Archive | April 2014

A Free and Open Internet For All

Net Neutrality

Did you know your ability to access internet data is under threat? Seriously. You might lose your FREE access to a variety of websites, information and more if the FCC continues to back the desire of ISPs to charge for access.

Today Senator Elizabeth Warren posted a warning on her Facebook page concerning the pay-for-play policy being considered by FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler.

On her post, Sen. Warren wrote:
“We don’t know who is going to have the next big idea in this country, but we’re pretty sure they’re going to need to get online to do it. Reports that the FCC may gut net neutrality are disturbing, and would be just one more way the playing field is tilted for the rich and powerful who have already made it. Our regulators already have all the tools they need to protect a free and open Internet – where a handful of companies cannot block or filter or charge access fees for what we do online. They should stand up and use them.“

What’s at issue?
There are many places online to read about both sides of the issue. But who do you trust? I’d be more inclined to lean toward Wikipedia (Wikipedia:Net Neutrality) than some of the PC blogs and online magazines. Everyone has a slant to the issue. So I kept researching. Continue reading →

Tony Stewart’s Log Home

Apr26

3-Time NASCAR Cup Champion
Tony Stewart ~ The People’s Champion

Hidden Hollow
Updated: March, 2018

If you’ve never been to a Bass Pro Shop store, you really need to go. Even if you only go once, it’s worth the experience! Each one is an outdoor adventurist’s dream. But they’re also part museum, art gallery, antique store, aquarium, education, conservation and entertainment center all rolled into one. And I believe all of the stores, have some kind of restaurant attached, which adds to the adventure. But the stores themselves, will give you an idea of what Tony Stewart’s Hidden Hollow looks like.

Several years ago, my family and I went to the Bass Pro Shop in Ashland Virginia soon after it opened. We all fell in love with that place from the get go. The restaurant, has become our celebration location, for birthdays, anniversaries and most holidays. Please, we live in the middle of no-where; there’s not a lot of places to go out and celebrate. The kid loves going to dinner and then heading upstairs at the shop, where he can take part in the “play gun” target practice range. But we especially love going to BPS during Yuletide when we can visit with Santa and have our picture taken for Free!

Our BassProShop hosts a great sea food restaurant named Islamadora. During dinner we started talking about living in a house designed like the store. It’s truly a masterpiece of art, nature and architecture. What a dream home that would be.

@TonyStewart 06.04.2014

One of the advantages of being a 3 time NASCAR Sprint Cup Champion, like Tony Stewart, is being able to build your dream home. And he certainly did! His new home reminds me of the Bass Pro Shops stores, inside and out and nearly exactly like what we had imagined such a house would look like. And why shouldn’t it, Johnny Morris owner of the Bass Pro Shops is one of Tony’s dearest friends.

Or as Tony tweeted
June 4th, 2014
“Fishing with one of the greatest persons I’ve ever known Johnny Morris from BPS @Bass_Pro_Shops”

Before you continue reading this post; let me clear something up. This IS NOT Tony’s website. Try TonyStewart.com. So for those of you who feel the need to comment on this post and let Tony know you love his house and you want to come visit; please remember I’m not Tony; I’m not related to Tony, this isn’t his website; and he’ll probably NEVER see your comments. I appreciate the feedback and I love the house too. But you’ll be making your comments to me…not him So please don’t get upset when he doesn’t see them and doesn’t respond. Thanks.

Continue reading →

The Business of Spirituality : Tune In

Apr26

The Ænigma Project – Mondays 9 PM Eastern

Join Paul Cagle and his co-hosts Sushi and Springwolf (that’s me), as we share our research, knowledge, insight and humor of the spiritual and paranormal on The Ænigma Project.

04/28 Our Topic This Week:
The Business of Spirituality
We talk about business in the spiritual world with Guest Christine Andrew from CoSozo Radio Network. What she has learned about running her own business, how others can get started with their dreams in business and what pros and cons to look out for. If you’re thinking of turning your spiritual passion into a career, this is a great show to tune into. There’s something for everyone as we discuss the practical and offer a few lessons learned from our own experiences.

Christine offers insight, information and inspiration on her radio shows hosted on the Cosozo Radio Network. You can find her on Facebook and Twitter as well.

Be part of the Ænigmite Crew and play “Truth or Tale”, see if you can tell the stories that are real, from those that are made up. And find out what the latest strange or paranormal is being talked about for the week as we discuss the “News of the Day”. Learn more at Springwolf Reflections: The Ænigma Project’s April 28th, 2014 show The Business of Spirituality.

Continue reading →

Morning Dew

Apr25

The Faery Festival

Once a upon a time, the Faeries of Bellaruesk planned a summer faery art festival in the deep hollow of the woods. To protect their celebration from Mother Nature, they asked the forest spiders to build a canopy over their meadow. The spiders worked through the night and weaved a beautiful fine web over the entire village. As the sun rose between the trees, the warm rays sparkled and danced upon the Morning Dew. The tiny droplets transformed the early light of dawn into brilliant colorful beams beneath the woven web, turning the Faery land into lovely rainbows sent from above.

Фотограф: Вадим Кондратьев ~ Photographer: Vadim Kondratyev

Living With Wolves

Apr22

The Sawtooth Pack

In 1990, Jim Dutcher was given captive pups and a permit to set up a 25 Acre Wolf observation camp in the Sawtooth Mountains in Idaho, where Living with Wolves” was filmed. He was later joined by his wife, naturalist Jamie Dutcher and together they lived with the wolves for six years. The Dutchers spent their time, filming, documenting and living amongst these wolves in their natural habit, studied their habits, personalities and family characteristics. Their experience was turned into a beautiful documentary about the Sawtooth Pack.

The “Sawtooth Pack” were later sold to the Wolf Education and Research Center,(a non-profit organization he founded) in conjunction with the Native American “Nez Perce” and moved to northern Idaho.

HTML 108.2 – Captcha

Apr13

Installing Form Security

A CAPTCHA is a program that can tell whether its user is a human or a computer. Computer programs can be bots that surf your site looking for information to use for malicious purposes. This type of phishing can capture email addresses on your contact forms and then begin spamming you endlessly. Or hackers can attempt to use your email for the spamming purposes.

Captcha creates a generating and grading test that humans can pass but current computer programs cannot.

You can acquire a free, secure and accessible CAPTCHA from the reCAPTCHA project. This is a Google project and it can be used for WordPress, MediaWiki, PHP, ASP.NET, Perl, Python, Java, and many other environments.

They’re becoming very popular because they are affective in dealing with the phishing problems. And for the most part, they’re pretty easy to set up and use. You’ve probably seen these tests when you’ve filled out a request form or tried to email someone through a contact form. For example, humans can read distorted text as the one shown below, but current computer programs can’t. Continue reading →

HTML 108.1 – TheSiteWizard Form

Apr13

Finding The Right Contact Form Program

In HTML 108 – Web Forms I mention my favorite site for creating a Contact form program and webpage: TheSiteWizard.com.

You can build a customized script specifically for your site at TheSiteWizard.com. At the time of this writing – I really love this place! They advertise their Wizard as:
TheSiteWizard.com’s Free Customized Feedback Form Wizard creates a FREE feedback form for your website. This allows you to put a Feedback Form or Contact Form on your site so that visitors can send you messages / email or make comments.

In full disclosure, TheSiteWizard site isn’t the greatest user-friendly site I’ve seen. But I’ve written instructions for what to do on their site for a few friends and it seemed silly not to add that here to my blog as well. So here are my easy instructions for using TheSiteWizard.com site for creating your own form. Continue reading →

HTML 108 – Web Forms

Apr13

Building A Form

There are many reasons you might want to create a web form for you site. It can be a contact form to gather specific information from visitors, feedback on a particular topic for a school project or perhaps you’re hosting a tea part and need information from guests in an RSVP.

If you’re a business you may want to design a job application, or service request form for customers to complete. Forms aren’t just for email! You’ve probably filled out dozens of forms online for a wide range of reasons.

There are several ways to design a form and there are two parts to that design. The form itself and a program that processes the data entered into the form. That program can be easy, such as a Contact Form. Or it can be complicated, such as those used by corporations to take in data, process it and give you a specific result.

This post isn’t about the programs. It’s about the forms and how to set up an easy Contact Form that you can use for eMail contact, a questionnaire or that RSVP and anything else you might want to have eMailed to you. Continue reading →

HTML 107 – Using Tables

Apr12

Basics, Tips And Tricks

Tables are a common addition to a web site. They can be used for more things than just displaying spreadsheets or organizing tabular data. A table can be used to create a certain look or presentation to a web page. They can be used to create a certain format for text, to show the separation of topics within a subject and even, show off your latest picks for this seasons Football picks. You can even have tables embedded inside other tables.

A number of the posts here in the HTML Tutorial, use tables to section out the information for a particular tag, or part of a tag with the instructional text that describe how it works. But tables can also be extraordinarily frustrating. Especially if you’re using them on a blog. Continue reading →

HTML – Web 1.0 vs Web 2.0

Apr11

Web Versions

The Web has versions? Yes, believe it or not.

When you create a webpage your using HyperText Markup Language (HTML) to tell a browser how to display the text and images to your visitors. You can learn more about its history and creation on Wikipedia which has a pretty complete entry for HTML.

Basically HTML had its prototypes developed at The European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in 1980. Physicist Tim Berners-Lee has been credited with starting the whole thing off. By 1989, he began work on a browser technology to easily display the evolved versions of his prototype language and HTML was developed. Berners-Lee and CERN data systems engineer Robert Cailliau collaborated on a joint request for funding, but the project was not formally adopted by CERN. The first publicly available description of HTML was a document called “HTML Tags”, first mentioned on the Internet by Berners-Lee in late 1991. Continue reading →