Some people have asked in the comments about how we take pictures. There is nothing special about the camera; it is an older Kodak.
Then we do this:
Or sometimes this:
The software is free. Anybody can make pictures look good with these excellent programs.
There is a fairly new VOIP solution out there called MagicJack. It’s comparable to Skype which is costing $3.00 a month these days. That’s $36 a year. Well MagicJack is $40 for the first year which includes a little jack that plugs into a USB port and into which you plug the POTS line from your phone. And after that it is $19.95 a year.
Skype, or else our Skype adaptor, has been having its hiccups lately so I decided to try this. I got my MagicJack today and installed it. It’s working great and is indistinguishable from a regular phone line. The call quality and ease of use is miles ahead of Skype even though there’s not much point in complaining about such cheap calling.
We still use Vonage (basic plan, about $15/month) for our main incoming line because Vonage lets us keep our old telephone number.
One problem I had was that I could not get a local number for MagicJack. Our area code is not even available. So I decided to try to find a number that was local for someone in our family that would normally have to pay long distance to call. Now my wife’s sister out West can call our new number which is local in their town without having any long distance charges. Nice for them.
Gotta find as many ways as possible to justify the cost of Comcast cable ($42.95/month). 6MB broadband doesn’t come cheap.
With much fear and trembling in light of all the naysaying out there, I recently installed Windows Vista Ultimate on my desktop. I have had the discs for awhile but for lack of time and also a good reason to leave XP behind I didn’t have much motivation to install Vista. Then the other day I set up a computer for my brother-in-law that had a 64-bit version of Vista on it. I was so impressed with its looks and features that I decided to finally go for it. So far I really like what I see. I think it pays to let new OSes work the bugs out for a year or so. The biggest improvement is the cool new interface but I am also learning about the nice new features under the hood. So far I don’t see any reason at all to go back to XP. There haven’t been any compatibility issues with my hardware or programs. I still don’t see any reason to go out and buy Vista to install on a computer that has XP. But if you have a chance to get it free then why not?
Andrea Beth
8 lbs. 5 oz. 20 1/4″
June 20, 2008 12:58 PM
Cute baby pictures coming soon.
Get a nice free download this month at christianaudio.com - Bunyan’s classic Pilgrim’s Progress.
In April Michelle and I went to Poland to visit her sister Alison who is working for AIM teaching English at their school Gateway to English. We were there for ten days and the following video slide show contains photos and videos from our trip. There are a number of clips of Alison teaching her classes. We spent about three days in and around the city of Krakow in southern Poland. We were at the site of the Auschwitz concentration camp for one entire day and spent another half day at an underground salt mine. This was a once-in-a-lifetime trip during which we left all of our children at home with my wife’s parents. We thoroughly enjoyed it but we were glad to be home again with our children and have been so busy that it took till now to do a blog post about the trip.
Click here to view the video slide show of our trip.
Click below to see the photos.
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| Poland Pictures |
The other night we got together with some of my wife’s cousins to play music. You learn something new every day. Jesse Ogburn demonstrated an instrument I have never heard of - the common hand saw. It’s quite an art and I could only manage to make it screech one or two notes. But by bending the saw and dragging a violin bow across the smooth edge it is possible to torture a melody out of it. Here he is playing Amazing Grace; background noise courtesy of the Funk house.
I have experimented with Linux many times and have been impressed by the way you can sample an OS by using a live CD. However the Linux people have officially outdone themselves. The newest and best way to try the latest Unbuntu Linux is with Wubi. With a simple Windows desktop installer you can painlessly install Ubuntu Hardy Heron (and uninstall it in Windows as well) without all the boot configuration and partitioning that a manual install demands.
I installed Hardy on an ancient desktop that I run mainly as a backup server in the hope that it would outperform XP. Unfortunately it was noticeably slower although I think this may have been because I did not allow it enough install space requiring more swapping of disc space. Otherwise I was impressed, almost enough that I want to try it on my main desktop or my laptop.
Hardy immediately recognized all hardware except my wireless network card which took just a little fiddling in the network settings.
There are a few reasons why I would not use Linux as a primary OS. One of them is just the extra work it takes to get everything running right. Yes there are many wonderful Linux programs out there but you simply have to have Windows compatibility in our world. Even using WINE, it’s just too strange and different for the average user who is accustomed to Windows. Another thing is that I don’t know of any Internet accountability software that works with Windows. I did a little googling on this and possibly there are some things in the works. But once again it is important that things like that are accessible to the average user and I think it will be awhile yet until something good turns up in that department. I would love to know if I am wrong there.
I think there is little reason to be spending a fortune for an OS or for software for a personal computer these days. (Even though a nice Mac still appeals to me.) Business is another matter. Commercial software has vast advantages over open source stuff in a lot of ways but I think the gap may be narrowing.