Day: 2018-05-06

My Week Ending May 6, 2018


HERE’S A SUMMARY OF SOME OF THE VARIOUS THINGS I LEARNED AND PUBLISHED THIS WEEK.

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Readings (You can follow my daily readings as they happen here.  Here are a selected few from the past week.)

  1. It’s interesting how most browsers pretty much look the same and work the same these days.  I suspect it’s because everyone’s using Chromium as the base for their browser creation.  I get excited when a browser has a feature or features that promise to be good.  A lot of the time, the goodness is concealed.  Brave is a different sort of browser and apparently there are a lot of people excited to use it.
  2. As Canadian elections start to appear on the horizon, will there be forces that are ready to try and sway our perceptions?  What are we doing about it?
  3. As I type this, I have no idea if Apple has solved the Siri potty mouth problem.  This is, of course, just the tip of the iceberg.  What all should developers protect the rest of the world from?
  4. Mankind has a list of things that it has banned over the years.  They start out as a great idea until they prove to be dangerout.  The European Union is ready to completely ban pesticides.
  5. Who doesn’t love all the things that librarians do for us?  Often, you just have to ask if you don’t know.  Here are 11 reasons why you might want to do so.
  6. Loving the new Gmail?  Want to know how to get it?  What to know what to do with it once you get it?  Here are 25 things you should know about it.  Everybody has at least one Gmail account, right?  You might as well learn how to use it as well as you can.
  7. Sometimes, you can just get so comfortable with a piece of technology that you can find the button for the action you want to do next in your sleep.  So, when an application gets a makeover, it may well be like you’re doing something for the first time.  In this article Screencastify is the culprit.
  8. Are you up for a conspiracy theory?  The Google Chrome browser crashes in the latest Windows 10.
  9. Speaking of Windows 10, here’s a good collection of things to ponder if you’re setting up Windows 10 on a laptop,
  10. Uh oh.  Security problems.  This time with Twitter.  Time to change your password.

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Blog Posts on doug … off the record

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voicEd Radio

My on demand page can be found here.  The latest edition features blog posts from:

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Technology Trouble Shooting

Downloading – I’ll blame this purely on Microsoft.  With my internet service provider, I have a cap on the amount of data that I can download.  I checked April and I still had about 20 GB left.  Microsoft released their latest and greatest update on April 30.  So, I turned on my computer and there was no notification.  Grrr.  I left the computer on all day waiting for my turn.  It never came.  May 1 comes, a new data limit, and guess what?  I shot about 10% of my monthly allocation getting the update.  What’s the chances there are going to be patches?

Tracking Via – I was pleased to find, after a great deal of boredom on a train ride, that Via offers live tracking of the train that you’re on.  Plotted on Google Maps, it’s pretty cool.  You get updates on when it expects to be at the next station too.  On the trip to Toronto, we really started to make time and I wondered – just how fast are we going?  It turns out that’s there too.  https://tsimobile.viarail.ca/ It’s very cool.  And, we were indeed hauling the mail.  151 km/h.  It brings up the question – can trains speed?

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Video of the Week – Where does the water go?

Do you remember the road picture from last week?  If not, here’s a review.

bridge
Now, if you go up to the railing on the left hand side, and it’s right after a big storm, the water’s got to go somewhere.  It looks like this.  It’s pretty impressive because Essex County is basically flat.
My Favourite Photo This Week

At the Ontario Teachers’ Federation Curriculum Forum, we went outside to take pictures of things.  Via the original picture or cropping of a picture, you had to put together a series of images or sub-images to spell a word.  I could do it all with just one picture.  Can you guess the word I spelled?

Screenshot 2018-05-05 at 16.05.45

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Thanks for reading.

dp

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Whatever happened to …


… Wilkinson Sword?

I was out walking the dog the other day and noticed a single razor blade at the side of the road.  That got me really thinking and remembering and counting money…

As a teenager, I just couldn’t wait until I could shave.  It was one of those passages to manhood, I guess.  There did come a time when I needed to do it.  I borrowed my father’s razor and it was one of those single blade razors with a Wilkinson Sword razor blade in it.  It was his brand.  The blades seemed to last forever.  They sure seemed to last a great deal longer than the toilet paper roll where I would rip off little pieces and stick them to the inevitable cuts.  Those little bumps right under the nose were the worst.  I could mitigate it a bit by making a funny face in the mirror.

It was painful.  Why did I ever long to be able to butcher my face?

These days, you see these single blades in movies in drug preparation.  I haven’t noticed them in the supermarket or drug store where I buy blades.

After a few years, I had saved enough money to buy an electric razor.  I remember it having three heads on it and the advertising was that it wouldn’t cause you to cut yourself.  It didn’t mentioned that you didn’t get a really close shave though.  Basically, I’d end up with a scrub when I was done.

At one point, I decided to grow a beard.  I looked good in it but it still needed the help of a razor to keep things trim.  And scissors to trim.  That can be even more painful.  So, I whacked it off one day and just left a moustache.

Then, the shaving world changed.  New razors and new designs gave us razors with two blades and then three blades and then five blades.  The idea was to give you the closest shave possible.  And it did.  It still does.

These days, I bounce between Schick and Gillette.  They have become so expensive that the stores have to put them behind little plastic doors that set off an alarm when you try to get a package!  Now, the price is the determining factor.  I do find that Schick blades last longer than Gillette do before they lose their edge resulting in pain.

I can’t win.

It’s not just a guy thing.  Shania Twain sings about razors but I find it had to believe that it’s a financial issue for her.

So, for a Sunday, let’s have some fun with this.

  • Do you remember your first razor?
  • What really is the optimal number of blades in a razor?
  • Have you ever grown a beard?  Goatee?  Something fancy sculpted with a razor?
  • What works best?  A running flow of hot water on the blade or a full sink and you swish the razor in the water.
  • Do you have any tips or tricks for extending the life of razor blades?
  • Whatever did happen to Wilkinson Sword?

Please take a moment to share your razor experience in the comments below.

This is part of a fun regular Sunday series of blog posts.  You can read them all here.

OTR Links 05/06/2018


Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.