Around Every Corner

Annapolis, Maryland.

A Shoutout To River Rant

Hey folks-
While doing some random browsing one day I came across a nicely written blog by a guy named danno called the River Rant. People in Detroit are an angst ridden lot, and few express their angst better than danno. He was nice enough to link my blog, with good result, so I'd like to return the favor and ask you, dear friends, to check out his little corner of the blogosphere.

Towne Cinema Marquee

Watertown, Wisconsin. A camera toss experiment.

Watertown Christmas Parade of Lights

Main Street, in downtown Watertown, shortly before the Parade of Lights. Not the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, but one of those chances for the locals to crawl out of the bars, watch an event.....and then crawl back into the bars.



This was a typical float in the parade. Not really typical, it was the one built by my son's Cub Scout pack. It was actually one of the better floats in the parade.


A horrible mishap? Frosty gone up in flames? No. Just a hot air balloon gondola complete with burners. It's the most popular thing in the parade. Hey, if you can't have big balloons, then this is the next best thing. Really.

How To Keep Adservers From Ruining Your Browsing Experience

I had a real problem today with using some of the game sites that I frequent. The pages were taking forever to load. I went into science mode, and started making some observations. You can see the status of your page load in the left side of the status bar in Firefox. Turns out pages were doing fine until they tried to load from something called "servedby.advertising.com". Being the curious type, I was intrigued and googled that phrase. Not much showed up, and even entering that as a url returned nothing. Through piecing some bits of information together, I found that advertising banners were being loaded from servedby. To think that a poorly run adserver can ruin my browsing experience doesn't sit too well with me. But I did stumble on a couple of solutions to this problem. One way is by creating a "hosts" file. This is a file that sits in your C:/Windows folder and requires a little bit of knowledge to set up. Luckily, for you Firefox users, there is a plug in extension that is easy to install, and you control what you want to block. It's called Adblock. You might have a pop up blocker, this is a banner ad blocker. Here is a link to Adblock, and here is a link to a forum page that contains an extensive list of adservers. A note of caution: some adservers may be your friend, and you'll need to visit your favorite sites to make sure you don't block something you really wanted to see. But my tests so far show my pages load MUCH faster, although I notice my own blog page doesn't load everything. So I'll have to tweak a little. Your mileage may vary, all standard disclaimers apply.

Cruising Salinas Tuesday Night

Salinas, California.

Happy Thanksgiving

A slice of pumpkin pie, found with Google Image Search, from www.eaglebrand.com.

To all of my friends and relatives that have been so kind to come back to this little corner of the blogosphere, I wish you a very Happy Thanksgiving. Indeed, there is much to be thankful for. So I encourage you all to take some time and think about all the great things that you have and remember, you may not realize exactly what you have.

Locals Night On Fisherman's Wharf

The week I spent in California featured unseasonably warm weather for this region. It was staggeringly beautiful....and very romantic. Fisherman's Wharf is one of the tourist spots in Monterey, not far from Cannery Row, featuring shops and restaurants.

Technorati tags: monterey, travel, sightseeing, california

Salinas Valley Fish House

Salinas, California.

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All In And Tied Down

Monterey, California.

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Late Afternoon On Cannery Row

Monterey, California.

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A Shop On Cannery Row

Monterey, California.

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A Sign?

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Moonrise Over Monterey Bay

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Cannery Row

Made famous by John Steinbeck. Cannery Row, Monterey, California.

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LAX Layover

Technorati tags: los angeles, travel, airport, california

Outbound MKE 8:26 AM

Technorati tags: milwaukee, travel, airport, wisconsin

Sony DRM Update

Sony BMG seems to be getting the message, this time. But remember, they snuck the software in their CD the first time, hoping nobody would notice. You have to wonder.....

Hot Diggidy Sun-Dog

See that bright spot on the right side of the picture? No, it's not defective camera optics. That is a sundog. I wrote a whole paper on it in college; you can read more about it here.

Travel's been slow, hence the lack of photos lately. That will change next week, when I spend four days in Salinas, California. Monterey, the Napa Valley, should be plenty of photo ops.

The Creeping DRM Crisis

I would guess most of my tech savvy friends are aware of this situation, but most of the folks who visit this blog are probably not aware of the latest attempt by big media to turn us all into criminals. So I depart from the usual diet of photographs to present this public service. The bottom line is this: if you have played recent music CDs by Sony/BMG on your computer, you may have seriously damaged your system through the installation of a rootkit. Not only is the software installed when you play the music, it installs without notification to the user. Better still, it reports back to Sony what you have played and when you played it. Even better still, it cannot be uninstalled, and attempts to do so may disable your CD/ROM drive. Just more proof from big media that they really don't want you to buy their product; they can make more money by suing you for obtaining it illegally. For more information on the Sony rootkit, click here. For an article by the gentleman who discovered the rootkit and developer of a utility than can detect rootkits, click here.

Storefront

Midway Landing Runway 31C

Midway Airport, Chicago. The runway is just on the other side of the wall, meaning landing aircraft are less than 100 feet from the ground when crossing the street.

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Get Me While I'm Cheap

My blog is worth $2,258.16.
How much is your blog worth?

Interesting? Sure. Real? I wish. And it's a mere pittance to what some of the "A-list" blogs are worth. But hey, we can only keep dreaming. Click on the link to find out more about the research behind the number.

Experimental

Chicago, Halloween.

Murphy Theater, Wilmington, Ohio

Technorati tags: sightseeing, travel, murphy theater, wilmington, ohio