The red amaryllis I bought a couple of weeks ago opened up this morning. Click on the image to enlarge.
December 2010
Warm Winter Weather
We awakened to a warm day today. The Santa Ana winds brought the temperatures up at our California home. It seemed like a good day for an outdoor barbecue, so we prepared baked potatoes, baked acorn squash, baked salmon steak and a grilled New York strip steak.
We posed in front of the grill while the meal was cooking on the outdoor grill. Click on the image to enlarge.
GPS Hints and Tricks
One of the limitations of my Garmin Nüvi 205W GPS is its inability to select a custom route. Unlike Google Maps™ and other popular on-line map resources, the Garmin only allows one waypoint to be programmed in addition to the destination.
When we leave the LA area to go to the new house (something we have been and will be doing a lot), I like to take a different route than the GPS decides. The GPS always wants to send me to Banning via state route 60 through Riverside which is an inferior route to joining up with I-10 via I-15. There is less traffic and construction that way, plus 60 takes us over the winding road east of Moreno Valley.
I searched for some information on setting a custom route on my GPS and found a blog that had tons of information: Tricks, Tips, Work Arounds, Hints, Secrets and Ideas for Garmin GPS. I spent quite a lot of time looking through the many articles there and found out a whole lot I didn’t already know about my GPS.
I eventually stumbled on a tip that solved 70 percent of my problem. I programmed a precision waypoint on the ramp from northbound I-15 to eastbound I-10. I say 70 percent because it still wants to take me up to I-105 and east. Fortunately, It will recalculate the route as I drive where I want to go and once we’re east of I-605 it shows the preferred route. Even though the hints and tips website didn’t solve my exact problem 100 percent, it showed me how to get more out of the GPS.
A Picnic at MacGuire Park
I took this picture last month in MacGuire Park, a nice little place with BBQ stands and a shaded playground. Near the middle of the park there are several picnic tables. Bob and the dogs were enjoying the shade as we waited while the chicken breast cooked over the charcoal fire.
Shopping Time ‘Til Christmas
I discovered another very interesting gadget in the Flash® component toolkit. It’s a countdown timer that is pretty easy to use. I made this little Christmas timer in about ten minutes, including publishing it to the web.
I’ve got all my Christmas shopping done (thanks to on-line shopping). How about you?
Animated Slideshow Transitions
I recently upgraded to the latest version of the Flash™ authoring tool that I use. There are lots of new features in the latest release, several of which I used for the slideshow seen here.
The tool lets me break up the images into whimsical shapes and then the effects browser allows me to preview the transition effect before choosing it. This is the result:
The images were made in November at the site of the new house in Arizona.
