Saturday, December 17, 2011

Sunday, October 16, 2011

Handy Food Storage Site


I try to always error on the side of conservativeness when throwing out stored food past their posted date. This is sometimes a waste since I love having food stock on hand for being creative and being able to create something at a moment's notice. Here are a couple of sources of information on shelf life for ingredients and left overs:

Still Tasty is a great site for information on most ingredients and left overs as far as storage and retention. It contains references on how long you can safely store Fruits, Vegetables, Dairy, Meats as well as dry ingredients such as grains, Herbs and Spices and snacks in addition to non refrigerated items such as Oils, Beverages and even water.

Another fun chart from another source are food condiments in the shape of a periodic table.


Let me know if you run into any food preservation and Storage information.

Tuesday, September 06, 2011

Socialism is a Philosophy of Failure


There are clear and distinct lines in this coming elections which can be summarized very succinctly:



  • Today's Democrat Party = Liberals = Socialist
  • Today's Republican Party = Moderates = Yesteryear's (JFK's) Democrats
  • Washington's Democrat & Republicans are mostly elitist more interested in the status quo or more government.
  • Today's Tea Party = Reagan Republicans 

"Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery..." -- Winston Churchill

Saturday, July 30, 2011

Non-Free Streaming Television/Movie Program Choices

From a July 28th Fox News Article: Netflix vs. Vudu vs. Amazon and More: A consumer guide to streaming video

Amazon Prime ($79 per year):
Amazon's new Prime streaming service just announced access to NBC videos, in addition to the new CBS library, bringing the total number of videos available to more than 9,000. The service costs $79 annually for unlimited access to all those shows and movies, and has gotten decent reviews. Don't let the price scare you.

"Ultimately Prime Instant Videos is actually quite good," wrote Engadget in a February review -- while noting that the quality isn't as good as that from Netflix. If that's too much, the Amazon Instant Video service lets you rent individual movies at reasonable prices ($1 to $4 for SD; $2 to $5 for HD), with access to more than 90,000 videos --  a whopping selection.

BestBuy / CinemaNow ($1.99 - $3.99 per video)
BestBuy bought the CinemaNow streaming service in 2009 to offer up the 14,000 available titles. The company offers no monthly subscription , but those many movies and TV shows are available for as little as $1.99 -- though add a buck for high definition.

The site has fallen by the wayside however, while Hulu, Netflix and others have soared in popularity. If the company's plans to embed the service in DVD players and TVs takes off, it could make a comeback.

Blockbuster on Demand ($2.99 - $3.99 per video):
Netflix customers are fuming over recent price hikes, and Blockbuster has the solution -- free 30-day accounts for irate users looking for something new. The service offers more than 10,000 video titles at $2.99 to $3.99, as well access to video games for all the major platforms.
Blockbuster says it will have several new releases well ahead of Netflix and Redbox, and the service has received generally favorable reviews -- though  there's one big caveat: No HD, at least not yet. But if you're into video games, the option to rent those as well is compelling.

Hulu Plus ($7.99 per month):
Offering a wealth of TV shows, including full seasons and full series, as well as access to movies, the Hulu streaming service is wildly popular among TV fans -- probably because it's free. Hulu Plus offers a deeper catalog of videos and content at a higher resolution, 720p format for $7.99 a month.

Subscriptions aren't publicly available to the newly released service yet, and paying subscribers have to deal with just as many ads as everyone else. The experience is great on an iPhone, PCMag.com recently noted -- but "if deep content is your main concern, however, Netflix gives you a better variety of content … for a dollar less without commercials," the site noted.

Netflix ($8 per month):
The granddaddy of streaming video may have turned off as many as 2.5 million users with the recent news that prices would go up as much as 60%. Netflix plans to charge $16 a month for services that used to cost $10 a month when bundled together, for example. It's still charging $8 a month for streaming, which it launched late last year.

Price increases aside, Netflix is still the giant in the space, with 22.8 million subscribers in the U.S as of March -- that's more than cable giant Comcast. And it offers access to over 17,000 titles. But will it remain on top?

RedBox:
RedBox doesn't stream video -- yet. But the buzz is on that the video rental company -- you've probably seen one of the 27,000 kiosks the company keeps nationwide -- will offer a service soon. In April, the company sent out a survey to customers asking how interested they would be in a $3.95 monthly package that would provide unlimited video streaming as well as four free DVD rentals.

Vudu / Wal-Mart ($1 - $5.99 per video):  
Wal-Mart Stores bought video-streaming service Vudu.com 18 months ago and now offers 20,000 titles that can be viewed on almost any device with Internet access, from computers to televisions to Sony's PlayStation3 and other Blu-Ray disc players. The company claims it will offer movies the same day they come out on DVD, a big selling point if true.

Movies are available at Walmart.com to rent for $1 to $5.99 or to purchase for $4.99 and up. Wal-Mart is not offering subscriptions, making its service more similar to Apple's iTunes, which charges $3.99 to rent newly released movies and $14.99 to buy a movie.

Sunday, July 17, 2011

Media Computers

The problem with Playon and TVersity is that they require a server that is on all the time. I will invest eventually in a home server but for today I wish to free up the burden of home desktop from constantly running to support these services. To accomplish this I needed a low cost solution which I found with the Dell Media Computer.

This computer starts at $299 is a perfect fit to replace the sometimes limited server based services. It includes DVD, a HDMI interface and with a wireless keyboard I found including cable, tax and shipping was under $399 for everything. (A little more for Blue-Ray).

This system is a Windows 7 PC. I set up the desktop to simplify the interface as much as possible (but did not use Windows Media Center) to create links to Hulu, our NextFlix queue as well as some of our favourite video episode sites such as CBS, SyFy, Food Network and Home and Garden TV.

There is so much content available with many of our favourite programs available the day after they have aired has created our sole source of family entertainment without antenna, cable or satellites connections or monthly fees. (We do pay only for Netflix at this time but are considering options.).

Thursday, March 31, 2011

Bring Misplaced Off-Screen Windows Back to Your Desktop

This is an article is copied from http://www.howtogeek.com/:

If you’ve ever hooked up your laptop to a secondary monitor and then disconnected without remembering to move the windows back to the primary desktop, you’ve probably encounted this problem.

The application is running. You can see it in the taskbar, but you can’t see it on the screen, because it still thinks it’s running on the secondary monitor. You try and use right-click, Move, but that doesn’t do anything, and the window doesn’t move anywhere. You end up rebooting and cursing Microsoft.

There’s a simple trick to get around this. First make sure you’ve alt-tabbed to the window, or clicked on it once to bring it into focus. Then right-click on the taskbar and choose Move

At this point, you should notice that your cursor changes to the “Move” cursor, but you still can’t move anything.

Just hit any one of the arrow keys (Left, Right, Down, Up), move your mouse, and the window should magically “pop” back onto the screen.

Note: For keyboard savvy people, you can just alt-tab to the window, use Alt+Space, then M, then Arrow key, and then move your mouse.

This should work on any version of Windows. It’s really amazing how many people are not aware of this little trick.

Update: Note that you can also right-click on the taskbar and choose to Cascade your open windows, which will often help bring the windows back onto the screen.