The latest in the testing of the publicize functionality restoration. Third time lucky?
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Farewell Alan
This is a short but sad post. I read the sad news of the death of Alan Purwin. Alan was a pilot and entrepreneur who was involved in many fields but was well known for his working in filming movies from helicopters. He was a genuinely friendly and welcoming person and had been involved in many interesting things.
Alan died in a plane crash in Columbia during the making of a film with Tom Cruise. You may have seen the news mentioning a crash but that Tom was not involved. Sadly Alan was, along with another two people, one of whom also died. It is a very sad time for all involved.
Amusing Decal
The number of stickers you see on people’s vehicles these days is substantial. I don’t much care what the composition of someone’s family is and whether they have a dog, cat, turtle etc. When I saw the above stickers on a car, while it is really more of the same, I couldn’t help but laugh and felt I light to get a quick shot of it to share.
Changing the Blog Link to Facebook
Putting links to the blog on Facebook is a big part of getting anyone to know about the latest blog activity. When I first started the blog, there wasn’t such a clear way to get an automatic post to Facebook when a new blog post went live. I ended up using a service called Networked Blogs to identify the new posts and automatically put them on Facebook. This worked well. However, it had the same screen capture off the blog that it used each time which meant that, other than the title, no one knew anything about the post.
I wanted to have something more specific so decided to change to the inbuilt functionality in WordPress. This now allows you to link the blog to your Facebook account and automatically post something when new material comes live. I have had mixed results with this. It puts some text from the blog post up on Facebook along with some images. However, sometimes it puts a clear link to the blog itself that anyone can click on to see the post. Other times, it samples the text and images but doesn’t provide a link. That means that no one has access to the rest of the post without having to manually go to the page.
This behavior is erratic so I am having a hard time diagnosing what the cause is. One friend has pointed me at some diagnostic tools in Facebook but they seem to suggest everything should work. For the time being, I have to put up with it. If you ever see something without a link, don’t assume that is all there is. There might be something more detailed lurking just out of sight!
Redwood Amphiteater
An enclave away from the main botanic garden is the Redwood Amphitheater. When we arrived, a wedding was underway in this area but, by the time we had finished walking around the main garden, it was open again so we checked it out. While the redwoods in there are still young by sequoia standards, they are certainly not small. The amphitheater itself is rather nice and it does look like a good spot for a wedding. While we were there, a couple was checking it out. Our assumption was that one person was from the botanic garden explaining to them what could be done, one was their wedding planner and the couple was taking all of this in. At least she seemed to be taking it all in. I got the feeling he was along for the ride on this one but probably wasn’t quite as “in” to it as she was. Good luck fella!
Sea Lion Paradise
A while back I posted shots of the sea lions at Moss Landing. Since then, their numbers have done a further job on destroying the dock at the entrance to Elkhorn Slough. They are now squeezing themselves onto what remains. They also find other docks or the backs of boats on which to take their rest. Interestingly, they didn’t appear to venture into the slough itself. They were all gathered in the entrance area with quick access to the open sea. Whether they have a territorial battle with the harbor seals or just don’t like the water that way I don’t know. However, it is safe to say the smell around what remains of the dock is pretty ripe when they are about!
MetLife Blimp
We have had the MetLife blimp flying around our area a lot recently. I don’t know what brought it to us. It may have been tied to some sports events or perhaps it is just a campaign for brand awareness. The blimp has been based out of Livermore Airport near us. Nancy had seen it at night over there lit up when she drove past.
Then we had it flying one evening. I had seen it previously just before sunset but I wasn’t ready to get a shot and by the time I was, it had gone. Shame because the light was great. Then it showed up at night. It was pretty dark so I had to really take the ISO up. My camera has pretty good high ISO capability but nothing like the current generation of bodies. However, it did a reasonable job.
Next time I came across the blimp I was up at Sonoma. I heard an odd noise and thought it might be a helicopter. However, Skypark does not allow rotorcraft. Instead it was the blimp shooting a low approach. They weren’t on the banned list so I guess it was okay! The climb out was quite dramatic!
New Gallery Presentation
For those of you that click through the pictures, you may have noticed a change. My blog has a plug-in that opens up the main pictures in a floating window above the normal page. Mistakenly, I had believed that the same thing happened to the pictures in the gallery at the bottom of a post. However, Nancy told me that she was having a hard time with those pictures since they opened in another page and did not always reflect the order in which they appeared in the gallery sometimes jumping to another post entirely.
First of all, my apologies to anyone who was frustrated by this. Second, I have experimented with another plug-in that makes the galleries open in a more useful way. Time will tell whether this works better for everyone but if you have any feedback on how it performs, please comment below so I can make changes based on everyone’s experience. Thanks!
Wings Over Waukegan
The Wings Over Waukegan show took place recently in Illinois. As with Waukesha, I was covering this for GAR so, rather than duplicate the effort, head over to http://globalaviationresource.com/v2/2013/09/12/airshow-review-wings-over-waukegan-2/ where you can see my write-up.
What’s in a TiVo?
Not so long ago, my TiVo packed up. This was part of a string of technology failures I suffered in a short space of time and about which I have previously posted. I was getting ready to dump the old box but, the engineer in me can’t just throw something like that away before having a poke around inside it to see what was there. Consequently, I fished out a selection of Torx fittings for my screwdriver and opened up the case to see what was inside. Not a huge amount really. It is no wonder that the replacement box is considerably more slimline!
The hard drive was the most obvious element. It was a “massive” 250Gb unit. No wonder too many HD recordings meant it started to fill up. I removed that since I figured it was probably worth trying to find out what files were on it later. After that, the board is in two parts. One of them is a very simple looking board and the other is something far more old school with a selection of more traditional components. I don’t know how TiVo design their system but it looked like the first board could deal with the digital signal processing while the other board was an analog tuner since this TiVo had the capability to manage old analog signals. (The new unit is digital only which is fine since we don’t have analog broadcasts anymore.)
The connection between the two halves seemed to have a lot of cables but I have no idea what they all achieve. My assumptions about the functionality may be completely wrong. I am not an electronics guy so I have an excuse and a blog is a perfect place for making guesses about stuff with nothing to back you up. That is what the Internet is based on! However, if you do know about this stuff, do comment below and let me know what the various bits are for. Now, to see what is on that hard drive…