Why You Must Be

Can I Ride?

Sam had to watch while big sister enjoyed a ride on a "big kids" attraction.  The foreboding sign:  "you must be THIS tall to ride," was the the only thing holding her back from joining her sister.

Being more than one foot taller, there are many things that Samantha can't join with her sister.  When there aren't any rules however, like climbing trees or running fast she won't let her height prevent her from doing her best.

Place:  Alameda County Fairgrounds, 2015

Friends in Music

Guides

My friends enjoy music.  I will start recommending them here and the work they put in their Google Plus pages.

Lars is the son of my friend Rob.  I am excited to see the consistent work they both are putting into learning together how to play.  Some stories are developing in response to this selection of music, read what I have to contribute.

Almost Like a Dream
It has been years since Jingwa was allowed to leave the village on his own accord.  The a clearing on the forest floor opened up to view under the dim rays filtering through the canopy overhang.  The skittering of hungry birds tithered around the foot of the heavy trunks.  "Those old ske'erhen were just full of bull", Jing boasted into the unknown ahead.

Dragon Hunt
Wow, this one surprised me, this Lars, son of Rob.  There is a resemblance in the melody to the trudging march through the forests of yore where we searched for Orkus and discovered them among us, allies in the hunt.

Linus and Lucy

This one is a clip from the theme song that is popular from the Charley Brown cartoon.  It just makes me want to stand up and dance.

Boxcar Rumble
We trudged along the tracks by day and when opportunity came we'd ride the rails by boxcar.  It was a noble march our pilgrimage to find the mysterious boy who went missing while hunting for berries in the bushes that sprung up on the tracksides.  Gordie thought he most surely got hit by one train as nobody turns up after missing for weeks as long as he has.


Raindrops
Listen to the rhythm of this falling to bring a cozy inside, indoors feeling to your day.  Open the cloud gates and see what rain befells us.

To Whom it may concern...

Invitations DIY...

(Do It Yourself)

I was out shopping with Mariefe the other day and something brought back a memory of our wedding day.  There was a half full box of blank invitation card stock for a less than ten dollars.  They were half the size of am 8.5 inch x 11 " sheet of paper.   

This was the example print.

Half Sheet sized blank invitation

So the memory we had was sitting on the living room floor in front of an ink jet printer feeding the invitation card stock one at a time.

Attempt #1:  Not knowing how much time we had left before sending out invitiations would be soo late, we tried bringing a word processing document file and the blank cards to a printer shop.

The machine, they said takes only full sized sheets of paper stock.  Ugh.

Attempt #2:  I understood what the printers did say because I couldn't fit them into my inkjet printer without jamming.  Only one track guys get stuck here.

Attempt #3: PRO TIP!  First, on your word processor, write the invitation to center exactly as much vertically and horizontally.

Measure the center of the page indent (i.e., 2" on each side, for example) and mark the corners.  Hold each sheet in place on your guide sheet with "not so sticky" tape.

Print.

Repeat.

Not so high tech, but my only complaint about the product has to do with this kluge (workaround).  Print shops print on full sheets THEN they cut them... otherwise, you can put on some light jazz music and spend an afternoon with your fiancee on the floor... printing and checking off invitations from a list.

An obvious manipulation, but I'll take the free time with her any time.

Biker Girl and Daddy-Os Busting Out

Turning Corners and Turning Heads

Follow the instructions in order to view the experience.  Sound effects from a real motor bike thanks to my friend Paul.

Mom coaches from the sidelines while Veronica steers the bike.

1. Start your engines...

2. At :30, He hops onto the bike and fires up the engines.

3. Miss Haru starts off at the engine sound.

Yo, for the engine lower your center of gravity to get a better push without tilting over. Paul, at :60, work on your throttle. Overall, good run.


I originally had my mobile with me cued up to one of Paul's race videos.  The idea was to just crank up the volume on the phone and have it play while I pushed her on the bike.  We got a spot of footage without the sound, but with lots of coaching from mom.

Paul, if you switch between views, it would sound like the voice of a mother is coaching you through your race.

So, a post-production hack got me what I wanted... an audio dub from another video!  Embedded video clips featured by Google Plus.

Rich



One more...

A late entry:  https://plus.google.com/+RobReed/posts/iFjnMTQL5Kz

Rob posted a video of Dave Matthews in concert.  Turn the bike race into a lazy Sunday roll.  The engine gears and Mariefe together mesh in three part harmony.  Well, don't take my word for it, run through it again!

Design Guide

Design Guide

I enjoyed putting together this website for Mariefe and I.  This is a quick guide to some of the features I added over the years to make it our own.

Home Sweet Home Page

Got a custom domain name?  It turns out that you can also knock down a wall or two to make an addition to an existing home.  This section explains how.

Own It.  Add it to Your Domain

Custom domain names are reserved through a name registrar.  There is a annual fee to keep your chosen domain name so keep this in mind.  Most registrars charge about 10 to 15 USD a year.  The cost is less if you can pre-register for multiple years in advance.

What to look for:  DNS Hosting.  This will allow you to set up a forwarding order from the registrar's records to where your home site is now.

Types of Domain Names:  This is a very broad topic, but have fun when you look.  Up until early 2012, just the standard country codes and the stock .edu (only schools can have that one), .com, .net and .org endings were available.  Now there are others such as:  .villas, .directory, and others.  These names with special extensions usually cost much more.

• .com (commercial):  is the most common, but may confuse your site with a commercial entity.
• .org (organization):  is my choice for general, non-profit or personal projects.
• .net (network):  used to be reserved for Internet Service Providers (ISP's) that maintain their own networks.  Now it is a way of reserving a domain name that was already taken for com and org.
• .info (information):  a nice secret selection.  Inexpensive if you reserve for multiple years.  Once the initial contract is complete, the annual lease on this name is the same as the above three. 

Married couples may appreciate our own choice of domain name:  mariefeandrich.com.

The use of a subdomain just adds another part to the "top level domain" (TLD).  With a DNS record, you can use it just like it is its own unique domain name.  The subdomain can point to a different resource so you can organize disparate resources under something called a "canonical" naming structure.

apple.mariefeandrich.com
atrium.home.mariefeandrich.com
veranda.home.mariefeandrich.com
... and so on. (These are just good ideas I've thought up!)

Adding a custom domain name through a CNAME

There are many registrars available.  If you search for DNS Zone Hosts, you will also find they are able to register a domain name for you.  By using the latter, you can be sure to have both features needed to complete this design task. 

The example here is for cloudns.net.  If you need a free domain, they offer extensions to their brand name.  I am showing my project, "Up Close Maui" whose address is:  aloha.upclosemaui.cloudns.us (.us is a location based Top Level Domain extension for the United States)  I also have a blog hosted on Blogger identified by this name.

Most blog hosting companies usually have documentation on how to make a custom domain setting compatible with their service.  This is what you need:

Make a DNS Record with these settings for Blogger:

Type = CNAME, Value = orange..net, Target = ghs.google.com

Google has their own domain name registry (Google Domains), I am using a different registrar to demonstrate that setting up a subdomain using either registry really can accomplish the same thing when compared to one another.

The domain name customization completed looks like below when requested from a browser.  The default domain I chose when setting up the blog also still works and forwards to the same location.  (Old links still will work).

Tah dah! 

Pin Up Modeling

Memories from some generations are of the calendar models and their poses hanging on the wall in the garage.  Pinterest is a break from the original thought of the  "pinup".  Pinboards are places where images of many sources are shared and organized in personal collections.

Oh say can you see?  I'll be watching you...

You can use your blog to anchor your Pinterest profile.  Just edit the home page by adding a line of code within the HEAD tags of your blog page.

Editing Your Page Template

This is the part where put the text string in.

Where to put the Pinterest ID Tag