Gone ...

Gone, but not forgotton ... Sister Joan

My, my! Aint She Something?

Melissa Claire Kuykendall. 

Quiz Time!

Lookin down my street, February 20th, here in the frozen suburbs of Cincinnati, Ohio, USA. Quite possibly the so-called spring thaw has set in. That said, it's quiz time ... on which side of the street, in this photo, are the south-facing yards? If'n ya git this wrong-o, shame shame on you! Now, if you buy a house and dislike shoveling snow, which side of the street do you want to live on? Duhhhhh. Not that side (and he points that general direction ... you know .... over there of course)!

Bigfoot Tracks

Tracks across my lawn reminded me of Edmund Hillary's images of the Yeti, abominable snowman tracks in the himlayas. For comparison, that's an actual dollar bill. Behold the tracks of the bigfoot - sasquatch andersonious:

Evidence ...

Who's been passing through my yard?

false_felis_silvestris_catus: 

bona_fide_felis_silvestris_catus

canine - possibly Canis latrans

felis_silvestris_catus with sciurus_carolinensis

actively engaged in changus_mindus_reversus

homo_sapiens_deliverus_mailus

Illusion

Same image, as photographed on left - inverted on right side. Make of it what you will.

Oh Ye, Behold, It Has Cometh!

The front end of Winter in southwest Ohio:

Peace on Earth

Well, maybe not on earth. However, in a suburban backyard, she's found a bit of temporary sanctuary and peace from traffic and hunters.

Goodbye November

Like it says ...

Hell-ooooo December

Well, we live in a temperate zone, with 4 full seasons. This sums up what we have, off and on, to look forwards to for the next few months. With a little visual assistance from Cincinnati's The Power of 5 televised weather information.

U. S. Capital

A photo I took back in 1976 or thereabouts. Mamiya C330f Pro

Ray ...

A squiggly abstract I managed to create without thought and without effort. It simply appeared as one of my October thumbnails. So, I named it Ray 'cause it looks like it's autographed. Ray scribbles from the beyond.

Reflecting on our Vacation

A mountain stream in the heart of the Smoky Mountains, near Gatlinburg, Tennessee. Image is inverted to make it .... uh, whatever.

Wooo Wooo clackity clack

All Aboard. Took a trip on the Great Smokey Mountain Railroad headquartered in Bryson City, North Carolina.

Blackberry 8310 GPS working without cell phone service

I just found out an interesting and, for me, very useful revelation. Recently, I had switched to an Android phone and my previous Blackberry phone provider was terminated.

Recently, I was thinking about getting a GPS tracker (data logger) for my Android. The free Google app, when I began to install it, required me to allow nearly every piece of data on the phone accessible to Google so I decided against that. When I read through all the things that were checked, it seemed that Google's Mytracks was straight out of the pages of the spy agencies. So, once again I began thinking about my Blackberry 8310's GPS capabilities. Voila!

I discovered that my Blackberry's GPS unit works without phone service. I had to go to Options -> Advanced Options -> GPS Services and make sure it was turned ON. I turned it off for a few seconds and turned it back on, stepped outside as it was searching for satellites. In less than a minute later, the display showed 6 satellites and had refreshed the previous reading. Voila and Eureka!!! ... or is it Eureka and Voila?

Next, I activated my tracking program, bbTracker, my friend when I'm roaming the forest, and took a very short walk. The tracker immediately started plotting my progress. The image below shows the my excursion's route. The chart was saved and then re-opened just to make sure the whole process worked. I edited some digits out of the GPS data so you won't know, without some research effort, where the concrete step is on my front porch.

I think I'll keep my Blackberry 8310 for a while longer.