Tag Archive | springwolf

Getting Your Favorite Android Sounds

May16

ringtonesRingtones, Alarms & Notification Sounds

If you’re like me, you set up your alarms, notifications and ringtones with specific sounds that help you identify what’s happening before you even look at your phone. Then you went to a new phone and all those sound files aren’t on the new phone. Come on! I want my old sounds to notify me of events that I still need on the new phone!

There are two safe ways to get ringtones, alarms and notification sounds onto your Android. They come with the phone or you create them from sound files yourself. That’s it.

Yes I know there are a ton of websites that offer downloads for your phone and you’re crazy to use them. Either they spam your phone number with texts out the wazoo, or they sell it to every annoying hacker and spammer in the world. Or they load malware onto your smart phone with the sound file.

If you can’t find a reliable download site, such as one that’s offered from your carrier, don’t bother with downloading. Stick to what’s on your phone and what you can make yourself.

There’s one exception to that rule and that’s an app that provides sound files from all makes and most models. I LOVE this app! Though I wish it had the sound files from the Samsung Galaxy Nexus. Maybe they’ll add those later; crossing fingers. Continue reading →

Android Weather Apps

May16

weatherbugHow’s The Weather

There are a lot of weather widgets out there. Local News outlets have their own apps now and most include weather tracking and notifications. But what if you travel? Some don’t go outside their own area. So if you’re at home and need to go to Atlanta, you’re out of luck finding out how the weather is in Georgia.

The Weather Channel App ☆☆☆☆
Has a lot to offer. Almost too much. Sometimes I don’t need video or images from around the world bombarding my display. Let me look at things quick and simple and I’m good. But other people like a lot of graphical interfaces. If that’s you, you’ll like the Weather Channel’s app. You can add locations and follow weather back home, where your move lives, or where ever your favorite sports team might be playing this week. You can set notifications for alerts, look at lightening and more.

Weather Bug ☆☆☆☆☆
This one is my most favorite. I have used Weatherbug on my desktop for years. I love this app on the phone. WeatherBug weather widgets display live, local weather conditions, forecasts, severe weather alerts and it can be specific to your location. So if you’re driving down the road, you can bring this app up, look at the radar and see what you’re driving into..or away from.  You can add locations and set a primary Home location.  Continue reading →

Emergency Flashlights

May14

flashlightThe First App You MUST Add To Your Cell Phone

The most important App you need is a flash light. Seriously, it sounds funny but in addition to coming in real handy during your day to day life, you most definitely need it in an emergency situation.

I have used mine several times in the late evening and even a few times in the day. I can’t always find that flashlight in the utility drawer, but I know where my cell phone is. And it’s dark in the bottom part of the pantry, even with the kitchen light on! I use it in the house for little things, like plugging in the power cord in the power strip under my desk. Or looking for the splinter in my son’s finger.

It’s handy for Concerts, finding your way through the driveway when you’ve forgotten to turn the porch light on before you left the house. Or looking for that quarter you dropped in the floorboard of the car. Continue reading →

Happy Mother’s Day 2014

May11
I Love My Momma

I Love You Momma

Thanks Mom’s Of The Past & Present

Happy Mother’s Day

Mother’s Day is a holiday honoring motherhood that is observed in different forms throughout the world. The American incarnation of Mother’s Day was created by Anna Jarvis in 1908 and became an official U.S. holiday in 1914. Jarvis would later denounce the holiday’s commercialization and spent the latter part of her life trying to remove it from the calendar. While dates and celebrations vary, Mother’s Day most commonly falls on the second Sunday in May and traditionally involves presenting mothers with flowers, cards and other gifts.

In the years before the Civil War (1861-65), Ann Reeves Jarvis of West Virginia helped start “Mothers’ Day Work Clubs” to teach local women how to properly care for their children. These clubs later became a unifying force in a region of the country still divided over the Civil War. In 1868 Jarvis organized “Mothers’ Friendship Day,” at which mothers gathered with former Union and Confederate soldiers to promote reconciliation. Continue reading →

Our Varied Interests

May9
windstone-emperor

Windstone Editions

We’re Pretty Eclectic

We Love a lot of different things and we enjoy sharing those interests. Especially with family and dear friends who are spread out across the country and even the world.

From the U.S. to Australia, from Washington, DC to Washington State, Alaska and even some dear friends in Hawaii. We can go north into Maine to find friends and south into Florida to find family.

If we share a few things that interest you too, come on in and share your thoughts and experiences too!

We love trains and technology. But we also love dressing in costume and attending the Renaissance Fairs throughout the south-east. We are a sports family, but only with certain sports.

We’re a huge NASCAR family. We love football and enjoy Hockey. We live on a lake so we can also slow down a bit and relax with a pole and a quiet morning or evening enticing the resident Big Mouth Bass to come for a visit.

My boys love engineering, astrophysics and building things. And we all like history, living in the center of the Civil War region, there is a lot to see and visit. So our adventures generally takes us to some interesting places where there’s always a camera ready to capture the historical, unusual or unexpected. Continue reading →

Samsung Galaxy S5

May9

galaxys5I LOVE My New Phone

Each week it seems like we’re moving the DomlyDude’s business one step closer to being in full operation. We registered it in March and started the final set-ups for funding. That includes the business plan and the really tough part, the financial projections. We’re up to getting the licenses that will allow us to go into full operations in June! Yeah.

Part of my part in all this is being the person who answers the office phone. We decided the best way to take care of that in today’s world is through a cell phone. That meant we could take AT&T up on a recent offer they sent him and pick me up a new phone. A brand spankin’ new Samsung Galaxy S5!

I’m slightly in culture shock. My last cell was a Samsung Galaxy Nexus. It’s a big upgrade! But I’m loving my phone! I’ve spent 3 days setting it up and transferring data. Most of the transfer was a breeze! The set up has taken the bulk of the time, because I have so many new features and capabilities that I never had before!

There’s a lot of kewl things about the S5 that I didn’t have on the Nexus. One of the biggest things I like is that I can add Home Screens! Yes!! My close friends tell me I’m overly organized and not being able to organize the apps I use most was driving me nuts. I didn’t add too many more. I only have 7. smiley-wink
Being the teacher person I am, I like sharing what I learn in hopes someone else out there will find it help and overcome their frustration a little more quickly than I might have trying to find an answer. Oh and I LOVE sharing my reviews of new apps I’ve found and fallen in love with. I have several of those to add! So check out my new GalaxyTech section.

I’m having a blast!

© 1997-2014 Springwolf, D.D., Ph.D., Springwolf's Kosmos. All Rights Reserved.
© 1997-2014 Springwolf, D.D., Ph.D., Springwolf’s Kosmos. All Rights Reserved.

 

HyperLink To Open Local Files

May6

pcworkingOpen A File In A Local Program

So you have a file on your PC and you want to make life easy for yourself and create a link from a personal home page in your browser to that file. But you want a program, like NotePad to open that file. What do you do?

You can search the internet high and low and you’ll find several javascript, php and visual basic solutions. But isn’t that a little over kill? Yes, yes it is. There’s a lot of information about why you can’t do this, or don’t want to do this. And some of that is valid. If this webpage was online and available to the world, the last thing you want to do is click a link that will run an executable file. That’s a huge security risk. Yes indeed it is.

But recently I had a need to simply open a text file  on my pc, in Notepad. Now I could have changed how the browser handles files like this and anytime it finds a .txt file, it can open Notepad instead of displaying the file in the browser. But that’s not what I wanted to do. I only want Notepad to open for this one file, on this one page, for this one link. There’s got to be an easier way than all that overkill coding!

Of course there is. And a huge thanks to my very smart friends on MozillaZine – a Message Board for everything Mozilla. And in particular a big thanks to Gingerbread Man! I love that place. Now let me say this solution does not work with Chrome or IE. All I can suggest there is…use Firefox. Continue reading →

The Wicked Storm of 2014

May1
~ April Flooding by Springwolf 2014 ~

~ April Flooding by Springwolf 2014 ~

April’s Slow Moving Rain Storm

PBS NewsHour declared it as “Slow-moving storm drowns parts of Southeast with record rainfall”. Torrents of rain caused severe flooding in parts of the Florida panhandle and coastal Alabama. Some parts of Alabama saw up to 26 inches of rain in 24 hours, and powerful thunder and lightning storms overnight knocked out power to thousands. Also, a train carrying crude oil derailed and caught fire in downtown Lynchburg, Virginia.

Here in Virginia the rain was torrential for several days. It moved into the commonwealth April 28th on an early Tuesday morning as a nice spring rain. Washing away the pollen and bring some much-needed rain.

At times the gentle sprinkles gave way to a calm relaxing rain. Nothing unusual for this time of year. But it never stopped. It never gave way to brief moments of damp humidity that so often comes with rain in the Old Dominion.

As the afternoon wore on, the rain fell harder and lasted longer in its downpour. We began seeing streams of water build up on the sides of our yard and flow down the small hill to the lake at the end of our property.

Then the winds came. Tornadoes had touched down through the regions where the storm had already crossed the south and south-east. Now it was in our backyard. We watched as the rain-soaked trees bent over to the east against the strong wind. Worried if we would be facing a disaster of our own when one of the giant oaks or pines falling upon the house. Thankfully we were spared that night. Continue reading →

A Free and Open Internet For All

Apr30

netneutralityNet 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 Sprint Cup Champion Tony Stewart

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 2014

@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 →