Tempus Fugit

Latin (tem-pu̇s-ˈfü-git): Time Flies

Category: Technology

  • Best widget so far

    Best widget so far

    OK, so I’m a bit of an Apple fan, not quite a fan boy, but up there.

    With the latest iOS and the ability for widgets on the Home Screen I did some playing around and settled on this Apple widget at the top of my screen.

    By default it shows my 6 things in a sort of random, but also some what intelligent way.

    First thing in the morning I get a display about what apps I might want to launch, scarily predicting what I might like to do based on past usage. Then the weather, generally useful, the calendar for the day with the next 1-2 events, again useful. Top Apple News stories which is OK but I have not yet succumbed to subscribing. A Map, a bit of a mystery for me and not yet useful. And then there is the best of all!

    It’s the photo! Generally, some combination of Grandkids like today’s where we were going to the 2019 Santa Claus parade with all of them together, which is a bit of a rare event to go somewhere all together with just Shirley and I. As I recall it was like hearing cats, but a lot of fun.

    If it’s not Grandkids it’s some other photo that Apple has figured out as a “Featured Photo”. Not sure how they do that. Some of them I’ve flagged as “liked” other are well… just photos that show up.

    Always brings a smile to my face and an extra bit of happiness to my day.

  • The heavens declare

    The heavens declare

    A sky shot I took at the lake last summer combined with a little Photoshop work, nothing fancy.

  • Highlighter

    I’ve had some interesting times experiencing the lowly highlighter. Let me explain.

    Remember your school days when you might have used one of those yellow highlighter pens to markup your notes with things you though we’re important to learn or remember? Perhaps you used a pencil to underline stuff for the same reason.

    Skip forward a few years, quite a few years in my case, or perhaps you’re a digital native, and you’re used to highlighting electronically in an app. My most recent experience with highlighting is with the awesome youversion. Go ahead check out the app right now, I’ll wait ?

    So, for a while now I’ve been reading the Bible and doing devotions with associated bible verse readings using youveraion. When I hit a verse that was especially impactful I’ve used the tool to highlight the text like this.

    Over the last few days some of the devotions had reading to support the devotion writers message with the truth of God’s Word. As I’m doing the reading some of the verses pop up with highlights that I added months or years ago. This has been surprisingly helpful and encouraging as I’ll take extra time to reflect back on why I highlighted this particular verse.

    I used to think marking up the Bible was just a so-so thing to do, not anymore! Give it a try! You’ll like it. Give it some time, at least a few months, long enough to have the highlighted verses pop up. Or, alternatively you can choose to review your highlights at anytime. I think you will be pleasantly surprised.

  • Coffee Mugs through the Years

    Over my working career I’ve had a lot of coffee mugs. some came and went, some hung around, some were collected. The collection ends up in a a box , stored away for who knows what. I still buy more and more coffee mugs from trips like to Maui, Frank Lloyd Wright, Route 66, and the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, all my current favourites.

    So, what to do with the excess? Well, it was give away time! But, before they got donated away, they had their photos taken for posterity. The above photo is mainly my work collection showing the Sperry, Unisys (after the Burroughs takeover of Sperry) and IBM in the e-business days and beyond as well as some software products I was involved with like Sperrylink (early office automation), Mapper & Linc (4GL languages), Lotus Notes & Domino (best software ever and one of the reasons I moved to IBM as they bought the Lotus Corporation ). Somewhere I have some Great-West Life (now part of the new Canada Life) coffee mugs but they didn’t make the photo shoot. Days gone by, all just a photo memory now.

  • Paper Maps – Pleasure and Purpose

    Recently, a friend gave me several paper maps of one of my favorite places, Lake of the Woods.

    Nice waterproof maps for LOTW

    I find something quite pleasurable and almost magical about looking at paper maps and wondering what it would be like to explore over here or over there and how would I get there. Plus there is a fascination with the markings, symbols, legends and colours. I find paper maps a pleasure to look at and explore.

    (more…)

  • WordPress Beta testing

    Not too much on the bleading edge but I jumped the gun and updated this site to WP 5 RC3 and I’m also posting from the iOS WordPress 11.4 beta app.

    So far nothing has fallen apart and the new iOS app handles media uploads into the RC3 Gutenberg format better that the old app.

  • Gutenberg – Taking the plunge

    A lot of controversy about WordPress 5.0 going to the Gutenberg editor and the block concept, but I’ve taken the plunge and installed the editor on both my blogs in a current but pre-5.0 version of WordPress. So far, so good and I’ve really not had any problems and I kind of like the block concept. Seems like we’re going there anyway so best to ride the horse in the direction it’s running.

  • Getting Closer

    Richmond, BC, Canada 11/10/2011 6:25 Arrival Scan
    Seattle, WA, United States 11/10/2011 5:35 Departure Scan
    11/10/2011 4:17 Arrival Scan
    Ontario, CA, United States 11/10/2011 1:58 Departure Scan
    Ontario, CA, United States 11/09/2011 21:00 Arrival Scan
    Anchorage, AK, United States 11/09/2011 15:09 Departure Scan
    11/09/2011 10:14 Arrival Scan
    Narita, Japan 11/09/2011 21:48 Departure Scan
    11/09/2011 19:59 Arrival Scan
    Shanghai, China 11/09/2011 16:17 Departure Scan
    Shanghai, China 11/08/2011 23:49 Export Scan
    Shanghai, China 11/07/2011 21:26 Departure Scan
    11/07/2011 19:41 Origin Scan
    China 11/07/2011 6:54 Order Processed: Ready for UPS

  • Impressive experience

    I have SocialScope on my Blackberry and today they had a new release so of course in opted to install it. The first install failed but before I could look onto the issue they send me an email saying “we see you’ve had a problem, here is how to fix it”. Impressive.

  • New and Improved!

    Just to show my good old blog some love, I’ve installed a very nice new plugin called Wptouch. Now I didn’t opt for the Pro version (yet) the basic one is quite amazing. So, what does it do? well, it take your WordPress site and delivers it to mobile devices like the iPhone, iTouch, and yes even a Blackberry! Their website bills the plugin as “magical transformation” and I’d have to agree since I don’t have to do anything, just install and activate and not my site looks like a iPhone app.

    I guess this is what happens when you have lots of time on your hands to just surf around the net. It’s been a cool, cloudy, windy day at the lake and I spent a lot of the day catching up on Lightroom stuff on the NAPP and Lightroom Killer Tips site