Serving Waitsburg, Dayton and the Touchet Valley
Serving Waitsburg, Dayton and the Touchet Valley
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Below is the ChatGpt article written in the voice of Times columnist Vicki Sternfeld-Rossi. The writer asked the bot to create an article for The Times. It found Rossi's article from November 10, 2022 and used the title and the first two lines to begin its version. The original article is posted along side the "bot" version in this weeks online edition at www.waitsburgtimes.com. "The joys and sorrows of my new singledom" By Vicki Sternfeld-Rossi Daniel is still working in Portugal, and although...
INTERWEBS—From between seemingly ceaseless snowflakes and bouts of sledding, we can agree that now is an excellent time to be inside. And while we’ve got all this indoor time on our hands, let’s talk about fun stuff: digital file management. If you’re failing to see the fun, I understand. Digital storage tends to only be a fun subject if you’ve got your ship together, so to speak. If not, the subject comes up with sighs and groans and much chagrin. Who has the time? No one, but also everyone. It...
Let me tell you about my most recent tech acquisition: the ReMarkable pad. I ordered it in April 2020 and received it seven months later. Due to Covid-related restrictions, the Norway-based company has been taking orders and shipping in batches. Once the product got to Hong Kong, it reached my front door in five days. The ReMarkable pad is an elegant digital writing and sketching instrument designed for people who love pen and paper but live in the digital world. Other digital pads and apps...
Happy New Year, Techies! Auld lang syne and all that jazz. Welcome to 2021. If getting the most out of what you already pay for is on your resolutions list, then let's have a look at our internet service providers (ISPs). Internet speed is measured in megabits per second (Mbps). One megabit is equal to 1,024 kilobits. This conversion means 1.0 Mbps is more than 1,000 times faster than 1.0 kilobits per second (Kbps). Internet speed is calculated with the formula: File Size in Megabytes /...
Remember when holiday greeting cards were simple? Down the stationery aisle, one could find a box that had the card, matching envelopes, and, with a book of stamps in hand, you're all set. Yeah, well, that ship sailed, and these days my mailbox is filled to the brim with beaming smiles from custom printed photo postcards. And since we haven't been allowed within six feet of extended family and friends for much of the year, this may be the perfect time to join the photo postcard trend. Get the...
Free resources WORLD WIDE WEB-For Halloween, we thought it would be fun to watch the scary-not-scary movie Pulse. In it, Maddie (Kristen Bell) is startled to find that her recently deceased boyfriend is still sending her messages via email and text message. This film might be a new classic for its depiction of technology novel at the time. All the characters carry flip phones, mobile devices around after pagers but before sophisticated camera lenses were added to the mix. Voice and text messages...
WORLD WIDE WEB—In the Netflix documentary, The Social Dilemma, director Jeff Orlowski (Chasing Ice, and Chasing Coral) posits that the massive data mining force that is social media is creating more than a few problems. The case is presented by some of the very creators of the social mediascape as we know it today who personally attest to using human psychology to imbed addictive qualities right into the industry. In some instances, the idea of social media’s problematic nature is very con...
WORLD WIDE WEB—It’s not nearly as fun as getting out the rod and heading down to the lake, returning hours later with a cooler full of fresh fish. It’s quite the opposite. Phishing is the fraudulent practice of sending emails purporting to be from reputable companies to induce individuals to reveal personal information, such as passwords and credit card numbers. To appear legitimate, scammers will add counterfit logos to the top of their emails sent from similar-sounding, but not-q...
Not all shortcuts are created equal. One should probably be wary of, for instance, construction shortcuts. I’m no expert, but my guess is creating long-lasting, safe buildings is not the ideal time to start cutting corners. Technology shortcuts, however, can be lifesavers. One of the more generalized tech shortcuts might even fall under the term “life hacks” and applies to any device. For example, it’s a good idea to avoid saving files directly to a device’s hard drive. That way, you never rea...
WAITSBURG-It happens often enough, scrolling through one's timeline to find a friend or acquaintance posting about their accounts having been hacked, but has it ever happened to you? Once in 2005 my eBay account was hacked into and subsequent attempts were made to use my sixteen-digit debit card combination at a few gas stations in Florida. Ah, but the joke was on the aspiring thieves. There was no money in that account. No nefarious gasoline expenditures for you! The fraudulent charges were...
SECLUSION-As our time apart stretches on seemingly indefinitely, the importance of alternative forms of communication rises. Fortunately, there's a heap of technology at the ready. Unfortunately, deciding which method of digital communications can be a tangled web. Some decisions may be easily dictated by the device used to access it. For example, if you're using Android devices, Facetime will not be a video conferencing solution in your arsenal. The vast majority of popular options cater to...
WORLD WIDE WEB-It seems like everyone is on social media. These days there are several newer or emerging social media platforms, but Facebook, the classic, is still maintaining its foothold with 2.37 billion active users. In recent years, Facebook has worked to create transparency in its user base. They've chosen to focus on verified first and last names as opposed to Instagram handles, for instance. Funkyjazzguy88 is now John Smith. Doing away with creative usernames makes their...
WAITSBURG—According to my phone there are 6,056 photos and 872 videos lurking in its depths. And that’s nothing compared to the five terabyte hard drive that houses our family archives. In it there are birthdays, holidays, and precious memories—some of which family members may not even remember. Those are the photos that make the best gifts: the candids. In a perfect world, our photos would be categorized and labeled electronically. They would be searchable by faces, by location, by seaso...
There are several factors that contribute to the way an image looks in print. Digital images have the added bonus of illumination behind the image, defining edges and sharpening image quality by default. JPEG files compress their data to achieve a smaller, more portable file size. Likewise emailing images imposes upon them compressions that affect the quality. This compression is accomplished by discarding some of the data that comprises the image. Each time a JPEG is opened and re-saved in the...
eLearning courses offer students a flexible alternative to on-campus classes. Best suited to self-starters or remote participants with unfailing access to the internet, some entire degrees can be earned remotely. Whitman College and Washington State University use Blackboard, a web based LMS used in both academic and business environs to help students and employees take on learning. Blackboard users have options in how the software is implemented: on the premises, managed hosting, or in the...
Gardening and technology are two words that might not seem to go together, but green thumbs and screen thumbs are not so disparate. There's a tool for every job, whether you're growing on an acre or in a container, it's likely there's an app for that. But apps are only the beginning. Plant Identification PictureThis by Glority LLC for iPhone, iPad and Android users is an app that identifies plants by photographs of leaves or flowers. This is handy in springtime, especially for planning what...
Are you an avid reader or a reluctant one? How often do you find yourself at the library? Did you know you can access thousands of free audiobooks, magazines and eBooks from your public library from the comfort of your own home? Of course, one would prefer to stroll the aisles of a book-and-shelf, brick and mortar library. Who wouldn’t? Libraries are treasure troves. They’re filled with librarians, who are the most clever, helpful and friendly people. The books come along with many other unc...
Despite the adage, you absolutely can teach an old dog new tricks. In fact, no matter what amount of formal education one has had, it is possible to continue learning on into senior age. While the general consensus is that people who have long been used to doing things in a particular way will not abandon their habits, the opposite can be true. It’s beneficial to adopt the concept of continuing education as a lifestyle. The trick is, according to Harry Graham, the learner must be compelled to d...
There it is. You’ve got a gadget, all new tech, fresh out of its box, it’s shiny, it’s sleek. Isn’t it amazing they can make these so small? That’s technology for you. As devices of all kinds become a staple in our everyday lives, so to are technical difficulties. Do you know what they call people who fix Apple computers? Geniuses. As if it isn’t troubling enough to require assistance at all, you go to a Genius Bar and for [at least] $250 they will troubleshoot and fix computer hang ups. Best B...
One might assume that the facsimile, or fax as it came to be known, is a thing of the past. Faxes are obsolete technology from the days of screeching modems and are better relegated to the past along with floppy disks. If you're faxing in 2019, you might as well pull out a chisel and slab of limestone. Why not send a telegram? Or spend 6-8 weeks raising a homing pigeon. They fly between 600 and 800 miles a day. Surely that's faster and more rewarding than sending a fax. The idea of faxing today...
