Saturday, January 7
7:30 am
It is -6 °C, with a high forecast of +2 °C
From the Environment Canada website:
Today Mainly sunny. Wind becoming west 30 km/h gusting to 50 this morning. High plus 2.
Tonight Clear. Wind west 40 km/h gusting to 60. Low minus 3 with temperature rising to plus 4 by morning.
Normals: Max. -2 °C Min. -14 °C
7:50 am Technology
I have seen the first few posts to the blog page. A check of the settings for this page seems to indicate that both images and links should work within a posting.
I have tried a small image and that did work. I had to click on the + symbol to add the image. But when I tried a 500 pixel jpg it does not seem to work. ... Now I get it. One must click on the thumbnail to see the larger image - but the image is reduced to some form of maximum.
I then tried adding a URL and it worked fine. It looked like it was just text but when the message was posted it became an active link. This is taking a little getting used to.
Now for a cup of tea.
8:40 am Musings
One of the advantages of this morning activity is that it forces me to think a bit about what is on my agenda for the day. Looking at the pop-up menu for Activities, I see that there are 5 items listed: Cooking, Geocaching, Literature, Technology, and Trains. There are a few others that have yet to make an appearance: Birding, Photography, Mathematics, Science. I should also add Musings and Life.
Now to review each of these.
Cooking: added when I try a new recipe, or when the meal is special.
Geocaching: not too active at the moment as there are few nearby caches. Winter weather is also a deterrent.
Literature: I have 4 books open. One is Guy Vanderhaeghe's western novel, "A Good Man". Then I have 2 books of Rumi's poetry that I try to spend some time with. Plus the “Bhagavad-gita”, which is on my iPad2.
Technology: This has been a major time consumer during the last week. The emphasis has been on familiarizing myself with the Sandvox web-authoring software. Next will be to learn to use Bento 4 - a database program that will replace Filemaker Pro for keeping track of birds, books, and model trains. This may also integrate with iPhoto but I will wait a bit before trying that.
Trains: I still have lots of work to do assembling a viaduct structure for the layout. I want to blend this with time spent actually running trains according to a timetable. On the near horizon is learning to use software to program the mobile decoders (a.k.a. locomotives) so I can control them (speed, lights, sound).
Birding: We are making a presentation at the beginning of February on birding in Panama. Last year I began submitting reports to iBird and should make this a priority for 2012. This is another activity that blends reading and outdoor application. I love it. But I need to do more reading - both on identification as well as on bird behavior. I have created a database for keeping track of what I see that works quite well.
Photography: I still need to spend time with my camera and manual and learn more about how to use the sophistication of the device to take photos under different conditions. I am primarily interested in composition and scenery, plus photos of birds. This latter requires a good telephoto lens. The one I have ( a Canon EF 70-300mm) is quite good but I am exploring the merits of adding a teleconverter that will double the focal length to 600mm but will lose the auto-focus capability.
Mathematics: Symmetry remains my primary interest but I am having difficulty finding the time for this. Other activities have a higher priority.
Science: Microbiology has recently captured my interest. This is like mathematics - intrinsically interesting.
Mathematics and Science are hobbies that is intrinsically interesting, but birding, photography and technology are more applied, and in that sense, useful. Model Trains and Geocaching are great fun.
Now for a couple of priorities.
- Technology: learn to create reports using Bento 4. Particularly the birding reports I could make with Filemaker Pro.
- Model Trains: build viaduct.
- Literature: continue progress on all 4 books.
8:50 PM Technology
Two technology issues were handled today. I played with the Bento database app for about half an hour and quickly created two of the four report formats that I was using with Filemaker Pro and my birding database. What could have been a very difficult technical problem became, almost immediately, a simple drag and drop activity. Amazing. I have still to read a manual.
The second issue has to do with the Blog web page on this site. It is not that obvious what a new user to the system is supposed to do. Here are a few steps:
- Click on the Blog menu heading.
- You should now be looking at the Blog web page which contains a couple of sentences welcoming one to the Daily Dale 2012 website.
- Click on the link containing the two words First Post. This is just above the word Welcome in the first introductory sentence.
- You should now be on the page that displays previous posts as well as an empty field for a new post.
- Click anywhere in the large area to the right of the silhouette for the new user. Then begin typing your message. If you wish to add an image, click on the + symbol at the bottom of this area and to the right of the word Image (which was first displayed when you clicked in the area to activate it).
- Click on the words Post as ... on the bottom right corner of the message area, and continue following instructions.