Sunday, May 1, 2011 Lethbridge

5:30 am

The temperature is -1 C, with a high predicted of +13 C.

From the Environment Canada website:

Today Sunny with cloudy periods. High 13. UV index 6 or high. Tonight Clear. Wind west 20 km/h becoming light overnight. Low plus 1. Normals Max: 16°C Min: 2°C

5:40 am

Yesterday I failed to attend to the problem with updating my windows xp system using the Parallels software. That will be my first task this morning.

My second task will be to add a few snowy photos of our last day in Jasper (April 29) to this website.

5:50 am Birding

Last night I was browsing through a few apps on my iPad while watching the hockey game between Vancouver and Nashville. One of the apps was a field guide for identifying North American birds.

I typed in Hutton's Vireo and read that a similar bird was the Ruby-crowned Kinglet. It mentioned that often the ruby-crown was not visible. One of the features of the app was that it permitted feature-by-feature comparisons of up to 4 birds. Most features were identical between the vireo and the kinglet, but one difference was in the shape of the tail. The kinglet has a forked tail, the vireo a fan tail. My photo showed a definite fork. The clincher was a link that the app provided to the Cornell lab regional maps which indicated that the kinglet was fairly common in the Valemount area whereas the vireo was not. I will now think of this app as an important resource for id-ing birds. I am now confident of my reports for April 28 and will update my eBird files later this morning.

[Addendum] eBird files updated at 8:00 am

6:30 am Technology

Not a good start to the day. I followed the steps in the email from Parallels Technical Support and uninstalled the current version of Parallels and then clicked on the link to obtain the new file that would resolve the problem. But I received a message indicating the link did not work. Now I no longer have Parallels on my system (which is not a big deal since the current version didn't work anyway) but I do not have a replacement. I have sent them an email, but since it is Sunday, I may not receive a response for a day or two.

6:50 am

I had no difficulty downloading a few images from my camera to the computer, resizing them, and placing them on the April 29 web page. Good.

12:00 PM Technology

I have made a number of improvements to this website, largely because of thoughtful suggestions from some of my viewers. I have changed the information on the Activity Index and eliminated the redundancy in the headings by deleting the word "tag". The background colors have been softened. And I will no longer use colored boxes to highlight fact from comment. Sometimes the distinction is a blend rather than a clear distinction.

Finally I have fixed a few broken links and images. Hopefully the errors are now fixed.

I am grateful for the suggestions and think the website looks better than before. Thanks to all!

4:00 PM Literature

I have also begun reading a hard copy version of a new novel by Miriam Toews. I have read almost all of her novels and thoroughly enjoyed each of them.

I like to scan large images of the front and back covers when I first begin a novel so the viewer of these pages can read the fine print. After that a thumbnail image is sufficient.

I consider her first novel, "A Complicated Kindness" to be one of the funniest books that I have ever read. Her recent books are more subtle but convey the deep sense of human angst in the modern age.

I now have both a "real" book as well as an "virtual" book on the go. A nice transition to a new medium.

7:00 PM Puzzles

I finished a Monday level New York Times crossword on my iPad.

Another neat app.

9:00 PM Literature

Perhaps it is because of my earlier efforts this morning to improve the colors of this website, but the following passage caught my eye while reading "Autobiography of Mark Twain".

"When the doors which connect these seven rooms and the corridor are thrown open the two-hundred-foot stretch of variegated carpeting with its warring and shouting and blaspheming tumult of color makes a fine and almost contenting receding and diminishing perspective, and one realizes that if some sane person could have the privilege and the opportunity of burning the existing carpets and instituting harmonies of color in their place the reformed perspective would be very beautiful." [p. 294]

Oh, have I also mentioned another advantage of ebooks? One can read them in the dark. Try that with a paper version.