Buying an electric pressure cooker

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I decided to buy a pressure cooker. The initial research showed that I had to choose between electric and stovetop. The stovetop is better, but it makes me nervous to leave an unattended stove, so I picked electric.

The first review websites I ran into showed the Emeril CY4000001 ($120) and the Cuisinart CPC-600 ($100) as the two best units. The Emeril was a little better because it did not lose as much liquids from evaporation, but the difference is small (3% vs 2% or so). Now the Cuisinart can be found in local stores, but the Emeril has to be bought online, and it actually seems to be out of stock in some cases.

Then I found the “Instant Pot”. Made by Canadians, and the reviewers say the company is very responsive and always improving the product. You have to buy it off amazon, and it can be delivered for about $130.

Their current model is the Instant Pot IP-LUX60, but check their website at Instant Pot.

So either get the Cuisinart from a local store or the Instant Pot from Amazon. I went with the cuisinart because I wanted it now. Got it from Dillards.

Recommend Bill the treadmill guy in Kansas City

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Just wanted to leave an internet trail to recommend Bill the Treadmill Guy in Kansas City. His website is . If you need in-home service for your treadmill, I highly recommend him.

He was fully booked when I called, so it took a couple weeks to schedule a visit. His price was $95 minimum for the visit, plus parts. He saw that our old treadmill (I bought it for $50 off craigslist) just needed a new belt, so he replaced the belt and gave everything a clean and tuneup. Total price $140.

Can’t beat that. Nice guy and professional work. Highly recommended.

Mike Royko on Doctor Salaries

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Mike Royko was the best newspaper columnist in the country in my lifetime. He had no tolerance for stupidity. This was one of his best pieces:

Poll about doctors’ earnings reflects a sick society

Mike Royko

ON A STUPIDITY scale, a recent poll about doctors’ earnings is right up there. It almost scored a perfect brain-dead 10.

It was commissioned by some whiny consumers group called Families USA.

The poll tells us that the majority of Americans believe that doctors make too much money.

The pollsters also asked what a fair income would be for physicians. Those polled said, oh, about $80,000 a year would be OK.

How generous. How sporting. How stupid.

Why is this poll stupid? Because it is based on resentment and envy, two emotions that ran hot during the political campaign and are still simmering.

YOU COULD conduct the same kind of poll about any group that earns $100,000-plus and get the same results. Since the majority of Americans don’t make those bucks, they assume that those who do are stealing it from them.

Maybe the Berlin Wall came down, but don’t kid yourself, Karl Marx lives.

It’s also stupid because it didn’t ask key questions, such as: Do you know how much education and training it takes to become a physician?

If those polled said, no, they didn’t know, then they should have been disqualified. If they gave the wrong answers, they should have been dropped. What good are their views on how much a doctor should earn if they don’t know what it takes to become a doctor?

Or maybe a question should have been phrased this way: “How much should a person earn if he or she must (a) get excellent grades and a fine educational foundation in high school in order to (b) be accepted by a good college and spend four years taking courses heavy in math, physics, chemistry and other lab work and maintain a 3.5 average or better, and (c) spend four more years of grinding study in medical school, with the 3rd and 4th years in clinical training, working 80 to 100 hours a week, and (d) spend another year as a low-pay, hard-work intern, and (e) put in another 3 to 10 years of post-graduate training, depending on your specialty and (f) maybe wind up $100,000 in debt after medical school and (g) then work an average of 60 hours a week, with many family doctors putting in 70 hours or more until they retire or fall over?”

AS YOU HAVE probably guessed by now, I have considerably more respect for doctors than does the law firm of Clinton and Clinton, and all the lawyers and insurance executives they have called together to remake America’s health care.

Based on what doctors contribute to society, they are far more useful than the power-happy, ego-tripping, program spewing, social tinkerers who will probably give us a medical plan that is to health what Clinton’s first budget is to frugality.

But propaganda works. And, as the stupid poll indicates, many Americans wrongly believe that profiteering doctors are the major cause of high medical costs.

Of course doctors are well compensated. They should be. Americans now live longer than ever. But who is responsible for our longevity–lawyers, Congress, or the guy flipping burgers in a McDonald’s?

And the doctors prolong our lives despite our having become a nation of self-indulgent, lard-butted, TV-gaping couch cabbages.

AH, THAT IS not something you heard President Clinton or Super Spouse talk about during the campaign or since. But instead of trying to turn the medical profession into a villain, they might have been more honest if they had said:

“Let us talk about medical care and, one of the biggest problems we have. That problem is you, my fellow American. Yes, you, eating too much and eating the wrong foods; many of you guzzling too much hooch; still puffing away at $2.50 a pack; getting your daily exercise by lumbering from the fridge to the microwave to the couch; doing dope and bringing crack babies into the world; filling the big city emergency rooms with gunshot victims; engaging in unsafe sex and catching a deadly disease while blaming the world for not finding an instant cure.

“You and your habits, not the doctors, are the single biggest health problem in this country. If anything, it is amazing that the doc’s keep you alive as long as they do. In fact, I don’t understand how they can stand looking at your blubbery bods all day.

So as your president, I call upon you to stop whining and start living cleanly. Now I must go get myself a triple cheesy-greasy with double fries. Do as I say, not as I do.”

BUT FOR THOSE who truly believe that doctors are overpaid, there is another solution: Don’t use them.

That’s right. You don’t feel well? Then try one of those spine poppers, needle twirlers, or have Rev. Bubba lay his hands upon your head and declare you fit.

Or there is the do-it-yourself approach. You have chest pains? Then sit in front of a mirror, make a slit here, a slit there, and pop in a couple of valves.

You’re going to have a kid? Why throw your money at that overpaid sawbones, so he can buy a better car and a bigger house than you will ever have (while paying more in taxes and malpractice insurance than you will ever earn)?

Just have the kid the old-fashioned way. Squat and do it. And if it survives, you can go to the library and find a book on how to give it its shots.

By the way, has anyone ever done a poll on how much pollsters should earn?

Looking for a new windows computer backup system – a rant

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I’ve used Retrospect since their first days in the Mac business. Spent a few hundred dollars a few times too many on upgrades. About the time CDs were becoming available, Retrospect was realizing there was no more money to be made, so they cut development to the bone and there were many years that CD backup never worked properly. This continued into DVD backups. Sorta works, but often not. And then they had one really bad release that made everyone furious, and they lost their way.

Well now I have 2TB in video file archives and Retrospect is getting wonky. Too many coasters (Could be my software, of course, but that is the problem innit?) Damn thing fails to do an incremental backup to DVD. I have an old x2 pioneer dvd, and I even bought an external usb dvd to see if that could fix the problem.

Is it time for something new? Yes. Oh dear, this is going to suck…

The thing about backup systems is that it only sounds easy. The truth is, behind “easy” is a rats-nest of potential problems. You have to be a really good programmer and you have to be good at hardware issues, and that is rare. For example, say you backup your files from “A” to “B”. All is good if it works. But what if your computer crashes while copying these files, and when you reboot you discover that “A” is corrupted and “B” is corrupted? You’re screwed. The problem with the free stuff and the poorly written stuff is that you’re at risk for precisely this kind of thing.

This is my current backup need:

1) I have one primary computer (windows xp) which contains all the important stuff. This has to be backed up every night. It is an old (year 2000) hand-built system and is flaky, so I may be forced to rebuild this computer at any time. I cannot lose the data. The computer has a 600GB raid 0 hard drive. I have a backup drive with 120 GB, and a second backup drive with 700GB.

2) I have other laptop computers which I don’t really care about. As long as I can rebuild them in case of a meltdown, that is good enough. Would be nice to back them up if it was easy and free, but not otherwise.

3) I do a lot of video editing. I have a folder called “Video Editing” where all my final work is saved. When that folder gets very large, I save it all to DVD, then delete the contents and start over. I have 2 TB of data in that folder that I have archived to DVD. I need to be able to search and retrieve anything that was ever there.

4) If my house burns down tonight, the really important files need to survive. Currently I backup these files to DVD every month or so and take the DVDs to work, but it is a pita and I forget. The latest backup software lets me backup to “the cloud”, so I could store my critical files on the web automatically and be sure they are safe. Now those files need to be secure, i.e., no one else can read them.

I do not have a “network storage system” or NAS. All computers have their own hard drives, and sharing is done via “shared folders”. NAS are terrific but expensive, and I am cheap.

Three weeks ago, I had one too many frustrations with Retrospect screwing up DVD archiving, so I decided to look around. I saw plenty of reviews, but all of them were BS. “Fluffy” tech writers who check stuff off feature lists and don’t get it. I read good reviews on software that I knew was junk within 10 seconds.

I don’t have to time to put together my own feature list, but I do have time to write long meandering posts. So that is what I’ll do. If you want to know my recommendations, skip to the end. Or read the next sentence: Truth is, Retrospect is still the best, provided your computer is new enough to avoid the hardware frustrations. And a tentative recommendation for NovaBackup.

Terminology

System Restore: The ability to rebuild your computer after a catastrophic crash. It is one thing to recover files, but all that installed software, all those custom settings … without it you could easily spend a week trying and failing to get back to where you were before. An advanced variant of this is System Restore to different hardware, where one recovers to a different computer.

Session You don’t backup something once. Usually you back everything up once, then back it up incrementally many more times. Each of these times is called a Session.

Full vs. Incremental backup: Say you backup everything on Monday. On Tuesday you want  to backup again. You could do everything all over again (full), or you could just backup the things that changed since Monday (incremental) It is a given that you might want to recover back to either Monday or Tuesday.

Network vs. Local backup: Are you backing up one computer or a network of computers?

Offsite backup: If the house burns down, can you recover? Some software vendors offer cloud storage where they let you upload to the internet for a monthly fee. Some software has FTP-storage, where you upload to an ftp-server. This is terrific because I have a website with an ftp-server that gives me unlimited storage.

3rd party recoverable: Do you need the backup software installed in order to recover the data? Sounds simple, but I have been archiving my videos for over 12 yrs. If the computer goes bankrupt and I move to a new operating system (where the software no longer works), I’m screwed.

File filters When you backup a hard drive or folder, you may want to include or exclude certain files. For example, who needs the temporary “tmp” files? So you can add a filter that says “never store files with names matching the pattern “*.tmp”. This is practically a must-have feature, but some apps don’t support it.

Validate After writing the backup, read it back and verify that everything was written correctly.

I begin the search

The first thing is to find a good list of options. I google searched for “windows backup software”. This gave me a good list from wikipedia and some horrible review sites. I looked at everything. Several tools are more applicable to large networks and really expensive stuff, which I won’t cover. I’m just going to bag on all the other options.

Retrospect

I bought Retrospect when it first came out for the Mac around 1990. It was rock-solid and far ahead of it’s peers. This was first-rate engineering. However, when CD burners appeared, support was very poor, and this continued into the DVD world. I suspect all the good engineers are gone and they only have support personnel left. Retrospect does not have FTP-storage, and stores everything is a custom format. Also it is relatively expensive at $119.

GFI Backup Freeware

This is a product that has been turned into freeware. Meaning the company could not make enough money on it, so they are giving it away. Meaning that they will soon stop supporting it. Meaning you can stop right here.

Now I did try it and the experience was bizarre. From my original notes…. “While burning DVDs, it seemed to be working nicely but I don’t really know what it was doing. Poor visual progress feedback. Makes a compressed copy somewhere else then burns it. I don’t like that it can’t do it on the fly and I don’t like that I don’t know where the file is and I don’t like that it is really slow (compressing 6GB takes over 1 hr before it even decides to burn to DVD?). I think … I really don’t know. Somehow it seemed to archive 6GB to a 4.3GB DVD, which is impossible. Then I added another 6GB and it ejected the DVD, which I visually inspected to see that it did not completely fill the DVD. And it completely confuses Windows. When I do a “properties” inspect on the mounted DVD, it says I have used 986MB with 0 available. And this on a 6GB backup! I probably can figure this out, but too much under the covers so far, so let us move on.”

 Norton Ghost

Hell, I couldn’t get FTP setup properly. Also, ghost backs up systems, not individual folders.

Paragon

Moving on to paragon software. At least they charge $40 so we can trust them, right? Inspection of the manual looks positive. But damn, what an ugly UI. Simple crappy options for the noob user, an “advanced” tab with more crappy options. Your conventional “wizard” interface for the boobs that is unexplained, and a conventional expert interface that has all the options that the expert needs and no help figuring out where they are.

I tried to select a folder and back it up to DVD, but it would not let me. Apparently this is not allowed? DVD backup only for disk or partition backups? Are you kidding me? Huh, this is a must-have feature and should be obviously supported. Hmm, lookup the website for support, but there is no help. Try and submit a question, but their website is so buggy that it puts me into an infinite loop. I have to specify the particular product, but the particular product does not show in their dropdown. Doesn’t matter because no matter what I select, it is refused and sends me back to the same place.. Leave a nasty message on their facebook page and see if they respond. Seriously, this is exhibit A for terribly designed and unhelpful interface. Separate issue from whether or not it works properly under the covers, but how can I find out? P.S. The help buttons don’t actually do anything. Wow. Moving on…

Note: I did eventually get a response from my support question. You cannot write a folder to DVD. Just a bizarre omission.

 Backup4All

Initially I was really encouraged. This is one of the best designed apps. (You can tell the UI programmers were good.) It would have been a clear winner, except it has no system restore. And then I was testing some backups to DVD and it locked up the DVD during an incremental backup. After reboot, the error was not recoverable. Imagine crashing on your 100th DVD, then not being able to tell the system that your 100th DVD was bad and can we continue with #101? The tool could not recover. It thought it had backed up files it hadn’t. Fatal flaw.

Acronis True Image

Extremely buggy.. I created some files filters, and they disappeared when I saved and reopened the app. It ejected a DVD I was writing to, thought for about 5 min, then gave me an error. I eventually discovered that if you ran the backup project (called an “archive”) immediately after creating it, then it saved correctly. However, if you saved it and then ran it, it failed to save properly..

The default is not to validate after storage. This is really dumb.

When testing recovery of a DVD archive, it failed and gave me a weird error message (something like “Error 31. See website”). When I looked up the website, the error code said “The DVD must be in the drive before starting the restore”. Are you kidding me?

The problems went on and on. I could not believe what a PISA this app was, since it is so popular (almost 24,000 likes on their FB page) and is often highly recommended. Then again, many of the posts in FB go something like this: “Anyone that uses this product needs their heads examined. It is, by far, the worst product ever to hit the net.”

Genie9

I started with high hopes, but got into trouble fast. First, I discovered that system restore only works in full backup mode and copies the User Documents and Program Files folders only. You can add folders, but you have to do it manually every time and there is no incremental backup with it. This is really dumb. I asked a question of their support and was told that this was the way it should work and any other way would not work. Which was odd, as I have 20 yrs experience to the contrary.

During that backup test, I had 60GB available on my target hard drive, but needed to backup 61GB. Genie told me it was probably compress to 40GB, but even then refused to continue with the backup. Jeez software; try and fail, but don’t refuse to try.

During DVD backup, if you start the project without a blank  DVD inserted in the drive, the tool simply fails silently with any kind of warning or error message. It got into trouble when it ejected the DVD then windows immediately complained and I had to reinsert it. More than a few times.

The real big problem was that it does not come with “packet writing” support for DVD. This is the ability to write half a DVD during one session, then fill up the other half during the next session. So when I first tried this, it tried to format the (non-formattable, already burned) previous DVD, causing a ruined backup. Windows 7 and up is supposed to come with this built-in, but XP requires some free software add-on. Free but not reliable, unfortunately, and it can screw up other tools that use your DVD. I tried for a couple of days to fix all this, but I eventually gave up. I hereby reject any backup software which does not handle this internally. You should too.

NTI Backup Now

No file filtering on system backup. Backup the entire hard drive or nothing at all. No thanks.

Bitser

Simple free tool using the 7zip utility. Nice, but it cannot write to DVD. Not a real solution.

Comodo

Comodo give you 5GB free backup on the web. However, it’s DVD backup failed when I tried to store files in zip format and only worked in it’s native format. Ok, but then it only allowed me to write a single backup. I could not append a backup in a second session. Next…

Crashplan

Now this is really interesting. A free java tool that lets computers back themselves up to other computers in a network. This might be a way to backup multiple computers. Very cool, and I will be exploring this in the future. However, crashplan does not do system restore and it cannot backup to DVD.

 GRBackPro

My first thought was “how ugly is this?” This tool also suffers from needing 3rd-party packet-writing software, so I did not bother any further.

7-Backup

Sorry. No trial version, no try.

Macrium Reflect

The free version cannot backup folders, so I could not test it. The DVD burning needs packet-writing software. You cannot do an image backup of the hard drive, but only select a subset of folders.

Shadow Protect

Image backup and system restore only

SyncBackPro

Finalizes the DVD after the first session. Cannot do append. Tries to overwrite the DVD on the second session. Restores only the last backup. OMG!

TotalRecovery

Cannot write to DVD.

Ultrabac

Ultrabac specializes in server software, so I had high hopes they had competent engineering. The setup was annoying as the UI was very clunky, and demanded I supply a User Account with a non-blank password. Most annoying.

There was no file-filtering capability. The UI layout was extremely unfriendly. For example, it was nearly impossible to figure out how to change a project’s backup properties. The tool’s awareness of full vs. incremental backup seemed to consist of a dropdown where one selected “all files” or “Modified”. I can handle unfriendly UIs but this was downright hostile.

And then I did a 2nd incremental backup to DVD and discovered there was no “Find files” search capability as part of the restore. Far far worse, I had to look at each session individually. Imagine having to look through 300 sessions to find the one where you stored your file? And then I noticed that the help files were different from my own. In the help files, the “Database” icon was activated, and you could click that to do multi-session backup (I think; the writeup was pretty poor so I wasn’t positive). But then following that link, I discovered I needed to install MYSql or SqlServer-Express to have this capability. Granted this is free software, but really! I actually started down this part, but got into trouble on the configuration (something I’m actually pretty experienced with) and eventually said the hell with it after an hr. Sorry, Ultrabac, but you’re too high maintenance.

Novastor / Novabackup

Novabackup appears to have all the features and is only $45. The initial look and feel is promising, and it’s feature set is practically complete. My review is confused. When I reviewed this two weeks ago, I initially liked it and then I had a fatal problem in the backup: Some files were missing, even though the logs said everything worked fine. So I made a small writeup and moved on. A few hrs later I accidentally lost my writeup (never trust a wordview draft apparently), and so I cannot remember exactly the circumstances. However, more recently I tried again and it is working fine. About the only missing feature I’d really like is a file-search capability in the restore. With 2TB of video, sometimes I need to file a file and all I have is a fragment of a name.

So provisionally, I am going to give Novabackup another chance. It has an FTP capability. The system restore looks good (although untested; but see below). The DVD archive seems ok, except for the one problem I cannot reproduce.

Back to Retrospect

If it isn’t obvious, I was really depressed at how bad all this software is (Novabackup on provisional probation). Seemed like each tool had some brain-dead missing feature or just sloppily coded something. Nothing as good as I had with Retrospect. So I decided to see if I could eliminate my DVD woes by using a different computer. I have a dell laptop with windows XP and a newer internal dvd sitting idle. Perhaps this will work?

Well, the good news is that it seems to. Sometimes problems only show up after a while, but I have had a full day’s worth of incremental DVD archiving and it all worked solidly. So perhaps I don’t need any new backup software after all. As of now, my primary archiving to DVD has been moved to the more reliable computer and continues to use Retrospect. However, I plan to buy the $45 Novabackup and continue to test it as an eventually successor.

UPDATE: Back to Novabackup

As I said above, backup to dvd seems to be going smoothly now. I have to see how it works when I experience a crash in the middle of an operation before I can give final approval. But moving on to restore, it is confusing. The restore button shows you a “restore files by device” window. But who the hell wants that? I want to restore a backup, not a device! And devices are hardware and hardware dies. What if I write to one DVD and want to restore to a different DVD. Will it still work?

Anyway, expanding the device I happened to store my backup on, I see every backup session. I don’t want that though, as I’ll have hundreds of sessions eventually.

After a while I noticed a “To Time Mode”, and this shows you some more options, i.e., “Restore Files By Time”. At least I can restore a folder from a device to a certain point in time. But what if I archived that folder to multiple devices? Again, I want my MTV and I want my “Restore Files By Backup”. Who would want anything else? I don’t get it.

Worse, I finally ran into a bug. I had written three sessions to DVD. Came time to restore and the time slider showed only two. Simple bug their code and probably quite easy to fix. I have a support ticket with the report and we shall see. More later.

 

UPDATE: 9/16/2012

Well the Novabackup tech support response went into my “bulk” folder so I missed it until now. The response may work. Problem is that the tryout deadline has passed so I cannot run any more tests. More later…

Liese Ridgeway Vanatta

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I was at a remarkable funeral yesterday for my friend Liese. Remarkable for far more than the fact that I heard a Metallica song played by a string trio. Remarkable because so few people contain a glimpse of sainthood. And she did. Always a sparkle in her daily activity. In her gladness to see you and give you her full attention. In her eternal optimism. She was one of the people you don’t believe exist until you meet one in person.

Her friend Gar Demo asked her how she wanted to be remembered. She answered:

Tell them how much faith I have.
Tell them how much I love God and I love creation.
Tell them how much I love my Husband. And my children. And my parents. My family.
Tell them how much I love them…And then tell them to live.
Tell them the gift that they have.
Tell them the light that is dwelling within them.
Tell them to rock on.
Tell them to celebrate.
Tell them to root for KU.

 

Audio transcript

 

Selling the bike roof rack

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With the new car, we went to a rear mount rather than a roof rack, so I’m selling the latter.

Thule 599XTR Big Mouth, which I bought back in 2000 and ran a few trips back and forth to Minn. It holds 2 bikes, including mountain bikes.

Thule website

Cost me something like $200+. I’m selling for $60.

You’ll need an existing roofrack. The fitting components were for a Mazda MPV 2000, but it should work for a variety of frames. This unit attaches a new crossbeam in the front.

 

There are rubber “cushions” for the wheel tie-downs. You need four, but I lost one and so only have three. Some rolled up cardboard does a fine job protecting the wheel. Can always order a new part from Thule if aesthetic requirements are important.

UPDATE: SOLD

My internet reading list

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I subscribe to a variety of reading material. A good cross-section of newspapers from around the world, and a just basic good readings lists. Here is my current main list of links.

Even better than newspapers are RSS news feeds. These are internet-based sites that will “feed” a list of articles to your “inbox”. I find these much more efficient.

I use google reader as my reader. It is all you need.

(*) for links I really like
(RSS) for news feeds

Local
KC Pitch. Kansas City underground paper
KC Star
Concert reviews. Music scene
Concert reviews. Music scene (RSS)
Gary Lezak weather (RSS)

International News
NY Times
Google news (great streaming. Also check each country’s front page)
Time magazine
Christian Science Monitor
Jerusalem Post (liberal)
NPR
The guardian
Spiegel (German) (*)

Economics
Fortune mag
The Economist  (*)
Financial Times
The weekly standard
Emanuel Derman (quant thinker)(RSS)
Pileus (conservative, not right-wing)

Opinions
Slate. (Liberal but analytical)(*)
The Atlantic(*)
National Review Online (right-wing)
David Gergen (best opinionator *)
The New Yorker (*)
Reason foundation
Daily caller
Ill Doctrine (intelligent black male) (RSS) 

South Africa
Cape Town daily newspaper
SABC
Durban newspaper
news24

KU / Lawrence
The UDK
Lawrence journal world
KU Sports
Lawrence.com

Science / Computers / Tech
Scientific American
CNET (computers)
Wired
Danger room (great military blog RSS)
Techmeme. (Computer link gatherer)
Cocktail party physics: Personable and cool (RSS)
CSS Tricks (only if you know what CSS is)(RSS)
Dead reckonings (obscure math)
Discover magazine (*)(RSS)
Paul Graham (tech thinker)(RSS)

Link Gatherers
Slashdot. The original
Digg
Boing Boing
Daily Beast
2leep (the best trashy stuff)
Anarak (even better trashy stuff)
Metafilter (*)
Mashable (RSS)
The Browser (general interest reading (*)(RSS)
Longform.org (general interest reading(*)(RSS)
Longreads (general interest reading(*)(RSS)

Toons
Doonesbury
Dilbert
PhD. Piled higher and deeper

Misc
Joe Posnanski (sports)(RSS)(*)
Lifehacker (DIY lifestyle)(RSS)
Playbook (techs sports)(RSS)
Dan Savage (sex advice column)(RSS)

 

UPDATE 8/21/2012
Removed Newsweek. If Tine Brown is going to turn it into the daily beast, might as well read the daily beast. One week Romney is a wimp; the next Obama is no good; the only common factor a magazine desperate for attention.

Places I have Lived (Thanks google maps)

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Google maps just keeps getting better and better. I love revisiting the places I’ve been. Not quite like being there, but more practical sometimes. Anyway, I had the idea of taking google map “photos” of all the places I have lived, so here it is.

I was born in Pietermaritizburg, South Africa. A sleepy little town 60 miles inland from Durban. I lived there for 2 years. The family has forgotten our address, but here is a picture of Grey’s Hospital, where I was delivered.

Next we moved to Durban. We spent 5 years in the “flats”. Cato Manor flats. Lower level on the north-east corner (although we moved once). Everyone was poor. To make some extra money, my Mom was the superintendent. That made it interesting. Lots of kids living there. One of the tenants had taken one whiff of mustard gas in WWI and was still slowly coughing to death. There was a park close by with swings and monkeys in the trees. A happy place for a kid. The first clear memory is at 4 yrs old when I was eating a sandwich on the concrete steps, fell down somehow and cut my chin. 3 stitches, a good scar, and a lost permanent tooth eventually.

In 1998, Pearl and I drove by and I got a couple of pictures:

There were two world-class schools in Durban. Durban Girls College and Clifton. It wasn’t a far drive for us to get there, but when I was 6 or 7, my parents could afford to buy a house much closer. 324 Florida Rd, and our all-time favorite house. It had a pool and was close to Mitchell Park. Helen still needed to be driven to school, but I could walk to mine. Much later the house was bought by friends of my Dad and converted into a business (pool is gone), so in 1998 Pearl and I could knock on the door and look around. Looks like it is for lease now.

It was getting pretty clear that the future of South Africa was going to get ugly, so my parents decided to sell the house and rent. That way we could leave on short notice if need be. It was only supposed to be for a year or, but it became several. We moved to Musgrave Rd, across the street from Helen’s school. The Ashes (Joe was the vice-mayor of Durban) had a large house and had subdivided the rear into an apartment. Perfect for us. We were actually next door to the Catholic school and could climb over the wall and swim in their pool. These days the house isn’t very recognizable. They moved the pool and build a second adjoining house. When Pearl and I visited, there was a large gate preventing us from seeing in. Some very well off Muslims live there now.

Christmas 1976 we announced we were leaving. The following year was lousy. I had to go to boarding school because Clifton was ended. Helen was finishing up her last year of high school. My Dad left at the start of the year to get settled in Cleveland and study for his exams. Topsy had her sudden heart attack. Lots to plan and all very very sad. I hated Kearsney before I even got there. My fatal mistake was announcing at the start that I would be leaving after a year. In a Lord of the Flies world, that meant there was little reason to form an alliance with me. That put me below the top dogs but above everyone else because I was a top athlete. However, an alliance of one is vulnerable, plus I was still very short, so the lower dogs could gain much by beating me, plus they knew no top dog would help. This lasted until rugby season when I became starting left wing for the A team, and from then on I was untouchable because the top dogs had to defend me (can’t exactly pass me the ball one afternoon then stand by and watch me get beat up the next, after all). Sigh, if only I knew then what I know how. The worst year of my life but I grew up five.

Pearl and I drove right in to Kearnesy. We drove down the one road to the end, then right back out the other. Never stopped. No pictures.

Here is the google maps version. I do recommend the drive through. This area is called the valley of a thousand hills, and it is utterly beautiful and  very “close to my bones”. That and the Drakensberg.

Well so much for South Africa. Next up was Cleveland Ohio, where my Dad was being sponsored by the Cleveland Clinic. He was waiting for my Mom and I when we flew in (Helen stayed behind for another month.) December 11th, 1977. I will never forget the plane door opening and the blast of cold air that rushed in. Coldest I had ever been was my Mother telling me to put on a sweater because she was cold. That night was below 10F and the wind was howling. There were 10ft high piles of snow in the parking lot and my Dad couldn’t find the car for 20 min!

So a rough start. But I loved the people in Cleveland. The nicest people I have met anywhere. Have to be to get through that weather. When May hit, we had still barely seen the sun and we didn’t see it that much that summer either. The weather was too much and we moved to Kansas City in August 1978. Here is a google map image of our home on Duffield Rd. Oddly enough, not a single family photo of the house. The things you don’t think to do.

So now we were in Leawood and I was starting 10th grade at Shawnee Mission South. My parents lived in this house for over 20 yrs. My mother built an incredible garden. David Haydn (of Phi Psi brotherhood fame) lives there now.

In 1981 I started at KU. Phi Psi for 4 great yrs in the house. (I was Chapter Advisor in the 90s and am still on Housing Corp.)

Doug Hiemstra was in the 5yr Industrial Design program and I was starting my Masters so we lived together from 1985-1986. 7th and Michigan, across the street from Louise’s West. That was a wonderful year. Both Doug and I were working our asses off and loving life. Louise’s had a deal that on Thursday night midnight, whoever had the high score on each machine won a free 12 pack. I had one of the pinball machines mastered and I only remember losing once that whole year. I’d wake up at 7AM, ride my bike to the lab (15th & Iowa) for the morning, ride home at 1PM for lunch, run over to Louise’s to play a quick game, ride back to the lab for the afternoon, back home at 5-7 for dinner, run over to Louises for a quick game, working at home until 10PM, then 10-12 at Louise’s drinking schooners and playing that game. There was plenty of competition, so Thurs night was huge. All the top contenders were playing against each other.

Doug graduated and had that awful split with “her”, so the start of summer was tough. Doug lost a ton of weight and couldn’t sleep, so we often found ourselves driving out to Lone Star Lake at 5 in the morning. Doug didn’t mope long, and he rented a van and headed out to San Francisco. The rest is history.

Meanwhile, Scotty Brown was finishing up at Washburn and he moved in for a month or two while studying for the bar.

Two standoutevents. The first was that sometime over winter, one of our trash cans had frozen solid, so Doug and I stored it behind the house. Then forgot about it. It sat there from December to July. Scotty, being helpful, dragged it to the curb. I saw him and yelled “NO!” too late. All of a sudden we smelled it. The trash can was one big maggot infested container and it reeked so badly it made everyone instantly nauseous. And it was a still night with no wind and that trash can was 20 yards from Louise’s West!

We quickly dragged it down several houses, washed away the slime trail that showed where it came from, and pretended we knew nothing about it.

The second incident was after Scotty moved back to KC. It was raining hard and the creek behind the house flooded. I was sitting home watching TV and suddenly a wave of brown water came in under the front door. I saved what I could, but for 5 min I had over 1 foot of rainwater rushing down my drive. The carpet was ruined. I had a cool landlord and I had only a month left, so he forgave the last month’s rent, I put down tons of newspaper to soak up the water, made sure all my belongings were safe, and threw a party. Keg behind the house, just kept putting down newspaper where it was wet, and we were good to go. I moved out early and the landlord replaced the carpet.

Next stop was a year by myself in 1986-87. I taught Introduction to Thermodynamics that summer and loved teaching. The MS clicked along and I finished that on schedule in 18 months. The apartment had no air-conditioning, which was a bit tough. My first time in the Lawrence “ghetto”. One-room aptmt on the ground floor. One fun part that the immediate start of my day was climbing 11th St on my bike. That woke you up.

The last month of summer, a mouse fell into the gap between the walls right  next to my pillow, and couldn’t get out. So not only was it blistering hot, it also smelled terrible.

I was ready to get out of the ghetto. Landlord was a bizarre henpecked weirdo as well.

Next was Tom Rotert in his senior year of 1987-1988. I was the “responsible one”, and Tom and his friends were living it up to the full. Lance Waldo was always around, Molly McKay, Jimmy and Pat, you name it. Helluva year.

We started at 12th & Rhode Island. I inspected the house in the dark, because it had no electricity. Weird house with most of the windows sided up. Two tiny rooms upstairs through tiny steps. A/C unit in the upstairs room, and when I asked “does it work” the owner replied “to the best of my knowledge”. And he didn’t want to sign a contract.I should have known.

Of course the a/c didn’t work and the landlord reminded me that he hadn’t lied about it, he had in fact said it worked “to the best of my knowledge”. I replied “Yes, of course you did. I get it now.” We weren’t there more than a few weeks when the repossession note was delivered to the door for nonpayment of the loan. We quit sending him rent payments. milked it as long as we could, and then threw a huge and awesome party the night before the bank said we had to be out.

Now it was off to 12th & New York. Another bizarre trash house. Bad neighborhood with trashy people of all colors. No heat upstairs, so it had to percolate up through a grill in the floor.That was cold in winter. No shower, but a great cast iron bath. And the good times continued.

Our lease only went until the end of school, and I needed a summer plan. Luckily, Kris Gottschalk had a place in the ghetto. This was an awesome apartment. We had the best porch ever. Great summer at 12th & Tennessee..

And then it was 1988-89 and off to 7th & New York across the street from the train station. Loved this location. Easy walk downtown; the train came through at 2AM every night and helped you drift off to sleep (I still miss this a lot). Joan Valverde was downstairs and we were on the 2nd floor. Cindy Lewy, myself, and a guy who has since told me to leave him alone so I forget his name (I blame his parents; he was not a happy person and does not make friends; his brother came to stay for a week and they didn’t say 20 words to each other). Kendra was supposed to be our roomate, but her Mom found out at the last minute that I was a guy and that sunk it. Sadly, we only got to live there a year. Our landlord, Lance, thought we were just too rough on his precious 100 yr old house, so he would not renew.

So Cindy and I needed a place together. Seeing plenty of Andy Sells too. We found it next to Centennial Park. The cats liked it. Cindy lived there until her graduation and I lived by myself for a 2nd year. So 1989-91. Also one of my favorite locations.

And then Brad Robertson moved back to Lawrence with his family. So I moved into their basement for 1991-92. Sadly it was also when I stopped cooking, and I have yet to pick it up again seriously. But the location was interesting. We had a private park in the back yard. And a school across the street where the little kids screamed nonstop at the top of their lungs during recess. It brings a smile. And of course, 2 yr old Anne as a roommate.

Brad quit his job and the family went back to Wichita, so I was alone that summer. They were trying to sell the house and couldn’t show if off properly with me there, I had to clear out fast. The timing was lucky, I’d met Sean Williams earlier and he had an extra room, so I moved to his place on Mass. This was my most favorite house of all. A church parking lot for overflow, a busy street where everyone came by, best porch eva, a liquor store, supermarket and restaurants a few houses down, it was great! (Google map picture not great because there was a big tree in the way.)

A little later I ran into Pearl again and we began “hanging out”. This went on for a few years, then Sean started making noises about moving to KC, right about the time Pearl’s lease was running out. Before Sean knew it, he had been “moved out” and Pearl was in. We got married while still living here. In 1997, Sean decided to sell the house and we had to choose. I was working in KC, Pearl was flying around the country ever other week, and we could buy twice the house in KC than we could in Lawrence. Very sadly, we moved to Overland Park. Nice quiet neighborhood with fast access to the highways and anywhere else. Love the new place but always miss Lawrence.

Gimp ‘dust and scratches’ filter

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Photoshop (and Elements) has a terrific filter called Dust and Scratches. It looks for dots and curves on the image that are clearly noise, then removes them. This comes from dust on your lenses or on the photos you’re scanning, etc. An invaluable tool for all image cleanup work.

No such thing in the Gimp world. Search for gimp + dust + scratches and you either find the despeckle filter (which is useless, ime), or references to some 3rd-party plugin which was never compiled for windows.

The best tool I know of comes from the G’MIC plugin for Gimp. This is a must-have tool for many reasons (e.g., making lady’s portrait skin look soft and smooth), but the Remove Hot pixels option under the Repair subset is essentially the same thing as the Dust and Scratches of Photoshop.

I have not read the technical documentation, but the controls are simple: Mask size is the number of pixels at which to consider something being a “hot pixel”. Too low and you miss pixels. Too high and you lose detail in the image. Threshold is the amount of difference to require for something to be considered “hot”. Too high and you won’t change anything. Too low and you change too much. A standard approach is to start with mask size and threshold at minimum, then increase mask size until you fix all/most of the errors, then increase threshold until you stop screwing up everything else. Tip: As this is a compromise, leave the big scratches for manual work: Use the Clone and Healing tools instead.

Here is an example of a BEFORE ==> AFTER.

UPDATE: January 2016

As of the latest G’MIC plugin for Gimp, this effect has been moved to “Repair -> Remove hot pixels”

Also, try the “Repair -> Iain’s noise reduction”