You’ll now note a “Print This” link at the top of our posts, this will allow you to have a printer friendly version of my posts available to you, incase you want to print out and share a story… I’ve also added a “Possibly Related Posts“ plugin, that automatically generates links to, possibly related topics within the blog… And I’ve added a “Popular Posts” plugin as well, for the sidebar to spur interest in my top viewed and commented on subjects.

Some blog linkage updates, now added:

• 5 Minutes for Special Needs, a blog for parents of special needs children, and props to Ellen from To The Max who now contributes to them as a writer. Ellen’s blog “To The Max” is one of my favorite blogs to follow.
• Coley’s Corner, Coley, and her son Noah.
• Fighting Monsters with Rubber Swords, Author, Robert Rummel-Hudson and daughter Schuyler who’s Fighting Monsters with Rubber Swords.
• n0thingbuteverything, from Australia, a personal blog, a mother and her son, who has CP.
• According to Jude, A blog about a baby’s story, and struggles of his loving mom. Please prey for baby Jude.
• Dr. Barbara Boucher, PhD, PT/OT, and her blog TherExtras.com. Questioning healthcare for children with diagnoses, parenting recommendations, therapy for a meaningful lifestyle change and promoting acceptance for all. An analytical view of the world.

I’ve talked with Dr. Boucher at length about many different subjects in personal e-mails covering many different subjects. I find her views very down to earth and a no BS point of view. (And she comments on my blog as well!) So props to the doc!

As always feel free to visit out friend on the roll, and if you are a friend and are listed, be kind, share the love, and link back to us if you please. You don’t have to, but it’s very appreciated!

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Holy mother of god, your going to need permission from NASA or the NSA just to boot up this bad boy.

• Brand New Quad-Core Intel Xeon “Nehalem” Processor in 4-Core or 8-Core versions! up to 2.93GHz!
• A Quad Core system with up to 8GB of RAM or Dual Quad Core with up to 32GB of RAM max!
• 640GB, 7200rpm Hard Drives Standard, up to 4TB (4000GB) of Internal Storage!
• 18x double-layer SuperDrive!
• NVIDIA GeForce GT 120 with 512MB Video Card or ATI Radeon HD 4870 512MB Video Card!

Simply mind blowing pure speed! I’m officially in geek shock! On my poor credit card…

The price of such a beast of a machine is not cheap at all, the base price system for a 4-Core machine is $2499, and the base price of the 8-Core system is $3299… Fully loaded, the system I would be looking to buy could be well in excess of $3600 to $6800 depending on options… This is no toy!

But this brings me to a perplexing situation… As I had mentioned in a past post, I’d really like to get a laptop, the 17-inch, MacBook Pro… It’s configuration for my needs would cost $3300. So the question is, who’s first? Should I upgrade my aged PowerMac G5 1.8GHz desktop to a new kick ass Mac Pro; or should I buy the MacBook Pro to become more mobile…

The Mac Pro desktop would certainly still be faster then a laptop, and I could hook it up to my 23-inch Apple HD Display. The desktop may be used more, as I’m at my desk a lot, chatting, blogging, or working on photos…

The MacBook Pro laptop, would allow me to be more mobile, which I am working very hard to become. I want to be able to take a computer on travels, blog, and work on photos when I am not at my desk, such as at a wrestling match or baseball game. I could also use the laptop to show my work to clients at games or at the school. This could potentially increase my photo sales. Not to mention, encourage me to travel. There are some very nifty GPS units that you can use with laptops!

At it stands now, at this very moment I do still think I’m going to buy the 17-inch MacBook Pro… But that may change, after I change my underwear… If you feel you want to weigh in on this debate in my mind, by all means feel free to comment, I could use all the help I can get! After all, you want to help me spend my money, right?

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Front row: Michael J. Smith, Dick Scobee, Ronald McNair; Back Row: Ellison Onizuka, Christa McAuliffe, Gregory Jarvis, Judith Resnik.

Where were you? Please share your memory…

I was 7-years-old, and likely in school that day. I remember the talk about the “Teacher in Space” and all the buzz that many of the nations schools had about this wonderful program. But at such a young age for the life of me I can’t recall if we actually watched the launch in school that day or not; or if we simply received word that something was wrong.

Share your thoughts, what do you remember, and how old where you?

Some Shuttle Facts:

• The Orbiter is 133-feet tall and it’s wingspan is 78-feet across.
• It has 2 solid rocket boosters, 3 main engines, 2 orbital thrusters.
• Each solid rocket boosters contain 1 million pounds of propellant and each provides 1,315 tons of thrust (at sea level)… They burn for a total of 2 minutes and 2 seconds.
• The Main engines utilize 603 tons of liquid oxygen and 101 tons of liquid hydrogen in the external tank. Each provides 170 tons of thrust (at sea level)… They burn for a total of 8 minutes. Maneuvering system engines provide 2.7 tons of thrust.
• Hottest skin temperature on re-entry 1,650 degrees Celsius, (thats 3000 degrees Fahrenheit)!!!
• Average shuttle speed to launch to orbit is 25,000 miles per-hour; Average shuttle speed in orbit is 17,000 miles per-hour.
• The shuttles nick-name on re-entry has been called “The Flying Brick“… Because the shuttle it self actually can not fly, it’s a glider.

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I never tried it before because it was yet another account I’d need to use, but it has become very handy. Now with all my blog friends updates in one place I can skim threw all their automatic updates in short order.

What is RSS?

From Wikipedia: RSS is a family of Web feed formats used to publish frequently updated works-such as blog entries, news headlines, audio, and video-in a standardized format. An RSS document (which is called a “feed”) includes full or summarized text, plus metadata such as publishing dates and authorship. Web feeds benefit publishers by letting them syndicate content automatically. They benefit readers who want to subscribe to timely updates from favored websites or to aggregate feeds from many sites into one place.

There are other RSS Aggregators around, like Mac Mail, at least on OS X 10.5 you can subscribe to RSS feeds right from Mac Mail and not have to worry, the new RSS updates get sent to your “Mail box” as if they where mail messages… But since I’m still running OS X 10.4, I don’t have this luxury.

In any case, I thought I’d make a quick post today about Google Reader, if you have not tried it… give it a shot, it’s free! Simply signup for a Google Account… and then activate the Reader function.

Now if only Google Reader would actually READ to you, that would be cool!

Don’t forget to support this site as well, you can Subscribe to our RSS Feed or if you prefer to listen to my posts you can Subscribe via iTunes… (Our Podcast’s are brought to you by the great service over at Odiogo.com.)

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Debbie, uses many assistive technologies to help her in daily life, one being Speech Recognition software on her computer to control it, and among other things type (say) her blog posts. The program she uses is called Dragon Naturally Speaking. Dragon’ has been around for many years and I have used it myself in the past. In fact, many doctors and lawyers use this very same program to dictate their notes.

It’s not cheap, but YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR… You can learn more about Dragon Naturally Speaking from their web site at http://www.nuance.com

But any way… What caught my eye on Debbie’s site was Odiogo. It’s a FREE service to bloggers to convert your text posts to speech podcasts, so people can LISTEN to your blog, and not have to read it.

I think this is great for us folks who cannot see to well or for people that may be dyslexic. In fact I know of at least one person who checks this blog who is dyslexic, and I think could greatly benefit from this service.

To find out more about Odiogo (short for Audio to Go) visit Odiogo.com. Again it is FREE, so what do you have to loose?

To use Odiogo on this blog or others, simply click the “Listen Now” button at the top of each post… Or you can use our Odiogo Feed to subscribe to our now podcast posts via iTunes or any of your favorite other services. Though Odiogo is free, for bloggers to use it, you still must submit your feeds to have them converted. See the Odiogo site for more information.

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But with DRM Free MP3’s it’s possible to copy your songs now to any system, any iPod, any CD, you buy it YOU own it, with no restrictions. As it should be. So now I may decide to get some stuff; who knows?

“Now, you can choose from millions of iTunes Plus songs from all four major music labels and thousands of independents. With iTunes Plus, you get high-quality, 256-Kbps AAC encoding. All free of burn limits and digital rights management (DRM).” ~ Apple

iWork and iLife have also been updated. I don’t really care. I’ve never used either program. Though if I ever do get into Pod Casting or Audio Blogging, it’s a thought.

The biggest news that makes me VERY HAPPY… Is the release of the new Apple MacBook Pro 17″. It has a new faster CPU, can use up to 8GB of RAM (though very costly from Apple!, I suggest like others you buy 3rd party RAM from Crucial.com), – but most of all it’s 17″ AND Apple seems to have listened to the FLOOD of complaints to bring back an Anti-glair screen choice! This is what will sell me on the MBP 17″!

Apple MacBook Pro 17" Laptop

A few months back I did try the new MBP 15″ with glossy screen, despite the thoughts of me being able to possibly use a 15″ screen the glair from the very shiny very reflective glossy screen was a real pain. I much prefer matt screen, my 23″ Apple HD Display is matt and I have really gotten use to it. Reflections are minimal to almost none, and working with photos is easy. My 23″ is a hardware calibrated monitor set up for photography.

Among other things the new MBP 17″ now has the large glass 1-button track pad with “Multi Touch” (very cool)… and a very improved 8-hour (according to Apple) battery life. That is VERY impressive.

Though, I’m a little worried simply because the new battery is built into the system and is not user replaceable like other laptops. By doing this Apple could make it bigger, but you now have to go to Apple to get it replaced. But on the flip side, they say it should last for 1000 charges and about 5 years. You can watch the Apple Battery Video for a better understanding.

In all I must say I am impressed. I’ll have to head to the local Apple Store and check it out (in about a month or so when they come in). I think a laptop could be very useful for my photography, and I hope my upcoming travel. After all, getting out in the world is something this blog is about!

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4th Generation iPod Nano, and iTunes 8.x. Accessibility’s include:

• Spoken Menus
• Large Font Choise
• High Contrast LCD
• Screen Reader Technology for iTunes 8

Click here to view the embedded video.

Although the iPod Touch does little for people with bad eyesight (as far as I can tell?) Reading the text is REALLY SMALL, for icons and such other things like Address Book, and iCal , but you can zoom in for mail and web pages.

It should be noted that other folks who may have mobility issues can benefit from the iPod Touch functions, and it’s touch screen use.

Read more about Apple iPod and iTunes Accessibility, from Apple
Some info about iPod Touch and Accessibility at the ATMac website.
Check out, Assistive Technology for Apple and Mac Users (ATMac) website, for more.

No, I did not buy an iPod Touch… I’ll stick with my 3rd Generation iPod Nano for now.

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