Kindle, Kindle .. come out where ever you are ..

I bought a Kindle 3 last year. Long story: it was lost for a while in a third world country (Bonaire), but eventually found it’s way home to me. Meanwhile, my daughters sprang for a replacement Kindle Touch for me for Christmas. Thanks Kids! So .. I (am supposed to) have two. It usually works out great, as I have two pockets in my suit jacket that they fit into quite well. It is often convenient to have two references open at once at church or in study. Mostly, they are used as replacement scriptures and lesson manuals and whatever. The bells and whistles of other devices fade in comparison to the crystal ink, usability and readability of my Kindles and they save me from lugging around my old 40 lb Samsonite briefcase.

Sidebar: see my results of my version of the Book of Mormon Study Guide for the Kindle at http://magrath-ab.net/studyguide .. I plan to document the steps required to convert from PDF > DOC > EPUB > MOBI = XML .. OK? Later.

Anyway, I have a Kindle Touch and a Kindle 3. Last week, the Kindle 3 disappeared shortly after our return from church. It was eventually found next to my computer under another book. Hmmm. This weekend the Kindle Touch also disappeared and eventually miraculously appeared under my daughters pillow in her room. Ahhh. So .. perhap we need some kind of GPS tracking device or a clapper/beeper function to be able to locate lost or stolen devices like this. THAT would be cool ..

Googlighting: Microsoft’s way of running for ‘Office’ – Page 1 – Leadership

Googlighting: Microsoft’s way of running for ‘Office’ – Page 1 – Leadership

Funny ad .. but how true can any ‘attack style’ advertising be? They are over-exaggerating the Googdangers to try to change the transfer of your dollars from someone else’s pockets back into their own. Has Microsoft ever killed a feature, moved a menu around, changed the way things used to work (ahem .. vista, word ribbon ..)? Can I get an ‘upgrade’ from the audience? Has a cool product ever just been scrapped? What ever happened to Bob? He seemed nice. Ever make a program obsolete? Try to make everyone ‘upgrade’ simply because they want you to try out a new operating system.They seem to be stuck on ‘how can so much of it be free’ – as in no charge, without exchange of dollars, open. The concept is simple. Remember broadcast TV? You know, the old kind before cable and satellite and internet. They paid for the service by selling advertising! We got to watch shows without cost over the air by permitting ourselves to become their product rather than their customer. Of course, in order to keep ‘us’ as products, they had to provide fabulous (enough) content so that we would keep watching. Ever hear of Nielsen ratings? It is in Google’s best interest to keep providing excellent (enough) products so that we continue to function as their products for their paying advertisers as we consume their Googcontent and use their ‘free’ Googservices.

Broken printer will not install .. unless connected

Just spent a half hour trying to see why an old Lexmark 2030 Color Jetprinter would not install on a Win7 64 bit computer. Downloaded several drivers that would not work. Never seemed to get any response from the printer. Finally decided to check the connections. Oh .. the cable to the printer is an old style DB25 cable type and the new computer only has USB. It has been disconnected since the new computer was installed. Since it was just sitting there like it always had, everyone supposed that it should be working.  I suppose we could look for a USB to DB25 like
http://ca.startech.com/Cards-Adapters/Parallel/USB-to-Parallel-Adapter-Cable-DB25~ICUSB1284D25 but that is $20 by itself and no guarantee that a driver exists for this old printer anyway. Ended up ordering an inkjet HP printer from Best Buy and will install it for client next week. Yay. The old printer has been sitting here since the old computer was replaced – looking like it might work, but sadly .. no.

Lost on the Net ..

I can’t settle on a favorite platform to post my insights on. I like Joomla but all my Joomla websites enjoy the almost exact look and feel. OK for ‘my’ sites, but not everyone wants to look just like me (he he). I am also testing out tumblrand twitter and facebook and google+ and even wordpress and weebly and google sites.This post was originally on tumblr which should have forwarded to twitter which should be passed on my 3 friends at facebook, but getting that content back from those sites to links on my websites is unnecessarily awkward. I usually end up double posting the content back where it should end up .. like here .. when I get time. Joomla is a CMS that I never use as one, because I really only have those 3 friends. So most of my sites end up like a large personal blog. Setting up a Joomla site for others to use has been less than successful due to the need to train users in entering passwords and basic html code. Their eyes start crossing and I have to back them slowly away from the computer screen.

Weebly was selected for the Magrath Museum website and it was easily mastered by the summer intern, but needs some full time tending. Content is king and I don’t have access to it unless I go work at the Museum (although my kids would say I belong there).

Google Sites has been used with some success for Westwinds Soccer. They only update it during the soccer season (a short season in Canada) and last year I convinced them to use an embedded Google Spreadsheet to report the League Standings with some success. It will remain to be seen if they will be able to update the site for 2012 without some assistance.

The Magrath Chamber of Commerce is a site I am donating space and time to. The primary site is on my webserver using Joomla with links to Google Sites for projects like the upcoming Tradeshow. This approach allows for quick implementation and presentation of information for chamber projects without major webdesign project on the main site. I simply include a menu link to the Tradeshow on my main Joomla site and back to the Chamber site from the Google Sites page with similar theme and it seems to work ok.

Finally, a word on Social Media .. Google+ vs Twitter vs Facebook. Still find it awkward to use successfully. I would like to use my multiple personalities but these sites want only to know the actual me. I would like to post as Magrath Chamber when acting as their spokesperson and as Soft Serve Direct when wearing my business hat and only as R Davies when posting my own family news. Similar problem with email: I have Gmail accounts for all these same entities. To their credit, Google is making recent strides in letting me ‘switch identity’ as needed between my various email accounts.

Meanwhile, my webdesign efforts are much like my kindergarten art projects – various interesting pieces of information glued together in awkward ways with occasional missing links, that once in a while could be considered a masterpiece (by my mom).

Happy Valentines 2012

I am a man. I don’t much care for flowers or chocolates or special moments. I come to Valentines Day kicking and screaming (silently to myself in my noisy troubled mind). My youngest daughter is 13. She seems to like the idea of ‘Valentines’. Last week, about the 12th or 13th of the month she came in to breakfast to greet me with this comment; “My valentine mailbox has been on the top of the piano for a week now, and I don’t see any cards from you in it .. yet.”. Next year she will be 14 and will probably be off to a school dance or something and too busy to care about her poor parents sitting home alone .. on Valentines! OK, so I brought home some red and white and pink cards for her and her Mom and some chocolate treats. They seemed to enjoy the moment.

Is my blog working?

ismyblogworking.com Is your webpage/blog working? How do you know? Veronica Belmont of tekzilla.com has shown us the way .. again. She reported a new free utility website called ismyblogworking.com that checks for you and reports back all sorts of neat techie info. You just enter in the site you want to check on their main page, or append it to the end for a quick shortcut e.g. ismyblogworking.com/magrath-ab.net/news/blog

Yay .. along the same lines, I like the whatismyip.com website which is extremely handy if you need to know what IP address (kinda like a call display number to the web) you are using. You need this info if you want two computers to find and talk directly to each other over the internet. It is also a quick and easy way to see if your internet connection is still working.

And if it is working .. just how fast is it? Go to speedtest.net for a free utility to measure how long it takes to upload and download a test file. Cool.

Now, how can they afford to provide free services like these? I don’t know, but I like using them. Perhaps is is a public service provided by a beneficent business who make their money in other ways .. kind of like the content on this website.

Ratings You Can Use

Family Movie Time? Check out kids-in-mind.com (http://www.kids-in-mind.com). It provides parents and other adults with objective and complete information about a film’s content so that they can decide, based on their own value system, whether they should watch a movie with or without their kids. It’s like a food labeling system which tells you what a food item contains. It is a reliable, content-based alternative to the confusing MPAA (US) movie ratings.

You may also find http://parentpreviews.com/in-theaters of use. Family Movie Reviews, Movie Ratings & More .. links to Expert Studies, Articles and Reviewer Blogs. Only rates movies less than R ratings.

They Googled my Van in Magrath, AB

I be googled! My daughter informed me today that her friend saw our van in front of my mother-in-laws house on Google Maps. Apparently last spring the Google cam-van was here and I never knew. No one tells me anything.

To see what YOUR house looked like last year, you can go to Google Maps and drag the little person icon to your street. Street view lets you navigate the same paths the cam-van took and you can look around and up at each point. Click the while arrow heads on the white path line to move along the streets. Click the blue arrow heads on the compass icon to rotate left/right or look up/down. Click the +/- below the compass to zoom in/out. Also, in the mini map at lower right you can move to other streets by dragging the person icon around. Neato.

So go to maps.google.com and search for Magrath, Canada. That should get you to the current map of Magrath or just click here to view our town on Google Maps ..