I am a retired Web Developer, Blackboard & Canvas Administrator at Fayetteville State University, which is a constituent institution of the University of North Carolina.
Flavored Vinegar – Hickory, NC
Barnyard vs Forest Characters – Asheville, NC
Stax Omega Restaurant, Greenville, SC
Water Art, Greenville, SC
Downtown Greenville, SC
Americus, GA in the rain.
Jonah’s – Liam’s, Thomasville, GA
Courtyard between Jonah’s & Liam’s Restaurants in Thomasville, GA
The Gulf at Clearwater, FL
The Sunshine Skyway Bridge from Pinellas Point, St. Petersburg, FL
On Saturday morning, October 5th, 2013, I started out on my October 2013 Vacation. I headed up Hwy. 401 to Fuquay Varina, and then on to Hwy. 55 through Holly Springs, Apex and finally stopping for breakfast at Brigs just shy of where Hwy. 54 crosses Hwy. 55. My friend and old boss, Leo Tayor, […]
I was playing with a free online 3D image creation utility called “123D Make” a couple of weeks ago. You took still photos around an object and the application generated a 3D image that could be rotated in various directions.
I just came across this article where (several years ago now) some researchers proved that they could take an image of keys from a relatively long distance (say from one high rise office window across to another high rise office where a set of keys were laying on a desk. They were then able with software they had created to make a working copy of the key they had photographed from say 200 feet away. I am not familiar with the materials that are used in 3D printing, but it would seem conceivable that plastic could be sturdy enough to make at least a temporarily working key copy.
I’ve been frustrated by how my US Senator (Richard Burr) has dumbed down his official web site and doesn’t even have an online contact form (he may have never had one). *I checked 30+ Republican US Senators’ web sites and all but Senator Burr’s site were still up and running with all sorts of content, and almost all of them had their online contact/email form prominently displayed on their home page. The site said two things to me… I don’t want to make it easy for my constituents to contact me, & I want to show you how disruptive this shutdown is by making most of my site content unavailable (even though he didn’t have to — the 30+ other Senator’s sites are proof of that!).
Today, I decided to contact my US Representative and wow, how funny, NOT! I go to the US House web site and start the process of looking for my Representative. I enter my ZIP code, ( http://www.house.gov/representatives/find/ ) and get the following beautifully colored map showing where I live. I go to the Congressman David E. Price web site ( http://price.house.gov/ ) and his Contact form ( https://price.house.gov/contact ) I then go to USPS to get my ZIP+4 number and enter those numbers and click on “Go to Form”.
It’s then that I’m told that they don’t have a record of that ZIP in the area which they represent. I finally find a local office phone number at the bottom of the web page and call it.
An assistant answers the phone and I rehearse my dilemma. She can’t verify me in their system and isn’t sure how to correct the problem, other than have me email her my correspondence to Congressman Price. She is going to check with their tech to see how to correct this problem. I guess there are several hundred of us in the apartment complex who would be in the same predicament if they tried to contact their Representative.
Last night, I tried to recreate the flavors of the Thai Dye pizza in my flour tortilla @home pizza. It was surprisingly close.
I didn’t want to have to cook a chicken breast to get the white chicken so I bought a can of “white chicken” chunks for $1.29 from Food Lion. I put a little olive oil in a pan and added a few cloves of garlic (whole), some chopped onion, a small chopped tomato and added some basil. I didn’t have Thai Basil (which is more pungent), but have had an adequate supply of Italian Basil that I have been growing on my patio this summer. I added the chunks of white chicken and then sifted some McCormick’s Curry Powder over the entire lot. I think I added a little salt and pepper here also.
While the ingredients were cooking on the stove top, I put one of my spinach, flour tortillas in a glass pie pan, spread some olive oil across the surface and added some powdered garlic. When the chicken was done, I spread it over the tortilla shell. I added several slices of cucumber about the ingredients. I had some sweet Thai Chili sauce which I drizzled over the pizza ingredients. I then spread grated mozzarella cheese across everything.
That’s it. I had my oven heating on Broil at HI. I slipped the pan into the oven on the top rack (maybe 4 or 5 inches from the top). You can’t go away too long on this. The pizza is usually done in a couple of minutes. I think 4 minutes would make the top mostly black, but 2.5 to 3 minutes gets the edges browned and some of the cheese browned dotted about the pizza.
I then remove the pan from the oven, and use a pot holder to hold the hot pie pan on one edge tilting it over toward a waiting dinner plate. I use a fork if I have to, and once the tortilla shell releases from the pie pan, the whole thing slips easily onto the plate.
The flavors were close enough to be quite pleasing, but I still like the “store bought” version because of the pizza dough’s flavor and saltiness. I plan to make this again, and might even try using real pizza dough because I think the resulting product will satisfy my Thai Dye pizza craving.
I was reading a blog posting and a teacher of keyboarding offered an observation that this year’s students were "not getting it" on how to type. She realized that their use of tablets and phone keyboards was changing the way they were able to interact with the full-sized, touch keyboard. Rather hindering their ability to use a full-sized keyboard.
Do you realize what an enormous threat this loss of capability is, both to communication and the educational process? *I think I now am beginning to understand why my suggestion that "posting via email" to a WordPress site, using a full-sized keyboard, could be used for taking class notes has fallen on deaf ears.
If students are neither learning to write cursively, nor type quickly, their communication skills are being reduced.
If I have a Bluetooth keyboard at my disposal, I can take out my smartphone, pair & connect to the keyboard… start an email and start typing notes in 30 seconds or less.
I am typing using my AWK right now. This is almost a full-sized keyboard and I can type pretty quickly with it. The phone also has a camera so I can take a picture of handwritten notes, or notes on a board (white/black) if necessary. When I send the email, a posting is created with my notes and any images that I attach to the message. Those notes are then available on any device that is connected to the Internet. This is not difficult to do, but it does require intent to practice the way that you want to perform the task.
I haven’t used ScribeFire in a long time. I am on a VDI machine in the basement of Cook. Installed Chrome without admin privileges. Actually, the next time I log into this machine, Chrome won’t be here.
Bill Gibson, II 