I applied water to my hands, then a few drops of oil, and “lathered” my face. The shave went a lot smoother than I thought. Since, shaving my chin worked well enough, I decided to shave my head. I had clipped the hair the day before, so shaving it was not quite as dramatic as it sounds.

When shaving with oil, the blade has to work much harder. I think this is because the hair is not moistened and softened as with shaving cream. Cleaning the blade was not nearly as easy as rinsing it under some running water. The oil and short hair stuck together forming a tenacious black glob that require wiping away or vigourous shaking. Since I use a a double sided razer, the hair-oil mixture was easy to clean. The current fashion of multiple blades may make cleaning this mixture much more difficult.

The shave was as good as shaving with cream. However, this time I used a small volume of a sustainable, cheap alternative. As for the problem of tougher hair, perhaps a shower or a presoak with a warm towel might help soften the hair.

When I load Simplenote, it will attempt to sync and then crash – every time. I loaded the lastest version of Simplenote – no change. My query to tech support prompted this reply…

I’m very sorry you’re experiencing this. Are you able to update your iPod to iOS 4.3 or iOS 5? We’re doing some additional testing here to see what the problem might be with your particular configuration.

While I appreciate the reply and efforts, I was disappointed. I am unable to upgrade further, because the iPod Tocuh will not support anything higher than 4.2 (simplenote requires only 4.0 and higher) Nothing has changed on my end, and simplenote works just fine if I do not try and sync the notes. Something changed in the syncing process, causing the cashing. I am not the only one either.

It was with great sadness that I deleted simplenote and installed Notesy. Notsey syncs via dropbox. I transferred my nvALT files to dropbox and Notesy is able to read those notes. It seems to work and I do not have to rely on a third party service for syncing. I do not think dropbox will be changing their protocols anytime soon. But, I will miss Simplenote as it served faithfully and well for two years.

I have enjoyed taking photos for several years now. But, one thing I would like to improve is my understanding of portrait photography. I am at a complete loss of how to arranged the studio, what to do with flashes, how to pose etc…

He went on build his own tractor and other farm machinery. From his farm, he and others have gathered to develop other machinery to power civilization.

Open Source Ecology is a global network dedicated to accelerating the growth of the next economy, an open source economy, that optimizes both production and distribution while promoting social justice and environmental regeneration. We are building the Global Village Construction Set, a high-performance, modular, do-it-yourself, low-cost platform that allows for the easy fabrication of the 50 different industrial machines that it takes to build a small, sustainable civilization with modern comforts.

Here are a group of people, stepping outside the “box”. They are deciding to dedicate their lives, to promote what they think is important. They are participating in life, joining the conversation of what it means to be human and to try and live on this world lightly rather than blindly following the world trashing script the rest of us have been handed.

They are choosing to be citizens rather than mere consumers.

All I need to do is navigate to the word that I want to correct and hit command-Alt f10 – the macro selects the word and then “right” clicks the mouse  to bring up a selections of correct words

The key to the macro is the two regular clicks (at the mouse location) , a pause (I am not sure that this was necessary) and then a simulated right click.

Unfortunately, the mouse cursor and the keyboard cursor are two different things. When you move to a word, using the arrow keys, the keyboard cursor “moves”. However, to activate a right click in the right position, the mouse cursor needs to move. The inelegant solution is to activate “mousekeys” through the Universal access menu and then “mouse” over to the misspelled word…okay back to the mouse.

The problem I had with continuing my mayonnaise creation experiments, was having to throw out the resulting concoctions. I like to use free range eggs, but they are at least double the cost of regular eggs if not more. I was always heartbroken to throw out all the olive oil and eggs.

But finally, I ran into a couple recipes seem to help. I gave up entirely on attempting to achieve the right mixture of oil and egg. Instead, I used almonds for a vegan mayonnaise.

The first recipe I tried:

Marcona Almond Mayonnaise

Ingredients

• ¼ cup apple cider vinegar
• 1 tablespoon agave nectar
• ½ cup olive oil
• 2–4 tablespoons marcona almonds

Directions:

1. Pour vinegar and agave into Vitamix and puree on high speed for 20 seconds until combined
2. With motor running on medium or high, drizzle in olive oil to create an emulsion
3. Don’t worry, if you don’t get the emulsification, the almonds will thicken up your mixture
4. Blend in 2 tablespoons of almonds, then check for thickness and texture
5. If necessary, blend in another tablespoon of almonds, until thick and creamy
6. Serve with sandwiches, burgers and salads

I did not have any apple cider vinegar, so used regular vinegar instead and substituted honey for agave nectar. The mixture was too vinegary for assistant tasters. My son wrinkled his face at the taste of it and then told me he did not like it with all the innocent honesty a three is capable of. I think the apple cider vinegar would not have been so strong.

The second recipe used lemon instead of vinegar.

Almond Mayonnaise

Ingredients (use vegan versions):

• 1 cup slivered blanched almonds
• 3 1/2 ounces oil (1/3 cup is too little, 1/2 too much)
• 1/2 teaspoon salt, optional
• 5 ounces water, divided
• 1/8–1/4 cup lemon juice

Directions:

1. Place almonds, oil, salt and about 1/2 the water in blender. Process on high until smooth, 3–4 minutes.
2. Add remaining water and continue blending until extremely smooth. Add lemon juice while blender is operating.
3. Pour into 2 cup container and chill. This will set up as it chills.

If this doesn’t set up right, try adding a little of the runny stuff to 1/4 cup more slivered blanched almonds, process until smooth, then add the remaining runny stuff, process until well combined. Chill. If this doesn’t work, add a little more lemon juice. It is never ruined, because you can always add more of the nuts or lemon juice and it works out ok.

If it is too thick, put the lump in the blender and add 1/4 cup water, process until smooth and pour back into the container and chill. When you get the right proportions for your blender and taste, write them down. This is wonderful stuff.

I used whole almonds, soaked in warm water instead of silvered almonds. But, I slowly added the almonds to the Vita mix after the other ingredients. I also added a dash of mustard (did not have any mustard powder) and added 1 tsp of honey. The second recipe was a success. I suppose this is not really mayonnaise as I never really did achieve the correct emulsification, but the addition of almonds after mixing the oil and lemon juice meant that I could control the texture and solidity.

Finally I had egg free (and any worries about salmonella) vegan mayonnaise without a huge learning curve.

Del.icio.us in its current form is lacking subscriptions. Not only that, but my data was trapped. I tried to log in to Del.icio.us. But, I only had a 4 character password. I know the horrors of having a 4 character password that could be easily guessed at. But, I do not think my bookmark information needed any higher-level security. The Del.icio.us website does. It will not allow me to log in with a 4 character password. I can get to my old bookmarks, but I can’t get them out.

I finally passed the mourning of a really useful site. Then I started Pinboard. So while Pinboard does not support subscriptions, it just works, and my data is not trapped. It looks like a throw back to the Del.iciou.us of old, and I paid for it – I think it was worth the cost, but I wish I had done it earlier.

But, things still seem slowly. I played around with the accuracy versus speed slider and that helped a little bit. But, using DragonDictate was never a smooth experience. It was a lot faster than typing, if I were using everyday English words. But, the words never seemed to flow across the screen. The time between speaking and seeing the words appear was long enough to break my train of thought. I was afraid to keep talking and talking as the manual had recommended, because I did not want to see my words disappear into a spinning beach ball of interpretation.

I recently upgraded my Mac to 16 MB of memory because I wanted to use Aperture and Nix software’s Color Efex Pro 4 full work more effectively. since upgrading to a Nikon D 7000, I found the computer slower. The factory default of 4gb was no longer sufficient to allow Color Efex Pro and aperture to work well. These programs are memory hogs. There is still lag between making my changes in Color Efex Pro and having the changes finally saved to the photo. But, it’s tolerable and significantly faster than the same procedure with 4 times less memory.

What I did not expect, was at Dragon Dictate operated much faster and more smoothly. I no longer seem to have to wait for the computer to “think”. When I’m dictating I’m no longer hesitating, and wondering if what I speak is being completely lost.

When I had used Dragon Dictate before I did not have any other programs open. I was trying to give Dragon Dictate to access as much system memory as possible. Nuance requires a minimum of 2 GB of RAM to use DragonDictate, they recommend at least 4 GB of RAM. I think that 8 GB of RAM, should be the minimum needed to run this program smoothly, effectively and without hiccups.

I have read a lot of posts from frustrated readers on the Dragon Dictate forum. I think many of these problems could be corrected if there was sufficient memory. However, I do not see too many people buying the program if the minimum (frustration free )requirements were 8 GB. But, I think either Nuance has got to upgrade the requirements or program more efficiently. Also having a newer Mac(<2 years old) may reduce the memory requirement.

I’ve always struggled with his program. It does not have a great UI and there’s always something that seemed to go wrong every time I do my taxes. But, the worst part about doing Canadian taxes is that there are no really great programs out there. The best tax program I ever had for Mac OS was Quick Tax. I really liked this program. I found entering data was easy, and the calculations were even easier. But, true to Intuit’s form, they removed this product from the market. The current incarnation of quick tax is TurboTax. Unfortunately, it’s browser only. Doing my taxes on a web browser seems foolhardy. I like my sensitive data to be controlled.

The next program was GriffTax . This is only slightly better than filling out the forms by hand, but it worked for a year. Grifftax was bought by TaxTron. But, this year TaxTron would not work.

Finally, out of desperation I found TaxFreeway.. The website look like some reject the 1990s so, I was really hesitant to use this product. The UI for this program was dated and restricted. But, it got the job done with In some region minimal fuss. I have spent far less effort using tax-free way that I did in the last few years of using TaxTron. There is even an iPad version.

I’m glad there is one more competitor in the very restricted field of Canadian tax software for Mac OS X in.

At least seven people died in Oslo after a huge car bomb exploded close to buildings which house the offices of Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg.
A further 84 were killed when a man dressed as a police officer opened fire on the island of Utoya where a youth meeting of the ruling Labour Party was taking place.

I cannot imagine the absolute horror that these children had to face. As a parent, knowing that your child was in such danger and being unable to help would be absolutely maddening.

The greatest danger this of cowardly attack is dismissing it as the work of a lone madman. This attack was directed against the Labour Party. This was a gathering of youth from the Labour Party. Anders Breivik wanted to make commentary on immigration policies of the Labour Party.

Hassan Ali argues that hostility towards immigrants has been growing steadily in Norway over the past decade and blames the rise of right-wing parties in parliament, particularly the Progress Party, or FrP, which now holds the second-largest number of seats.
This mad man (Anders Behring Breivik) has been brain-washed by the far right party (FrP)… and has been following its ideology… and he needed to do something,” he said.

The FrP was attacking the Labour party because they were bringing Muslims to this country and defending their rights, their workplace and social rights.”
Mr Breivik was a member of the party for four years but the FrP denies it influenced him, saying his actions and beliefs are contrary to its policies and value-system.

”Over the last three years we have felt we are not welcome here,“ says Hassan Ali.
”Every Sunday the papers are writing only negative things about the Somalis. People are leaving and more will leave as the pressure builds up.”
Members of other immigrant communities are also concerned about what they say is the negative attitude towards them.
Kenneth, who came to Norway from Kenya six years ago, says he was on a plane when the attacks took place.
”The first thing someone said was that it was an immigrant and immigration should be stopped.”

A party or a people can not espouse anti-muslim sentiments and then be surprised when these thoughts have given rise to a mass murder. This had happened in Nazi germany, Rwanda, and Sri Lanka. Anders Brevik was a creation of the extremist views that pervaded his country.

Lars Buehler, a Norwegian scholar and terrorism expert, said he had debated with Breivik on an extremist website frequented by what he calls xenophobes and Islamaphobes all over Europe.

”I was the single opposing voice, arguing against the xenophobic, Islamaphobic postings and comments that were the norm on this page, and Breivik did not stand out with a particularly aggressive or violent rhetoric. He was quite mainstream, Mr Buehler said.
The rhetoric that fuels Anders Breivik exists in not so hidden forms in main stream society .

Following the devastation wreaked by Breivik, it was a week of intensive damage limitation for the anti-Islam populists of Europe. Alarmed they might be tarred by association with the Utøya massacre, the New Populists, usually if inaccurately dubbed neo-fascist or extreme right, have been in a hurry to disavow the Norwegian mass murderer and condemn the violence.

Among the extreme parties in Italy, France, Sweden and the Netherlands, politicians have been fired, suspended, disciplined or rebuked by their leaders for voicing sympathy with Breivik’s worldview – nostalgia for a conservative, traditionalist, whites-only Europe of a bygone age combined with blind fury at its dissolution in a globalised world.

If Breivik’s anger erupted in mass murder, the populist politicians use words as their weapons, posters and images for their witch hunts and scapegoating.

”In a Norwegian Norway this tragedy would never have happened,“ blogged Erik Hellsborn of the anti-immigrant Sweden Democrats party. ”This was caused by multiculturalism.“ He was in trouble with the leadership of a party that campaigns to ”keep Sweden Swedish” in the country that is the most open to immigrants in Europe.

Wilders, leader of the Dutch Freedom party, who has been tried and acquitted on hate speech charges for his calculated provocations, is a favourite of Breivik, notching up 30 references in the manifesto. Wilders said he was appalled by Breivik, fearing that such actions could damage his campaign. “This is a slap in the face for the worldwide anti-Islam movement,” he said.

In Austria, Heinz-Christian Strache, the Freedom party leader who associated with neo-Nazis in his youth and who is now neck-and-neck with the governing social democrats at the top of opinion polls, fired a party official who responded to the atrocities by declaring that the real danger was Islam rather than Breivik. The same party used a computer game as a campaign tool last year. In Mosque Bye-bye, the players zapped Muslim prayer houses, only to be told that the southern Styria region of Austria is “full of mosques and minarets”.

The idea for the game was imported from neighbouring Switzerland where the rightwing Swiss People’s party has powered its anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant referendum campaigns with potent, inflammatory posters almost always in stark red, white, and black, recalling Third Reich propaganda – grasping black hands scooping up red-and-white Swiss passports, three white sheep kicking a black sheep off a red-and-white Swiss flag.
As outlined in Breivik’s rambling manifesto, they largely dovetail with the views of the New Populists who combine a far-right outlook. Liberals and the left have been eager to seize on this, seeking to score political points by blaming figures such as Wilders or Strache for fostering a climate of hate, fear and prejudice that may not condone but nonetheless tacitly encourage violence.

I am unsure how any person can dismiss the inflammatory ideas of racisms and hatred from the actions of Anders Breivik. But, apparently it is possible:

An Italian MEP has described the ideas of Norway’s self-confessed mass killer, Anders Behring Breivik, as “good” and in some cases “excellent”.
Mario Borghezio, who belongs to the Northern League party, condemned Mr Breivik’s violence, but backed his stance against Islam.
“Some of the ideas he expressed are good, barring the violence. Some of them are great,” Mario Borghezio told Il Sole–24 Ore radio station.
He agreed with Mr Breivik’s “opposition to Islam and his explicit accusation that Europe has surrendered before putting up a fight against its Islamicisation”.

How does a person condemn mass murder and in the same breath condone the sick, cowardly ideology that lead to the act in the first place. What kind of mental gymnastics does a person need to perform not to see the hypocrisy ? Extremists views from the far right or the Jihadist have no place in a decent society. Free speech ends when violence, and murder is sanctioned.