A place to store my thoughts until I figure out what to do with them.
I need some bloggers to post about Missionary Talks. Though I have some bloggers who have me in their BlogRolls (or links) section, I have few who have blogged about the podcast. Getting a link in a blog posting helps bring Missionary Talks up in the rankings at Technorati. Which then makes it more visible in other search engines.
I know, it is tooting my own horn, but someone has to do it. No one is doing it on their own. So get out there and blog! (please?)
Josh is the oldest son of the missionaries we had on episodes 7 and 8.
This was a fun interview. Josh is a runner too. Though we did not talk any about running in the podcast, we had dinner together later that night and talked quite a bit then.
When I was interviewing him I noticed that he was wearing a T-shirt from his college, but did not pay attention to it. Later at the meal when I was getting another helping of lasagna from the kitchen, I noticed the back of his shirt. It had one of my favorite Steve Prefontaine quotes on it.
To give anything less than your best is to sacrifice the gift.
He ran cross country in college his freshman year. His school is kinda small, though they competed against all the big colleges in Florida. They raced against the Gators, Hurricanes and Seminoles. He only ran XC his freshman year because the other 4 runners wanted to play soccer this year and he needed more time to study. That is how small the school is, their only 5 runners made up the whole XC team.
Enjoy the show!
Oh, my other favorite Pre quote is:
Somebody may beat me, but they are going to have to bleed to do it.
We had a computer that has done something odd for at least 3 years. Sometimes after being unplugged it would not start up again. You would have to keep trying to restart it until it just decided that it was ready. This problem has gotten much worse over the last 6 months or so. The problem came when the power would go out. Sometimes it would take close to a week before it would decide to start again.
This summer I got a new power supply for it thinking that was the problem. Did not help.
When the power went out this weekend, the computer acted completely dead. I pulled the motherboard and just tried a visual inspection. I saw that there were 5 capacitors that were bulging. None were leaky, but they were not right. I did some looking on the Internet and found a page that talked about restoring old radios. The man said the first thing he does is replace all the capacitors. If that does not solve whatever problem the radio had (which it almost always did) it would make the radio function much better. That told me capacitors are a likely device to fail.
I am handy with a soldering iron. I can cook my fingers on an iron with the best of them. The problem was in finding the replacement caps. I hit several stores yesterday looking for the size I needed. Finally I went to the man that has done some electronic repair for me before. He told me the reason for the difficulty in finding them was that it was an odd size. But, he told me how to combine caps to get the value I needed. We chatted just a bit and he said the key words: “That size capacitor is pretty common in computers, but not in a lot of other things.” Ah-ha! I have a motherboard at home in a computer that was pulled out of service a couple of months ago. I will look on that board.
Fortunately it had enough caps of the right value to do a pell-mell replacement of all the capacitors that I needed to replace. I popped them off while putting third degree burns on only one finger. I then I replaced the bad ones and put the computer back together.
It started up at the first try. Whew!
I would not try this with a new computer/motherboard that is still under warranty. But the machine that was failing was bought used in 2001. The motherboard that I pulled the caps from was bought off of my brother back in 2000 (or so) for $50. The reason I got such a deal is that the computer had already blown up once (sparks and smoke) and was pronounced dead by the computer experts in town. I bought it for parts and found out that it just needed a new power supply and some add on cards replaced. That old Pentium 350 had been in constant use up to about two months ago.
Someday I will own a new computer, but not likely.
My wife bought me a new can of hairspray today. That may not be exciting for some, but the longest hair I have on my head is in my mustache. The fact that I am quite balding would make anyone wonder “Why?”.
Well, it isn’t for my head. No, not for the curly locks on my chest either.
I read something a short time back about using an art fixative for your inkjet photos. This fixative spray is used in charcoal, pastel and pencil art to “fix” the picture. It helps protect the art from casual water and smudges. The article said that it would do the same for inkjet photos.
Back in my more artful days I used aerosol hairspray instead of the professional art spray. If you had seen any of my art from back then, you would understand why it was not worth spending more than just the few cents that White Rain hairspray cost in those days. That got me to thinking that I could probably do the same with inkjet printed photos. If I used hairspray to coat the photos, then that should help give them some water resistance.
So that is why my wife bought me the hairspray. I tried it and let it dry. Then I ran the photo under the water in the kitchen sink and it came out mostly unaffected. The one spot that did go wonky in the photo was right on one edge where I apparently did not get the spray on well.
Since my testing, I have done some research. I know, most people research and then experiment, but not me. Here are some things I found out.
You want to avoid hairspray with conditioners in it. The conditioners are usually oils which can cause spots in the paper. Another caution is that the reason the art spray costs more is because it is designed for that purpose. While the chemical makeup in the hairspray is fine for the job, the nozzle that delivers the hair spray probably is not as well metered. You can end up with spray coming out in blobs instead of a nice mist.
Do your own testing. Use at your own risk. But, it may be just the thing to use when you print out snapshots that are going to be handed around in a group. I realize that you can always print a new one, but this is supposed to also help keep the ink from fading over time.
By the way, this is not necessary in photos from a photo lab. The process used is totally different. In fact, if you get something on a real photo you can just rinse it off with water. The last step in a photo’s birth process is a water rinse cycle. Just let it dry (best results if hung on an edge) and the photo will be as good as new.
Please don’t sue me if none of this works for you and it ruins your photos. I am just giving info that has helped me. Apply at your own risk.
At the request of the president of the Pensacola Linux Users Group (P’cola LUG) I wrote an article yesterday on the basics of podcasting. It is nothing too deep or complicated, but since I put the work into it, I wanted to get more mileage out of it. Therefore I am linking to it from here.
It is kinda long, so you might want to bring a cup of coffee along for the ride.
I used to write a lot of longer articles for the group. We are finishing up our 6th year as a LUG. When we first started there were so few with any Linux knowledge that I would do a writeup on every new thing I learned. Now the group has quite a large number of intelligent members that I feel like the newbie in the room. So I have not been writing as many articles for the group like I used to.
Here is an excerpt:
While I titled this How to Podcast from Linux, it really is not Linux specific. The only real software that you need that will be running on your local system is Audacity which is available for Linux, Mac and Windows. Everything else can be done through the web browser.
What makes a Podcast?
File types
The files can be just about any file type/format you want. For audio podcasts these are usually .mp3 or .ogg. For video podcasting there are several formats to chose from. I am not sure which is the most common since I don’t do a video podcast.
You can read the rest at the P’cola LUG forum.
Don’t forget to check out my podcast at: www.missionarytalks.com