Fossils gifts from geologic past; remains of ancient living things

Jamie my 8^th year old daughter kept asking me about her going back to school. I guess she really is soooo over with summer! Who would not be? She had been into a lot of activities already, from our trip to Maryland and Virginia to her dance recital to swimming in our local beaches to a visit in Welk Resort and the USS Midway Museum in Downtown. She seemed to be really just ready to be back at school. Lately, she had herself mostly glued to the Science Channel; she said she had watched all the Disney programs that are aired. Thus, she excitedly watched How it’s Made and Factory Made. She also had diligently watched The Real Rainman: Kim Peek. With gusto and understanding she shed a tear knowing that Kim’s dad may not be around forever to care for his son. This afternoon we watched Radioactive Paradise: Bikini Island. She showed so much interest that she had kept asking me a lot of questions, questions of which lead to the word fossils.  Being able to make one during her 1^st grade in one of her Shoebox Science Activities she urges me that we create another one. Having some more Plaster of Paris in her art box we started mixing it with some water. She carefully arranged two sea shells that she brought with her from Virginia Beach in an empty ice cream cup she poured the mixture in it. Tonight, after several hours she excitedly broke the plastic ice cream cup and found her very own fossil. She was beaming with pride when she showed it to her dad. Who was in turn was of course feeling the proudest dad ever.

At 8 Jamie knows what a fossil is whereas I was clueless what it was when I was her age. Internet had played an important part of her learning. Her zest to learn more had just been cultivated and nourished with her dad’s support of giving her own laptop at an early age. She can even well navigate and use applications from her dad’s iPad and iPhone far better than myself. She was playing some games in the iPad when I just unmindfully asked her to do a research on what she had just made and here is what she got read it here.  Gone are the days when you can just slumped oneself on the couch and just wait for school to start. There are indeed a million and one ways for a child today to be well informed and educated. I am happy that I got one with an insatiable hunger of learning. There are some cons on her exposure to the world wide web but we are taking all precautionary measures and dealing with it with outmost care. Well, this is just one proud rumbling of an admiring mom.

But in any case you are really is looking for some updates on our geologic past signs and remain that were recently dug up. I also found this site  read it here this might be a helpful link.

U shape image with an exclamation point inside on car dashboard light

I made a quick trip to the drugstore and used my daughter’s car when I noticed that a U shape icon with an exclamation point is lighted in the dashboard aligned with the other reading meters in the car. This was the very first time that I encountered it so I was clueless as to what it was. Being on the road already I just continued driving and drove slower than I am used to. I did not feel anything odd or unusual while driving so it didn’t alarm me much. Then I did my quick purchase and ran back to the car. Start the engine and again saw the sign. I readily got my mobile phone out and search answer online. Funny how coincidental it was that this article also just came out at this time read this now I know what it means and what I should do. Thanks goodness now I am one of those persons who knows what this sign means.

Perseid Meteor Shower 2010

I wonder if anyone of you believes that Friday 13^th brings bad luck. Because I do, there haven’t been any major catastrophe that happened to me as far as I can remember but I was made to  believe that if the 13^th day of the month falls on a Friday I should expect that something bad will happen to me. So while waiting for my husband to arrive tonight from his once in a blue moon night out without me (yes, you guessed it right, I fore go my night out tonight ). I was anxiously waiting for his return since it’s almost dawn already when I receive a call from him asking me to go outside to bring him a jacket. He just said it’s really too darn cold outside as this wee hour. Knowing that it really is cold I unwillingly oblige.  Walking from our unit going to where he was parked I wondered why he was not anywhere where he parks. As I looked around I saw him parked right atop another street where street light had been scant. Walking towards him saw some sprinkle of lights which I mistakenly thought as a sign of a bad omen I sped off going towards him so we can go back home as fast as we can. So imagine my dismay when he asked me to sit atop the rear hood of our car just to marvel the vast sky. With cold seeping through my hoodie and my angst of him coming home this late. I just lean on and waited for him to make excuses. But he never said a word. He just looked up the sky for a good 20 minutes when suddenly he said, “Look up babe falling stars is trickling by two’s”. There and then I saw some falling stars drop fast from the sky. It was a beautiful sight to behold an experience of a lifetime I would say since we had been doing the meteor shower watching for 2 consecutive years together and it was only now that I was able to see such magnificent shower of light in the vast sky. We savor the moment for the next ten minutes and it was gone. Right after we got home I Googled the meteor shower and here’s what I found an really cool educational video about where the Perseid meteor shower come from and what causes it to appear every year.

Adobe Acrobat Connect

To make video presentations of what you are doing on your screen, there are several ways to do this. Currently at my day job, we like using Adobe Acrobat Connect. It is a good software platform that can run on any operating since it is an application service that runs on an Adobe server that you simply connect to and uses Adobe Air which runs like like Flash as a desktop application. Advantage of this is you can Air pretty much on any operating system, thus you are sure Adobe Acrobat Connect will run on any computer. Although good service often does not come free. But still Adobe Acrobat Connect is affordable at $39/month.

But Adobe Acrobat Connect is only one option to record your screen that you may use for some instructional video, and it’s main purpose is not only as a screen recorder. It is a full web-based online meeting/collaboration platform with tons of power that if you just need a screen video capture software, there are many other options such as GoToMeeting, Jing Project, Screenr and more listed below.

GoToMeeting/GoToWebinar by Citrix|Online

Citrix Online - Makers of GoToMeeting, GoToWebinar, GoToMyPC

The same people that gave you GoToMyPC which is a remote PC controller over the web, also makes software for online web conference meetings and public/private webinars just like Adobe Acrobat Connect. It also cost $39/month if you pay for the whole year. But if you pay on a monthly contract, it is actually $49/month. I personally like the intuitiveness in using GoToMeeting and GoToWebinar compared to Adobe Acrobat Connect. But somehow some people at our company have been saying the voice conference over the phone is clearer on Adobe Acrobat Connect, but in my experience, I never really had any serious problems with GoToMeeting and GoToWebinar. And like Adobe Acrobat Connect, this is a full remote meeting/collaboration/presentation platform. Has more power than just screen grabbing your actions. So there are more options that are actually free, like Jing Project, Screenr, and NCH, read more about them, below.

Jing/SnagIt/Camtasia by TechSmith

TechSmith - Makers of Camtasia, SnagIt and Jing

TechSmith is really a screen capture company. Images or videos, adding annotations, cropping, resizing, saving in files, saving to clipboard and everything you need in a screen capture grabbing company. When you go to their site, it starts to become confusing which software you need. As a quick guide, you can think of it this way, for professional video screen recording, for professionally done presentations, Camtasia
is the way to go. For the best image capture would be SnagIt and if you want something for free, but limited power, but good enough (Video Screen Capture is only for 5 minutes maximum), use Jing Project.

It seems Camtasia + SnagIt and Jing is the top team to beat. And there does not seem to be any other reason to use something else. But actually there is some reasons why you might want to use Screenr and also NCH Debut Screen Capture. Read more about them below.

Screenr

Screenr - Share videos on Twitter

In the age or real time search, social media and microblogging, Screenr easily captures short videos and easily post them on Twitter. If you are an active Twitter user, you may want to consider using Screenr. All uploaded videos are also in the MP4 or Mov format what makes it compatible also for the iPhone that does not play Flash video. So sharing on Screenr can be seen everywhere. This is a free tool and since it is free, you have a limited time of recording also per video.

But if you want just to screen capture anything for free, capture all movements of your mouse and keyboard as you explain everything on your microphone, NCH Debut Video Capture Software.

NCH Debut Video Capture Software

NCH Debut Screen Capture

This may not have the zooming in functionality of Camtasia and the annotation power as well, but this software can record screen video as long as you want. It is really limited by your available disk space. And the best thing is, this is all free! Today, NCH Debut Video Capture Software is still my personal favorite. It gets the job done, and I didn’t need to spend anything. Although they have a pro version which is probably more comparable to Camtasia, but with the free version, this will make many people happy already.

Being a Filipino, with many friends and relatives in the Philippines, I sometimes need to call someone in the Philippines to their landline of mobile phone. And in some cases, the person I need to contact may not be near a computer or may not even know how to use the computer well like my mother. So I am going to exclude talking about Yahoo Messenger, Google Talk, MSN/Live/Windows Messenger and others.

Now based in San Diego, California, Every now and then, I receive a random call from a telemarketer promoting some service to call the Philippines saying they have an extremely low rate to call the Philippines. Cheapest than most overseas long distance calls.

Not being rude and also being open-minded to listen to the various options I may have to call the Philippines, I often entertain these people and I just always ask the bottomline. How much? And not a single time has any one of these telemarketers matched the prices of what I was currently paying to call the Philippines

And to share what I have been using and why, I am sharing my review in comparing several companies that you can use to call the Philippines.

• Directoph
• Skype
• PinOnSale
• Vonage
• Packet8

See who wins the review! Download the comparison table document here.

If you find this helpful and you know people that need to call the Philippines, or if you are in the Philippines and have relatives abroad that need to call you, feel free to pass this blog post to them so we all get to save some money and use the money to save for more important things like sending money to the Philippines.

Sexy Breast Mouse Pad Design

And remember it is nice to have good ergonomics. We don’t want you having any Carpal Tunnel Syndrome. So these mousepads are padded in the right areas.

Ergonomic Padded Breast Mouse Pad

Hat tip goes to Alfredo for sending me an IM about it.

And I was still confused on what route to take as I have seen other people with a lot of proficiency in Joomla and still making their websites rank high for SEO purposes like the works of Jun Macarambon and Dennis Agulo.

But I received the task of doing some research at work to compare various CMS’, Drupal emerged as the winner. The research was a long and detailed process, which I do not even want to repeat in this blog post. And after my own research, Drupal was my winner and after I have done my research, I was happy to find other websites starting to come out that reinforces my decision. Here are a few things I found on the net which may want you to choose Drupal also over other CMS’.

The IBM Development Team thinks Drupal is the best for them

IMB Software Engineers: Louis Weitzman, Alister Lewis-Bowen and Stephen Evanchik did their study and posted the results here.

Drupal Wins Overall 2007 Open Source CMS Award

Wow, Drupal won the best CMS, after always being second from Joomla, this year, Joomla is second.

A lot of popular and probably high traffic sites use Drupal

JumpTV, MTV UK, The New York Observer, Ozzy Osbourne, Playboy Germany, The World (by BBC World Service) and Us Weekly Online, a longer list of notable sites using Drupal can be found here.

I myself am sold by the power of Drupal, now the next step is actually learning it. Learning Drupal is not that hard and there are several mini Drupal tutorials here and here. And one of the best teachers of Drupal is the community. Learn from other Drupal users in in the official Drupal forum. And in the learning process you can play both roles as Drupal student or Drupal teacher depending on your current Drupal knowledge. You can always be a Drupal pupil to Drupal experts better than you. And you can play Drupal instructor to followers with less Drupal knowledge.

Now if the forum is not enough, You can always buy Drupal books, I 3 books I recommend are: Building Online Communities With Drupal, phpBB, and WordPress, Pro Drupal Development and Drupal: Creating Blogs, Forums, Portals, and Community Websites. One thing I like about books compared to online forums is, I could easily bring a book to the restroom when needed since being in the restroom is always a waste of time. Might as well learn Drupal in the process.

• .docx
• .xlsx
• .pptx

This simply means you are not yet running Microsoft Office 2007 and is probably still running MS Office 2003 or lower. And isn’t in frustrating knowing that your old Office cannot open these files and you think you have to buy the new Office 2007 package?

Actually you can still open MS Office 2007 files with these file extension in Office 2003 using the Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007 File Formats. If you need a copy, you will need some update packs and simply download the compatibility pack here. No more problems in opening .docx, .xlsx and .pptx anymore.

Through the widespread banner ads and pay-per-click ads, GoToMyPC has become popular and I decided to search for an open source alternative for me not to spend money.

I searched for “gotomypc opensource alternative” in Google and the first result was an entry from Wikipedia shown on the screenshot below:

Click thumb to view larger image

As you notice, it indicates an open source alternative:

[edit] External Links. GoToMyPC Web site for software installation and computer access. TightVNC An open source alternative …

I checked out the page but I no longer found the opensource alternative in Wikipedia.

Click thumb to view larger image

So I checked the cache from the search result hoping that the old text is still there and I was right…

Click thumb to view larger image

Then I found out about TightVNC and decided to use that link instead. http://www.tightvnc.com/download.html

After what I encountered regarding my search on an opensource alternative for GoToMyPC, it occurred to me that maybe GoToMyPC themselves have been editing their own Wikipedia entry or they may have hired bloggers to edit GoToMyPC entries found in Wikipedia just like Microsoft who allegedly paid bloggers to look for Microsoft entries in Wikipedia and edit them for Microsoft’s advantage.

Do you think that GoTOMyPC will really make such a move to protect their own product?

I drove to city hall today in a motorbike and noticed just how much time I spent waiting at red lighted but otherwise empty intersections. I tell you, it sucks that I have to wait so much until the light changes on its own or until a bigger car comes by (for which the red almost instantly goes green). Infuriating! I must’ve wasted about 25% of my trip waiting on empty intersections gnashing my teeth but unable to run the red light because of traffic cameras.

So a little research led me to some very interesting little known hacks that will help me get the green light everytime! You want to save gas and truckloads of time? Do yourself a favor and read on.

First off, some disclaimers

The knowledge put forth here are purely academical in nature. We have researched the methods and gadgets herein described and tickle your fancy with some rather interesting possible applications. However, we reiterate that these are simply for academic purposes and that they should NEVER be used for anything illegal.

Now that those are out, you know that the information that comes next oughta be good. =)

How traffic lights work in the U.S.

Here in the good ole US of A, traffic lights work on a queueing system that puts premium on traffic density and waiting time. How would the traffic lights “know” that there are more cars on your side of the intersection or that you have waited longer than anyone else? It’s the same system they use in Mickey D’s drive-thru, where they embed a loop of wire that detects any nearby electromagnetic field (everything with matter emits an electromagnetic field of sorts, but the wires for these usually detect those coming from machinery like cars, trucks, etc). Meaning, a machinery of sorts that is bigger than the size of your small coupe or about the size of your regular sedan will trip it.

Someone on the net figured out how they can activate or trigger the device even if you are using a small car or even a motorcycle! The mechanism is simple – you just attach some powerful neodymium magnets to the underside of your cycle perpendicular to the road and you are set.

The above condition is all good for smaller vehicles, but still do not let you change red lights to green. It simply allows smaller vehicles to register as bigger ones and let them note that a big vehicle is on queue.

Pedestrian influence

Pedestrians also exert some control over traffic signals via pedestrian buttons such as these.

This photo is NOT by actiononline.biz

Getting the green

For real control over the traffic lights from a moving vehicle, one has to turn to a little-known feature of US traffic lights. Most intersection lights have an infrared scanner that allows emergency vehicles to pre-empt traffic light scheduling systems. Meaning, ambulances, fire trucks, and police vehicles emit an infrared signal that the sensors catch – which will make them turn green for the said emergency vehicle almost instantly! These are MIRTs or mobile infrared transmitters.

Of course, using a MIRT is almost always strictly for emergency vehicles (check with your local laws before using one as it could be illegal in some states). But human ingenuity always finds a way! There is this guy who discusses how to make one from scratch and there is another guy who teaches you how to use a normal universal remote to do the same job.

Getting away with it

This photo is NOT by actiononline.biz

Of course, there is one big problem: getting caught. Most heavy traffic intersections have traffic cameras that take pictures of cars getting into intersections and most of them can capture the tell-tale IR beam that comes from your remote control or MIRT.

So the solution then is not to actually use MIRTs, or, turn to methods of hiding your face (via heavilly tinted windows) and hiding your plate number via reflectorized license plate sprays.

Parting shot

We reiterate that this is purely academic conjecturing at methods of saving gas and time by making sure you always get a green light. These techniques and gadgets should NEVER be used for anything illegal.

Please use this knowledge wisely, if everyone has the technique and uses it indiscriminately then it would mean utter road chaos. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, eh?