Weekly Round Up

This week I....

... had cupcakes with the girls and their kids

Please note that Simon (on left, with spoon) is to be included among the exceptionally cute kids of my friends!  :)

... spend more than an hour on the phone with AppleCare but my Mac is now running smoothly again.  Belovedest had downloaded some Adware when attempting to add WhatsApp to my computer.  I learned a few things whilst on the the phone with the AppleCare guy, and I've set up the mail program which is much more keyboard friendly than on-line email programs.  It pulls in emails from my yahoo and gmail accounts, and I haven't given up hope of getting it to talk to my work email either.

... learned that I need braces.  Oh, dear.

... sprinkled crushed egg shells around garden beds to deter slugs.  We have saved eggshells for months, but we didn’t save nearly enough to go around all of the beds.  However, we are now set up to do a little experiment to see whether or not the eggshells make a difference.  TIP: rinse the eggshells as you go and wear gloves when you crush them.

 ... hung up a curtain that I scored for free at the EcoStores Free First Friday.  I used a curtain rod that I had lying around.

BEFORE:

AFTER:

COST: $0

Coming Monday: highlights from the Retirement Camping Trip!

Playing with Photoshop

I played around with Photoshop to so I could simplify the background on some pictures of my latest upcycle fashion project, a scarf made from old T-shirts.  (These also make use of Belovedest's new green screen.)  Here's what I came up with:

What do you think?  

Technology.... and Bllogging

I've been having a wonderfully creative and fun break.

The reason you aren't reading much about it here is that I can't figure out what to do about photos and my new Mac.

On my PC I had cascades of nested file photos for my pictures.  However, iPhoto doesn't work like that.  (I thought Windows was bad for "No, do it MY WAY" but Apple is way worse.  Supposedly the efficiently and all-around coolness will make up for the bossy attitude.)

I blog via my camera.  Looking through my pictures tells what I've posted, what I'd planned to post, etc.  But I'm still spinning my wheels about organizing the Mac way on iPhoto.  My uber-organized friend Anne swears I will like it better.  In the meantime, I'm creating lots that will get posted... just as soon I as get a system in place for dealing with photos....

Here's a sneak peak.....

Ouch!

The  blog has been on autopilot lately because I have been undergoing severe pain from some kind of nerve problem in my back. Eight days of agony have now turned into constant pain but I'm finally able to function thanks to steroids. Physical therapy started today, and have high hopes that I will be able to avoid surgery. All of this comes right in the middle of the end of the semester grading binge. It has not been a very good week!

I'm also not sure what to do about the Mac. If I am keeping it, I should start downloading my photos into iPhoto, but if I'm not then I need to make some plan for that. Generally speaking, I like it, but there are a few things I have to figure out how to do before I am going to commit. My husband is  perfectly happy to take it off my hands if I decide I don't want it!

Anyway, between the constant pain (and the dizziness and nausea from the pain medication) and my Mac indecision, the blog has been a bit orphaned. But I will return – I started work on a fun up cycled scarf with my niece!

Assorted and Random Round-Up

Today the blog hit 20,000 views.  Hugs to each and every one of you!

I'm making progress on my tile testing!  I found a spray that smears a tiny bit when applied but that has held up to the water overnight test and the wine test.  Next up: boiling water.  I'll give you all the details if

My Mac and I are still trying to decide if we are going to commit.   I have spent some very frustrating time on it, but there are features that I like.

We earned $8.92 from 11 Amazon purchases this month.  Thanks to everyone who shopped through the Amazon portal!

Learning to use iMovie

Here is a beard oil commercial for my husband's company Charlemagne Beard Oil.  It's his first stab at using iMovie on the new Mac.  He adapted a template from iMovie to make it and I'm impressed that he managed to do this in only half an hour.  Yes, my sweetie is super cool!

Two Computers

Friday I got a shiny new computer at work, since the previous one seemed to be rehearsing for Hamlet.

Also on Friday, we bought a Mac.

I have to say I was impressed that from box to functioning took about 5 minutes.  Now I have a lot of adjusting to do, but I'm really excited to see if making videos is as easy as I've heard.  Hopefully the blog will enjoy lots of benefits of my new tool!

Flying High! The Strategic Air and Space Museum

On Saturday my sister Chrissy organized a family trip to what is now apparently called the Strategic Air and Space Museum.  We always called it SAC - Strategic Air Command - because one of its duties was to always keep a plane in the air, 24/7, as part of the Cold War vigilance.  Dad thought they shouldn't have stopped doing that. 

Now there is a museum there with two hangers full of planes, a planetarium, and some space stuff.  We saw bombers, stuff from a Nebraska astronaut, a Russian MIG, and the engine from a plane that goes 3 times the speed of sound.

Hanging out with family.

More photos after the jump...

An Update on Some On-Going Projects

 BackBlaze – It hasn’t slowed down my computer at all.  Hooray!  And I haven’t needed it.  Double hooray!

Solar night light – There just aren’t enough hours of daylight right now.  Plus I'm not liking this cold, so it stays inside on the kitchen table where it gets even less light.  Maybe once a week it accumulates enough juice for an overnight as a night light.  Not effective for frugality unless you ask for it for your birthday...

Self-watering herb garden pot - Mysterious.  The soil seems utterly dried out, the water level doesn't appear to go down, the wick is covered with gross algae and the plant is fine.  (Next time I won't use a wick that is dyed.)  Further update--after I wrote this, the wick broke off.  The container is now a regular herb pot, but at least it has a hole for draining!

The One-Year Anniversary of This Blog

The whole thing began with a post about a dress made out of sweaters...

Thanks for reading!

Blog Milestone

Today we reached our 10,000 view!

Steve Jobs and Fonts

Steve Jobs took a calligraphy class before he dropped out of college completely, inspired by the calligraphy he saw all around him back in the day when "every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed."  This is one of the reasons that the first Macintosh computer came with multiple choices of fonts, including some new designs that were "named after cities he loved, such as Chicago and Toronto"  (Pages 1-2).

~ From Just My Type: A Book about Fonts by Simon Garfield.

Hello, Monday

My last Weekly Round up makes me laugh, because I was waxing poetic about the beautiful weather and we now have 4 inches of snow on the ground.  I have to go outside this afternoon for an interview for a freelance project and I'm not looking forward to driving in this.  (He called me this morning and wanted me to come to the interview this afternoon.  Seriously?  Do have no respect for my time at all?)  At least I will have more time this way to get the piece written.

The backup finally finished on Saturday, or was it Sunday?  Anyway, my computer had been on constantly for almost a week, and it was such a relief to turn it off.  I did go ahead and purchase a year of BackBlaze.  It is a nice feeling that my stuff is backed up someplace off-site.  As a cloud -- i.e., a web-accessible place from which one can retrieve files when one is on a different computer than the one where the files were created -- it's actually rather clumsy.  You have to pick a file, and then they e-mail you a zipped folder and then you download it to get your files.  But I generally email files to myself when I need them, so it's not a big deal.  The thing I like about it is that it backs up quietly in the background without me having to do anything, and that it does not appear to have slowed down my computer at all, which was one of my big concerns.

Weekly Round Up

This week I...

... hung out with Marcia at Crescent Moon coffee shop and listened to some poetry

 … enjoyed having the Daileys over for a pleasant Sunday afternoon chat about creativity, sub-creation, invention, and discovery.  I created "Dreamville" which the Magician turned into an airplane.    These two photos some things up nicely.

A good time was had by all!

 … did some work on my painted shoes, since I already had painting stuff out while working on the lamp stand.

... spent time with family for Thanksgiving.  Here, Dad teaches my niece Arwen to play solitaire.

 (In real life she isn't that blurry!)

... watched the odometer on the Honda hit 100,000 miles on the drive back from helping Dave and Sarah move into their beautiful new home.  (And then dusted off the dashboard!)

... per my brother-in-law Micah's advice, I downloaded a trial version of BackBlaze, an on-line (and therefore off-site) back-up system.  It only backs up files like photos, Word documents, videos, etc, not applications, but on my really old machine I have 19,697 files that meet its criteria.  So far it has taken about 24 hours of my computer being on continuously to get about 10,000 files downloaded.  Happily I can still use my computer while this is going on.  Anyway, apparently upload speed is always much, much slower than download speed.  I will let you, my loyal readers, know how the system works and if I decide to spend $5 a month for the service.  As Micah pointed out, whatever disaster claims your computer would probably claim your back-up external drive, too, so having your data in a cloud is more than just being able to access it from multiple computers.
... counted my blessings, not least of which has been getting to spend lots of time with my beloved, as we are both off from work the second half of this week.