I’ve often heard it said of folks who are long-lived how awesome it must have been to have witnessed so many monumental events and changes, such as the invention and adoption of aircraft, automobiles, TVs, etc. And yet in the very recent past there have been phenomenal changes right before our eyes. So called “paradigm shifts” in what we view as commonplace conveniences are all around us. In just the last 25 years we’ve gone from yelling into “landline” phones to be heard across oceans to just flipping open cell phones that would have made James T. Kirk envious. I can send an email to someone in Australia and receive a reply within seconds. I watched the space shuttle lift off last night by just going to a NASA website on my laptop. And today, as the Patriots and Colts were both setting a shining example of how not to play football, I was able to snap some cool pics of my cats and some deer in my backyard and put them up on a web site in just a minute or two. None of these things would have been possible at the time I got out of the military 20 years ago. And yet looking back to that time I don’t recall missing any of these conveniences. And that’s where the paradigm shift comes in. These gadgets have forever changed the way we live our lives. Instant communication, instant images, and instant gratification have become the norm. The world is becoming a very different place.

Oh, and here are the pics I took today.

Some backyard visitors.

Warm and comfy cats.

This webcam is quickly becoming my favorite. Check out the clouds flowing over the ridge like water.

That’s the claim made by the observatory at the summit of Mt. Washington. And today, at least, I believe them.

Update: It’s getting worse.

At the risk of boring you, I have just one more shuttle pic which I think deserves mention. This was taken as it approached the space station. The links below the image are for wallpaper suitable versions.

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Shot from the WB57 chase plane. Too cool for words.

Who’da thunk it?

We’re in Chicago for a few days as Sarah was invited to the Illinois Authors’ Luncheon, which took place on the Navy Pier. The weather was awesome. We hit the Shedd Aquarium afterwards. Pretty fascinating. Check the snake pic below. Not bad pics for a phone camera, although the colors are weird. The tall building is not red and green. It was also nice being able to use the XV as a Bluetooth modem to access the internet on my laptop and avoid paying the hotel $10 for their wireless. 😉 We got pretty decent speeds on the EV-DO network around Chicago.

Just got a new XV6700 PDA/Phone from Verizon. Very sweet toy. Lots of bells and whistles, but the thing I like most of all is the “push” email feature. As soon as someone sends an email to my campus Exchange account, it shows up on the phone within a minute or two. For an email junkie like me, this is ambrosia. 🙂

And because my 740iL is in the shop yet again, I’m driving a loaner. Maybe the dealer felt sorry for me or maybe they feel I’ve paid my dues, because they gave me a brand-spanking new 330i for a few days. Last night I made a late run to the store (for kitty litter, of all things) and discovered the joy of adaptive headlights. These headlights turn as you move the steering wheel so they are lighting your path around a bend or corner. There’s a 90 degree turn off the main road and down a side road on my way home that’s particularly hairy because it’s very dark and the side road has very steep drops on both sides. Overshoot the corner and you’ll be calling AAA to tow you out of the field below. With these headlights, the minute you start to turn the wheel, the path around the corner is suddenly illuminated. And as you drive through the turn, the headlights shift back forward. Very trick, indeed. The only thing I don’t like about this car is the color. I can only imagine what folks think when they see me driving a candy apple red BMW at my age. 😉

The last gadget isn’t really a gadget at all. It’s a website. But Google Earth is still fun to play with. Apparently it has given birth to a whole new hobby of treasure hunting for strange images, such as the KC-135 refueling the Galaxy C-5 in mid-air. Gotta love technology.

The following programs, listed in no particular order, all work very well, contain no spyware, and are free. I’ve used all of them extensively and recommend them with no reservations.

Eraser will permanently erase a file or folder. It will overwrite the filespace 35 times with random numbers, making the data stored there virtually unrecoverable. The only caveat I’ve found is using the “Erase all free space” option on the C:\ drive may overwrite or damage NTLDR, which is a critical file on WindowsXP. Therefore, I recommend not using that option. The best facet of Eraser is the ability to right-click on a file and choose Erase. Simple, easy, effective.

Allway Sync is a great folder syncronization program. It will keep a folder or directory on your hard drive exactly sync’d to one on another drive, say an external USB drive or USB thumb drive. You can even set it up so that plugging in a USB thumb drive will activate the program and sync files automatically.

Filezilla is my FTP program of choice. I like the Explorer-like interface and the drag-and-drop usability.

JDiskReport will lay out for you the space used by files and folders on a hard drive. It’s great if you’re trying to figure out where all your hard drive space went.

Beyond Compare is perfect for comparing two directories so you can see where they differ. It makes a pretty good backup system, too. Ok, it’s not totally free, but you get a fully functioning version for 30 days, which is great if you just need to compare directories once or twice.

GAIM is a multi-platform instant messaging client which works with all IM services. It’s handy if you have friends using AOL, MSN, Yahoo, etc who can’t agree on one service.

Google Earth is just plain fun. You can see a map of an area and then flip to an aerial view or combine the two. The folks at Google are constantly updating the capabilities, so it gets better and better.

SDP Downloader allows you to extract video files from direct play links, like the ones in the post below about the space shuttle external fuel tanks. Just copy and paste the link to the website into SDP, and it will grab the video file and allow you to save it on your hard drive.

Rainlender is a very cool desktop calendaring program. I only use it at its basic level, just so I have a current calendar on my desktop. But you can really put its many options to use for a fully functioning calendaring system.

Spambayes is the one of the best client-based spam filters. It can be installed as an Outlook plug-in or used with POP3 or IMAP clients. It learns over time and very quickly becomes an effective spam filtering program.

Active Ports shows you which programs and ports are accessing the network from your PC at that instant. It will also show you the remote IP addresses and ports to which your PC is connected. It allows you to kill any network-using program and uses color coding to differentiate between outgoing and incoming packets.

One looking up.

http://mfile.akamai.com/18566/wmv/etouchsyst2.download.akamai.com/18355/wm.nasa-global/sts-121/right_aft_srb_camera.asx

http://mfile.akamai.com/18566/wmv/etouchsyst2.download.akamai.com/18355/wm.nasa-global/sts-121/right_forward_srb_camera.asx

The separation sequence is awesome. The vids show the entire flight all the way to splashdown in the ocean.