I have been messing with computers for 20 years, and I have been creating websites for more than ten. Believe it or not I never had occasion to do a print screen to create a screen shot before today. I guess I mainly worked with my own content.

However, I had a good reason. I was helping out a person writing to me at BreadInfo.com. I had a PDF file of the manual and wanted to show my correspondent the instructions for programming a Zojirushi. I could have sent the whole manual, but it is huge. So I decided to do the print screen thing. Little did I know how easy it would be.

Basically, in Windows XP, and probably most other windows systems, you just hold down alt and then hit the PrtSC key. This will print the window to the clip board. If you want the entire screen just hit the PrtSc button. You can then paste it to your favorite image editor and do what you like with it.

Well there is nothing like revealing your ignorance for making you feel young…and naive again.

WJR

I read in yesterday’s WSJ that Wikipedia has lost over 40,ooo editors in the last year. Well, in theory they have about 3,000,000. So really this is a drop in the bucket. But it was enough to cause hand-wringing among the wiki-ites.

My attitude toward wikis is well known. I don’t like it as a model because it can be manipulated easily by anyone. However, I have to grant that often the quality of the information can be pretty good. Yet one never knows what one is getting.

The loss of so many editors was attributed to falling interest, and also the fact that Wikipedia is becoming more and more structured. Many topics are completely closed and others require editorial review before a change can be made. I can actually understand these restrictions, drive by spammers, goofballs, and political advocates probably corrupt the database every day. It must take tremendous resources to police the wiki world.

I certainly don’t see the demise of Wikipedia any time soon. It is simply interesting to see it struggle along, losing adherents as the economy falls, and unemployment rises. I think the biggest reason that Wikipedia might be struggling is that more people are putting a monetary value on their time and are beginning to see that giving it away free to Wikipedia might not be the good deal they once believed.

Yesterday, I took the opportunity of a few spare minutes to quit my ivory tower and do a bit of leaf raking. We have two ash trees, an apple tree, a maple, and 12 grape vines. They all shed their leaves in the fall, but they don’t have the decency to drop them all at once. No, they make certain that I must rake the entire yard twice.

Sure, I could take the easy way out like the neighbors and run a lawnmower over the works. Of course, I don’t because, because, well, because I didn’t think of it until just now.

In any case, while I was raking I waxed philosophic as is my want in the midst of manual labor. I was thinking that if I left this carpet of leaves on the ground it would eventually kill off the grass. I could not let this happen, as I need the grass to provide me something to mow in the spring and summer and autumn. It reminded me of an article I read long ago that hypothesized that wheat has us enslaved. It uses us to coddle it, protect it from insects, plow fields for it, kill off its competition, and distribute its seed every spring.

Indeed, it is the same thing with the lawn, a close relation of wheat. I rake, fertilize, and give it a periodic hair cut. I am a servant to what? grass. I suppose it is the destiny of man to become a slave to a plant. And when we are done, we ourselves are planted six feet under it.

Since I wrote a quiz script in php, I have found quite a few uses for it. It seems to me a good way to allow the reader to test their retention of knowledge imparted in a particular article.

I haven’t put it to extensive use. I originally created it for a BabySitting Tips website a couple of years ago. Most recently, I have been trying it out on some history pages on InDepthInfo. This is a quiz on the Protestant Reformation and the Catholic Counter-Reformation.

Making up the quiz made me realize that there is a certain art to making up questions and more specifically answers to a quiz. You want the questions to pertain to the material, of course, but you also want them to dig down to the nub of the material, only asking questions that relate to the most important facts on the page.

Answers are even more interesting. I try to include answers which might seem like a viable possibility, only occasionally throwing in an ironic response. Don’t make the answer too obvious, but at the same time two or more possibilities should not be made so close that they become confusing. A test writer does not want the quiz to appear to be unfair.

I have just finished a webfolio on Tea, also known as Camellia Sinensis for InDepthInfo. I find it amazing how much I learn every time I create a new folio or webpage. What I find equally amazing is that six months down the road, I sometimes forget completely that I even created a particular webpage. I did one on chopsticks a couple of years ago. I ran across it completely by accident. It was almost orphaned, but not quite, or I probably never would have found it.

Later I realized that it was one of those pages that I created late one night for my old OneManWiki.com (no longer extant). I salvaged the content as it was fairly comprehensive and moved it to InDepthInfo.

In any case, tea has always been a passion with me. I can remember when I was a teenager, my Mother, Brother, and Sisters would sit out on the porch and watch the rain as we sipped a cup of black tea. I seldom do this now, despite the opportunities. It seems I am too busy trying to keep up with commitments, and with the ancillary duty of making a living.

In recent years I have switched over to green tea. I find it sits much better with my delicate constitution. What I found most interesting was the difference between green and black tea is in the processing. Black tea is “fermented” or oxidized for four hours, while green tea is not.

This site also prompted me to swipe a few raspberry leaves from my wife’s favorite raspberry plants. I dried them and then made tea from them. Truthfully, they do taste very much like green tea. If you want to make a cheap decaf green tea, try it out.

You may have noticed the radical change in the way this blog looks. But of course, if you had not been here before, you would never know. So why am I bringing it up then?

It was prompted by a vicious attack on my server. Someone uploaded files to my server, I believe through a very old version of Wordpress. I have been putting off upgrading for a muy long time. This is because I generally have about a million other things to do as well, and even though Wordpress claims a five minute install, we all know that at least I am not capable of that kind of efficiency.

In any case, I no longer have the old “Kubric” look, but have opted for more modern, if not as clean styling. There are some things I would change about the new “theme” so if you are a regular, you may see a few more changes before I settle back into my usual troglodytic attitude about change.

WJR

Okay, I have done it. I published another book. This one is a fairy-tale entitled, Grezundl and the Frog Prince. I actually wrote it a couple of years ago, but it just sat in a folder for a while. Recently, I had opportunity to reread it again and found it, unlike some of my other work, stood up well to the test of time (at least two years worth of it). I then decided to spend the time and effort it would take to get it into actual book form.

I originally wrote it for my children, who were very much entertained by it. Not that this is a general recommendation, my progeny tend to eccentricity on my own level. What they like, the world will not necessarilly also enjoy.

The book is loaded with bad puns, sarcastic humor, and a touch of pathos which will have readers laughing and weeping by the end. Well, at least smiling and sniffling (especially if they have a cold). Even so, I usually write for my own entertainment and if anyone else finds it entertaining so much the better.

As I may have mentioned before, I have written about 10 books. Now three have been published. Looking at the other books, I wonder if they are worth bothering with. Most of them are (dare I say of myself) as witty and sarcastic as the books I have already published. However, they were mainly written in a more adult vain. In one book I treat with religion and sex in a seemingly off-hand manner. By the title you will see what I mean: “Antic: The Confessions of the Anti-Christ” The message is actually quite positive, but it tends to be reverent beneath all of the irreverence, if that is possible. When my mother-in-law read a draft, she said. Why don’t you write something that you would be happy to let your children read. I took her comment to heart and “Grezundl and the Frog Prince” was the result.

I just hope it does well as my cookbook!