered
on one typical PC in just a few hours.