Grown Man Musings

Feed Squares

2010-07-24T00:13:00.001-05:00

FeedSquares is a neat way of organizing your Google reader.

You can use it in your browser if you’re not blessed to have an Android phone. Super-cool on the Droid and in the browser. So many toys, so little time.

nook for Android

2010-07-23T22:30:00.002-05:00

WOW! Barnes & Noble stepped up their electronic book game. I just installed nook
on my Droid , and it works phenomenally. I had checked out a Kindle
at UA's library, and it turned pages way too slow. nook for Android flips pages so fast and so gracefully; the graphics are really cool. The page wafts then lays back down if your thumb is indecisive in its action (i.e., it doesn’t flip if your thumb hesitates). I can’t highlight or make notes (yet?), but I can bookmark pages. I’m not sure if it syncs with the highlights and notes I make on my laptop, but hopefully it does. If not, I’ll just use it for fun reading (like when I’m waiting for or riding on the Crimson Ride). The graphics are superb, and given my presbyopia being able to hold the display close or far away (and negate the need for glasses) that is such a plus.
FWIW, Greg Gutfeld’s Bible of Unspeakable Truths was the first title I tried on it. Lovely, absolutely lovely. And if you don’t like Greg Gutfeld and watch Red Eye, then you’re a racist homophobe who hates kittens.
Also, this is my first post using Zemanta (which is why this blog entry is heavy with graphics). I’m not sure what else it does (well, it suggests related articles, which you will see below), but the graphics part is pretty cool. It goes out to the web and finds them for you.

ZeroWater - Water Filters and Water Filtration Systems

2010-07-12T21:10:00.001-05:00

ZeroWater - Water Filters and Water Filtration Systems

Aight, I've been planning to add some "college living" type posts to this blog. This will be the first one. You've probably seen the advertisements, but here is a personal endorsement. I bought one of these within a week or so of when I moved into the Boardwalk at Brittain Landing apartments. I'm not sure why, but the water there tasted horrible! The ZeroWater pitcher worked just like the commercial said. The water read 180 on the meter that comes with the pitcher, but the filter brought it down to 000, and it tasted great! The filter lasted the whole semester and still read 000. $30 may sound expensive initially, but a bottle of water a day is like $1.50 X 30 that adds up to $45.00 so you save $15 in just the first month. And if you're like me and drink more over a half-gallon of water a day then it pays for itself in a week. With all that money saved you can buy yourself one of those fancy water bottles in your favorite shade of lime green or whatever pleases you. Or, you can do like me and refill those bottled water bottles (I favor the Fiji Water bottles because of that cool square shape) with filtered water that tastes even better. Then after a month or so I buy a couple new Fiji Water bottles instead of the hassle of washing it.

Technorati Tags: college living,bottled water,savings

Impending Joy

2010-07-03T08:22:00.002-05:00

people often speak of a sense of impending doom, the last couple days i've had a sense of impending joy, not sure why, i've had a rough time since 1998 pretty much (well, not sure why on that too), pluses and minuses in that time, but yesterday i found myself singing in the car while driving and it struck me how odd that was in that i couldn't remember the last time i had sung spontaneously (i.e., w/o the radio going or anything) whereas i used to sing in the car constantly, something is changing for the good, and i'm thankful

The Christian Chronicle: Did 'jailhouse religion' save Jeffrey Dahmer?

2010-07-02T17:04:00.000-05:00

The Christian Chronicle: Did 'jailhouse religion' save Jeffrey Dahmer?

food for thought and meditation: just how big is God's grace? more encompassing than we imagine!

Welcome!

2010-06-23T09:38:00.001-05:00

Just wanted to extend a quick welcome to all my new followers. I’m finishing up my Summer 1 course, but I’m not taking any Summer 2 courses, so I plan to post more here. I’ve been going non-stop since I got back from the national championship game. ROLL TIDE ROLL!!!

Seriously, I took an interim course and now a Summer 1 course. The only break between those was the weekend.

In particular I will post the thoughts from February 16, 2010 that I promised many of you, along with some other notes promised. I’ve learned a lot of interesting things, and I’m gonna see how well I can apply some of these thoughts to current events.

God Bless! See you soon!

New Template

2010-06-19T15:27:00.002-05:00

Okay, I spent way too much time looking thru templates, trying to decide on the correct background image and format to match my background and what I’m writing about. At first I was looking through pictures of books and writing instruments, then I saw this bridge and that was it! I titled this blog “Grown Man Musings” when I began, mainly because
I’m an older student surrounded by undergraduates half my age – many of whom could be my children if I had gotten an early start. But it’s not really about being older, but about being in a position to give back, possibly more than I could if my life had taken the married with kids track. Instead of writing more, like my long-winded self tends to. Let me just share a poem that explains it all. You may recognize it. I heard it years ago. The background should be obvious after reading it.

THE BRIDGE BUILDER

An old man, going a lone highway,
Came at the evening cold and gray,
To a chasm, vast and deep and wide,
Through which was flowing a sullen tide.
The old man crossed in the twilight dim-
That sullen stream had no fears for him;
But he turned, when he reached the other side,
And built a bridge to span the tide.

"Old man," said a fellow pilgrim near,
"You are wasting strength in building here.
Your journey will end with the ending day;
You never again must pass this way.
You have crossed the chasm, deep and wide,
Why build you the bridge at the eventide?"

The builder lifted his old gray head.
"Good friend, in the path I have come," he said,
"There followeth after me today
A youth whose feet must pass this way.
This chasm that has been naught to me
To that fair-haired youth may a pitfall be.
He, too, must cross in the twilight dim;
Good friend, I am building the bridge for him."

-WILL ALLEN DROMGOOLE

A Racist Note

2010-05-02T23:08:00.002-05:00

Okay, now that I have your attention. Just a brief note, then I’m back to writing 2 more papers I have left to do. One due tomorrow, one due Thursday…
I forget where the idea clicked in my mind, but I somehow made a mental note (then actually typed it into my “Remember the Milk” program, pretty cool, check it out sometime) to investigate the origin of the word “Aryan.” I’m not sure, but I’m guessing it was a geographical reference or possibly a name in the news. I’ve known for the longest that Caucasian (and I hate that term) referred to the Caucus mountain range which was the dividing line between Caucasians and everyone else. Well, specifically it divided Europeans from Asians. If you lived on side of the mountain range you were Caucasian, but if you lived on the other you were Asian. Kinda funny that “asian” is in the name meant to delineate non-Asians, which brings me to my point.
Somehow in the last couple months something triggered me to make the connection that Aryan was actually Iranian or somehow related to that area.
Sure enough, it is. Well, not exclusively Iranian, but the word / name refers to people and places in Iran, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and that general area. To say the least, Aryan has its origin in people who were not blonde-haired and blue-eyed. Of course, skinheads, neo-nazis, and the like have developed legends to go with their co-opting the word as though Nordic people (the Aryans) invaded India at some point in the past. Yeah, right…
Anyway, if you wanna look into it further, Google it like I did. I just thought it was interesting that a news item (or maybe I was watching the Discovery Channel like I do a lot) caught my attention such that I decided to look into it further. Sure enough, like many racist notions, it is not rooted in fact but in made-up lore. yawn… It’s 2010. When will this end?

fixed?

2010-04-02T19:45:00.000-05:00

Okay, I think I fixed it. I'm not sure where / how it crept in, but I guess the point is to be careful of 3rd party gadgets, widgets, etc. I'm gonna try to customize this again, but I'm gonna double-check the html as best I can.

spam

2010-04-02T18:55:00.000-05:00

I'm not sure who all has tried to get to my page lately, but it's bouncing to random spam sites. I've reported it to Google, and hopefully they will address it. I'm trying to spot it, but I'm not that good at this stuff and haven't spotted it yet.

Elizabeth Warren: Time For Wall Street CEOs To 'Earn Back' America's Trust

2010-02-09T00:46:00.001-06:00

My politics remain conservative, but Warren has a point. The financial industry is lubricated by trust and the integrity that makes someone trustworthy. Remove that trust and integrity, and the system screeches to a halt. And we should not be misled into thinking in terms of "big business" and "corporate interests" as though such is the problem. The problem lies in individual integrity and will be solved at that level. We must revisit the lessons (often told through stories) we learned as children about what builds proper character. We need to re-learn them ourselves and ensure our children learn them as well. Only when genuine moral conviction of right and wrong re-enter the market and crowd out self-interests and greed will things get better. I pray we change our ways before the lesson gets any harder to learn (re-learn).
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Make Google products work for you - Google Help

2010-02-08T00:34:00.000-06:00

A page about using all of Google's products together. Just blogging this so I have a permanent reminder to keep improving things.

Make Google products work for you - Google Help

11 Things to Consider Before You Send the Next Email

2010-02-08T00:30:00.000-06:00

I just installed a bunch of "extensions" in Chrome. One of them is a "BlogThis!" extension, which brings me to the screen I'm typing from now. Not quite as cool as Live Writer, but it will do for quick comments and sharing of websites on my blog. There's still the bold, italic, and color options on top, so it's cool. Just not the strike-thru that I'd like. Anyway, you might like the following web page, especially if you're a beginner on the internet.

11 Things to Consider Before You Send the Next Email

Lisa Notes: Wondrous Words Wednesday

2010-02-07T23:16:00.000-06:00

trying this link-back thing, here's a post from Lisa's Notes where she hits up a word I passed along to her. Check my comment for the Scripture reference

Lisa Notes: Wondrous Words Wednesday

fruITful experience

2009-11-29T22:59:00.002-06:00

I had been holding back since I’m new to Instructional Technology and just participating marginally as best I could in the IT forum. In the back of my mind I was trying to figure out how to put together a discussion that would benefit my side of the program, social and cultural foundations. Then an opportunity for some volunteer work presented itself, and it also sparked a question to ask in the forum.
Starting Spring semester I will begin working with a program which originated among some students at the University of Alabama to address functional illiteracy among adults and youth in the state. The program is called Literacy Is The Edge.
It seems the bulk of the discussions on the forum have been oriented around distance education in the collegiate environment. There is an assumption regarding basic computer skills and availability of a high speed internet connection. It occurred to me that many people in the LITE program would have neither of these. Are there ways IT can be brought to bear in a setting where the typical digital accoutrements are not in place?
It turns out that although the emphasis is in distance education at the collegiate level (I guess there’s more money there) some work has been done in the area I asked about. It’s even been termed the “digital divide.” Although the term is new to me, the problem is not, and it was encouraging to find there is a significant amount of research in the area that I can refer to when this volunteer work starts next semester.
In particular I was curious if materials have been made available on DVD which most homes have even if they don’t have a computer. The possibility of interactive programs tailored toward gaming systems was my primary curiosity. It turns out there is an entire movement of people working in this area as well. Also, I was contacted with an opportunity to research and co-author a paper in this area. It should be a great Spring semester.
Finally, I apparently touched a nerve. What began as a somewhat simplistic inquiry from someone new to the field spun out into at least 4 sub-topics. I was glad I could make a contribution to the forum even while “green” in this field.

Technorati Tags: AIL 601,instructional technology,literacy,video game systems

Critical Thinking

2009-11-29T05:04:00.001-06:00

Interesting how several topics have popped up as the semester closes out. I had thought I knew what critical thinking was, and I’m not entirely in the dark (although I may be confusing / merging the idea with higher order thinking, which is related but different, if I’m understanding one or both of those right), but the discussion on the IT Forum gave me opportunities to think thru it a little further. In particular I “starred” an email from Bev that had some useful resources I hope to investigate further.

Comments appreciated as always.

Technorati Tags: AIL 601

Switch to Purple

2009-11-05T10:22:00.001-06:00

Yeah, I made a couple changes and restored some of the stuff that got dropped the last time I tried to improve things. And I use ~~red~~ crimson and blue so much that I thought I should mix it up. Oh, those two blend together to make purple. Cool. I guess that is fitting. Oh, and you better like this change. You wouldn’t want to “piss God off” as Alice Walker wrote.

There’s some stuff on the page that still needs editing. Bear with me. I’ll correct it all soon. Look for more colorful, useful, and insightful posts from me soon, although the next few will probably more related to my coursework since I’m required to blog about that, and school is about all I’m doing right now anyhow.

PEACE!

Giving Windows Live Writer a Try

2009-11-03T01:05:00.002-06:00

~~Actually I don’t have time to type in too much tonight, but I just set Windows Live Writer up.~~ Well, I’m gonna waste just a little time now, but not gonna do a whole lot of formatting. This might just be the missing link I needed to jazz up my blog a little without too many headaches more later. Just a few tests for now.

Here’s how you insert a hyperlink What Black Men Think is one of my favorite documentaries.
Last Thursday I went home to catch the last ballgame at my alma mater. Jacob is my nephew, and he is an awesome saxophone player. And he’s just in the 7th grade! My little brother, Dustin is a freshman football player. It was such a blow-out that he got to play about 5 minutes and get that uniform much dirtier than it is in this picture.

Okay, that’s enough for my first windows live post. so far so good, much better than my previous attempts which were merely typing

oh, and

GO BIG BLUE!!!

WordPress vs. Blogspot

2009-10-23T13:03:00.000-05:00

Okay, so I had this blog set up halfway decent, and I was about to start promoting it. I'm in the top 10% of twitter users, about to break into the top 50 in Tuscaloosa even (actually made it one morning, but got bumped off later that day), and I'm in the top 2% of facebook users, but my blog sucks.

However, before I started promoting it I thought I should spruce it up a bit. I've seen several blogs on WordPress that look nicer than BlogSpot, but sure BlogSpot should do some of the same stuff.

So I started experimenting. And I got really ambitious and went for the background and layout right away. Of course I was warned, BlogSpot told me to save my current template, but I figured it wouldn't be a problem, just choose that template again.

Somehow I lost all my widgets and switched to a one-column layout instead of two. And I still haven't gotten around to looking at WordPress. So now I'm experimenting with some simple things like fonts and colors, so I can see how easy it is to emphasize really emphasize something inline while I'm typing up an entry, because I heard that was hard to do in WordPress. (It makes you change lines every time you change formats.)

And apparently BlogSpot deals with pictures better too. This is one of my maternal grandparents, either on their wedding day or early in their marriage, which reminds me of my next point.

I'm thinking most of you aren't that interested in everything I have to say, so it might be better to split my posts out into separate blogs. e.g., It probably would be good to put my thoughts about the genealogical work I'm doing all in one place, my academic thoughts in another, political rants, weightlifting tips... But still have a central blog for all my adoring fans Mom (if she ever gets computer savvy) to find things all in one spot.

Well, I guess that's enough for now. I'll try some more options in another post. Back to school work, well, real school work. (Blogging is part of one of my courses this semester, although specific to instructional technology issues.)

Alabama Congressman Parker Griffith Epitomizes Everything that is Wrong with Government

2009-10-01T17:24:00.001-05:00

reminds me a lot of not-my-bud Cramer, who claimed he didn't know his district was that conservative when Wayne Parker almost beat him back in 1994... (or sometime near then) Yeah, right, Huntsville and the big defense presence... and you didn't know it was conservative?! And all the folks voting democrat because their union told them to are still very much pro-life for the most part. Idiot! No wonder Parker Griffith employs similar tactics. He's just following in not-my-bud's footsteps.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

MDB!

2009-09-26T16:32:00.001-05:00

Band is actually playing some cool music this year - a Motown Tribute.

You can't tell it entirely from this pic, but that's the color guard and the Crimsonettes doing a "Thriller" routine, and Brandi at the end standing up in a Michael Jackson pose.

The Christian Chronicle: Reporter earns $500,000 prize for serving 'God, justice and the families'

2009-09-25T11:22:00.001-05:00

The Christian Chronicle: Reporter earns $500,000 prize for serving 'God, justice and the families'

Posted using ShareThis

1st mobile post

2009-09-23T22:23:00.002-05:00

Trying out the mobile posting option. Let's see if this goes thru.

Testing how an attachment works too - my mohawk pic from Saturday's game. ROLL TIDE ROLL!!!

IT WORKED!!! YAY!!!

I'm not sure if this counts as a 601 type posting, but it is a use of technology so I'm gonna tag it that way. I could see an educational use for this. Updating a class on an excursion pertinent to a topic in the classroom. I have a friend who got a Fulbright fellowship (I think that's the correct word) to teach in Poland. He's keep all of us back home (including some of his students) informed of his adventures via his blog. I don't think he's sent pics from his mobile phone yet, but I imagine he will. I know he's using Skype over there.

Converting .pdf to .doc

2009-09-06T22:31:00.003-05:00

A lot of material is delivered via .pdf files these days. It's great for the authors in that they have a way to protect the format of their work. However, when reading .pdf files for my academic work I find myself frustrated in regards to marking up the file and making my own notes. Previously I had went the traditional route of printing them out and marking them up by hand. Perhaps my old-fashioned (or just old) nature likes the tactile feel of paper and highlighters, but since I'm taking an instructional technology course now I thought it wise (and consistent) to figure out a way to do it electronically. And forgive me if this is old hat to anyone, but it was new to me so maybe it will be helpful to someone else.

NOTE: I'm going to avoid mentioning specific products beyond Adobe, lest I disparage any of them unfairly.

Of course, Adobe has a solution, for a nominal fee (like $20/month, OUCH! this "poor grad student" can't afford that), but if the author has not turned on the commenting feature then it's useless. (I'm sure there are hackers and / or possibly some freeware out there which will break passwords and security settings, but I'm also taking an ethics class this semester so I just didn't wanna go there.) There were a couple 3rd party mark-up programs out there, but again: expensive. One had a free trial for 30 days so I gave it a shot, but the "highlighter" wasn't a text tool, just drawing single marker lines (see-thru, so it was like a highlighter, but not quite). Although it had an option to straighten my lines out (which was much needed, my finger naturally glides up and to the right when drawing lines on my mouse pad), still you could only draw a single line at a time. There probably was a colored box feature, but highlighting doesn't break off into even rectangles. The other program was more expensive, didn't have a free trial, and the screen shots on its website were not impressive.

But I did find a work-around which I think should do well for me. A website called Zamzar will convert .pdf files into a variety of formats. I used a Word document file format since that opens the editing / revisions process I'm already used to. Although I had to tweak it a bit on a file that was scanned. (It basically put a graphic on top of the text conversion, which I just removed. Also, the text layout was a little off in a spot or two each page it wasn't enough to lose the context of what was being written, and the time deciphering the context was much, much shorter than drawing individual highlighting lines.) A second file where the .pdf file was created from a text document converted quite smoothly.

Hopefully that's enough information to get you going. Once I got to Zamzar, and subsequently back into Word, the whole process was quite intuitive, but let me know if I can be of assistance.

AIL 601: Google Scholar Shortcut

2009-09-04T20:51:00.001-05:00

I think most browsers are set up this way these days. (It will definitely work with IE 8, which I just downloaded. I use 3 browsers now -- Chrome for Google stuff, Firefox for facebook, and IE for myBama and eLearning.) I just gave it a shot on a whim and it worked. If you right click and search with Google you can do a drop-down on the right hand side to Scholar and it will convert the search into a Scholar search. Give it a try and let me know if it works for you.

NOTE: For some reason, it's not letting me do tags from this initial screen in IE. I'll add the tags later. It doesn't let me preview either. Maybe the tags and the preview come up after I hit "Publish Post"? We'll see.

Okay, they came up once I hit "Edit post" on the next screen.

Grown Man Musings

Feed Squares

nook for Android

Related articles by Zemanta

ZeroWater - Water Filters and Water Filtration Systems

Impending Joy

The Christian Chronicle: Did 'jailhouse religion' save Jeffrey Dahmer?

Welcome!

New Template

A Racist Note

fixed?

spam

Elizabeth Warren: Time For Wall Street CEOs To 'Earn Back' America's Trust

Make Google products work for you - Google Help

11 Things to Consider Before You Send the Next Email

Lisa Notes: Wondrous Words Wednesday

fruITful experience

Critical Thinking

Switch to Purple

Giving Windows Live Writer a Try

Okay, that’s enough for my first windows live post. so far so good, much better than my previous attempts which were merely typing

oh, and

WordPress vs. Blogspot

Alabama Congressman Parker Griffith Epitomizes Everything that is Wrong with Government

MDB!

The Christian Chronicle: Reporter earns $500,000 prize for serving 'God, justice and the families'

1st mobile post

Converting .pdf to .doc

AIL 601: Google Scholar Shortcut