Dogma

OK I admit it....I'm faceless on Facebook, I'm not a twit on Twitter, I don't text on my telephone and I've been skipping calls on Skype lately. So, to you who send me invites to one or all of these, it's not that I don't care if I don't reply, it's just that I prefer to spend what little quality time I have with my wife and my two best friends. My two best friends are always there for me and they don't really give a shit what kind of day it's been, they're always cheerful, ready to go anywhere or just lay around. They won't ask for favors or talk about their shrunken portfolios, their aching muscles, and they certainly will not ask me to go out of my way to fund a needy cause or help them move heavy furniture. My best friends are Fanny and Charlie. They're dogs...and I mean that literally.

Fanny

Fanny is the eldest at three years. She's a female schnauzer that was somewhat rescued from a pet shop. By rescued I mean she had been there for four months and , not being sold, she was in danger of being euthanized. She was quite fearful when we got her and very scared of kids. I guess that being in a pet shop for so long she got her share of little devils banging on her cage to get her attention. Fanny's a terrier, meaning that every outing is an adventure in odor land. Sure, she'll play for a while but soon enough she will resume to sniffing and tearing up the backyard for anything from roots to insects. This is why our backyard looks like a lunar surface only with spots of grass. Quite the character, she'll be as docile as can be but in a flash, if she's frustrated, she'll show it immediately with an unmistakable growl. Even so, when she comes up to me and puts her tiny head on my lap and her furry little paw on my hand, I melt like ice cream in the sun. I remember long nights when she was young and frail, I would spend long hours with her outside until she finally did her business and we could finally both go to bed. A few weeks back, while in our backyard playing, she escaped my attention for a few seconds. The next thing I heard were car horns and brakes. Rushing to the front of the house, I saw Fanny crouched down across the busy street, terrified but unhurt. My heart stopped that day and I hope I never have to relive something as dreadful.

Charlie

Charlie on the other hand is a mixed breed. He was bought off a squeegee kid in town by one of my teenage stepdaughter's friends. Unable to care for him and desperately trying to find him a home amongst his also not too bright friends, we took Charlie in because he was emaciated and had diarrhea after being bounced around for a week or so. Charlie was only 8 weeks old at the time. The cutest little pup you've ever seen. He was so cute that when we went to the park to walk him, he would spend most of his time in the air being cuddled by everyone who met him. We thought for sure at that point that he was a Jack Russell, but Charlie grew and grew and grew again. He could be a giant Jack Russell, if such a breed existed. He now weighs about a hundred pounds and hasn't lost a bit of his regal looks. I think of him as the Brad Pitt of dogs. A face like you would see on a major dog food brand. Often enough when we go for walks, people stop us and ask us what bread he is. Our answer is always the same...We don't know. Or as the vet put it , he's a Heinz 57....57 varieties rolled up in one.  Unlike Fanny, Charlie likes to play a lot and especially  with his  favorite balls, rubber or tennis,, which he keeps in a hole in the stream in the back. We play this little game where he drops the ball from an elevated point in he backyard and I return it using a golf club. He can play hours without stopping so It's no surprise that he comes to beckon me in the house with a ball in his mouth every half hour or so.

Fanny and Charlie's playground

As you can see, my network up here is mostly four legged and extremely satisfying. I'm a strong believer in zoo therapy and if not for my dogs bringing me down to earth a lot of times, I would spend way too much time in my brain. You might have done yoga with a master or even meditated in a Buddhist temple in the far reaches of Tibet where the yeti roams free but as zen as you might think you are, you'll never be as much in the moment as my dogs are. So, if you feel the need to network with me, there's a new device out called the Te-le-pho-ne. You can call anytime and by some miracle of modern technology, you'll be able to hear my voice. Or, better yet, why don't you come and spend some time with me and my wife and my two best friends. I'm sure we'll have a grand old time going for walks in the woods. Believe me we won't  need a keyboard to say how good we feel, because we'll be savoring each precious moment just like my four legged friends have taught me.

Footnote: The Dalai Lama once said:  "We anxiously think of the future while forgetting the present to the extent that we experience neither."

Clean it..!

For this week I thought I'd give you guys and girls some cleaning tips. I'm sure you clean just about everything in your house from bookshelves to window sills. Yet there is one item in your midst that you use as often as the kitchen stove but for some odd reason you never thought of cleaning it. I'm talking about your computer and physically cleaning it. The fans revving up faster and more often is a dead giveaway that it's getting clogged A few weeks back a friend of mine wanted me to fix is computer after Vista went blank and wouldn't come on. I reinstalled another system on it...a Linux of course, but I told him I would have to clean the inside of his computer. This particular computer had been purchased a few years back and was sitting on the floor next to his desk. Before the Vista blowout, the fans inside were coming on all the time, making a not so pleasant racket. Well, when I opened his computer he was shocked to see how much dust it had accumulated in that short a period of time. After the procedure the computer ran as silently as if it had just left the store. This is an all too common problem and can be detrimental to your computer's performance. So in the hope that this helps a bit. here's the way to a clean box.
Just keep in mind that if for some reason you turn your computer into an over sized paperweight after attempting this, my lawyers, Dewey, Screwem and Howe say that I can deny all responsibility.

Housing interior

For this example I'll use my trusty IBM. This is what you'll need...compressed air in a can, cotton swabs, a straw and an ordinary vacuum cleaner. Unplugging the computer would be a great idea for starters...Duh'..! Opening the case is pretty straight forward on most computers (mine has a latch) but you might need to unscrew the side panel from the back to get access. Refer to your owners manual or get it off the Net. Once the panel is removed you can start cleaning. The compressed air will disperse most of the dust and using the cotton swab you can dislodge a little more. Just be extremely careful not to accidentally pull any wires and slightly touching the exposed metal of the box with a finger before starting will eliminate any unwanted static. The areas you have to look for are the power supply fan, any other utility fan, the heat sink and it's attached fan.

Heat sink with fan removed

The heat sink is the usual culprit and may require that you remove the fan to really clean it out if the compressed air fails to do so. For my friend's computer, the fan was clipped on to the heat sink so it was easy to remove. Mine had four little screws to fasten it. I used an ordinary vacuum cleaner to suck the dirt out but it's safer to attach a drinking straw with masking tape to to the nozzle and gently run it across the fins of the heat sink. Reattach the fan, close the box and you're done.

Heat sink

For the more adventurous types, once the heat sink fan is off, it's not a big deal to remove the heat sink itself not only to clean it properly but also to change the heat paste (every 4 years or so ) between the CPU (central processing unit) and the heat sink. This inexpensive paste is paramount to the heat exchange and if left to dry can lead to serious damage.

CPU is revealed after heat sink removal

For those of you who have laptops...you're shit out of luck...just kidding.
I wouldn't attempt to open it if I were you. I did it once for a friend and it took me four hours to get access to what I wanted and two to put it back together. The straw and vacuum trick will work a little.
Just be careful not to push it in the heat vent in the back. Laptops are notorious for sucking up dust ( my friend's laptop had felt like compressed dust blocking the ventilation) so you might want to take it to a dealer to get it cleaned especially if you find it getting hotter than usual.

Keeping your computer well ventilated and raised off the floor will help to keep it clean and run smoothly.

Footnote: Additional tips.
Always back up your important stuff. Nothing is for ever and this goes for computer components. Uncheck the ''RESTART AFTER A POWER FAILURE'' box in your power management controls. Spikes in the power when it comes back on can do serious and sometimes irreparable damage to your computer.

Give it away

40 billionaires pledge to give half their fortunes to charity...Humm..!
The net was all abuzz with this grandiose announcement this week. From my perspective, I greet this with the same excitement that would bring on the fortuitous encounter between a garden snail and a ladybug. While I'm almost certain at least some good will come of this pledge initiated by Warren Buffet and Bill Gates, it's most definitely certain that this money will wind up in the hands of rich foundations whilst the neighborhood soup kitchens will still be struggling and looking for handouts.

The people listed on the roster have always gravitated in a sphere that seldom had any contact with the real world. Buffet after this massive give away will be left with a paltry 460 million. I hope he manages to get by with that measly amount...trimming down on planned space flights and selling a few castles might do it. It's noble for these rich cats to share the wealth, or so it seems, but it leaves me with a sense of unnerving suspicion.
How does one exactly become a billionaire..? Like the old adage " You can't make an omelet without breaking any eggs " I'm not sure if these people didn't wreck a few lives on their illustrious way to the top of the heap or shield their riches from the tax man in offshore bank accounts. I know for a fact that Gates ran Microsoft with business practices that rivaled the Mafia, strong-arming distributors and clients alike to the point where there are lawsuits pending against his company all over the world. As some guy put it bluntly on his blog "Gates should give the money back to people who spent their lives trying to make Windows work "


How many people in this world struggle to make ends meet and yet open the dismal contents of their wallets to charitable causes every year..? And what about those unsung heroes who give up their livelihood on a daily basis to help the needy in the worst places of the globe..? Of course they rarely get exposure because they don't own an island, a private turbo jet or a multitude of different companies. So the ultra rich are cornering the charity market and getting all the media hype....again..!


I remember when Jeff Bezos was made man of the year by Time magazine. He ran Amazon and was still 2 million in the red at that period. I thought to myself " What the f...." Is this the best we can do..? Forget about the tireless aid worker or the courageous doctor who leaves a very lucrative practice in the States to vaccinate orphans in Africa, we're talking big business here.


Somehow I equate this whole charity bonanza to the same level as McDonald's building hospitals for sick kids or Walmart giving away Xmas basket. It leaves a not so pleasant aftertaste in my mouth...just like a bad hamburger.


So basically, the Rockefellers of this world can do what they want with their riches to redeem themselves, just don't expect me to jump for joy or be impressed. If you really want to score points with me, disappear like Cat Stevens did...leaving fame and fortune behind. At least then, me and the rest of the world won't have you in our collective faces as a constant reminder of society's massive inequities.



Footnote: Agree or disagree...? Please leave a comment.

Rat out..!

The buzz this week was hard to miss unless you've been living somewhere in a cave in Afghanistan for the last five years. Wikileaks and it's founder, Julian Assange were plastered all over the media for bringing to light official documents pertaining to misconduct during the war in...where else...Afghanistan. Snitches, informants, whistle-blowers and whatever you want to call them seem to be all over the place these days. Of course the grand daddy of the lot was none other than Judas Iscariot. According to the bible. he delivered a fellow by the name of Jesus to the Romans. How a Porto Rican found his way to Jerusalem I have no clue. Interesting story but the plot is a little weak. My first real encounter with a snitch happened during a test in first grade. I casually blurted out the answer to a question to the student sitting next to me who immediately pointed an accusing finger and calling the teacher said '' Miss, he said the answer out loud ''. This was also my first encounter with the yard stick, receiving a couple of blows to my bottom for my indiscretion.The teacher obviously did not question the snitch's credibility and this is unfortunately the case nowadays. The media often jumps on the bandwagon and a frenzy erupts before any informant credibility can be established. And, in some cases, with the new and improved security measures, contrary to our justice system, the accused have to establish their innocence, being presumed guilty from the get go.This has happened all so fast on numerous occasions, especially involving alleged cases of child abuse. A lot of families, lives, reputations have been ruined by hearsay and non credible witnesses. Also, some people's moral grounds are someone else's playground. I remember these two old ladies in British Colombia who complained to the police that their neighbor walked around naked in his house and they found this offensive. When the whole thing went to court, the judge inquired has to how the two spinsters could see the naked man in the house since he lived 300 feet away. '' We can see him with our binoculars '' they replied. The case was thrown out. With that being said, I don't doubt the validity of whistle-blowing one bit. We need brave individuals to come forth and report anomalies or misconduct from governments, multinationals, institutions and individuals. Often enough, these people seek some form of anonymity. I say No..! I f you want to point an accusing finger at anyone we should know who you are in order to establish your credibility. With technology today, it's way too easy to start the rumor mill going and inflict serious harm to people who are just going about their daily lives. Imagine for one second that you were in Toronto on business during the G8 summit. You're walking downtown thinking of arranging this important meeting when your foot hits a brick on the sidewalk. Finding this odd, you pick up because you don't want anybody else to hurt their big toe. At that moment a couple on vacation snaps a picture of you holding the brick. Unfortunately, there's an identifiable Mc Donald's window in the background and you're wearing a germ protective mask they gave you at the hospital in case your flue turns out to be contagious. They post their picture of you with brick in hand and masked on Facebook, thinking they've photographed a real life anarchist. The Toronto police find this while scouring the web for info and through some face recognition software, they id you, review your credit card transactions, find your address and pick you up at your hotel for questioning. Of course you deny the whole thing but they bring up your participation in a protest against the seal hunt during your college years in the 70's. They allow you one phone call, so in desperation you call your wife on her cellphone but it's buried somewhere between a chocolate bar and a dry cleaning bill deep inside the bowels of her purse. So you leave a message on her voice box hoping that she remembers the access code.
Basically you could rot in jail from anywhere between 48 hours to a month, whith-held on reasons of national security. We've all heard about the Stasi years in East Germany when even family and friends were snitching on each other, creating a wave of collective paranoia. Any idiot with a camera equipped cellphone is a potential snitch. Just look at how many people after 9/11 reported seeing Bin Laden either driving a taxi in Manhattan or buying fruit in a seven-eleven in Boca Raton. So, as my father always says...'' Don't believe everything you read and only half of what you see''.

Footnote: The video above is an hilarious SNL skit with Robert De Niro where college students have phoned in to report terrorists.

Wake up call

This week I'd like to talk to you about the worst torture instrument ever concocted in history by human intelligence. Yes folks....the alarm clock. WikipediA describes it as a clock that is designed to make a loud noise at a specific time which means too early and too loud in the morning for most of us. Actually the concept is not new. It is rumored that the Greek philosopher Plato had a similar device to signal the start of his lectures. Jumping ahead a bit,the production of the infamous alarm clock was halted in 1942 as factories were converted to aid in the war effort. However, the geniuses in power at the time, ordered production resumed because of a high rate of absenteeism in the work force . This appears to be why we all get shaken out of our peaceful sleep mode, a hyper production schedule during the second world war. Where would the world be without wars...? Somewhere between Eden and Paradise I suspect. But that's another subject just down the road.
Anyway, this ode to the ingenuity of capitalism which has been ensconced in practically every bedroom in North America continues to prod us without mercy on a daily basis. The loud repeated beeps are especially irritating and reminiscent of sirens that sent people running for shelter during air raids . Most of them now have the radio option so instead of being jarred with incoherent decibels, you can wake up to Led Zeppelin's Black Dog or a newscaster describing an horrific crime seen. Tried it..didn't like it. I remember in my salad days not having an alarm clock. I did have a tv in my bedroom so, always the tinkerer, I decided to purchase a plug-in timer to turn on the set at the time of my choosing. Proudly, I enabled the whole system on a Saturday, activating the timer to 9 am the next day for a test and proceeded with my day and evening. In those days my roommate and I often went out to clubs and indulged in alcohol and nature's best, coming home in the wee hours to crash. Sunday morning I awoke in a total sweat from a apocalyptic nightmare. I dreamed I was being poked by a horde of terrifying blood thirsty demons in a fiery pit with no possible escape. Turns out that my tv had been turned on as planned but that I unknowingly had selected a channel that featured one of those evangelical Sunday preachers. He was sermonizing his flock on the perils of sin. Obviously this dogmatic lecture had pervaded my unconscious dream state, prompting the aforementioned nightmare. Too bad I wasn't tuned in to a porn channel...I would've never wanted to get up. I often wonder why nobody thought of using the sound of washing waves on the seashore or the melodic daybreak chirping of small birds in lieu of that cataclysmic beep. My wife says that we need a strong wake up sound. I think it's just conditioning. It would be nice to have a radio channel that would be entirely devoted to softly waking people with a soothing voice, prompting you to cheerfully rise and shine. A lot of people use their cellphones as alarm clocks these days. My wife does and believe me it's also annoying. When she first started doing this without telling me, I would quickly jump from bed and scramble in the dark to get the phone, thinking that at that early time in the morning, it had to be an emergency.
We do have an internal biological clock not unlike the one in our computers. The problem is we have forgotten how to use it. And even if we did, I don't think it would be compatible with today's hectic pace. So we'll continue to suffer at the hands of these dreaded machines which are a constant reminder of how little sleep we get. According to recent studies, our current lifestyle is listed as the number one culprit in sleep loss and the side effects are..well....alarming (no pun intended...). So much so that you''ll want to use public transportation instead of facing off in the frantic morning rush hour, battling for your share of the road with a multitude of sleep deprived drivers. http://www.sleep-deprivation.com/ is where you wan to go to find out more.
Finally, if you find yourself or someone you care for missing out on valuable sleep time like I once did, consider this a friendly wake up call.

Footnote: The picture, "Running out" was done in Adobe Photoshop with the "Liquify" filter. It's a fun tool to use and it's most often used for face reconstruction. An Omni light filter was added for a more dramatic effect as was the drop shadow on the melted clock dial. And of course, having forgotten to wipe my night table, a lot of retouching was done.

Hip to be round

It seems to me that we humans never quite decided which of these two forms we should have adopted in our daily lives, the square or the circle. We have round wine glasses that are neatly stored in square cabinets, round lighting fixtures for rectangular rooms, round clocks on walls with four corners and we serve square meals on round plates.If you're a cowboy, after a roundup you go to a square dance Most of us live in square boxes we call homes, travel to work in smaller mobile boxes with wheels and earn our pay in cubicles.
No wonder we feel boxed in. This brings me to R.Buckminster Fuller or Bucky as he was affectionately called. Bucky was a strange kind of genius and set out to prove that we had it all wrong. Why was housing square..? There are no squares in nature with the possible exception of the weekend bird watchers. The people who are closest to nature because they depend on it for their basic sustenance live in round shelters. The North American indian had the teepee or wigwam and the Eskimos had igloos. So Bucky started to experiment with spheres and soon came up with the geodesic dome. His idea was to mass produce these half globes so that everybody, even people in third world countries, could afford a nearly indestructible, weather resistant dwelling. His plan almost made it to fruition but his greedy investors who were evidently not as altruistic, pulled the plug on the project when they couldn't see eye to eye. Bucky went on with his experiments and soon found other venues for his domes, notably the US pavilion for Expo 67 in Montreal.
He also went on to produce a fantastic weird looking car that was reminiscent of an airplane fuselage, the dymaxion car. This car was so futuristic that he was barred from driving it into the city, causing a scene each time he would take it for a spin.


He also wanted to mass produce his vehicle and this certainly would have changed the history of the automobile if it hadn't been for a tragic accident involving one of his potential investors who died in a crash on a test drive. So Fuller was a visionary. He spent most of his time lecturing and underlying the need for us to conserve our precious unrenewable resources.
It was during one such lecture that he came up with the name spaceship earth, alluding to our limited resources. His dome dwellings never caught on except for a few companies strewn across the states who still produce them on demand.
However, If you've gone camping with a tent in your lifetime, you'll have experienced the transition between the square tents with the inordinate amount of ground spikes and the dome tent which seems more spacious when it's actually smaller and can easily be moved, even when set up, thanks to Bucky's ideas.
The basic idea behind all of this is that we need more efficient, climate change ready houses capable of riding out the worst of storms. Unless we want roof flying to become the national past time for the mid west during the tornado season. They also need to be on higher ground. Too much water is already a problem in some parts of the world. There is a tendency to build energy efficient partially buried houses called burmed housing. But unless it's as waterproofed as a submarine and can float out of harm's way in short notice, I woundn't consider it an option. There is a company in Japan called International Dome Design who built a whole village of domes. It's quite a sight to behold and unlike their american counterparts ( talk about bad design, some look like a hybrid between a colonial house and a dome) they have a flair for good taste and some of their products are simply outstanding. You can see them with floor plans at http://www.i-domehouse.com/case.html
So we might have to live like hobbits in a not too distant future. As for the more distant generations, I suspect their houses will be mobile, having to revert to the hunter gatherer style of life, looking for resources like water or simply escaping the wrath of a furious mother nature. Odd that we seem to be going around in circles after years of cutting corners.

Zoom in

Thank God this week has ended..! It wasn't bad enough that the whole province of Quebec was blanketed by a humidity tsunami, but also that my 83 year old mother was urgently rushed to the hospital while my 85 year old dad was left to fend for himself at home. Thankfully every thing's back to normal for now.
This week's blog might not interest everybody. So what else is new...!
I write off the cuff, meaning I really don't prepare or give it much thought until the deadline looms. This particular blog is the perfect example.
I've always been interested in photography at large but especially the outer rims of the process. Macro photography is one such area. The name can be a tad confusing. Basically it implies that your using a macro lens to zoom in to a specific subject or part of it. It is sort of between regular photography and micro photography which uses a microscope. It falls in a universe all by itself sort of like Pee Wee Herman.
Most digital SLR (single lens reflex) lenses can't focus close enough to give you a macro image. You either need a special macro lens or either a bellows extension device or as in my case a tube extension. This is where the whole thing becomes a bit dicey. A bellows or tube extension will render your camera electronics like focus metering virtually useless. However on the good side, auto exposure will work and you'll be able to review your shot immediately and readjust if necessary.
This first shot is just to show how far into a subject you can go with an extension device. On the left you'll see how close I got to the ruler with my macro lens.On the left is the same ruler but using an extension tube between my lens and the camera.

Pretty powerful..!
Let's put this to work. Obviously I was going to need a lot of light. This is one of the major drawbacks of macro photography. The closer you are to your subject the more light you need. A lot of people use flash for this purpose but to me it looks a bit unnatural. I prefer working in natural light but since I'm getting really close, the slightest movement of either the camera or the subject can result in a total blur.
Just like Lindsay Lohan about to go back into rehab.
This picture is of a flower bud. Don't ask me what flower, I simply don't know not being a very flower knowledgeable kind of guy. You can observe that not to much is in focus what we refer to as depth of field. This can be a plus in macro simply because you can isolate the subject against a mysterious looking background.

This next picture is of a stamen. As you can see, it can easily become an abstraction if it were not for the bare hint of reality showing.

This next one is a shot of the rust on an antique stove we kept in the yard near the stream. Flat and steady surfaces are a great way to get into macro photography. They are abundant and easy to capture. The only thing you have to look out for is not casting a shadow on the subject with the camera or the lens since you're only an inch or two away. A steady tripod and an integrated timer to trip the shutter will help immensely. Or if you prefer, a six pack of Heinekens will steady your nerves.

This pic is of the interior of a computer hard disk. I took it apart to see what it looked like inside, something that got me in trouble on numerous occasions when I was a kid, taking apart all sorts of things, a lot of times, aggravating my parents. The phone incident didn't wash down too well.

Basically, you can have a lot of fun doing this and any subject is fair game. Sometimes it will be frustrating, other times you'll rejoice with amazement at your results. There are a lot of sites on the web devoted to macro. I was somewhat disappointed looking it up because to me, a lot of them are only satisfied with using a standard macro lens which will not zoom in enough to totally immerse you in a place of unseen wonders and awe.

Footnote: Most digital cameras have a macro mode that you can enable in the settings. It won't (depending on the manufacturer) be state of the art macro, but it can get you started.