Success

It is nonsense to say there is not enough time to be fully informed... Time given to thought is the greatest timesaver of all. (Norman Cousins in The Book Of Choices by Mike Magee, M.D., p. 195)

It takes twenty years to become an overnight success. (Eddie Cantor in Believing In Myself, Larsen & Hegarty, 19 March)

But success stories are full of tales of rejection slips and bankruptcies and years of unrecognized work and thwarted ambition. (Eric V. Cogape, Black Pearls, 19 March)

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Yesterday I went for a nice five-lap walk at Schrom Park. I usually walk four laps.

I received additional photos of the computer classroom ribbon cutting from Vic. I added them to my Picasa photo album. which instantly made them available on the club's website. Vic also shared photos he took during Eric's recent talk on file shredders. I created another album for this photos. Then I installed a running slideshow of the photos on the club's Meetings webpage. Thanks Vic, for sharing.

During the evening I watched two very nice music shows. There was a tribute to George Strait on GAC channel. He was named Country Entertainer of the Decade by some group. The guest performers sang many of his songs. Later, on MPT our Maryland PBS station, I watched a show about the Troubador nightclub. There were many interview clips and lots of music clips. In particular they focused on James Taylor and Carole King.

This morning I'm listening to the PBS radio classical station. I have one of those radios that straps to the upper arm. This is cool because it allows freedom of movement. I often listen to music and television while wearing headphones. That way I don't disturb anyone else with what I'm listening to or with the volume I need.

I used to spend quite a bit of money purchasing plastic floor mats to use under the chair I sit in while at the computer. It wasn't take long before the material would become brittle and break. I finally solved the problem at the thrift store. I bought a piece of floor paneling that looks like wood on one side. It was just the right side for placing in front of the table where I have the computer. Now I can move the chair in any direction without resistance. I'm still asking myself, "Why didn't you think of this years ago?"

Mr. Dickie
10/Apr/2011 9:18

A Busy Day

It is all too true of most of us that we are the victims of the same faults of temperament and of character; that we fail for the same reasons; that as year succeeds year, we are no further on. (William Barclay, The Letters to Timothy, Titus and Philemon, p. 118)

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I was very busy yesterday.

I attended the 10:00 a.m. ribbon cutting and open house for the new computers at the Bowie Senior Center. I took ten photos of the event. I thought there was a nice crowd. People attending that I know were: Kathy White; John Jones; Dale Grant, Dick Boell, Dan Lee, Vic Kiviat, Karl Bulger. With the new equipment the computer club will be able to offer courses for the Windows XP operating system and for Windows 7. I never thought to ask what happened to Windows Vista.

When I got home I loaded the ten photos on my computer. Then I uploaded them to my Picasa account where I used their Picnic editor for the first time to do some cropping. I captioned all of the photos, arranged their order, wrote a album description and selected one photo for the album cover.

I copied a piece of HTML code from Picasa and embedded it at the top of the club's training page. This displayed the album's cover photo. Visitors can click on the photo to go to Picasa to view the nine-photo slideshow. I was very pleased with the result. I also installed a link to the slideshow on my Facebook wall and in a posting to Mr. Dickie's Blog. Everything worked. This was the first time I have done this. I'm sure I will want to use this approach again.

I spent time in the morning and evening working on fixing a problem I caused myself with the club's Training page. To make a long story, short, I damaged some links to course description pages and had to retype about ten URLs with rather complicated punctuation. Live and learn!

I continued a project with the genealogy society website. I'm studying the folder structure and trying to get a handle on what graphics are already available on the website. I have discovered that the same file names were used for different graphics and that some graphics can be found in several folders. This makes using the graphics difficult. In my opinion the graphics should all reside in one folder. It's not an easy problem to fix, and probably not worth the trouble. However, the graphic files can each be given a unique name and saved in a new graphics folder for future use. I'm going to advocate for this approach.

I stopped at BJ's (like Costco and Sam's Club) to look for a table for Melva. I didn't find what we want. I bought a bag of birdseed and several other items. It wasn't difficult to leave there fifty dollars poorer. I also stopped at Target where I purchased a 2Gb card for my Oasis player. The card is about the size of your pinky finger nail. It fits in an adapter that I already have. The player came with 2Gb of storage on board. I already have a 1Gb card which I just recently installed and learned how to use. I'm going to have some fun getting the music ready to fill up this new card.

I returned a borrowed flat screen monitor to computer club member Dan Lee. I also brought along my broken Dell laptop computer. Right after I got home he called me to tell me he'd already successfully removed the hard drive and installed it into his hard drive adapter. He hooked the adapter up to his laptop and was able to read my hard drive. He mentioned he found the Devotions file that I had been thinking about recently when I looked at the book I printed out after I created the file. I'd like to update some typos in that file and then publish it to MyBox. Dan and Vic are both urging me to "get off the dime" and purchase a new laptop so I can leave all these problems with obsolete and breaking equipment behind. I don't disagree.

This afternoon I going to take the subway to The Library of Congress. I'll stop at the Credit Union and then attend the retirement function for Sarah Gaymon from 2-4 p.m. Melva will take me to the subway and I'll ride the bus up the hill when I come home.

Mr. Dickie
24/Mar/2011 9:51

Mr. Dickie's Slide Show

Here's a HotLink to an AOL Journal where I created a slide show with eleven photographs I took of flowers that are in bloom right now inside and outside our house. Melva and I have been growing plants under lights and in the yard for many years. Because we've had lots of rain this year and because we remembered to feed the outdoor plants with Miracle Gro we are having very good luck.

http://journals.aol.com/rhenthorn1/mrdickiesphotos2/

The slideshow uses the FlashPlayer to present the photographs in the Ken Burn's format. If you'd like to stop the show and view a still of a photograph in a larger format just click on the moving image.

The journal works best when viewed over a high speed Internet connection. I'm still using a phone line to access the Internet and quite often I get a little black box with a swear word symbol because the server times out.

Use the browser back button to return to Mr. Dickie's Blog.

Mr. Dickie

Slide Shows

Yesterday I discovered the website of Slide.com. Apparently this slideshow works with AIM. I tried to create a three slide show and then put it on my Obituaries blog to test it. I couldn't get it to work.

Later I tried to find information on AOL about how the Slide.com and AIM work together. I didn't have any luck.

So far I've learned that uploading any photographs using telephone access to the Internet is tedious to say the least.

I'm also trying to understand the differences between a private and a public gallery. I realize that if I want others to see my private gallery I have to send them an invitation. Am I right that often the viewer has to register to access the private photographs?

Mr. Dickie