Bored? Make a Flowchart!

These are fun. They're flowcharts on flowcharts. The first is on whether you should make a flowchart, and the second is how to read flowcharts. Don't know how well you can see them here, so if you need to, click on the image and it'll come up (bigger) in a new window:





Fun, huh? Makes me want to work in an office again. Not. (hee hee hee)

We Love LibriVox!

When was the last time you listened to a good audio book? And when, I ask you in all seriousness, was the last time your kids did? I bring this up 'cause about a couple of years ago I found a great resource for FREE audiobooks on the web (of course it's free, that's what I live for)(hee hee hee). I'm referring to LibriVox. Their site is filled with free classic audiobooks, all for the downloading. The site has a catalog and you can search by genre, which I do, for "children." They have hundreds of entries there, some of which are short stories and the rest of which are full books. One of my children has gotten a bunch of Sherlock Holmes stories, and the other is currently into both the L. Frank Baum Oz books and the Tom Swift adventure books (by various authors). They both listen to their stories as they go to sleep or do things quietly in their rooms (which in our house happens very rarely). It's a great way to keep your kids interested in reading, especially if you want them to learn a bit about some classic books. I say "classic" 'cause LibriVox, like Project Gutenberg, only deals with out-of-copyright books (ie, pre-1923). That's not so bad, though, because there are a ton of really, REALLY good books on there free for the taking.

If you're interested in getting one of these books and are hesitant 'cause you've not done this before, it's easy: go to LibriVox.org, click on "Librivox catalog" on the box on the left, and run from there, filling in either an author or a title, or look below that and you can click on "browse entire catalog." Assuming you found the book you want, you then get to that page, and scroll down to where each file (or chapter) is named. After the file name, there are several several file types listed. Right click on the type you want (I usually choose the mp3@128kps) and tell them the location to which you'd like to save the file (I put them in my "downloads" folder). You have to do that with each file. Relatively speaking, an easy process, and fast, depending on the speed of your connection. After you get all the files you need (or want), you just need to play them, either on your computer or your mp3 player or (my choice for my kids) on a cd. I'll leave those directions to you. But if you need any directions on MS Media Player, I've got it in XP and Vista, so send me a note and I'll send directions.

I've gotten probably 25 books from LibriVox so far, and am currently work on another. I hope you all check it out and give it a try. It's a great idea well executed!

Couldn't Resist...

Nothing Fun, Just Interesting...

My son has played "follow the links" from the lolcats site to the (lol)dogs site to a rather cynical but often quite silly site called "FailBlog." It's filled with mostly pictures but occasionally video of stuff that, well, just didn't work as their owners had planned. He pulled up something today that looks so benign when you first glance at it, but, well, you watch and see:



Did you not gasp at the end? And did you not worry that the cop was gonna blow up at any minute (at the end there)? Whew!

What's Pandora? Free Radio on Your Computer !!

Hey, have any of you checked out Pandora yet? It'a a great site that plays music based on your musical choices. Once you have an account, you create "stations" based on either a group or song or type of music. And they have TONS of tracks, so almost anything you enter gets matched to other similar songs. And did I mention it's FREE? I think they operate on the presumption that they'll introduce you to music in the genre you like but that you haven't heard before (and then order the tracks/albums through them). Which is cool with me.

My musical tastes run to the relatively obscure, so I have a station that's geared around The Pogues (Irish rock and folk), XTC (80's alternative rock), and Sara Bareilles (00's mellow pop). And I could have set up any number of other "stations" as well.

I keep this music on when I'm working on the computer or in the house in general. It's even on my internet-radio receiver in my room, so once I set it up once, I can access it from any computer or receiver.

So if you've become bored with regular broadcast radio, why not check out www.pandora.com and see what you can find there?

Gotta Post It, Just Once...

You did it, America! Woo Hoo!!!



I do not have what might be defined as "unbridled optimism." I just have more than I would have had the other side been elected. Done.

I Knew Welsh Was Tough, But This is Just Ridiculous...

With a friend, I visited Wales back in the '80s. I have two great memories of that trip. The first is of the beach at Tenby, which was at the base of an incredibly high, rocky hill, and at which the water was unbelieveably cold. The second memory was of the family we stayed with. They were my friend's boyfriend's grandparents, and they were natives of Wales, and hence English was not their first language. With the great prevalence of English (even in Wales), we didn't think this would be a problem. Hee hee hee on us. We were fine with the grandmother, and her sister and the sister's husband. But the grandfather was tough; not only was his first language Welsh, but he also whispered and was going senile. Which means that not only could we not understand what he was saying, we couldn't HEAR what he was saying. Oh boy. I guess 50 years in the mines will do that to ya...

I loved this story and thought I'd share. In Wales, as in Ireland, all road signs are printed in Welsh as well as English. So recently a sign showe up that looked like this:



Looks like a regular road sign, right? Hee hee hee... wrong. The top (the English) is correct. I guess having designed that part, the highways office then sent that text to their translation service. The translator was not available, as their email response read (in Welsh) "I am not in the office at the moment. Send any work to be translated." Hee hee again: the roads department assumed that that was the translation they asked for, and put it on the sign. Hence, the sign now read the English text on the tope and the "out of office" response on the bottom. Hee hee hee once again!