Maroon Michelle's profile~The Story of Maroon Mic...PhotosBlogListsMore  |  Tools Help |
|
~The Story of Maroon Michelle~http://www.flickr.com/people/maroon_michelle/ December 24 Happy holidays to everyone on Spaces/Messenger! Image courtesy of: http://www.rhettsmith.com/blog/archives
"This is my wish for you: peace of mind, prosperity through the year, happiness that multiplies, health for you and yours, fun around every corner, energy to chase your dreams, joy to fill your holidays!"
--D.M. Dellinger As you can tell, I haven't really been keeping up with this space in the last couple of months. I've recently gotten interested in photography and have really enjoyed posting my photos on my Flickr photo blog and getting involved in some of the Flickr photo groups. Hope to continue blogging in the new year but not sure if I will remain in Windows Live Spaces. Right now, I've had to disable the comments feature on my space because of annoying spam comments & trackbacks. Unfortunately, Spaces doesn't have any way for users to preview comments prior to MSN users posting new comments on your space.. so you are only left with the option of deleting such spam comments from your space but who really wants this kind of stuff to be posted on their site anyways.
Despite the ugly spam comments, I've met alot of awesome people on Windows Live Spaces and wish to send holiday greetings to everyone on Windows Live Spaces who makes Spaces a friendly and positive place to write a blog.
~Happy Holidays to all of my friends on Windows Live Spaces/MSN Messenger & best of luck in the New Year!~
August 09 A beautiful day to take flower macro shots    After a couple of days of cool and foggy weather, it's nice to finally return to the sunny & warm days of summer. Today, I had the day off from work and decided to do abit of work in the garden. I usually take my best flower macro shots on bright sunny days. Right now, we don't have alot of plants in bloom because they bloomed at a more earlier than usual in either late June to mid-July. Today, I took a couple of macro shots of pink roses from a pink rose bush and pink phlox. I especially like the rose macro because the photo captured the varying texture of petals and I also like the color.
For the last month, I've been regularly posting my snapshots of flowers, plants, nature, and other stuff in my Flickr photo blog. You can see more of these photos in my Summer 06 set on Flickr . I've also posted some of the photos that have gotten the most hits in Flickr in the Live Spaces photo album. My neighbour has some amazing vine flower plants and roses in her garden. I hope to take some snapshots of these flowers soon and post it on Flickr. August 08 Hiroshima Documentary- Intense and moving
A scene from a Hiroshima Documentary featured on the Passionate Eye Two days ago, 55 000 people in a Hiroshima ceremony located in the Peace Park remembered the moment the atom bomb was dropped by a US plane at 0815 on August 6th, 1945. I hadn't heard much about the day because it was overshadowed by the war in Lebanon.
However, this evening, I watched a CBC Passionate Eye Documentary about Hiroshima which described minute by minute accounts from living survivors on how it feels to experience a nuclear explosion. I was amazed that this show was able to find several people who actually observed the nuclear explosion and were able to survive to the age of 80 years old after being exposed to a lethal dose of radiation released from the atom bomb. This documentary had a unique perspective where they showed parallel accounts from living survivors who experienced the atom bomb and the Americans who were involved in deciding to drop the atom bomb and the American soliders who assisted with dropping the atom bomb from a plane on Hiroshima and on Nagaski (2 days later, August 9,1945). From the American side, the politicians and soldiers admit that it was easy to experiment with the bomb on the Japanese after Pearl Harbour.It reminds me of the attitude that United States continues to use against nations who threaten their sense of safety after September 11th. The re-ennacement video of the devastating aftermath of the atom bomb is quite graphic and intense to demonstrate how the release of tons of energy and heat from the bomb led to thousands of people being vaporized into the air. It was horrifying to hear the living survivors talk about seeing people covered in black and their faces were burned to a point that you can barely see a human face. The most tragic part of the video was listening to a Japanese lady who is now in her 80s talk about how she saw her 6-year old daughter cry with fear as she was engulfed by flames while trapped in the rubble and she had to helplessly watch her daughter die. A week later, she lost her husband who died from the 'invisible illness' which was later revealed to be radiation poisoning. Sixty one years later, the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki have rebuilt their cities into a thriving area who passionately supports disarming nuclear weapons. Unfortunately, nuclear weapons continue to be developed in other regions around the world. Unfortunately, the Middle East Crisis is starting to look like the beginning of World War III where there is a divide between extremists who support terrorism and nations agaisnt terrorism. Right now, the war is in Lebanon. As I'm writing this entry, there are many innocent people who are living through the experience of surviving a missile attack. How many more people have to die? More importantly, what are we fighting for? How does war help protect our safety when it leads to some of the people unjustly hurt in war to join extremist groups. During the WW II, the US thought the nuclear bomb would end the war and bring peace to the world. Unfortunately, we still have war. Will we ever find peace or will we have to experience another atom bomb to finally resolve the Middle East crisis? Comments on this issue are welcomed. August 07 Never miss the bus again! Text Message alerts available for transit users in St. John's. I take the bus alot to travel back and forth to school, home, and places around the St. John's area. One of the things that I find annoying about using the bus is waiting for the bus to arrive and worrying about missing the bus when I have to be at certain place at a specific time.
In the last two years, Metrobus has updated their services with current technology to include real-time updates on bus routes. In that way, transit users can find out if there is bus is running on schedule by checking these real-time updates by phone or checking the Metrobus site.
In March 2006, Metrobus took this process a step further by teaming up with MyStop.ca to offer real-time bus arrival text-message alerts to people living in the St. John's and Mount Pearl area. My Stop tracks the location of bus in real time. This service seems to have potential for cell-phone users who frequently use text messaging. At MyStop.ca, you can find more information about how to register for the service, guides on using the service, rates/ rate bundles to receive text messages, and schedules for alerts (e.g., remind them 10 minutes prior to bus arrival)..
Currently, the service is available in the St. John's metro area and MyStop is working on expanding the service to regions in Canada. Below is some more information about using the MyStop text messaging service. Rates seem affordable and work well for those of us who have pre-paid cell phone plans.Has anybody out there used this type of service? Feel free to comment on your thoughts regarding the service or how you found it? I'd definitely like to try this service out when I buy a pre-paid cell phone
Further information on MyStop - Review the MyStop service agreement & how to use guide.
1. On-demand Requests for bus alerts to receive estimated time of arrival for the Next bus and the Following bus – for specific routes or all routes serving your stop.
Text VITALX (848259) - 25 cents per text message will be added your cell phone bill.
2. Pre-paid Messages
Register on-line to purchase a bundle of lower cost messages. Choose Bundle 40 at $6.50 for a bundle of 40 messages, or Bundle 80 at $12.00 for a bundle of 80 messages.
August 05 FireFox Live Bookmarks- my favorite RSS reader
Click on image for tutorial on using FireFox Live Bookmarks Until I started to use my computer more from home, I never realized the value of having a RSS reader. In the past, I mostly used computers in school to surf the net/ check e-mail because of the faster DSL connection compared to dial-up at home. Recently, I bought a new laptop and I've spent more time using it at home because of convenience and the fact that dial-up is faster on a new system with higher processing capability. For the last year, I was using Bloglines - web based RSS aggregator to keep track of the latest updates from my favorite blogs & news sites. I certainly recommend this site if you mostly access the net from various computers such as a library, office, school, etc... Using one account, you can access your favorite feeds and import/export your list of feeds to a RSS news reader on your personal computer at your convenience. If you like to read updated website content from your computer/ laptop, there are a wide range of RSS reader programs available . Last month, I installed Sage- RSS reader extension which works with the Mozilla Firefox browser. The only problem that I had with this reader was that it took a lot of steps to add feeds because I would have to open up Sage and copy and paste the RSS feed address to Sage. A lot of unnecessary clicks when you don't want to use up all your dial-up minutes. Fast-forward to my discovery of Mozilla Firefox Live Bookmarks about three weeks ago. Google Pack updater forced me to my archaic version of Firefox and I noticed a new button called “Subscribe” on the firefox tool bar. Eventually, I figured out that all I had to do was click Subscribe on any website with an active RSS feed and it would automatically add it to the bookmarks tool bar. From your bookmarks, you can see the latest item headlines from your favorite blogs or news feeds. It's great for me because I can easily keep track of the latest comments to photos posted in my Flickr blog / Flickr photo groups, the latest news headlines, and my favorite blogs by just hooking to the net for five minutes. It is a major time saver. To use Live Bookmarks, you will need to install the latest version of Mozilla Firefox on your computer . Caution: There are some features in MSN Spaces that don't work in FireFox such as the media player and editing your MSN Space blog. Thus, keep using Internet Explorer if you like to view or edit music/video/blogs on MSN Spaces. Firefox live bookmarks is useful to keep track of the latest blog, photo, and site updates from your friends on MSN Spaces. Useful Links Information from FireFox on Mozilla Firefox Live Bookmarks Firefox bookmarks tutorial- how to use live bookmarks? My RSS feeds- Subscribe if you like updates from my sites Latest blog entries, photo & site updates from my MSN Windows Live Space |
|
||||||||||
Send a private message
Tell a friend
Add to My MSN
Add to your network
Sign up for alerts
|
|
