February 28, 5:20 am Musing
Now that I have my website operational, it is time to get my head around the future.
First item is health. I have had a nagging cough for almost a month, but it seems to be getting better, slowly. The big item is fitness and weight loss. As I keep telling myself, this is not rocket science. Weight loss is primarily a matter of portion size and no snacking. Fitness is a matter of exercise - primarily walking but some abdominal (abysmal?) exercises would be a good idea. I will begin my coulee walks today. The shift in emphasis should be for more outdoor activities.
Now for technology. I am almost ready to buy a new computer. My MacBook Pro is almost 4 years old and is not capable of being upgraded to the latest operating system (Lion). This also prevents me from fully using the iCloud capabilities, although my iPad2 seems to be able to transfer files to the laptop. The problem is transferring files from the laptop to the iPod2. My choice for a new computer is between a MacBook Pro and a MacBook Air. I am leaning toward the Air because it is much lighter and smaller and thus easier to carry with me on trips. But I will wait for the next version which is likely this summer.
Geocaching. I am enjoying trying to fill in those days that have yet to register a find. This involves restricting my searches to one per day for caches within 100 km of home. There are 3 that meet this criterion at the moment. I will try for 2 of these today and tomorrow. That will mean that I will have finds for 25 out of 29 possible days for February. One other goal is to find caches in most of Alberta's provincial parks, but this is not a high priority at the moment.
Birding. Our recent trip to Hawaii was surprisingly productive as we identified 11 new lifers, about twice as many as I was expecting. I am hoping to focus on providing regular reports of Alberta sightings to the eBird website. This should provide the main motivation for getting out and about.
Literature. This is a regular feature of my life. There is now a balance between ebooks (I subscribe to 2 magazines -Walrus & Dumbo Feather - and am reading Shakespeare and Stephen King's "The Stand") - and heavy books (which I continue to buy).
Model Trains: I am in the process of building a mountain and a viaduct for my layout. Regular operational runs are now a normal feature.
Immediate plans for today:
- Health: coulee walk
- Geocaching: search for one geocache in west Lethbridge
- Literature: read more of "The Stand" (iPad2)
- Literature: read some articles from The Walrus (iPad2)
- Model Trains: run my trains for the next hour from my operational timetable.
- Technology: begin reading "My MacBook - Lion Edition" (which I bought yesterday).
February 12, 7:30 am Musing
Subscribing to Dumbo Feather yesterday rekindled my interest in setting up a special format for note-making. In the past I had often used a feather icon to highlight the idea of a special section and then used a two-color system for making notes and adding commentary.
It is not too difficult to embed a feather into these pages.
background |
commentary |
But if I want to change the background color of a section of text then I need to use raw HTML, which I want to avoid whenever possible. But I will keep the Dumbo feather - pass it on.