Ta-da!
This is the last day of March NaBloPoMo! From here on out there will be no pressure to post something every single day…so there should be no more filler crap like this:
The End!
Counting down….
Only 2 more posts after today for the NaBloPoMo challenge! Can’t say any more than that, really. The momma needs to work on her grant! Ciao!
The End!
Deadlines Schmedlines
We must apologize, but the momma has several deadlines coming up so the next week’s entries may be kind of blah……
- Income taxes
- Progress report for grant …. the expanded version
- Flexible spending account 2007
- Two manuscripts for publication
Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
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NBC Heroes/USA The 4400
There are only two television shows that we watch regularly, Heroes (NBC) and The 4400 (USA network). Does anyone out there know when the new seasons start? There’s no mention on either website.
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Happy St. Patrick’s Day!
How the momma spent the day……
- Showered with Irish Spring
- Put on a green dress
- Ate Lucky Charms for breakfast
- Took her Irish Setter for a walk (I pretended to be one)
- Using just her eyes, smiled at a neighbor who was walking his Irish Terrier
- Found a 4-leaf clover on the way to work
- Pinched everyone in the office who wasn’t wearing green
- Left work early to drink Killian’s at the pub
- Kept laughing and saying “Irish I were drunk!”
- Almost forgot to help me make a list for today’s post
- Passed out while still typi
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The Silver Tsunami
The baby boom began 65 years ago and now the silver tsunami is coming toward us. In a few years, social security, long-term care facilities, and families will be overwhelmed with a doubling or tripling of senior citizens by the year 2030.
President Roosevelt signs the Social Security act on August 14, 1935
A few years ago, the momma went to an Alzheimer disease lecture given by Dr. Richard Powers, a neuropathologist from the University of Alabama at Birmingham (btw, an excellent speaker, sensitive with a great sense of humor!). He listed 3 basic tips for successful aging.
- Walk 2 miles every day
- Burns calories
- Lowers blood pressure
- Makes your butt look better
- Improves overall physical health
- Lowers risk of disease
- Have 5 really good friends
- High level of engagement with life
- Interactions with a variety of other humans increase cognitive function
- Avoid long periods of depression. Get treatment.
- Stress hormones are associated with memory loss
Start now. Become a good example and enjoy yourself in the process. If you’re a multitasker, take an antidepressant, call 5 of your friends and go for a 2-mile walk!
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11 things the momma must do this weekend
Let’s get rolling!
- Get tax stuff together
- Laundry
- Fuel up the car
- Grocery shopping
- Get receipts for FLEX reimbursement
- Help me add two more entries to wordpress
- Recycle
- Pay bills
- Work on manuscript
- Work on grant progress report
- Wash car
I suppose I will have to “hound” her to get them all done!
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Bad speeling and grammar all over the internets
So, it is NAtional BLog POsting MOnth and the March category is lists. This is our first time doing this and it is much harder to keep up than we thought it would be. Today we will list common grammar and spelling mistakes. How boring is that?
- without further adieu - vs. - without further ado
- for all intensive purposes - vs. - for all intents and purposes
- Pre-Madonna - vs. - Prima Donna
- This is definately boring - vs. - This is definitely boring
- I would like to meet a women - vs. - I would like to meet a woman
- You’re pants are to tight - vs. - Your pants are too tight
- Your going to regret reading this - vs. - You’re going to regret reading this
- I bit my tounge - vs. - I bit my tongue
- Thats bad grammer - vs. - That’s bad grammar
- Your a whimp - vs. - You’re a wimp
- A friendly woman from the countryside and a snobbish city woman were seated side-by-side on an airplane. The country girl naturally asked “So, where are you from?” The snobby lady said “From a place where we know better than to use a preposition at the end of a sentence.” The country girl sat quietly for a few minutes and then asked “So, where are you from, bitch?”
Gosh darn! English is hard!
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Scan you dig it?
The momma is looking for a good quality scanner that can scan transparent media, such as x-ray film. The momma does scientifical research. In her research she needs to scan x-ray images of protein blots. In order to analyze them with her computer, she needs a good scanner….
This is a protein blot. The black blobs are the protein that have been sorted by an electric field.
But that is all beside the point. For this is a list for NaBloPoMo day 3!
Random stuff about scanners (and adobe photoshop) we have learned thus far:
- Resolution: the detail of an image stated in dots per inch (dpi). Resolution can be interpolated or optical. Interpolation is a software technique that “guesses” and fills in gaps between the pixels that were actually scanned. Optical is the true resolution.
- Sharpness: The optical quality of the scanner lens and the brightness of the scanner’s light source will determine the sharpness and clarity of edges in the image.
- TWAIN: Technology Without An Interesting Name – it is the driver type used for most scanners.
- Most scanners only scan film negative sized transparencies
- OCR: Optical Character Recognition – used to capture text as.,.er,well…text, not just a photograph of text. In other words, it should be editable with a word processor.
- CCD (Charge-Coupled Device) array – commonly used for image capture in scanners. It is the main component of a scanner. More expensive, and better quality scans than CIS (next). This technology is also used in digital cameras.
- CIS: contact image sensor – newer technology than CCD. lighter and cheaper but lacking in CCD optical resolution.
- Unsharp Mask: used for sharpening photography. For graphics, “sharpen” and “sharpen more” are used. It is best when used as the last step in image processing when the specific purpose of the image is known.
- Radius: the width of the edge rims. Radius = 1.0 is best for most applications, and the better ranges are from 0.6 to 2.0. Too high of a radius setting will cause halos at edges of the objects in the image. In general, use a smaller radius for fine detail, such as facial features, and larger radii for objects.
- Threshold: the distance between tonal values before the filter will determine an edge. Facial features need thresholds of more than 1 to 2. Objects will be better with 0 to 1. The threshold in unsharp mask is different than line art threshold.
- Amount: controls brightness of the edge differences. Usually set between 80 to 120.
If you include the three subheadings of unsharp mask, this list does equal eleven, which was in the original plan.
The End!