The Friday Five Good Things

 

Five good things that happened this week.

1. Enjoyed a nice thank you lunch at Point Breeze with Himself's teaching assistants

2. Himself's college roommate and his wife ran a half marathon over the weekend in Rhinebeck, NY. We met them for lunch at The 51 Park Restaurant in Lee, Massachusetts. Good food, lots of laughs

3. While driving through the Berkshires and admiring the foliage, we saw a bald eagle

4. I had a funny dream about my Ma. I was in a crowded place when I heard my name to "come over here". I saw her in her Persian lamb fur coat, but she was only 2 feet tall like a little doll. So very cute.

5. The operating system wouldn't update so had to do a reinstall and lost some accounting files. Tech support helped me get back on track.

Whatcha Doin?

 

I have mentioned not being able to upload multiple images to Blogger and have them show in a correct numerical order.  Rather than search for a solution, I just whined about the problem. Enter my friend, Andy, with a link to how to upload multiple images to Blogger in the correct order

Mr. Spock supervised while I followed the instructions to test whether or not the procedure worked. I uploaded 5 images from Sunday's How Does Your Garden Grow Post (some of these images were omitted from the original post) and voilà! The images appear in the correct numerical order.

aaa (I didn't bother to delete the letter place holders)

Thanks, Andy! A lot of people will be happy with this simple fix.

Whatcha doin'?

T Stands for Humble Bundle

 The Young One knows I use Corel Paint Shop Pro for photo editing. It's a poor man's version of Photoshop and a fraction of the price.

While I was having my evening cuppa, she told me about Humble Bundle Software and a promotion that was offering a deal on Paint Shop Pro called the Creative Super Hero Bundle.

For the next 15 days Humble Bundle is offering an unbelievable deal. You pay what you want.

Seriously?

Seriously.  You get real, working software. Not a demo version, but the full blown program.

Okay, but why is the software so cheap? Well, Corel will be releasing 2021 versions of the software. So if you don't need the latest and greatest, this is an unbelievably good deal. Brand new from Corel, Paint Shop Pro runs about $99. 

For $1.00, you get to download After Shot 3 (like Adobe Lightroom)

For $26.95, you also get Paint Shop Pro 2020 (like Adobe Photoshop) AND several brushes and filters for PSP.

Pay $30 and get all of the above PLUS Corel CAD 2019, Corel Painter 2020, Corel Draw 2020, and a bunch of brushes for these programs.

Besides the unbelievably, great deal, Humble Software also donates a portion to charity. You get to decide how much goes to their charities (Room to Read, The V Foundation), how much Corel gets, and how much Humble Software gets. Pretty cool. For my $30, $10 bucks went to all concerned.

The only downside (for me) is I prefer a hard copy (DVD) of the software rather than a download link. I'm an old, programming dinosaur so I like to have a backup. Also if you download the software, be sure to write down the 25 character key to open the program. You can't copy and paste it. 🤬

They also have other bundles for games, programming, and sometimes e-book bundles. Go check them out.

Drop by hosts, Bleubeard and Elizabeth's blog to find out what the rest of the T Stands For gang is up to. If you want to play, include in your Tuesday post a beverage or container for a beverage. Don't forget to link your blog to Bleubeard and Elizabeth's page.

T Stands for Virtual Lunch

The Moms Breakfast Club usually meets during school breaks since two of the moms work for their town school system. Now that school is on hiatus, it seems like a good time to get together. Virtually. Instead of breakfast, it was decided we would meet for lunch.

I set up the iPad in the dining room along with my ham sandwich with mustard, no cheese on homemade bread. The loaf was freshly baked and I got to have the heel, my favorite part of the bread. No  one else likes it. I also had some pretzels, but ate them before the chat because I thought the crunching might be too loud. I also had a cup of ice tea, and some oatmeal butterscotch cookies.

We had some difficulties getting connected. Facetime, Zoom, tried to get people to download Skype or remember their passwords, tried Zoom. It was quite funny and bit like:

We finally got things going on Zoom. We had a great time checking in with each other, catching up on things we were doing, husbands, kids, comparing shopping expeditions and which stores were stocked up. All in all an enjoyable lunch date. The best part? Not having to worry about not finding a parking spot at the breakfast place.

Drop by hosts, Bleubeard and Elizabeth's blog to find out what the rest of the T Stands For gang is up to. If you want to play, include in your Tuesday post a beverage or container for a beverage. Don't forget to link your blog to Bleubeard and Elizabeth's page.

The Friday Five Good Things

Five good things that happened this week.

1. A blog buddy was having issues reading a T Day post. Her anti-virus program was flagging my blog as an unsafe site. 😮Even if she clicked the I'll accept the risk anyway, it wouldn't take her there.  I had the Young One log in to the website using 3 different browsers and Avast as her antivirus program. No problems for her.  An internet search for the issue brought up the fact that some antivirus programs won't log into a site with the old http:// protocol requiring the new https:// When I add my link to the T Day link up, I use the old protocol. It never seemed to be an issue with other readers.. I asked E to log in to my blog by following the https:// and she was able to.

In another lifetime when I was a computer programmer, part of my job involved answering the phone on the help desk and troubleshooting client issues with our software. When E sent me an email saying she was able to get onto the blog, my first thought was Yes! I've still got it! 😺

2. I was really pleased with the dragon eye I did for the Inktober dragon prompt

3. Found a solar powered Halloween, Black Cat dancer. With light, he wiggles from side to side.

4. Himself donated to the 99 Restaurant for their fund raiser for The Boys and Girls Club. Waiter said we got to pick a  balloon and asked what color. Blue? He brought a balloon over. Gave it to Himself to pop. Suddenly a  memory. I was 5 or 6 and had a helium balloon on a string. Himself ,4 or 5 years old, asked to hold my balloon and then he let it go. Just as he popped the restaurant balloon to find out the prize we won, I saw my balloon (a red one, I think) floating away in a cloudless blue sky! I told him this memory, and we were laughing.  How can you remember things like that? I'm Italian we never forget.

How was your week?

Problems on Blogger Using Chrome

At the beginning of December, I whined about problems I was having with Blogger using Chrome as my browser.  Even though I was logged in, I couldn't comment on Blogger blogs or my own blog. Very frustrating. And I couldn't seem to find an answer other than to switch browsers. I don't care for Internet Explorer and don't really like Firefox as loading webpages was very slow. Also my bank doesn't support Firefox, but I limped along with it.

So Friday, just for chuckles and to procrastinate doing some housework, I started looking for answers. And this time I found the answer! Third party cookies needed to be enabled. I found the answer at the University of Connecticut Off-Campus Housing of all places. There were also instructions for other web browsers.

The Friday Five Good Things

Five good things that happened this week.

1. The new printer is up and running.

2. Enjoyed watching football with Himself.

3. The return episode of Supernatural didn't disappoint. Predictable, but I loved it.

4. PSP X8 arrived earlier than expected. Install went smoothly.

5. Worked on an idea for the Graceful Envelope contest.

How was your week?

Paint Shop Pro X8

Sandra asked: Is Paint Shop Pro like Paint? And is it easy to use?

No, Paint Shop Pro, now in version 18, is a complete photo editing program. I like to think of it as a poor man's version of Photoshop.

You can enhance your digital images. Add filters, special effects, even virtual picture frames. I first started using this program about 8 years ago when the program PSP 7 was owned by Jasc Software. I used it to make signature tags when I belonged to a Western writers' board. At the time, its only use was for amusement.

Since then, Corel Software bought out Jasc, and PSP has become the most useful software program I own. I scan in my artwork and tweak the image. I've manipulated my artwork to create signatures, avatars, and have "framed" my artwork to be shown on my website. Artwork just looks better when it's framed.

These are things I had tried to do in Photoshop which had come bundled with my first scanner. I couldn't quite figure things out. Photoshop has a very long learning curve (at least for me) and a hefty price tag. (approx. $650) Definitely out of my price range.

At $99.99 Paint Shop Pro X8 is very affordable. I found the program to be more intuitive than Photoshop. I also like the fact that Corel allows a free 30 day trial. (I think Adobe also offers a free trial for their products, too.) Corel also offers an extensive Learning and Tutorial area on their website.

My advice? Give a try for the 30 day free trial period. If you like the program, you buy it. If not, you haven't lost anything.

The Friday Five Good Things

Five good things that happened this week.

1. Hung out and went to lunch with my friend, Teague. I hadn't seen her since her Christmas party. Holidays, snow, illness, more snow, illness, and more snow, and more snow....kept us from getting together.

2. The Jamberry nail wraps ordered for The Eldest's Easter bag arrived. The Easter Bunny didn't have to write out an IOU. While she was applying wraps that looked like butterfly wings, I applied a sample the rep sent. Just to see what they were like. I'm not big into nail polish, but I saw Jamberry has a Doctor Who set.

3. Had a long overdue visit to the dentist. No cavities! And there was a cancellation the following day so

4. He could Bondo the front tooth I chipped.

5. For some reason the scanner decided not to interface. I thought it was going to be a long drawn out fight to troubleshoot ending with me having to buy a new scanner. Did an online search for the manual which brought me to the HP Troubleshoot site. Downloaded the guide. The program found the issue and the scanner was back up and humming in under a half an hour.

How was your week?

The Friday Five Good Things

Five good things that happened this week.

1. We had dinner at The Brother's. Chicken and Sausage Cacciatore, salad, bread, cannoli, and Italian cookies.

2. Skyped a call with The Young One. At least we tried to. Her interweb connection sux so we kept losing the call. At least I got to see her smiling face for a minute.

3. Got iCal to sync on the iPad.

4. A mid-week snow day

5. Some of the books I bring to class to show examples of illuminated initials are wearing out and falling apart. Happily, I found Dover Publications was offering some of the books as ebooks. Instead of lugging a ton of books, which sometimes don't get looked at, I can take the iPad.

What happened to you this week?

The First Rule of Programming

Over the past couple of days, iCloud Caldender and Contacts weren't updating to my iPad. Data was available on my iPhone and in iCloud online, but not on the iPad. WTH?

So, I fell back on my computer programmer training. The first thing I did was turned the iPad off. Waited a minute and turned it back on.  Ta-da!

Tools, Gadgets, and Widgets - Siri

One of the fun toys with the iPhone is Siri, the personal assistant. Siri recognizes voice commands. She can send and read text and emails, find information on the Interwebs, remind you of appointments, tell you the weather. It's a nice feature if your sausage fingers don't always negotiate the touch screen key pad accurately but...

Siri needs to be trained to your voice commands and she doesn't always get it correct. The more you use the voice commands the quicker Siri will recognize what you mean.

The first time I asked Siri: Who is the fairest of them all? Siri thought I asked: Who is the fairest of the mall. Siri brought up links for Disney Stores featuring Snow White.

You can choose a male or female voice for Siri. You can tell Siri to call you by your nickname or a title like Your Serene Highness.

Siri isn't all business. The assistant has a sense of humor. The second time around my query: Who is the fairest of them all rewarded me with: Your Serene Highness, you are full fair 'tis true but...No, you're definitely the fairest of them all. Good answer, Siri.

Do you use an artificial intelligent, personal assistant? Would you?

Tools, Gadgets, and Widgets - Toyota Entune

One of the toys that came with my new Toyota was a software suite called Entune. This is a suite of apps (Bing, Pandora, Open Table, fuel prices, sports, and traffic) that are accessed through the dash console from your smartphone. Very cool, or so I thought. I've had my car since June and haven't been able to get the apps to work.

At the dealership, when I went to pick up the car, the salesman went through the process of pairing my iPhone via Bluetooth to the car so I can make and receive hands-free calls and use the navigation system.

Now I don't need to order movie tickets from the car or make reservations at a restaurant, but it would be nice to tune to music I like to hear when I'm out of range of my favorite radio stations. I downloaded the app to my iPhone and followed all of the instructions. Every time, I'd receive an error message that the phone had no Internet connection. Frustrating, but not really needed especially the cost of another service or worry about eating up the phone's data plan. The car is a dream to drive. The hands-free phone is convenient, and the onboard navigation is helpful without having to drag out another electronic device.

Then Toyota announced Entune would be free. Free? Sign me up and again, the same error message. An online search found that lots of others were having the same problem connecting to the apps. And the consensus from the bulletin boards was Entune sucked. I read the FAQs and followed instructions and had to agree Entune was an epic fail.

I contacted Toyota and detailed all the steps I had taken. A day or two later (kudos to Toyota for their quick response), I received this: The issue sound like you may not be using a USB cord to connect. We have provided the following pairing instructions to assist you;

What? A USB cord? What the Hell? There was nothing in the manuals that said a USB connection had to be made. It said Bluetooth. That means wireless. Back out to the car with the USB cord and the instructions I was able to get my Pandora stations to play through the dashboard console. 

So Entune is not quite the epic fail I thought. Nice to be able to listen to Do-Wop Oldies or Gregorian Chant when I'm out of range of the usual radio station. Toyota, you need to make it clear that the Entune service doesn't connect via Bluetooth, but the USB cord is needed.

Spring Cleaning

Spring is here, finally, and that means the cleaning hormones are starting to ramp up. Time to give the home environment a facelift. That goes for the virtual home, too.

I have a new webpage and domain name. My old webpage was hosted by Yahoo. In the beginning they were great. Easy to edit templates, webmail with the domain name, and all the marketing goodies you want. Here comes the but...a few months ago, the webpage editor started giving me headaches. A simple change of description and fonts sizes changed all over the place, or font color. The editor would only work with Internet Explorer which I hate and Firefox which I'm not overly fond of. I like Chrome. Since Google and Yahoo are competitors, they don't play nicely with each other.

May is the month my subscription ran out so it was the perfect time to look for a new home and a new domain name. As much as I love ponyexpressgraphics.com, it was a lot to type. And it should have been ponyexpressstudio, but for some reason, my fingers typed graphics and hit enter, before I could correct the mistake). Marketing articles and tips I read screamed "brand your name". Do you know how many Kennedys there are in Massachusetts? Someone had the nerve to take cjkennedy.com. Now what to do? Something has to be appended. Don't use numbers. Use something that defines your business. Calligraphy, Lettering, Lettering Art. All too long. Pen. Maybe. Ink. Ta-da! My new domain name is cjkennedyink.com

Researching top webhosts brought me to ipage.com. The day I went to check them out, they were running a special so the price for two yeas was über cheap. They offered unlimited bandwidth, disk space, and email addresses, free domain registration, drag and drop templates, and an anytime money back guarantee.

I do have to say that customer service with Yahoo was great. No pressure or a million questions as to why I wanted to end service with them. I just had to verify some information and a couple of clicks and ponyexpressgraphics.com was gone.

The new website was up and running in minutes. A nice, new, clean layout. Thought I would give the old blog a facelift, too. Comments about the new look (like it? hate it?) would be welcome.

Tools, Gadgets and Widgets - Bamboo Paper

Yesterday, Sherrinda at Simply Sherrinda had blogged about starting the New Year off more organized. She came across a free-printable calendar to help keep your blog organized. There were places to write down blog ideas, giveaways, etc.

It's quite a nifty package, but managing two households, I'm awash in paper. My goal is to reduce my paper clutter electronically. You know me and widgets. I have two methods for taking care of blog or creative ideas.

The first method doesn't involve any kind of widget. I just take advantage of Blogger's built in scheduler. You know you can schedule your blog posts ahead of time in Blogger, right? Just compose your blog post and then on the right is a schedule pull down. You can set the date and time of your blog post. Easy. If I'm not exactly sure what I'm going to write about, but have an idea, I'll title the post, make a quick note in the text box as to what the post is about and then instead of setting the date and time, I'll just save the post as a draft. Then when I'm ready I go back and edit the draft, then schedule it or just publish it right then and there.

The second method involves a widget on the iPad. I may not be near the computer, but the iPad is my Gal Friday. Bamboo Paper is an electronic notebook system. Allows you to jot ideas, draw, doodle in an electronic notebook. Wacom, the manufacturer, claims the widget may have problems if you don't use a Wacom stylus, but I haven't had problems using another stylus or my finger. Bamboo Paper is free for iPad and Android users, but you get a limited number of notebooks you can create. For a mere $1.99 you can create 20 notebooks each with up to 100 pages!

I have notebooks for journal prompts,my calligraphy class syllabus, genealogy notes. It's the best two bucks I've spent on software. I don't have to worry where I'm going to store a notebook in the dollhouse, and I don't have to worry about losing a slip of paper.

How do you keep your blogging or creativity ideas organized?

Internet Explorer Could Have a Huge Security Hole

Beware Internet Explorer has a new security threat. Read the article and then download a more secure browser like Chrome or Firefox.


Internet Explorer Could Have a Huge Security Hole

Daffodils

Photograph of daffodils run through Corel Paint It using the modern painting filter.

Tools, Gadgets, and Widgets - Digital Scrapbooking Software

This should have been yesterday's post, but the computer was acting slow and stupid again.

The nursing home wanted a small picture (no larger than 5 x 7) to be put outside the room. Knowing how some items at the nursing home grow legs and walk away, I had no intention of giving an original photograph.

The MyMemories Digital Scrapbook Suite software came in handy. I scanned in a couple of photographs from the family album and used one of the quick page templates. These pages are like mats. The background is already decorated. You just insert the photograph(s) into the hole. Very quick. I also used the text tool to add Ma's name to the page. It's just not shown here. Album pages can be exported as images (.jpg, .png). Printed out, trimmed to size,I thought it  looked quite nice. I used a different quick page template and made one for Dad's room, too.

Looking for a last minute gift? Click on the MyMemories Suite promotion code button on the upper right on this blog. Use the promotion code STMMMS65809 to get $10 off the  $39.97 full price. With lots of freebies (background papers, quick page templates, embellishments) to download, it's a lot of bang for your buck.

Tools, Gadget, and Widgets - Remove Ads

AdBlock is an extension you add to your browser (Firefox, Chrome, Safari). It blocks ads on web pages and prevents tracking cookies from downloading to your computer. Flash and banner ads are blocked so you can read without annoying distractions. Your pages load faster because there are no pesky ads. If there is an ad you need to see, you can easily change the options by clicking the red stop sign icon that appears in your browser tool bar. The program is donationware. It's free, but the programmer asks you to make a donation if you can afford to.

To find the AdBlock extension download for your browser, use your favorite search engine to find it.

Tools, Gadgets, and Widgets - Disk Cleaner

Sooner or later, your PC begins to bog down and doesn't seem to run as fast as it did when it came out of the box. You run the Disk Cleanup utility that's found in the System tools, but all that seems to do is empty the recycle bin. Yeah, it takes care of the temporary files from IE, but it doesn't seem to get junk files if you use another browser. (You are using another browser like Chrome or Firefox, aren't you?)

I heard about CCleaner from Andy over at Fish Wrap. The utility is free (there is a paid version which offers technical support) so I figured I didn't have anything to lose except junk files. All I have to say is wow! The utility not only gets rid of IE junk, but cleans out the superfluous files from other browsers (Chrome, Firefox, Opera, Safari). There are download versions for Mac besides Windows. The utility even has a registry cleaner feature which gets rid of old or broken registry keys.

CCleaner has become part of my weekly maintenance. Make it yours, too.