Swift Sweet Rush by Jim Charanis
Took a bunch at Maia’s recital but this one of her and her friend running across the bridge in euphoric enthusiasm before the performance was candid. Funny how things work out – life is what happens when you are making plans.
Derek Art – Illustration, Serigraphs, Paintings, and Tiki Mugs
A friend with a very cool website but the real cool is the stuff he does. If you like retro 60’s funky comic meets Africa meets tiki; or want to hire an artist, Derek is your man.
This is a great way of creating the environment where people can create logins then post comments. If you are looking to collect ideas this is the best way. I use Wordpress
some examples of wordpress implementations..
http://bhsclassof87.wordpress.com/
http://sunnyslope1977.org/
Patriot Road< ------- old friend in NJ who helps local businesses to build these types of websites. Very interesting guy.
Complete Running
Luke Ford
and look how my two websites differ on the same wordpress platform.
www.charanis.com
www.i-rant.orgThe other option is to go with a forum or bulletin board type of site
http://www.phpbb.com/ is one of the most widely used.
is one of the most widely used.For example
Or you can get a WordPress plugin for a simple forum and have both
Yellow Swordfish simple wordpress BB plugin
I’d also recommend creating a Wiki – similar to a blog but it creates permanent posts where people can edit them for content. This could be implemented on top of a blog to allow you to setup a program and everyone contributes to the final product.
And you could always use Friendster or Myspace.
I love reading tidbits during my lunch break. This is a great idea – esp when I’m hiking.
Eco-Terra Landscape Consultants has a great article on what to do with this frost damange here in the South. 
Here is the little Maple I planted last year, It had come in so nicely and I had pruned it back a bit on the interior to give it a nice look. That’s probably all that would have survived, so I blew it. I have dead wood all the way down to the trunk. I’ll cut it back and hope for the best. I just deep watered them, will do that once a week.
Here is one of the Crepe Myrtles that got wacked . I had just pruned them 
The Article says to just let them grow, they should come back.
I can’t stand it. I’m getting a Mac Pro. I have a Compaq Presario Intel Win XP box I’ve been running for over 5 years and my trusty PowerBook G4 1Ghz. It just takes too long to process the RAW photo’s from my Nikon D200 (10MP) on the powerbook and if I’m going to upgrade my Win XP box I might as well run it on an Intel Mac now that I can. It also takes too long to process movies even in iMovie. I like my transitions and titles, pan and scan. Every time I change something it renders for a good 5 minutes. Sure iMovie is smart enough to do that in the background but on a Quad Core Intel box it will tear through this stuff. No I don’t need the 8-Core. I’m researching a Mac Pro to run Final Cut Express, Aperture, Adobe Dreamweaver and Flash. I’ll upgrade FC Express and the Adobe Web suite and buy a new copy of Aperature.
I spoke with a Mac guy at the Apple store and he confirmed that the processor speed isn’t the challenge for me. I’m not doing heavy engineering or gaming that might require intense calculations. So figure a Two 2.66GHz Dual-Core Intel Xeon (that’s 4 2.66 GHz processors!). $2,499.00
Upgrading the memory both Ram and HD is the key. I have looked into it and I think getting the RAM from Apple is probably the best bet. When they configure the box they will fill all of the memory slots so getting 1GB will fill 2 slots with 512MB RAM, 2GB will fill 4 slots. I have also heard the Apple memory is built to be cool in a box that doesn’t have many fans. So figure a $699 upgrade to 4 x 1GB 667MHz DDR2 fully buffered ECC RAM in 4 of the FB-DIMM slots.
Then I take the standard Hard Drive in Bay 1 – 250GB 7200-rpm Serial ATA 3Gb/s. The upgrade to a 750GB drive is $299, for that price I can get two 500GB drives and create one RAID 0 volume. That’s right – these drives are now selling for as low as $0.23/MB! This type of RAID, also referred to as a striped array, reads and writes data to and from all the drives at the same time, which can really speed things up. In fact Macworld tests show that this gives more critical applications almost as much throughput as moving to the 3.0MHz CPU costing hundreds more. Add the RAM upgrade and my photo and movie editing should fly. Less waiting, more creating.
The Apple rep also suggested upgrading the Graphics card to the ATI Radeon X1900 XT 512MB (2 x dual-link DVI) for $249. This doubles the onboard RAM and the ability to support two 30†HD Displays. Not that I’ll ever afford such eye candy. In fact I will probably have to keep my SyncMaster 20†for now. But when we build the home theater – POW! Another reason to upgrade is that it uses a special double-wide slot designed to accommodate its on-board fan and vent. If I got the standard Nvidia GeForce 7300 GT it would be in this slot and really a throw away if I ever needed to upgrade – unless I wanted to drive more then two monitors. Doubt it. Having said all of this there was a comparison done by Christoph Vonrhein for Final Cut Pro. Based on this review and the kind of work I’ll be doing it probably won’t make much of a difference and I should save the $249 upgrading later if I need to.
In fact, I should put the $249 towards AppleCare to protect the purchase and provide onsite support for 3 years. Not that I expect problems but it did help with my PowerBook for a power supply and great tech support. In fact, if I purchase a monitor with it that will be covered too. And I’ll include an Airport Extreme card with Bluetooth.
Grand Total $3,526.00
With a 24†HD Flat Panel Monitor $4,425
Add the two hard drives (2 x 500GB @ $125 each) $4,675
Add Aperture ($299) and an upgrade to Final Cut Express ($99) $5,073
Tax at 7% ( $355) $5,428.11
Add Windows Vista to run my old stuff (or I could just install my old copy of Windows XP). $99 to $150 more.
Okay, maybe I’m not. For a while.
Alternatives:
Other World Computing for the memory and Newegg.com for the drives. I have purchased drives and batteries for my power book from them before. Should be able to get the 1GB RAM model and then purchase 4GB RAM from these guys for $430.
For the CPU – mail order saves tax and shipping less then $70: Small Dog, Power Max ($200 rebate with AppleCare, $75 with RAM), MacConnection ($150 rebate), MacMall ($150 Rebate, free printer, bundles).
