Dave's Share Blog

The insurrection attempt, $5.99+ gas and a war greets us

The insurrection attempt, $5.99 gas and a war is a fine greeting from the ordeal of the global pandemic! I was wondering where all the Venezuelan oil we used to get went. The entire Texas refinery system was built just for processing Venezuelan crude, which is heavy and dark, and all those facilities are still there. Trump happened. Trump imposed sanctions on Venezuela to punish Maduro for not…

The Road to World War III

FRESNO (DPdc) WEDNESDAY, MARCH 9, 2022 — The Joint Chiefs of Staff advising President Biden yesterday put their foot down on a Polish MiG deal – a scheme to get more fighter planes into the hands of the Ukrainian Airforce as they fight off a full-scale Russian invasion. Begin commentary… Now it becomes a little more clear the situation we are in, because, that means the US military can’t keep…

Save US “Clean Energy” Investment… in Mexico

Energy envoy John Kerry is in Mexico today on an emergency visit! Because… Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador wants to shut down US corporation owned “clean” energy projects in Mexico. Mexico’s protest is: “instead of favoring your corporations to take over our country’s power market in the name of global warming, depriving our government of revenue we need, give that money to our…

Two years ago, Virginia became the 38th State to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment, first proposed over 100 years ago, first approved for Ratification by Congress in 1972. It declares women are equal to men under the Constitution. Two years after Ratification, the Constitution gets officially updated, and that’s today!! States cannot “unratify” or “rescind” their ratification after a political…

Since our family moved into this Fresno house in 1970, the electric system has been upgraded 3 times. The electric system that was in the house was very small in the beginning. Plugging in the vacuum cleaner could trip the circuit. It’s dangerous to rely in the circuit breaker to save your house, so be very quick to resolve any overloading. Look at any old movie and look for anything in the…

Google “Helen Wink”

Well, here’s a news item. Page 3 story. This one small landlord in Connecticut tries to get her tenant, who is behind on rent, to leave, by throwing away all his clothes, jewelry and other possessions into the city dump and locking him out of the house, when one day he leaves to go do something. He comes back to no home and no stuff, except that’s not the legal way to get rid of a tenant. He…

America: Love It or Leave It! This is Democracy’s most desperate hour.

It’s really disheartening to see America getting subjected to what is going on in Washington right now, and I’m not talking about Democrats pushing for voting rights. I’m talking about those serving in the Senate who get big financial political support for never giving up that 1975 filibuster rule. Anyone willing to carry that unholy flag gets to be miles ahead of the competition for campaign…

I just learned how to set my Pentax K-5 USER modes

When I first bought the Pentax K-5, I was just excited to have their latest APS-C DSLR, and that it succeeded the previous model, the K-7. But really, what was I getting that the K-7 didn't already provide until I finally learned how to use the USER modes. That's because the K-5 allows you to enter many user settings. The previous model allowed only 1. You just set the dial to user and then using one of the dials on the camera body you can cycle though all the user settings sets you created. The place to create a user setting is an item in the menu system. What finally pushed the issue was I was trying many setting changes today, many I liked. In fact, each one was better than the last, and it was getting to the point I felt it was time to make settings I can get back to easily. I searched around the internet for how to do and found the answer on this web page: http://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/K5/K5MODES.HTM

You can do that?

Linked text fields in programs like Illustrator and Flash is a form of multi-colum text where instead of columns happening within the field, you make additional text columns out of separate text fields, linking them so the text flows from field to field in whatever order you want. 

In inDesign and Quark I remember you could scale a text field, so the font size in a scaled box would be larger or smaller without changing the style in the original text. I got in really big trouble for trying that! But it worked. The upgrade from CS3 to CS5 was not kind to that trick, as it did not convert well. But that tomfoolery is not what this article is about.

If you're an inDesign/Quark whiz you know about these text fields, how at the bottom right on one tab the text flow continues to the next text box, the upper left inflow tab indicating so on the next text field. But in Quark and inDesign, you could wind up in a pickle if while linking text fields you accidentally clicked on the wrong one. You'd be looking at this instantly created tangle of crazy linkage arrows going every which way. Sure, there's undo, but what if that isn't an option because you'll lose changes you made in the interim? Here's what I never knew for years you could  do. 

So What's That AE-L Button For Again?

Turn off the LCD Screen on a DSLR when it's annoying you.

I just discovered how to turn off the LCD screen on the back of my DSLR, which is a Pentax K-5. The INFO button. Camera on - default view 1st click - mode info 2nd click - level 3rd click - screen OFF  4th click - back to default. 

Next mystery: Manual Focus

My viewfinder seems very unhelpful or I have no idea how to use it. But apparently all I need is a viewing screen with a split image circle on it.

Link: basic description of the SLR viewfinder and its parts: understanding viewfinders.  http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/understanding-series/viewfinders.shtml

Replacing a DSLR's Viewing Screen with a Focusing Screen

Well, it wasn't just me. It is darned near impossible to manually focus a DSLR using just the viewfinder because the viewing screen lacks a matted glass square nor the split image prism, and what you see through the viewfinder looks focused when it isn't, especially in low light. These were regular features on the old full-frame film SLRs.

The reason they are omitted from modern DSLR's is including these features on the focusing screen gets in the way of the exposure meter, causing it to miss by as much as three f-stops - causing overexposures. This is because the light meter has inadequate room to operate. Full-frame, there's enough room. The smaller APSC sensor is smaller in area. 

The exposure error can be minimized by using the multi point averaged metering - since the focusing aids get in the way of the centered metering. But some exposure compensation will be necessary. My lazy solution would be to take every shot with exposure bracketing on, and set the brackets as 0, -1.5, -3. 

KatzEye™ Replacement Focusing Screens

Fresno Design Alliance Ends Its Run 

Virus Protection on the Mac Has Gotten Cheap

http://www.sophos.com/en-us/products/free-tools/sophos-antivirus-for-mac-home-edition/download.aspx

That's the link to the Sophos Antivirus Home Edition download page. Sophos makes the best antivirus software and it is installed at large company and government sites. In an effort to reduce the amount of malware getting spread by individual home computer users, particularly Mac users who pass malware written for Windows to Windows machines without knowing it, Sophos is free for home use!

http://www.titanium.free.fr/download.php

Lynda.com

CSS elements can have transparent background color!

The old way to create a background with transparency was to create a graphic of say, 20% solid color in a Photoshop document with a transparent background and export as a .png file and then have that be the background-image.

Now you can just tell a color to be transparent at 10 different levels using rgba instead of rgb or hexadecimal color.

{       background-color: rgba(103, 122, 99, 0.2); } 0.2=20% of opaque, 0.5 would be 50% of opaque, 1.0 would be 100% opaque.

Appsumo's Got The Goods!

The link below is to the next downloadable course I'm buying so I can get closer to being a competitively knowledgeable web design master. Going down the rabbit hole, that's me! Think knowing how to use jQuery will make my web site designs jump out? You would think it would. The most trustworthy web site to find the right materials to learn from I've ever come across is Appsumo.

Mastering the Code

Okay! Using the validation service html: http://validator.w3.org/ and css: http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/ I have completely cleaned up my code. Plus, Using Firebug Plugin in the Firefox Browser, I discovered one of my "divs" was performing no useful function and eliminated it.