Ever Forward

Remember when you bought that cool scanner, thinking you could digitize your photos and old document archive?  And do you recall how the procrastination set in, so you never really got around to doing all that scanning?  Yeah, well, that’s where I am right now – facing a mountain of scanning so I can send a bunch of documents to the shredder bin and subsequent recycling.  So here I sit with my HP OfficeJet, Ubuntu Linux and XSane, scanning old documents.  Finally.

The project could take a while.  I’ve got a whole box of stuff I want to scan – folder after folder, full of documents that I either need or refuse to let go of.  But space I need.  So scan I must, and scan I will.  There are the pay stubs dating back to my Revolutionary War days, letters from King Henry VIII, and all the little odds and ends I’ve collected over the years.  All so very important, yet so in-the-way, so taking-my-space.  They are memories, proof of accomplishments and even proof of my so-called income.  Some are little humorous signs and silliness – they help me remember my laughter of old.  Some are reminders of friends and family who have moved on to a (hopefully) brighter future.  Some are my thoughts on social issues in which I played some small, insignificant part.

The hard copies of these old documents will be shredded and recycled, or perhaps simply recycled.  But they will continue to live on, so to speak, in the digital realm.  I will be able to print out these documents as necessary, or e-mail them, or just bring them up in an instant, as I desire or require.  O.k., well, maybe I never fought in the Revolutionary War, and I confess that Henry VIII never sent me any letters.  But many of my documents are meaningful enough to me that I just cannot bring myself to part with them.  At least this way, I can have my cake and eat it too.

I just thought I would point out something about the cool white light of LEDs. Although you can buy LEDs that offer a warm (yellow-ish) light, the light of the cool white LEDs is more like the natural light shining through your windows. The effect is that the light in my dining area, when I look at the walls, appears almost exactly like the walls in my living room, where the sun is shining through.

I’m currently working through the FSI French Phonology course, which helps students of French with their pronunciation skills.  The bad news is that hardly anything gets pronounced like it looks.  The good news is that, they give you clear examples of how not to pronounce words, as well as how to pronounce them correctly.

Even though it may be difficult to learn the pronunciation rules for French, the FSI French Phonology series works to make it easier.  By providing examples of right and wrong pronunciation, the student has an opportunity to avoid bad pronunciation habits from the beginning.  The pronunciation of ‘dans’ is distinct from the pronunciation of ‘temps’, even though the untrained (or unobserving) ear might easily miss it.

Students will also discover that it takes a little bit of practice to get those final ‘R’s down pat.  And, would you pronounce the ‘e’ in ‘samedi’ and in seulement?  If so, you’d be wrong.  I confess, I was tempted to jump straight to the general language lessons, since I tend to pick up on languages fairly well.  Even so, I’m glad I chose to take the slower(???) route and focus on pronunciation first.

Now, when I get to the actual language classes, I should be able to focus on speaking and not stumbling over pronunciation patterns and linguistic rhythms with which I am unfamiliar.  Just as a note of progress, I’m currently working through Chapter 3 of the pronunciation series.

Here it is, going on 04:30 AM in Charlotte, and I’ve just received an e-mail that we hit the Code Orange for Particulate Matter (particle pollution, as opposed to ozone pollution) at 03:00 AM.  Particle pollution reached 101 AQI, meaning that it is just over the Code Orange mark.  And I have to admit, the 84% humidity isn’t helping any.  The temperature is 25C (77F), and the dew point is 22C (72F).  Ugh!  Now I’m gonna have to ride home after a double shift in this air.

I’ve finally gotten around to uploading the photos I took last year, both during the 2009 Presbyterium Invitational Criterium (bicycle race), and from my trip to the UK.  I still didn’t have my Nikon when I saw the Criterium, so those photos are taken with the Canon Powershot 540.  And no spare battery.  I’ve added photos in the Dunstable Downs and the Saint Albans albums as well.  Those photos are, of course, taken with the Nikon D70s.

Dunstable Downs is, effectively, a chalk hill with a phenomenal view over the area below.  It just so happens that there is a glider  club situated just at the foot of the Downs.  Thus, you will see I’ve caught a few shots of the gliders in their brief flights.  Additionally, you can see a bit of Saint Albans, particularly the Six Bells pub, where my Mom’s husband and I ate lunch.  Then the park, leading to the abby, and the abby itself.  Of course, we had to come back, so a few more shots coming through the park.  Here is a sample of what you’ll find in the 2009 Criterium album:

Did I mention I’m no expert at photography?  The Criterium was my first experiment in sports photography – not at all easy.  Enjoy your browsing!

I frequently encounter friendly, polite drivers on the mean streets of Charlotte.  Today was a great example of how drivers can sometimes make a difference in a bicyclist’s commute.  The lead drivers of 2 lanes of traffic on Park Road let me out ahead of them.  And there were two long lines of cars behind the two drivers.

I’m out there everyday, so people who travel that stretch of Park Road frequently should recognize me by now.  Maybe these drivers were two such people.  Maybe they’re just honest-to-goodness, salt-of-the-earth kind of folks.  Who knows?  But here’s the really cool thing.  I knew I would have a safe commute for that brief 1/3 of a mile stretch of Park Road that can sometimes make me wonder if I’d be safer jumping into a hornet’s nest.

With the huge, honkin’ SUV behind me – willingly, no less – I knew it’d be a challenge for everyone else to run me over.  So, for that stretch, I had some protection.  And then, when it came time for me to get in that left lane for my turn, once again, the lead vehicles behind me simply let me over.  It’s a lot nicer than having to slow down (making the people behind you even angrier than they might already be) and feeling like you’re gonna have to fight a car or delivery truck to be able to turn – and get out of everyone’s way.

It’s kind of sad to realize that drivers frequently hamper their own cause by trying to push past a bicyclist – even when it should be apparent that the latter is trying to get out of the road.  Yet everyday, on this short stretch of Park Road, there are people who recognize the need to cooperate with the bicyclists.  See?  We really can share the road!

I can see!  I can see!  Well, you might understand my excitement better if you ever sat at my dining room table.  The conical fixture that hangs over my dining table tends to drown most of the light from a normal Compact Fluorescent Lamp (CFL) before it gets anywhere.  The result is an almost romantically dim dining area at all times.  Well, now I can actually see what I’m eating.  I’ve just installed EarthLED‘s 7-Watt, cool white (5000 Kelvin) Zetalux 2 PRO bulb.  And to think I was such a skeptic!

Granted, given my cooking skills, it’s probably best not to see what I am eating.  Throw in the fact that I typically inhale my food, and I rarely actually see it anyway.  Even so, the difference the new LED is making on its inaugural installation leads me to think I’m going to want to replace the ones in my bathroom and kitchen, too.  I may actually want to see what I’m shaving (maybe that explains the hair missing from the top of my head).  Anyway, here’s the “after” shot showing the Zetalux bulb:

Dining area with EarthLED Zetalux 2 PRO cool white bulb

So… what did it look like before, with the 13-Watt CFL?  How does this strike you?

Dining area with standard 13-Watt CFL

Both (the CFL & the LED) are replacements for 60-Watt incandescent light bulbs. I was honestly quite skeptical, as I have found it difficult to compare LEDs with other bulbs, since the technical information isn’t all that helpful for the layman.  Lighting engineers understand all about various degrees of light, Kelvin temperatures, etc.  The average person doesn’t.  Even experienced facility managers rarely have more than a basic grasp of this subject.  I simply had to test it for myself.  And you see the result right here.  This is the difference a good LED can make.

The dining area is fairly well lit in the mornings, but by early afternoon it’s time to turn on a light.  The kitchen is totally in the dark.  One thing that did throw me for a loop is the heat the LED core generates.  I was under the impression that LED bulbs would generate little or no heat.  Well, the bulb itself may not, but the core certainly does.  I suggest that, assuming your hands aren’t slippery, you should be able to grab the bulb to unscrew it from the fixture if need be.  Mind you, I shouldn’t need to worry about that for another 10 years or so.

While these LED bulbs are far more expensive ($35.00 for 1), they will use nearly half the energy and last at least 3 years longer than most CFLs.  The greatest cost savings is for those who have yet to switch from incandescent bulbs to CFLs.  Also, I did drop the bulb on my tile floor from about knee-high and it just bounces.  The EarthLED video shows them dropping from a ladder.  Definitely don’t do that with your CFLs!

Going forward, I would like to replace my bathroom lights for sure.  I currently have 5 13-Watt CFLs over my bathroom mirror.  If I put 5 Zetalux standard (40-Watt replacement) cool white bulbs in my bathroom, at a cost of roughly $25.00 per bulb, that will come to $125 total.  Still, at roughly 54% of the energy use, I should earn that money back fairly quickly.  Considering the lights I use the most are the ones in the bathroom, dining room and kitchen, that’s where I should invest my efforts.  I already use LED lamps in my bedroom and at my front door.  So this is, for me, just a logical progression toward a more efficient home.

Now let’s give it a little time and see what happens over the longer haul.  Still, I am very excited about the future of LEDs.

Update:

I just tried the Zetalux in my bathroom.  I’m only going to need two – at most, three – LED bulbs.  Period.  Can you imagine two 7-Watt LED bulbs replacing five 13-Watt CFLs?  That means eliminating 51 Watts altogether.  Maybe I need to post another pair of photos.

One would think you could simply take a bunch of photos, connect your camera to your computer and upload the images to your website.  Alas, it just isn’t that simple.  My digital images are large, the filenames overly simple and the format tag is always capitalized as JPG, instead of the normal jpg.  However, I tend to use two libre-licensed applications to prepare my digital images for uploading.

A magnolia flower

Let me say up front – this is not so much a howto as a ‘whatto’, as in ‘what to use’ to process your images for posting on the web.  These are not the only two, of course, but definitely two great applications anyone can use.  I asked about this on one of the Linux4Christians mailing list I subscribe to, and the folks there were pretty helpful.  So I’m really just passing on what others have passed down to me.  I may come back with a proper howto article later.

The focus here is also on working with multiple files – batch processing, if you will.  If you’re a big GIMP fan, or you have some specialized task that you need to perform before uploading a particular photo, that’s one thing.  But when you need to rename and shrink a bunch of files at once, it’s time to pull out a different toolset.

Once I am ready to transfer all my cool photos, and maybe some that aren’t so cool, to my computer, I usually place them in a ‘holding tank’ of sorts.  I have a folder named for whatever the current set of photos is all about where I copy the original images to.  Having done that, I normally like to run pyRenamer, a program that renames whole sets of files at once.  I use the Images tab, which has a preset renaming pattern that works for me.  I then re-run it to change all the UPPERCASE letters to lowercase.

Once I’ve done this, I import the originals into F-Spot (my desktop photo album), thus creating a duplicate set of images.  Now I can have the full-size originals and play with the ones in the holding tank.  I then run an ImageMagick command to resize the photos from their original 3000×2000 (or something like that) resolution to 102×768.  ImageMagick is a command-line tool, but even a novice computer user can run the simple command to resize images.

The resizing process takes a few minutes, and once it’s done, you should be able to see the difference when looking at the file sizes of your images in a file browser.  KDE users may prefer KRename (I believe that is the correct name) for renaming files.  At any rate, ImageMagick and pyRenamer both work very well at getting my images ready to upload to my blog.

I’ve added some 235 photos to my albums of England, namely the London and Leicester albums.  I will continue uploading photos over the course of this week and next.  The photos of England were taken during my trip there last October.  There are 6 different albums for London – just to keep things from getting unwieldy.  And don’t stop there – check out a few of the other albums, such as my Little Sugar Creek Greenway album.  All were taken with my Nikon D70s camera.  Anyway, enjoy!

Big Ben from the London Eye

Today was a Code Red ozone day for the 8-county Metrolina region that includes Charlotte.  Apparently, our region did not quite make the Code Red level, but the air quality authorities left the status at Red as a precaution.   The rest of the week looks to be at least Code Orange.

It is crucial that we get people to change their habits, as not doing so affects, not only our health, but also our local economy.  People with asthma, children and older adults are all directly affected by poor air quality.  Even healthy people are affected by poor air quality, especially when exerting themselves during the poor conditions.

Do what you can to change your habits.  If you can’t bike, carpool or take a bus, at least wait until after 6:00 PM to refill your gas tank.  Oh, and don’t ‘top-off’ your tank – once the handle clicks on the pump, just leave it at that.  All you’re really doing is wasting fuel and releasing more fumes into the air.

AQI Index