       (Translate this site)
|
|
|
(Translate this site)
|
|
|
BUY YOUR OWN SHADOWFAST MOUSEPAD OR T-SHIRT!One minute site tour (and free site wallpapers!)
What most perplexes 31st century folk about our own time: |
5-22-15: New pages: The Best Free Roku TV ChannelsWe here at WebFLUX Central have been using Rokus for at least three years now. There's lots to like about the platform, such as the plethora of channels available for it. However, with that bounty has also come lots of 'junk' channels, so that it can be tough indeed for a new Roku user to separate the wheat from the chaff without a minimum of a hundred hours or so of channel browsing and sampling.
Today I present my own attempt at making this process easier and faster for everyone, with my page The Best Free Roku TV Channels, which offers up the best FREE channels for:
Full length films, shorts, documentaries, video clips, and/or TV shows
Primarily instructional, educational, how-to, presentations, and sometimes real world videos
Hopefully I'll be able to update and improve upon these pages as warranted by events.
4-17-15: New pages: The Quest to Make a Simple Internet Slideshow in Windows 7 for Free, and A Hero's LifeIn my previous post I listed lots of tech problems I'd faced lately. But I've also dealt with plenty of other issues as well. Among them was the creation of my first ever internet slideshow version of a comic book story. The Quest to Make a Simple Internet Slideshow in Windows 7 for Free describes some of the difficulties encountered along the way, while One Hero's Life is the slideshow itself, version 1.0, as it exists today. I hope you like it!
If you encounter problems with it, please let me know: I intend to improve the slideshow code if I can.
4-12-15: New page: Dead USB ports and/or flash drives; signing up for cloud storage; incorrect time/date-keeping on my Windows PC; a dead network router; and severe eye strainAs can be seen from the title of the new page, I've had better months than the one just past. The link is Dead USB ports and/or flash drives; signing up for cloud storage; incorrect time/date-keeping on my Windows PC; a dead network router; and severe eye strain.
3-27-15: New pages: Household Starter Kit and How to Stop Buying Crappy Coffee MakersWe here finally got fed up with coffee makers which only last weeks or months before conking out, and quit using them forever. Here's how you can too: What's the Best Instant Coffee Maker? Or, How to Stop Buying Crappy Coffee Makers.
Someone I care about a great deal recently found herself abruptly uprooted not just once, but twice, in very short order, and in need of starting over again practically from scratch, in terms of many of the personal and household items lots of us more settled folks take for granted to make every day life easier and more manageable. She was also left with only an old and somewhat in disrepair mountain bike for transportation, too. Atop all that, being a small woman in unfamiliar territory and alone, she didn't feel very safe much of the time either.
I wanted to help, despite being 1000 miles away, and offered to come get her and bring her home with me to stay for a while, to give her a chance to save up some money for making the transition to a new place. But she's fiercely independent, and wanted to try to just tackle things head on where she was.
It took me a couple months, but I finally talked her into letting me send her what I called a 'care package', to help with the process. Once I had her permission, I naturally sent her everything I could afford that might help her have an easier time of it down there. I couldn't send her anywhere near as much as I'd have liked to, of course, but I definitely surprised her with what I did.
Afterwards it struck me that others too might benefit from the thought and planning and online shopping around I did for her particular circumstances, so I wrote up the composition of her 'care package' for folks in similar circumstances. The link is A household starter kit for impoverished college students and others starting from scratch (especially those whose main transportation will be a bicycle).
2-7-15: New page: My own day to day anti-depression strategiesMy anti-depression, anti-suicide page brought in an especially touching email last year, which spurred me to write a whole new and different perspective on the matter for the sender. Now I'm posting a slightly edited version of my response to them on my web site, in case it might prove as helpful to others as it did that particular visitor:
My own day to day anti-depression strategies
12-30-14: Two page updates
Notes from the actual owner/driver of the original 1970s Shadowfast super car
What's new or surprising in science, technology, business, society, and opportunities
8-23-13: New page: What can I eat for breakfast while taking Levothyroxine for Hypothyroidism (underactive thyroid)?Both my parents are now on Levothyroxine medication for Hypothyroidism (underactive thyroid), which puts fairly severe constraints on their breakfast choices. So I've tried to help them out by compiling a list of possible candidates for their first meal of the day, which should come reasonably close to meeting the seemingly unreasonable demands of the US Pharmaceutical Industry.
Hopefully the list could help others as well, since there seems to be dearth of info on the subject anywhere else online at the moment.
What can I eat for breakfast while taking Levothyroxine for Hypothyroidism (underactive thyroid)?
7-6-13: Kindle ebook guide updatedWow! Making Kindle ebooks has changed a lot since the last time I did so. No longer can you merely do something resembling a bare bones HTML web site from the 1990s and publish it as an ebook. Apparently when Amazon came out with the Kindle Fire tablets, the old ebook ways went out the window.
As a result, Kindle ebook how-to info online is now in chaos, in terms of its usefulness to authors, with maybe the vast majority of it presently misleading at best, and completely wrong at worst.
Fortunately, there remains at this time one fairly simple and straightforward way to get published on Amazon (at least if your book is a straightforward novel, and not something more complicated). I explain the method in my update.
How to make your own Amazon Kindle ebook in just hours CHEAT SHEET v2.0
3-12-13: Cutting the Cable TV CordAt WebFlux Central we finally got fed up with our cable TV company regularly raising their monthly fees while at the same time cutting the number of channels they provided us. It also got our goat that that dwindling number of channels was getting steadily worse in terms of entertainment value too, with it becoming almost unheard of for them to ever show a fresh film anymore, and mostly nothing but creaky reruns and God awful reality shows filled their inventory.
So we dropped the TV part of our cable sub, keeping the internet portion. Then we bought our first Roku; then a second; then a third. We also tried some Apple TV.
Then we went whole hog, and sprang for an OTA (Over The Air) Antenna too. Something which was a major (and relatively expensive) project for our location.
Cord-Cutting For the Rest of Us offers tips and leads about your overall choices in cord-cutting today, which I learned in past months of research into the topic.
How We Got Over the Air (OTA) HDTV in a Fringe Reception Area details the antenna project implementation.
7-29-12: Where did Apple's iPad concept really come from? Steve Jobs? Some high-priced German designer? Or an obscure Mac user in the USA?Way back in 1990, I sent a new product proposal to Apple Computer, which elicited some back and forth correspondence between me and a particular Apple V.P. of the time. It was for a tablet computer. This is a present day scan of the main page from my little mailed in presentation of 1990. I pitched the idea in a mock Apple advertisement for the device.
Did Apple ever use this idea? Check out the images and text description of the theoretical gadget, and judge for yourself.
And yes, for those of you who might be wondering: I saved the original correspondence from Apple, and have multiple post office receipts for packages sent to them back then (I sent lots more product ideas after the tablet, since the feedback encouraged me). And I have dated and notarized copies of the original item, too. Just in case it might ever amount to anything (I was on my toes in 1990, in some ways).
4-3-12: Get free TV with Roku via the internetOur cable TV company finally took away too many channels and pushed the price up too far, and we decided not to take it anymore. We dropped our cable TV (while keeping our internet).
Luckily, there's now a pretty good free or low cost alternative to cable TV in the Roku set top box:
Get free TV with Roku via the internet
10-25-11: The third book of The Chance of a Realtime is now available as an Amazon Kindle ebook
Book three of The Chance of a Realtime is titled The Madness of Dreamers, and is now available for reading on any electronic platform with Amazon Kindle compatibility.
7-30-11: The fifth and final volume of The Shadowfast Supercar Driver Logs is now available as an Amazon Kindle ebook
Volume five of the Shadowfast Supercar Driver Logs is titled Nowhere to Go But Up, and is now available for reading on any electronic platform with Amazon Kindle compatibility.
5-22-11: Free ebook for your Kindle or Kindle app!For a limited time only, you can get a free copy of Sirens for your Kindle or Kindle app!
Sirens is the first book in The Shadowfast Supercar Driver Logs series, and is a coming of age story for high schoolers living in one of the wildest outlaw counties in America during the 1970s. Sirens was inspired by actual people and events in the life of the author.
To get your free ebook, just send your personal email address (not a kindle.com address) to webfluxmagazine@yahoo.com with "SIRENS" in the subject or message.
All that's asked in return is that (if you like the book) you please write a review to that effect on its Amazon page; for that would help it get seen by more people on Amazon. Thanks!
4-27-11: WebFLUX Central is struck by a tornado (seriously).We were knocked offline (and off the electrical grid) for three days. Two enormous trees fell on the house and garage. The garage roof looked like a Tyrannosaur bit a chunk out of it. A chimney at the rear of the house looked bitten too, in its top few feet of bricks.
Many shingles were blown off the house roof everywhere, but the worst damage there was the roof over the back porch being broken down, and gutters and the weatherhead (the electrical grid's connection to the house) being ripped off the building.
A rear deck was broken in half, and a backyard fence and gate destroyed.
It appears to be that I'm having encounters with tornadoes on average around once every ten years now...(no matter where in America I might happen to be).
3-14-11: Dark Horse: The Official Shadowfast Supercar Technical Reference is now available as an Amazon Kindle ebook
Dark Horse: The Official Shadowfast Supercar Technical Reference is a compilation of all available design and construction details about my old supercar from the 1970s (including its special tricks and gadgets). The ebook is now available for reading on any electronic platform with Amazon Kindle compatibility.
2-9-11: The second book of The Chance of a Realtime is now available as an Amazon Kindle ebook
Book two of The Chance of a Realtime is titled Meeting of the Minds, and is now available for reading on any electronic platform with Amazon Kindle compatibility.
2-2-11: The first book of The Chance of a Realtime is now available as an Amazon Kindle ebook
Book one of The Chance of a Realtime is titled A Shock to the System, and is now available for reading on any electronic platform with Amazon Kindle compatibility.
12-24-10: The fourth volume of The Shadowfast Supercar Driver Logs is now available as an Amazon Kindle ebook
Volume four of the Shadowfast Supercar Driver Logs is titled Driving Needs, and is now available for reading on any electronic platform with Amazon Kindle compatibility.
11-3-10: The third volume of The Shadowfast Supercar Driver Logs is now available as an Amazon Kindle ebook
Volume three of The Shadowfast Supercar Driver Logs is titled Deep in the Throat of Texas, and is now available for reading on any electronic platform with Amazon Kindle compatibility.
10-17-10: How I published my own Kindle ebooksWith two published Kindle ebooks now under my belt (and a third well underway) I decided to compile much of what I've learned about the process into a single handy page on the subject, for both my own reference and that of others:
How to make your own Amazon Kindle ebook in just hours CHEAT SHEET v1.0
10-14-10: The second volume of the Shadowfast supercar driver logs is now available as an Amazon Kindle ebook
Volume Two of the Shadowfast Supercar Driver Logs is titled Necessary Ends, and is now available for reading on any electronic platform with Amazon Kindle compatibility.
9-23-10: The supercar stories are becoming available as Amazon Kindle ebooks
Volume One of the Shadowfast Supercar Driver Logs is titled Sirens, and is now available for your convenience on any electronic platform with Amazon Kindle compatibility-- including Windows PCs and smart phones like the iPhone and Android lines, as well as Apple Mac computers and iPads.
I hope to have all the stories available as Kindle ebooks soon.
3-4-10: A new science fiction story: Voices from the voidIn yet another of my many attempts to be the very best uncle in the world (who's not rich, anyway), I've written Voices from the void for my oldest nephew, and his sister and her fiance. Those three just might be able to turn this into a Youtube video (complete with special effects) at some point.
3-3-10: I've tweaked my page of preferred news sourcesWhat's new or surprising in science, technology, business, society, and opportunities
2-19-10: More on my transition from Windows XP to Windows 72-19-10: Moving from 32 bit Windows XP on 2003 hardware to 64 bit Windows 7 in a 2010 box
1-30-10: I've bought a new PCI had no choice, really. My Windows XP machine (manufactured in 2003) had been causing me no end of trouble for months (you might notice the scarcity of site updates during that span).
Hands-on review: eMachines ET1331G-03W desktop PC (and Windows 7 64 bit)
1-2-10: I've updated my personal news links pageWhat's new or surprising in science, technology, business, society, and opportunities
12-31-09: The reason why Obama is so badly disappointing his own supportersPresident Obama and the Democratic base: Is there method to his madness?
12-15-09: Ex-President Bush's record gets worse the more we find out about itMore references regarding the Bush Presidency as perhaps the worst ever in US history
12-13-09: Several desktop computer and Ubuntu-related postsUbuntu on a full Gigabyte of RAM
An old Sony Vaio is reborn. Arising from the ashes like the mythical Phoenix of old
Big troubles with my Windows XP Compaq
12-5-09: Newbie (me) meets new OS (Ubuntu)11-24-09: My preferred list of personal news sources gets an update10-12-09: I'd like to present my site's first ever holiday commemorating page10-8-09: Two new domains join the troop9-20-09: Perhaps THE biggest reason why U.S. politics works so dismally: the American voter is no longer of much consequence in many elections9-16-09: My favorite niece has a new blog (and other news)The poor man's airship has some spiffy new images courtesy of Macey's brother Jake.
9-8-09: The overwhelming downsides to religion9-8-09: Touched in the headI've also updated my What's New page
8-6-09: The End-- and Clifford Dunburton7-24-09: The monster standing between America and progress7-19-09: Robert A. Heinlein once said "Never underestimate the power of human stupidity"; American politicians once again prove the validity of his statement7-17-09: Obama's most terrible weakness laid bare7-5-09: What can newspaper companies do to survive?7-3-09: Windows XP updates seem to bring me a new PC glitch.7-2-09: The chance of love might literally be just around the corner6-4-09: Your TRUE chances of getting rich in America offers up some sobering facts of which most Americans seem utterly unaware. One reader asked me what I would suggest for someone who wanted to try fighting the immense adverse odds anyway.5-13-09: Now MORE Fast times at Sigma Chi.4-30-09: New pic4-20-09: The site's slowly getting a makeover...plus a couple of actual content updatesI plan to roll out the new format across lots more of my pages over time. But the sheer number of pages to be manually changed is daunting: so it'll be the very opposite of an overnight thing.
One new page though is President Obama's late April 2009 report card...as seen by someone who voted for him in November 2008. And Testing the limits got a new image.
4-1-09: And the winner of the March 2009 Jerry Staute's world trivia challenge is...I pulled all the entry data from the database this morning and went through it, looking for the magic number of the answer. Then I made a second pass, just to be sure.
The triva question was:
"Like most everyone else, Jerry Staute had to get a loan to buy his first car (Shadowfast). What was the dollar amount of a single installment payment related to that loan?"
The answer was to be found on-site in this quote:
"I was dumbfounded. I finally realized what Arbitur had been trying to tell me about my car...
Shadowfast had been crushed to the size of a toaster. The black paint wasn't even visible. The whole thing just looked like a brown rock, carved into a perfect cube.
I was paying sixty-nine bucks a month for a small brown metal block."
The quote comes from the page Chapter four: Navigator from my science fiction novel The Chance of a Realtime. This page was available via a single click from this index of my stories, strongly suggested to players as a good starting point in the March 2009 Jerry Staute's world trivia challenge page.
And the winner was...nobody!
No one gave the correct answer. So no prize is going to be awarded. Sorry! I get to keep my prize money today!
But thanks to everyone who played! Though quite a few of you tried to merely guess the answer rather than seek it out...and some of you didn't even give an answer in the form of a number! Ha, ha.
Some did do enough reading to come up with plausible-sounding ways that I/Jerry Staute might have gotten away with getting no loan at all for the car. But of course that ignored the contest question itself, which plainly stated I/Jerry Staute DID get a loan.
One of those simply making wild guesses DID miss it by less than ten dollars.
You know, I was actually worried this contest would be too easy! Ha, ha. Because of all the different search tools available to you folks for searching my site. I mean, it's not like the answer was buried in a 500 page hard copy novel somewhere. Just think how much harder it'd be to find something like this in an Atlas Shrugged paperback, for instance. I figured someone would just use an advanced configuration of Google, or fiddle with one of the two different local searches I provide on-site, or even use one of those scary downloadable search apps or browser plug-ins to find the info, rather than reading for it as I hoped. And all that would be left to do then would have been brainstorming up a list of likely related words to plug into the search query.
I fretted that someone would find it immediately, and send in the answer the very first day the contest was running-- that maybe even a hundred different people would find it the first day. But I was wrong!
It appears if I do something like this again, I need to offer a much bigger prize to get you guys to do some serious digging...but of course my question(s) will have to be more ornery, too...
3-23-09: UpdatesThe case against God has been updated.
3-21-09: Over the edge update3-10-09: Beware General Electric3-3-09: Update to contest how-to2-25-09: Is there anywhere to go but down in America?2-19-09: My Compaq Presario S4020WM desktop user log gets an update2-16-09: Fixing the US economy is much more straightforward than many would have us believe2-14-09: Two new low cost web authoring entriesHow to run a trivia contest on your web site to boost traffic and sales: A plain and simple guide
2-8-09: Announcing our first ever $100 prize trivia contest!Good luck everyone!
1-27-09: Shadowfast T-shirts are here!1-26-09: Some updates to the 'Civilization's best defensive measures' pages1-24-09: Free self-promotional three-minute video scripts for all1-22-09: Bad news for Bank of America customers1-20-09: The supercar mousepads are finally here!Also, The case against God and What's new pages have been updated.
1-18-09: Update on Republican dirty deeds1-17-09: Putting faces to characters1-10-09: Update to Frankenstein's monster1-9-09: The WebFLUX store pages are up and running again.1-5-09: NEW PAGE explains the current Twitter fadThe case against God received an update.
1-4-09: NEW PAGE: The most straightforward way to prevent human extinction12-29-08: TWO NEW PAGES12-28-08: The news page gets updated again12-27-08: Updates related to America's policies of artificial scarcity and
institutionalized poverty12-20-08: The professional Republican mindset:
The same short-sightedness as most robbers and murderers?12-12-08: Update to the Poor Man's Airship12-11-08: Visual site tour updated/expanded12-9-08: Update to alien civilization glimpse12-8-08: Several page updatesThe supercar tale Breaking up got a new pic of the battleground in the story.
What's new or surprising in science, technology, business, society, and opportunities has been updated.
11-28-08: Needle's eye updated11-16-08: NEW SUPERCAR STORY11-13-08: More artwork for the story index page11-9-08: What Obama must do to boost his chances for successHere I offer him my own tips for how to get off to a good start.
11-2-08: How to save Ford, Chrysler, and GMAlthough I'll admit I've been as disappointed with the products of America's big three the past decade or two as much as anyone else, still, I find it difficult to believe we'd let them go under without a fight. Especially when their biggest problem by far seems to be how the Republicans screwed up the credit markets for everybody. Car makers depend more on credit than just about anyone else but the construction industry.
And when you think about it, killing America's auto manufacturers seems to have been a key goal of Republican politicians for decades. For that'd surely kill too what few vestiges of strong unions America has left: entities Republicans despise for their empowerment of average joes.
Republicans want all average peoples' jobs to be third world in terms of pay, benefits, and conditions. US auto-workers' jobs haven't usually been like that for a while now. But in the credit crunch the Republicans themselves have orchestrated, the course to that status now looks all but inevitable. It makes you wonder if this was the plan all along.
Plus, this seems to be a matter of national security too. If we lose our entire base of heavy manufacturing in this country, to become wholly dependent on machines from foreign countries, won't that make us vulnerable to a lot more threats both military and economic?
When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor to send us plunging into World War II, what and where was the bulk of our strength to respond? Our automobile manufacturers. We switched our factories over to producing war equipment almost immediately, and by that capability and others managed to win the war a few years later.
I suspect history would have gone differently if we'd possessed no domestic automakers at that time. We might now be speaking Japanese or German, for instance.
And how could we ever hope to maintain-- much less improve-- our technological and economic competitiveness with other nations if we're not even in the game, on vital matters like auto manufacturing?
Sure, it might be necessary for the big three to change in big ways to survive-- but it also seems essential to America that they do make it past this crisis.
10-29-08: News for the news page10-27-08: NEW PAGE: How to turn bust to boom10-23-08: UPDATE to Mac OS X troubleshooting guide10-21-08: NEW PAGE: The story of one thoroughly dead Powerbook G4 and how it was brought back to life without paying Apple a dime10-18-08: I voted today10-16-08: NEW PAGE: I think home schooling is a bad idea10-6-08: New mermaid pic for a novel chapter10-3-08: Factcheck.org reveals a preference for muddying the waters over hard-hitting truths9-30-08: Congress will wait as long as possible and do the absolute minimum in regards to enacting real solutions to the financial crisis-- because many members and their biggest campaign finance supporters are the primary parties responsible for the mess9-25-08: A brand new Mac laptop user's logMac OS X troubleshooting, repair, and recovery CHEAT SHEET
9-19-08: The God-awful economic track record of US Republicans9-13-08: New page, new graphicsThe gamma ray burster threat and The Pearsall saga got new illustrations.
9-7-08: Lots more pics (and a few revisions) for various supercar pages8-29-08: New essence of supercar pics8-27-08: New links to real life supercar adventure locales, new site pics, and morePigeon Forge and Gatlinburg (among other things) host something called 'Rod Runs', where basically hot rodders from around the nation congregate to show off their rides and trade tales. I actually attended a primoridal version of the Rod Runs with my Mustang supercar decades ago in Gatlinburg, and describe it in a supercar account not yet posted online, tentatively titled Black and blue magic.
Anyway, I recently ran across what may be the best informal introduction to the Pigeon Forge/Gatlinburg area (as well as the Rod Runs) online today. And amazingly enough, it's authored by a fellow T-shirt airbrusher!
His site is Pigeon Forge Gatlinburg,Tennessee,Gateway to the Smokies. And here is his supercar related page: Rod Run Pigeon Forge.
New pics of beautiful girls were added to The Battle for Pearsalls' Grit part one (the indomitable Liz Pearsall) and A teenage pressure cooker (the cheerleader Sue Anne Maddison).
Great hoaxes and pranks of the 21st century has been updated.
8-24-08: New pictures8-23-08: A flurry of new pics
How one struggling teenager met one wrecked Mustang
One small taste of Hell
Introduction to the Rise and Fall of Star Faring Civilizations in Our Own Galaxy
The Battle for Pearsalls' Grit part 2
Prologue: critical mass of the online novel The Chance of a Realtime
8-20-08: Tornados pic8-16-08: NEW PAGE for teenagersI noticed lots of teens accidentally stumbling onto these stories (based on my emails), and so figured why not make it easier for them?
8-11-08: Miscellaneous updatesThe world's easiest cheapest gas saving tips
Supercars: the legends, history, creators, and specifications; plus how to build your own.
Chapter 17: the taking of Amphitritium got a new image.
8-10-08: Supercar update8-6-08: NEW PAGES: A Windows XP PC security overhaul, and political opinionThe spectacular success of the Republican party in hijacking political debate in America
7-31-08: UPDATES: death control pill, alien civilizations, and gas saving tipsIs this our first glimpse of an alien civilization?
The world's easiest cheapest gas saving tips
7-30-08: Supercar tale update7-24-08: UPDATE on why the rich need the rest of us to pay their share of income taxes7-14-08: New supercar tale pics7-9-08: Obama's biggest mistake so far. Will it cost him the election?7-6-08: NEW PC TROUBLESHOOTING PAGE and other updatesMore links were added to the list in Miscellaneous unorganized links relating to How to Live Well on Very, Very Little. Gosh, but I really need to process some of those into an update of my How to live well on very little pages!
The astonishing decline of America got an update.
7-4-08: NEW PAGE AND IMAGESThe Apple PowerMac G4 user's log and Salvaging the hard drive from a dead Apple Powerbook G4 both got new images.
7-3-08: More links added to off-site images
Chapter 13: A fantasy of chaos
Chapter 14: Descent into chaos
Chapter 15: Hell and the human spirit
Chapter 16: The terror
Chapter 17: The taking of Amphitritium
Chapter 18: The siege of the seventh palace
Chapter 19: The battle of Belphi station
6-29-08: NEW MAC PAGE and linksA PowerMac G4 where "No burning device was found" and Installation of a second internal hard drive into a PowerMac G4 got updated with the addition of some the possibly helpful web links I ran across while trying to work through the problems.
6-20-08: NEW GRAPHICS and updates: Supercar tales and gas saving tipsThe supercar prologue tales of A small slice of one young rural geek's life and How one struggling teenager met one wrecked Mustang both got some pretty substantial imagery added to them.
6-16-08: Troubleshooting a PowerMac G4 where "No burning device was found", and installing a second hard drive into sameInstallation of a second internal hard drive into a PowerMac G4
6-9-08: GAS TIPS UPDATE plus NEW IMAGES ADDED to several mustang supercar pages, and the airship pagesA ghost of a chance from the Moonshadow outlaw airship pilot logs got new imagery.
The supercar pages below have gained one or more new images:
Daytona 2.0: Between a Ferrari and a hard place
Part 2 of Too close for comfort
A call to arms
Part 2 of Slip, sliding away
The Daytona 1200
6-4-08: NEW IMAGES ADDED to a couple mustang supercar pages, and the page covering the super rich...
What goes around part 2
Breaking up
The super-rich, the 'plain' rich, the 'poorest' rich...and everyone else...Everything you might want to know about wealth and the richest among us
6-4-08: WebFLUX Alert: Powerful anti-aging substance availability UPDATED 7-7-08 However...something in red wine has been exciting longevity researchers for maybe a decade now, and regional world populations who drink it have displayed remarkable protection from the otherwise usually harmful diet and lifestyle of modern westerners like ourselves.
A few years back researchers seemed to isolate the ingredient responsible for this, and named it "resveratrol".
There seems to be a race on between health supplement companies to start producing pills of this stuff as soon as possible. But those might be expensive. And if past history is any indication, the corporate version might be utterly worthless at best-- and harmful at worst.
So how can you get some of the good and real stuff today?
Well, there's always the wine. But that's not necessarily a convenient or desirable avenue for many of us, or our daily routines. Thankfully there's alternative sources.
"A compound in the skin of red grapes has been found to curb the effects of ageing, even when taken in tiny doses."
"The compound is abundant in the skin of red grapes. Its concentration in red wine varies greatly depending on the grape variety. Normal levels are between 0.2 and 5.8 milligrams per litre, but wines produced from muscadine grapes may have more than 40 milligrams per litre.
A five ounce glass of muscadine red wine can contain as much as six milligrams of resveratrol.
Smaller amounts of resveratrol are also found in blueberries, bilberries, cranberries and peanuts."
-- Scientists discover the secret behind red wine's anti-ageing properties; 03rd June 2008
7-7-08 UPDATE: Apparently there's already some resveratrol supplements available over the counter today! At least according to the news report below:
"Resveratrol is a natural substance found in red wine and red grapes. It is sold in extract form as a dietary supplement at most major drug stores."
-- Researchers identify cancer preventive properties in common vitamin supplement. END UPDATE.
6-3-08: NEW IMAGES for Essence of supercar, the Daytona 1200, Wild horses, Over the edge, and Drafted (all but one of these supercar accounts)
The Daytona 1200
Wild horses
Over the edge part 2
Chapter 3: Drafted
6-2-08: NEW IMAGE added to Testing the limits (supercar prologue tale)6-1-08: NEW IMAGES added for Fast times at Sigma Chi, Heartbreaker, Critical mass, and Something different (supercar stories and sci fi novel)5-31-08: NEW IMAGES added to 'the Taking of Amphitritium' (underwater city in a science fiction novel)5-27-08: UPDATES to essence of supercar, what the rich do with their freedom from taxes, and the Mustang super car projectSupercar project got a few more references, as well as further technical detail about Shadow's build and likely final specs (like front/rear weight distribution for better handling performance).
5-26-08: NEW IMAGES have been added to the story index page5-25-08: PAGE UPDATE: 1969 Ford Mustang Mach One: essence of supercar5-24-08: NEW IMAGES: How one struggling teenager met one wrecked MustangI suspect I may ultimately move one of the images to a different story page, to make it better fit chronologically. The reason I haven't already done it is the final destination page will be a story I've not yet posted: The spring break plot, about a little adventure we had in Daytona Beach Florida (wholly unrelated to the earlier Daytona 1200).
5-23-08: PAGE UPDATES, NEW IMAGERY: Web authoring log and supercar concept interiorLife just isn't stressful enough already: your hosting company has to poke you with a stick, too. The Shadowfast super car project: Interior concept sketches got a update, which includes a new image.
5-21-08: NEW IMAGES: Illustrated story index5-20-08: NEW PAGE: Great hoaxes and pranks of the 21st century5-16-08: NEW IMAGES ADDED to certain Crossroads pages5-14-08: UPDATE to religion page5-12-08: UPDATES to the massive shortages hoaxes foisted upon us by corporate America and their government croniesAre we there yet? part two and References
5-10-08: UPDATE to the on-site stories index5-9-08: UPDATE to the wasteful spending of the little-to-zero-taxed rich5-7-08: UPDATE to PC online security how-to5-6-08: NEW PAGE about future pie-in-the-sky articles, plus gas savings tips updatedThe sight of Hell through rose-colored glasses doesn't improve the view for me!
5-2-08: NEW PAGE: How to fight back against surveillance, censorship, and more5-2-08: The debut of Pathfinder the book4-30-08: The incredible road network of America4-28-08: Several page updatesAre we there yet? (part 2) and its references.
4-26-08: New super car page4-25-08: An update for Kerri and Cluke, and moreThe timeline got new links to off-site artwork.
Fast times at Sigma Chi finally got some (not all) of its story posted.
4-22-08: What the rich do with their astonishing freedom from taxes4-20-08: Another day, another set of images added to the site
To whom it may concern
Limits
The second coming
4-16-08: More off-site image links added
Chapter 13: A fantasy of chaos
Chapter 14: Descent into chaos
Chapter 15: Hell and the human spirit
Chapter 16: The terror
Chapter 17: The taking of Amphitritium
Chapter 18: The siege of the seventh palace
Chapter 19: The battle of Belphi station
4-15-08: The sorry international club America under Bush has joined4-12-08: 'What did geeks do before personal computers and the internet were widespread?' gets a MASSIVE graphics updateWhat did geeks do before personal computers and the internet were widespread?
4-4-08: Once again, a list of recent pages receiving image updates
Chapter 9: Inner space wars
Chapter 13: A fantasy of chaos
4-2-08: Lots of new images added to various pages on-site
Supercar project notes
A teenage pressure cooker
Slip, sliding away part 2
The ultimate science fiction novel for geeks
Chapter 1: Something different
Chapter 14: Descent into chaos
Chapter 18: The siege of the seventh palace
3-29-08: Links to additional imagery added3-28-08: New graphics3-27-08: New pics added3-24-08: New images added
Chapter 13: A fantasy of chaos
Chapter 15: Hell and the human spirit
Chapter 16: The terror
3-23-08: New graphics updates3-22-08: Miscellaneous page updates
What goes around
Supercar site map
How one struggling teenager met one wrecked Mustang
To save my world
Fast times at Sigma Chi
Too close for comfort
3-20-08: New page: Life as a zombie2-23-08: New imagery added to a supercar tale2-21-08: New pics for both the sci fi novel and a supercar story2-18-08: New page: The great American mystery1-24-08: Praise science and pass the (anti-hacking) info1-21-08: Solving the mystery of why times are getting harder instead of betterHere it is. With references
The references list is already pretty hefty, but not yet complete. I'll be adding to it over coming months.
1-14-08: Another new chapter added to the science fiction saga1-12-08: Fighting back1-11-08: Kicked while I'm down1-6-08: Worst case scenarios1-5-08: New science fiction epic chapterOn the brighter side, as The Chance of a Realtime covers many months onboard a multi-verse spanning time-traveling vessel, what's already available online is maybe four hard copy books worth of material. And like Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy, there's oodles of in-depth reference material backing it all up, with most of that to be found in An illustrated speculative timeline of future technology and social change. But that's not all: just as Tolkien fans can explore both what came before and after the events in the main Rings trilogy by examining the appendices, or reading the Hobbit, so too can Chance of a Realtime readers check out what the hero of the saga did both before and after his time traveling jaunt. For instance, The Shadowfast supercar driver logs covers much of his late teens and early twenties. But there's more! The most avid fans can see what his life was like in his early teens too, as well as the whole rest of his life after The Chance of a Realtime-- and even a bit of his after-life as well(!) The most complete guide to his life and times available in a single page can be found in Welcome to my universe: illustrated story index.
12-26-07: Bad news regarding my recent eye operation12-23-07: Each chapter of my science fiction novel gets its own badly needed synopsis in the table of contents12-23-07: Mainstream news reporter astounded by old artificial tree being oblivious to wars and nuclear weapons
Christmas tree survives war, A-bomb By ERIC TALMADGE, Associated Press Writer, Dec 21, 2007
"http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071221/ap_on_re_as/japan_the_tree;_ylt=AlmssLDCkU0m00TLv1JFmNQDW7oF"
After the original link breaks, you can try this Google search for a copy elsewhere on the net.
12-19-07: Update to the list of real life circumstances which inspired the supercar tales12-17-07: Fresh treats for the most hard-core Shadowfast supercar/Jerry Staute fans
A small slice of one young rural geek's life
Passages to a larger world
A teenage pressure cooker
Of new best friends and old
How one struggling teenager met one wrecked Mustang
Testing the limits
To save my world
As usual, these accounts may be expanded upon in the future, as time and new recollections allow.
12-14-07: Update to why the rich might want to help the poor12-12-07: Update to Hysterical America12-10-07: My general purpose exercise machine/fitness journal has been updated with a real-life operation experience12-5-07: Never give up! The ancient office fax inspirational image for employees from decades past which inspired the title of my supercar in Texas page is now upNotes from the actual owner/driver of the original 1970s Shadowfast super car has been updated with some actual photos from the real life parkway described in several of my supercar stories online. And one of them actually includes me and my friend I call Will in the stories, too.
11-29-07: A sketchy look at Jerry StauteThe poor man's airship got a scan of a chunk of an actual gyroscopter blueprint I bought long ago, before I ultimately decided to go the personal airship route instead.
11-28-07: TONS of new graphics posted online!Chapter 3: drafted of the science fiction novel The chance of a realtime now offers up various original views of the time-traveling vessel Pagnew, created way back in 1990 (the year Jerry Staute finally recalled his fantastic journey from 18 years previous). No kidding!
Fast times at Sigma Chi will eventually offer up the story of one supercar driver and a particular college fraternity in the 1970s. But for now it primarily holds scans of campus newspaper editorial cartoons I did at the time, plus some doodles of me and friends I made to avoid studying.
11-25-07: Banner: How to tell if hope still remainsBasically I've put in image form the quote from my own writings which has proven most popular with web surfers in general over the past decade.
11-20-07: More images for hot-linking11-15-07: More graphics for Myspacers, etc.11-13-07: A new experiment gets underwayThis got me to thinking maybe I should cater to this phenomenon a bit, and see what happens.
So I've begun creating graphics I hope might be specificially 'tuned' to such folks' needs.
One of the first is this wild wheel gif which can now be seen in context in part two of Nowhere to go but up.
I've also updated both the How to get rich in America page, and its references.
11-10-07: Social networking sites experience added to page about making money online11-8-07: How to get rich in America updated11-7-07: Gamma ray burster update11-1-07: A vision of Bridget in the afterlifeCould a bizarre, inhuman race have evolved on Earth as long ago as 600 million BC? If so, what might have been its fate? Could it have become Earth's first lost civilization? and Could we eventually uncover a lost civilization on the sunken Kerguelen continent? And if so, what might have been its fate? REFERENCE (part 2) have also been updated.
10-26-07: What my friends' Mustangs looked like in the old days10-22-07: A new look at the wonderful Bridget Dufay10-19-07: The love story begun in Heartbreaker continues-- and gets its own index page.It's amazingly tough to do the simplest of pics in Adobe Photoshop Elements involving common object shapes. If I can ever figure out how to better use PE's shape tools (and they truly are better than they seem to be at present-- OUCH!), I'll take another shot at The heart afraid of flying..
As a token of my appreciation towards my female readers, I've established the new page But two to keep tomorrow: The story of one pair of star-crossed lovers destined to become all humanity's greatest hope against the ultimate supernatural threat. This page will serve as a handy index to the entire Jerry-Bridget saga, which begins with Heartbreaker, and doesn't end until well into the afterlives of both.
10-16-07: New advertising sales pages now open for business!While selling ad space directly can be more lucrative than the indirect text ad channel most sites use, it's also more demanding overhead-wise. So I decided to automate it somewhat, to reduce my workload.
The new pages relating to ad sales are:
Advertise on this site and Advertising fine print
10-13-07: The very first Moonshadow airship story is now onlineThe bad news for airship aficionados is that this particular tale may offer the least of the whole bunch about Moonshadow itself-- as it mostly relates to the consequences of a bad mistake on my part that separated me from the ship for a couple months one summer.
Plus (as usual) I'm not posting the stories in chronological order. This one actually takes place during the second summer of the airship's use.
A ghost of a chance is the first actual story posted to the complete list which can be seen in The Moonshadow flying wing pilot logs.
The supercar story Wild horses also got an update.
10-11-07: Update to getting rich in America10-2-07: New page showcases the depth and scope of my online stories (AND related imagery)This is the first draft: I'll be adding more links and possibly images too later on.
9-25-07: New page on how no American universal healthcare hurts the old on Medicare, and update to supercar notesAmerica's lack of universal health insurance even hurts old folks on Medicare
9-24-07: New supercar story9-17-07: Updates to 2013 wonders and supercar correspondence9-16-07: The driver logs and supercar feats index are updatedIndex of Shadow's supercar feats, deeds, and exploits
9-15-07: Lightningfast makes its best online appearance yet9-13-07: American hysterics updated9-11-07: Updates relating to correspondence with supercar readers, the Wild horses story, How to get rich in America, and moreHow to get rich in America REFERENCE
Things only Americans worry about
9-5-07: Supercar legends, building your own update, plus America's black hole of a heartAmerica has a black hole where its heart should be
8-28-07: Update to How to get rich in America8-20-07: Update to hysterical America8-19-07: A review of the anime TV shows Naruto and Bleach8-15-07: A tweak to the Chance Staute fate-storm logs8-14-07: A rash of newz&viewz items updates/expansionsStephen King could have been God
Hysterical shrinking America the guilty
8-5-07: Low cost web authoring update8-2-07: Two page updates7-27-07: Two page updates7-26-07: Afterlife update7-26-07: New page: Things only Americans worry about7-23-07: Fact versus fiction in human civilization7-22-07: New supercar driver's account: Wild horses7-19-07: Where's Clark Kent when you need him?7-18-07: The state of America, mid-20077-14-07: Updates/revisions to two supercar tales7-11-07: The Pearsall saga gets still more artworkThe relevant URLs here include:
The Pearsall saga
Part one and part two of the Battle for Pearsalls' Grit.
The rehabilitation of Al Pearsall has also gotten an update (text-wise).
7-7-07: Cheap and easy summer home cooling ideas7-6-07: Fresh supercar meat7-5-07: Are we there yet?
Sometime soon humanity should be hitting a techno-economic tipping point...7-4-07: How-to for leaving this reality for another updated; plus how some cartoon gags can really happenMy Tony Little's Gazelle Freestyle Elite: One user's log and general health and fitness journal has been updated with 7-3-07: Replacement piston results and real-life TV cartoon head bump.
7-2-07: America's not only getting ever more small-minded: it's losing stature in just about every other way that matters, too.6-21-07: A Pearsall Rover cockpit pic now available6-16-07: Another Lindsay bikini pic posted6-14-07: The amazingly awful AT&T6-13-07: Still more pics rolled out on-sitePart one of the Battle for Pearsalls' Grit has gained an artistic rendition of the Grit planetoid.
Part two of the Battle for Pearsalls' Grit now boasts a view of the sexy photo of Liz which Al used to hide the tainted data stream from Sol system from Liz's purge efforts.
6-12-07: The beauteous Lindsay Finch from the Shadowfast supercar driver logs gets two more pics on-site.6-11-07: Liz Pearsall makes her visual debut on-site for the first time ever6-6-07: New site tour page
Backward into the archives for 12-3-04 through 4-9-05...
Backward into the archives for 4-26-04 through 11-29-04...
