Flickr/RemarkableOhio hits 100

If you are travelling around the state during the summer and happen across an Ohio historical marker, take a picture and add it to our map.

http://www.flickr.com/map/?&q=remarkableohio&fLat=39.842666&fLon=-82.650146&zl=11

Today I added the 100th picture tagged “remarkableohio” to the map.  There are a few duplicates and some places have markers with different information on each side.  The picture above is the “Side B” of the “Mad River and Lake Erie Railroad” marker in Tiffin.  We don’t quite have 100 different markers, but we should soon.

The main reference for Ohio historical markers is the Ohio Historical Society’s site: http://www.remarkableohio.org

Some of the markers in the database don’t have addresses.  There have been several markers that I haven’t been able to find at all.  Camp Ball was three or four blocks from Frost and Perry.  Arlington’s marker simply says – South of Findlay in the town of Arlington.  With the Flickr map I can usually get within 50 feet of the actual location.

Today we went for a ride to a town about 20 miles away – New Riegel.  I thought this one would be an easy one because the OHS site says the marker is at 41 N. Perry St.  The guy that lives there said he didn’t even know the town of 226 people had an historical marker.

I went to the store next door and they said the post master might know where it was.  No luck there.  The post master pointed me back to the house where I started, explaining that guy had lived in New Riegel all his life.

According to the OHS, the marker says something about the Parish and Convent, so my last trip was to the Catholic church on N. Perry Street.  They didn’t know anything about the marker either.

The search is half the fun.  I have met a lot of interesting people while looking for these markers.  The funniest thing that happened was out on Put-In-Bay.  A lady at a shop said she knew someone that would know where to find a marker.  She asked if I had a cell phone and then pulled out a 8.5 x 11 piece of card stock to find his phone number.  I asked if that was the “official” Put-In-Bay phone book.  Her comment: “White pages and yellow pages.” It did have printing on the front and back.

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Efficiency Tip #76 – CPU Affinity

Here is something you can use to isolate processes that consume a lot of your computer’s processor power.  If you have a computer with more than one CPU, you can benefit from this tip.

affinity.png

If you have a program that bogs your computer down, you can force the program to only use one of the processors on your computer.  Go into the Task Manager (Shift-Ctrl-Esc) and click the Processes tab.  You will get a list of each program running on your computer.  In the CPU column will be a number between 0 and 100.  The higher that number, the more of your computer’s processing is being consumed by that process.  Select the process with the highest number and right-click it.  From the list select Set Affinity.  This will pop up the window shown above.  Uncheck one of the CPUs and click OK.  This will force the power-hungry program to use only one processor and give you the power you need to do other things.

TSPY=1.39

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I touched an iPhone

It was my turn to run the slides in church today.  When I went into the sound booth, the sound guy was already there and he had an iPhone.

My first impression – it is smaller than I thought it would be.  For some reason I expected the whole thing it be bigger… smooth, like an iPod, but bigger.  It’s probably just the advertising that Apple has done, making it appear larger than life.

Once I touched it I was impressed.  In the 60 seconds I messed with it, everything worked as easily as it was advertised.  I flipped through some pictures.  Did the two-finger zoom.  I then used a browser to open a page and do the zoom thing there.  The connection was slow, but I have heard that from other people… a feature of EDGE.

I didn’t make a call, so I don’t know how the device handles the task I would use it most to do.  That’s the thing.  The iPhone is a phone.  It does a lot of cool things, but it’s a phone.  I wouldn’t want to carry something as big as an iPhone around with me all the time.  I have a RAZR.  It cost me $10.  It’s compact and it has great sound/voice quality when I use it to make calls.  It has a lot of other features that I barely use… because I use it as a phone.

If you travel all the time and need to get on the web, the iPhone may be worth the expense.  $600 is a lot to pay for a phone when you can buy a much more powerful laptop for the same amount and get a 14 inch display to boot.

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Efficiency Tip #75 – Bulk Rename

I have talked before about the fact that I have a lot of picture files.  Like most digital cameras, mine names all the pictures with sequential names: IMG_0001, IMG_0002, etc.

I put my pictures into folders based on the event where the picture was taken.  If I am going to do something else with a set of pictures (like give a copy to my parents), it is better to name the actual files with a descriptive name.  My parents don’t use my Neanderthal-like folder structure.

Here is an easy way to rename a group of files using the Rename command built into Windows.

1 – Highlight all the files you wish to rename.

2 – Press F2.

3 – Type the new name all the files will receive.

Windows will rename all the files with the file name you specify in step three and follow the name with a sequential number.

TSPY=1.02

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Efficiency Tip #74 – Enable ClearType

Windows XP has a nice feature called ClearType that is disabled by default.  Your screen can look a lot more clear if you turn this feature on… especially if you have an LCD panel display.

ClearType uses anti-aliasing to make curved parts of letters look smoother.  This makes them easier to read.

Here are two pictures – one with anti-aliasing (top) and one without (bottom).

The top picture is easier to read because of the anti-aliasing.  ClearType does this same thing, but with text on your screen.

To turn ClearType on, right-click a blank part of the desktop and select Properties.  Click the Appearance tab and then click the Effects button.  There should be a check-box for “use the following method to smooth edges of screen fonts.”  That is where you will find ClearType.

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