First post from the road

Tonight I'm writing during a layover at the Denver International Airport in Colorado. As I was searching for a place to settle for the multi-hour stint in Terminal A, serendipity occurred when I walked by a young lady practicing violin in a spare seating section. By herself, facing outward toward the chilly, clear night and crescent moon just visible over a Frontier walkway, she is playing a sort of sad, but upbeat folk sound that would be right at home in Oh, Brother, Where Art Thou?

The kindness and inner desire that people have to be social creatures really is exhibited here tonight. Most of you would be familiar with the fairly impersonal and isolated culture of airports where people are simply on their way from point A to point B and are usually tired, hungry, and cranky. The section near this young woman is filling up with passersby who both give her a small bubble of space, seeming not to want to disturb her practice, and who also sit in the adjoining seats to listen in. In only the span of a few minutes, quite a few people, before heading to their departure gates, have approached the violinist (what's the difference between a violin and a fiddle, by the way?) to give her thanks and, at one point, a few dollars as a small token of appreciation. It is a somewhat surreal scene that is both beautiful and peaceful.

This week was the first week of on-the-road training with BER and today was the first that I was alone with a presenter. All went well and I seem to be dealing with a pretty significant lack of sleep fairly well. However, this is only after a few days, so we'll see how the rest of this contract year goes. I'm enthused about it all. A fellow Program Manager created a restaurant blog to help others find all those hole-in-the-wall places that are a true treat when out in a strange city. I hope to use it and maybe contribute myself.

RSS Feeds and How They Make Me Happy

RSS stands for "Really Simple Syndication," according to its Wikipedia article. Basically, it's a standardized file format for automatically publishing and sharing blog articles, photo galleries, and many other bits of information in this Web 2.0 world. In order to take advantage of RSS feeds, you will need a feed reader (or aggregator). I personally use Google Reader and it seems to be one of the more popular web-based RSS readers out there.

My online interaction is fueled by social interaction and interlinked information; most of what I'm interested in is linked to from sites I already read or follow. RSS really has made a dramatic difference in how I experience the internet; I subscribe to RSS feeds that allow me to do all of the following, and more: automatically download episodes of my favorite TV shows, keep track of all the photographs and web articles that a lot of my friends are interested in, keep an eye on a customized Craigslist search for rooms for rent in Seattle, and get instant updates about local happenings here in Gainesville.

There are many how-to articles written about subscribing to posts with various programs. Google's "Getting Started Guide" is pretty convenient and helpful, while the BitTorrent client uTorrent's documentation can leave some things to be desired if you're just getting your feet wet with RSS.

If you spend any significant amount of time online reading blog posts, browsing Flickr for cool photographs, or even scouring Craigslist for that new toy you've been craving, learning how to take advantage of the automation and ease-of-consolidation that RSS readers provide is a MUST.


9-9-09: A total list of my RSS subscriptions at this date. I think some very interesting things are possible with the beauty of RSS feeds. If you like this, you should see my bit torrent feed filters...



Full View is a MUST.

Invention

03-01-08 - 162619, originally uploaded by J. Johnson.

I was on a run before 10am this morning and, when I got back, hopped in the shower to wash off and cool down. Of course, being Florida, the coldest water that came out of the tap was actually quite warm. This got me thinking: how hard would it be to integrate a home's HVAC and tap water system? When cold water is needed, it would be routed through the cooling fans (radiator?) and then through the HVAC system before being routed to the home plumbing.

I suppose this could be used for heating as well, especially since most in-home water heaters are constantly heating its supply of water anyway.

I wish I knew more about these systems. Can anyone shed some insight?

Portrait of Orlando mayor Buddy Dyer by Roberto Gonzalez

This may not be a totally mind-blowing portrait, but it made the front page of the Orlando Sentinel today and really stands out as a unique political environmental portrait.

It had me thinking, for a bit, that the photographer utilized an outside crane for the rear flash.

Simply beautiful, isn't it?

Please, if you cycle, watch this.

10 wins at The Trophy Lounge

06-25-09 - 081915, originally uploaded by J. Johnson.

A few weeks ago, my family and I went on a cruise. We dominated various sports and trivia events, leading to the photo of our awards table on the last night before a return to normal life.

It may seem like a pretty trivial skill, but I recently found a pretty nice tutorial on Tutorio.com describing how to create rounded corners in Photoshop. Very often Adobe surprises me with just how much potential their imaging products have if the user only takes a small amount of time to learn about their features.

The official "credit card" size standard here in America, and possibly internationally, is 2 1/8" x 3 3/8" (54mm x 86mm) with 1/4" rounded corners. Typically, credit cards are made from PVC and are a sturdy 30mil thick.

Ever wanted to know a really quick and easy way to fold your short-sleeve t-shirts? Check this YouTube video by VideoJug.

Recently, a close friend of mine highly suggested what she called her "type bible:" Thinking with Type by Ellen Lupton. The book can be found on Amazon here.

First Friends Knowledge Share

Inspired by the knowledge-sharing events I've recently spoken of, BarCamp and Ignite, some friends and I decided to start our own small set of events to accomplish the same thing. Tentatively happening on the last Saturday of each month, the Reneers hosted the first gathering on May 30th followed by an outing to Tijuana Flats for dinner. Four attended and three spoke:

• "How to Calculate the Radius of the Earth Using a Stopwatch and a Yard Stick" by Mike R.
  
• Information about pruning various types of flora by Christie
  
• "Useful Knots and How to Tie Them" by myself
  

The photograph above is of my cousin Greta's MBA degree she recently received from Rollins College in Winter Park, FL. The frame she ordered, seen here, included a window matting that was too small to show the entire degree. I helped her out by separating the original navy backing, cutting a new set of windows, then cutting a larger window in the off-white mat on top. Good afternoon project to force me to get my mat cutter out of my closet and to use it again.

Below is the PowerPoint presentation I created for our Knowledge Share event.

Knowledge Share - Knots

View more OpenOffice presentations from downwitda.