Here’s an interesting musical. The Doctor regenerates and needs a new companion. A “must see” if you are a Doctor Who fan.
Here’s a direct link to the video.
This is starring Travis Slavin as Doctor Who and Elizabeth Oldak as his companion. I don’t know who they are but they deserve to be mentioned by name!
Tagged Doctor Who, funny, music, television
Last night I got to see the Aerial Angels at the Detroit Institute of Arts. I saw them a year or two ago and I think they were even better the second time around. Last time they were in an open area, while this time they were on the stage in he auditorium and it felt like a real performance. The cast is excellent, a few of them wander around before the show and start interacting with the audience. They give some of the people in the audience a hard time and at first they aren’t even sure it’s the performers or something else, it makes it fun before the show even starts.
The lighting just wasn’t bright enough for many great photos and not only was the lighting dim, the performers were constantly moving. But I got some video, a few photos, and a neat animation; the video is a little long at 4 minutes but it’s got some interesting parts.
It was great. I’d see them again for sure! They have a web site at www.AngelsInTheAir.com but the schedule doesn’t really seem to be up to date…
Posted in general
Tagged acrobatics, Aerial Angels, Detroit Institute of Arts, DIA, juggling, trapeze
So it’s Saturday and I was biking Hines Drive (again). It was extra windy so it was ext a difficult biking, but I’d got the 25-mile Tour de Troit next week so I thought maybe I should do the whole 15-miles today.
It was extra green today, so that was nice, summer has been so dry, the grass has looked like straw and I’ve been waiting for tumbleweeds to roll out in front of me.
I did get to see a dear running (galloping?), I had seen it a few minutes before and waited for it to come out the woods, but it didn’t so I started biking and it caught up to me again. I didn’t even stop to take this one, it’d have gotten away if I had!
I saw this guy go zooming by on his Lightning F40. He was flying (I didn’t stop to take this one either) I saw him pass the bikers in the distance and look how far away they are still! He was flying!
Tagged bicycle, Dearborn, deer, Hines Drive, photos
One of the photo groups went out to a park at sunset to do some silhouettes. I’d never done this before so I made sure to attend.
There were twenty of us, so we were always asking the two models to move. We pretty much needed them between us and the sun.
A few of these I cropped and a few I tweaked a tiny bit in iPhone on the iPad. When I say tiny bit, I mean one click and a drag (not a dozen adjustments).
I cropped a few too. When the contrast was just right there was too much black below the figures.
If I’d gotten a little lower on this one, I think she’d really look like she was floating.
I was surprised at how much red you could still see in the ribbon in this shot.
The bicycle was tricky because she needed to go slow and also not accidentally ride down the hill she was atop of.
This one I think I cropped too much, but maybe I was cropping something out. Regardless, she’s too much of the image but I love this one, I need to find the original and take another look at it.
I took hundreds of bad ones. Why? Because they kept moving. We didn’t have control over them moving, so we just kept snapping. But I got lots of good ones too!!!
Tagged people, photography, photos, silhouette, sunset
I live alone, so buying in bulk at CostCo is tricky sometimes. If I eat it all, it’s generally a big value but what if I don’t eat it all? 
I see some people at the store saying “I won’t eat all 36 eggs before the expire” but I ask, but are you saving money even if you only eat 24 of them and throw the rest away. Personally, I hate to be wasteful but paying more for less eggs somewhere else is also wasteful.
In case you don’t know, CostCo is a bulk warehouse of food (and many other non-bulk items) similar to Sam’s Club or BJ’s warehouse.
Since you asked (you were going to ask, right?) these are my staples at CostCo.
Regular Food:
EXTRA LARGE EGGS, you have to buy 36 eggs at a time, I eat one egg a day, so sometimes the dates work out close for me, but generally I don’t get to eat them all. But even if I don’t eat all of them as long as I eat at least 24, I’m generally saving money. Since they have the date, I know how many I’ll have left near the end, so I can drop those off (in advance) at Mom’s when I visit.
WATER the 16 ounce bottles are the same price as the 8 ounce bottles (sometimes cheaper). Why would any one buy the 8 ounce bottles (water is actually good for you). Water lasts a long while and I drink a lot. The generic brand is almost always cheaper than anywhere else. To be clear: at home I drink water from the fridge, the bottled water is just to take with me on the go (I actually leave it in the garage); I know I should use reusable bottles, but that’s money and time so I think I’d end up drinking less water and more soda.
BANANAS they have a huge bag at a good price, I don’t always get through them all, but value-wise I think it works out. Regardless, I eat more of them because of that and fruit is good for me!
MICROWAVE BACON, I have two pieces a day and the date is generally months in advance. There is incredible savings in the larger packaging on this. Sometimes you can find good sales at regular grocery stores but these are really good prices (and large pieces of bacon).
LUNCH MEAT, I get the Hillshire Farms brand but I have to get 3 pounds of it! The date is usually in the future aways and the 3 different flavors are in 3 different 1 lb. bags. In the summer months I usually eat it all (I always pack a sandwich to take biking, hiking, blading or reading) and it’s a huge savings. But other times, even if I only eat about 2 pounds, I think I at least break even.
BUTTER, I put in the freezer so it lasts forever.
ORANGE JUICE I drink (at least) one big glass a day so I have no problems. I buy the Tropicana (4 ½ gallons) so it’s about the price of an average sale (but way better than non-sale prices). If they’re way on sale at a local grocery, I stock up there.
BREADS and BUNS for the above sandwiches, I buy and put in the freezer then I pull out 3 or 4 at a time and put in a zip lock bag.
MILK, I only have to buy a gallon and it’s generally a great price (or an okay price), I usually get this here.
CEREAL, I get it every so often, but I’m generally disappointed, it seems more crushed than smaller boxes, I break even I think, but I’m disappointed so I don’t often get them.
Snacks:
SUN CHIPS has 30 bags in a case and is usually good for 6-8 weeks (and will last much longer than that). Good value for me generally any time of year (but I eat more of them in the summer). It seems like they have these on sale (CostCo coupon) a few times a year.
TRAIL MIX (asst. nuts, M&Ms and raisins) has really good dates, but the price on these have really gone up. I thought they used to be in the 40-50 cent (each) range and a few months ago I noticed they were 55 cents and a few weeks ago they were 65 cents each! I passed last time, but I really miss them, I might cave on these next week. These would be a better value for me if there were 24 smaller bags in there instead of 18 larger ones…
WELCH’s CHEWY FRUIT SNACKS in the tiny bags, (I don’t know the actual name of these). These are hugely cheap and have a huge quantity and are way cheaper than at the grocery store. I like them a lot (sometimes I eat two or three), a few friends like them, but my mother thinks they’re awful!
RICE CRISPY TREATS is one I occasionally get. They last forever. A decent value. If they’re on special (CostCo coupon) it’s a great value.
Lunch:
While I’m there, I’ll get lunch. Usually a bottomless Coca-Cola and a hotdog (great value, but the hot dogs are a little boring there) or a large slice of pizza and a coke (grab some extra napkins to dab off the grease).
I get a variety of other things at CostCo, but these (and gasoline) are what pay for my membership.
This post started as a really long (slightly off topic) comment over at The Simple Dollar so I turned it into a longer post and posted it here instead.
WIth today’s (alleged) password breach of LinkedIn, it made me think to change some passwords. Why? Because I had a few accounts that use the same passwords. Yes, I know that’s bad. But they were “unimportant” to me at the time I was checking them out, but later they because more important and yet I still had a week password.
If you don’t know why it’s bad here’s why: 
Now that they’ve got your login and password, the bad guys are going to start plugging in that password into every computer system out there (Facebook, Amazon, Google, the USPS, Twitter, etc.) and knowing many of you, they’re probably all the same. Some variation doesn’t count, having your google password is gary1234google means someone’s probably going to guess for Facebook it’s gary1234facebook. There are computers out there trying to guess your password all day long, I promise you.
A few of the sites I could log into, but couldn’t find where to change my password. So I logged out and clicked “I forgot my password” and it sent information to my e-mail account on how to reset the password.
They’ve mentioned it’s only a small number of the passwords stolen (6 million), it’s assumed the other 150 million users were also compromised, they just had easier passwords to crack. They also believe that a bunch of eHarmony passwords were breached also, because many of the passwords consisted of the words “harmony” or eHarmony”. I think most of this is done for money, but do you really want some bored hacker posting your eHarmony information to your LinkedIn profile?
To clarify about my accounts, most of my accounts that deal with money all have unique passwords (and unique logins) the same goes for my places that I shop. But a few older accounts still had some older shorter passwords. Does it matter to me if someone hacks those passwords? Maybe not, but still I want my Flicker photos right where I put them.
With a site like “www.HowSecureIsMyPassword.net” you can punch in some passwords and it’ll tell you how long they might take to hack. FYI, most 8 character (letter and numbers) are about 3 hours. Try it, you don’t have to give them your password (if you don’t trust it), if you use a word, year or name, just try a different name and year, just so you can see (how many minutes or seconds it takes).
Also, keep in mind if someone has access to your e-mail, they can have your password reset at many sites and have the change password information sent to the compromised e-mail (that someone else has access). Some sites are smart, Ticketmaster when resetting your password, also deletes your credit card information.
Back to my passwords: Keep in mind some sites the function changes. Maybe when I created that password at the Post Office or FedEx, I just used it for tracking alerts or vacation holds. But now they might let me purchase postage or other things that I just couldn’t buy when I set it up with a non-complicated example.
And I know some people don’t worry about shopping accounts, because they don’t keep their credit card information on-line. But all your receipts are in there, you might want that someday (and where you had all that stuff sent). What if you sign up for that Amazon card with the $50 bonus and it automatically puts it into your account?
And when your computer remembers passwords for you, that’s great, but who else uses your computer? You trust them, but do you trust they won’t download a virus or something that will steal that information? What happens if you lose that computer or it’s stolen?
Personally, I keep passwords on my computer just to wake it up from sleep mode. Passwords on my iPhone (10 tries and it deletes all the data on it). I even keep a password on my Kindle, why? Because I occasionally check my mail or access my Amazon account on it.
I was surprised that some of the apps on my phone didn’t need new passwords. They had already authenticated to the other accounts so many seemed okay. I’m not sure I liked that…
I love learning. I also like talking (sharing) about things that (I hope) other people are interested in. Today xkcd talks about how many people each day learn something that everybody knows.
At their site, if you hover your mouse over the comic you always get an extra thought/punchline/jab. Today’s extra was “Saying 'what kind of an idiot doesn't know about the Yellowstone supervolcano' is so much more boring than telling someone about the Yellowstone supervolcano for the first time.”
xkcd is an excellent comic that talks about life, love, tech, math, science and more. Sometimes it’s just a few frames, sometimes it’s dozens. Sometimes it’s really tall and you have to scroll and once in a while it’s got a little bit of color in it. Sometimes it’s funny and sometimes it’s serious.
On Saturdays from May until September, Hines Park closes Hines Drive from 8 AM to 3:30 PM so that people can ride bicycles, walk and rollerblade in the road and not have to fear traffic.
They close the road from Outer Drive and Hines Drive (near Ann Arbor Trail in Dearborn) all the way to Hines Drive and Ann Arbor Trail (where they cross is about 12+ miles away? 7 miles?). Many of the parks along that route are open, you just need to access them from a road other than Hines Drive. The parks are the two ends are semi-barricaded off, but it does say you are allowed to drive around them at Outer Drive to get to Helms Haven Park and at Ann Arbor Trail to get to Nankin Mills Park.
The video has a bit of the Rouge River and some geese and baby geese (goslings?). At the end it was later and the road was open, but all the times I shot video, I think I’m on the sidewalk.
Video and photosynth both shot, edited and uploaded from my iPhone 4s. It’s not very fancy edited, just put a few clips together (trimmed a few) and added a (tiny) bit of text.
Posted in general
Tagged bicycle, Bike, Geese, Goslings, health, Hines Drive, Rouge River, Saturday
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