Hands on History at Dakota City

Dit da da dit -Morse
Doo bee doo bee Doo -Sinatra
I use one of theae
don't leave home without your Express papers

iTunes Radio

My little dog died yesterday.  I played my go to song for mourning : Patti Smith - Paths That Cross. I played it in the iTunes radio mode.  Apple followed it with Lucinda Williams - Are you all right?

Technology works and can comfort.
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and so it goes
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Give 5

Well my spring 2015 volunteer work has been scheduled. In May I've agreed to help at Dakota City Heritage Village on 5 seperate days. One of which I'll be school master for the One Room School program. 2 of which, I'll be an apprentice blacksmith. Once a store keeper and the fifth to be determined as needed.

In 2014, other commitments interfered with my being able to participate much there. It is so rewarding.  Interested kids and adults learn by hands on history. One of my favorite things I do, is equate new fangled activities with a 1900 counterpart. Ordering Online is like the Wards Catalog shopping. Text messages are like telegrams.  Kids get a kick out of it.

Up in Aitkin, it even came up as fellow visitors to the Depot Museum were curious about artifacts, that were familiar to me from Dakota City. Also in Aitkin this year, my Log Cabin project is moving forward in a big way. The vintage logs from a depression era resort cabin have been delivered and stacked on my property in Glen. Reassembly will commence after site selection. I've offered to document the process for the historical socierty, as they have a book about Aitkin County resorts in process. This very afternoon, I discussed this with the director.

Three days with John Wick

What started as a laugh, snowballed into something nice. 

Day 1 Friday

A trailer for some action movie barely registers in my mind, as the bit culminated in "Now on . Blu-Ray (BD),  DVD and digital HD" (sound effect dun dun dun)

John Wick

Shortly after, my father's phone number was dialed and the above information was repeated to him.

He laughed out loud.  He immediately said he wanted to buy a copy and give it to his close friend JOHN WICK!

My sister received a copy of the title cad in an MMS text- "Ever heard of this movie?"

Her reply made me chuckle. "Sure, Denzel Washington plays a guy that lives in the woods and talks a lot :-) "

The name John Wick resonates in our family. Our father spends about 30 weeks a year, over the 12 mos of the year. It is extremely remote, being only a mile from Western Ontario. That mile, is a lake. Surrounded by the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. The asphalt enclave known as the Gunflint Trail is treasured by anyone that had ever visited. Only in the late 20s, did white people start going there. Dad's cabin dates back to a lumberjack's log camp from the 30s.  It is right on the water. In the 50s, a more modern building was built a bit further back.

As mentioned, dad is up there sometimes 3 weeks a month. His main source of company is his trusty dog Gunner and a year round neighbor, the 80 something John Wick.

This John Wick is long winded. He's a very nice man.

Having researched the movie I had just learned about, it was found to have great buzz. Rotten Tomatoes certified it as "Fresh" that's better than two thumbs up from Ebert and Siskel, because RT aggregates many many reviews.

I decide to rent it. I spring for the extra $1 for the HD on Google Play. I settle down and watch it in the comfort of the man cave. Leather seats, surround sound and the 60" screen serve it up right. Popcorn could wait, it was like I was late, despite having complete control. The popcorn was never made. My eyes were glued to the screen the entire time.

Day 2

Digital rentals last 48 hours after first play. I could watch it again. Was it just a fluke? No, even on the smaller upstairs TV (36" ) it held up a second time just twelve hours from my first viewing.  It was Saturday, the day for shopping. I stocked up on beer and headed to Target. In the movie section John Wick was offered $20 for BD and $15 for DVD. At first glance, the DVD did not have bonus short films. I am a notorious spend thrift. But when I remembered the $5 target gift card in my wallet, I sprang for the higher priced option.

At check out, the clerk noticed the cardboard outer sleeve containing the plastic BD case had a crease. It had been noticed but didn't care. Then I gushed that I had never "rented a movie and bought the disk the very next day before. The clerk pulled it back, read the title and said dismissively that he'd never heard of it. I assured him I had not either until the night before. He double checked the title again to help form a memory.

On the way home, I considered swinging by my sister's place and lending them the disk. I was pretty certain they didn't have a Blu-Ray so I went home. Opening the package there were two disks. Thinking that was odd for a Blu-Ray, upon further inspection, the second disk was a DVD! So my $20 " splurge" which in turn was subsidized by a gift card had yielded me two copies at $10 each, not including the card balance. ($7.50 ea with).

After watching some of the "making of -" featurettes, I switched to YouTube.  There I started watching on line reviews of this movie. One stuck out. Chris Stuckman. His views very nearly matched mine. His 2013 top ten list was almost entirely in my Netflix, Hulu or Amazon watch lists. The ones I had seen, we were in complete agreement. I look forward to following this guy.

Bottom line. Watch John Wick. If you cringe at violence, don't. If you love dogs more than people, ignore that and watch it.

I say what I mean. 

K

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Sent from Gmail Mobile via my Ip / KBF "Je suis Le Oignon"

Grade C

today I received news that an aspect of me is normal. Until that news. it had been concluded by me that I was sub standard. My vision has been deteriorating lately. I am 51 so that should not be surprising, and it wasn't.  A Complete physical was scheduled as well as a vision test. I lamented at my poor performance of reading line 7 n the chart. Recently My eyes have had to focus, almost like  camera to be able to see correctly. That concerned me as this was relatively new. 

Today I found my left eye is 20:20 and my right is 20:25 very close to normal, but but far better than what I was expecting. 

Perspective, as a young man and boy, my vision had always been better than 20:20. Even after screen time became a reality, professionals had been impressed with my vision. 

Please excuse the following as it will come off as arrogant. 

I was complaining about having Normal vision. The same thing was explained about my memory "Loss" I still have superior empty. It has just deteriorated over time. Because of the higher baseline, my complaint is related to falling from Superior to normal. 

But, I  am a slob and a bad house Keeper.

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Sent from Gmail Mobile via my Ip / KBF "Je suis Le Oignon"

John Wick

GOne of my father"s real life friends is named...

John Wick

With a major home video of the October 2014 film of the same name, I saw an ad. Immediately I called my dad. 

He laughed. But as I looked up info on the movie, it became one I wanted to watch. Soon after I had rented the HD stream from Google and watched it on a 60" HD screen. It may be the only reason such a huge TV was ever made.

Too bad missed it in Cinema

Tech I love: Dynamo usb light

This handy device is great for those times power is out. 120 cranks in 2 minutes make 10 minutes of bright LED light. The usb A charge port works while cranking. So if your phone is dead, you can still make an emergency call. Well you do need your charger cord

Ice Driving

Screen print map of my Ice drive

Last weekend, I drove out on the ice, and took some videos.  One was a time lapse style, during which I also had get sat tracking.  When I got home, I wanted to find some version of What Power Art (aka Cold Song) and discovered a set of musicians called Paris'Click their video of the song blew me away, and I was instant distracted from my modest video project, I bought their EP, and put all their videos on a Playlist.

On Facebook and Twitter I announced it as genius.  Today, they tweeted about a new video and asked my opinion.  I could not believe how close a concept that video was to my humble time lapse.  140 characters meh! So here I blog.


My Humble iPhone time lapse driving on Ice.  It ends abruptly as I drive up the boat landing into the town of Excelsior.

This is the google map of the ice drive. or should be. this screen print does it better.  It was just over a mile, but I easily drove several miles earlier that day.  The video from the tweet

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@ke7in What do you think of this one ? https://t.co/h3ACGC2Agp #trashme #stunts #paris #rock #dangerous #crazy
— ♫ Paris'Click ♫ (@ParisClick) January 26, 2015

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is above. It is wild and makes my Ice drive look Tame
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and so it goes
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Aunt in Vietnam

 

Photo Effects Creator Free - iPhone

This app for iPhone has some bugs, but there are some tricks I have figured out, that gets around them.  The comment section is filled with reviews of users that love the apps, but find they have to restart their iPhone if (1)a chosen photo fails, or (2) they want to make another one right away.

(1) choose high resolution photos, revert them to their original state if they have been edited in iPhone.  If by chance I want to keep the edited version, I will save it somewhere else, then reintroduce that saved photo as a "new" photo on my iphone, then revert the edited version.  Now the "new" is original too, but looks like the way you want.

(2) close the app between projects.  Not just going to home screen and clicking on the icon again. I am just a 9 day old user of my first iPhone, so if you know how to shut down apps, bear with me here.
     Quickly double press the home button. This calls up a carousel of apps in the order of last use.  This list is perpetual.  To "hard close" an app, long press and simultaneously swipe your finger up.  The app should disapear from the carousel, and next time you start it, it will be "fresh". If by chance the long press swipe causes the app to start, you did not press long enough before you swiped.

http://downloadapp.info/26Omegle-Free-588186833.html