#164 - Exercising your mind

I saw an interesting article in the Roanoke Times on keeping your mind active. There have been many studies that confirm that exercising your mind is at least as important as exercising your body as you age. The Internet has some great sites that can help you to keep the "little gray cells" moving and grooving.

My spousal unit loves Suduku. She prints of pages of Suduku puzzles (evil only!) from the web suduku site. She always prints them on the back of used paper being environmentally friendly.

WEB SUDUKU

One of my favorites is to use your opposite hand in doing everyday tasks. Try brushing your teeth or hair with the other hand. Try hitting the space bar on your keyboard with the other thumb. This is harder then it looks. You can even wear your watch on the opposite wrist to get you thinking different.

Reading is fundamental. Read a book every week. Well we try. What I've done lately is try to read an entire series by an author. Pick up a James Patterson series, or Nora Robb, or even Janet Evanovich! The Internet is your friend when looking for a series to read. You can also read books online with the Google Book library.

There are even websites that specialize in exercising your brain. Here is one that does brain training by playing games MIND 360.

Crossword puzzles are very popular and the New York Times has some of the best. They charge a fee for online access. Here is some free crossword puzzles FREE FREE FREE

Learning more about your computer is always good. You probably have programs on your computer that you have never used. What is this Access thingy? I have all these Accessories, what do they do? Google is your friend here. Look up how to use these programs and try to use them.

Happy Exercising!

#163 - Flash Memory Card update

Flash memory technology certainly has changed the way we live. It is the basis for digital cameras, digital camcorders, cell phones, MP3 players and of course thumb drives. The ability to store large amounts of information in a small space has changed how we work and play. It also has killed one industry (picture film) while creating many new ones (mentioned above).

Flash memory cards, used in digital cameras, have certainly changed since being introduced. The original flash memory card was the CompactFlash Drive made by SanDisk in 1994. This square drive (1.69 inches x 1.42 inches) had female pin connectors and was very large when compared to today's cards. Nikon used this format for almost 10 years before switching to the now standard SD media card.

The first thin and quite small card was the Smart media card introduced in 1995. This card is the grandfather of SD (Secure Digital) media card that is used by most digital cameras today. It had a gold plated connector that easily inserted into the appropriate device.

Sony and Olympus are still using their proprietary formats Memory Stick and xD respectively. There are some advantages to these formats (Memory sticks are pretty rugged and xD is pretty small), however the majority of new products have moved to SD technology. Most new laptops and netbooks have just an SD card slot in them.

SD has advanced to the new SDHD (High Density) cards that can be as large as 64GB. Unfortunately SDHD cards can NOT be used in older cameras and MP3 players that use SD technology. Be aware of what kind of card your electronic product can use. There are also Micro and Mini versions of the SD card used in Cell Phones and MP3 players.

It is pretty confusing keeping up with these standards. Wikipedia has an excellent page with pictures and information about all the memory cards: MEMORY CARD COMPARISON

#162 - Traffic Technology

So I asked the wife, "What would be a good topic for the blog?" She says, "You've been traveling by car alot this summer, maybe talk about traffic technology". Ok so here goes.

My parents were amazed this summer when their town put in new traffic lights with detection cameras. We've had those in Virginia for a good 5 years. The detection cameras note when a car comes to stop at an intersection and then instruct a processor to turn the correct traffic light to green. Now they are fortunate that what didn't go up was a traffic enforcement camera. One that catches those that run lights by taking a picture of a car that goes through an intersection when the light is red. These are popular in Northern Virginia.

We've also seen some new surface technology in the small town of Covington. A new bridge over some rail tracks went in with a new composite surface that is supposed to last twice as long as either blacktop or new concrete. Its costs about 30% more, so should pay off in the long run and the costs should come down if more is used.

Another great boon to traveling by car is the GPS. The Global Positioning System box helps us get to our destination by showing turn by turn directions. Now let me be the first to say that there still needs to be some work on this technology. Take my last trip to Ohio with the spouse. She was driving on a West Virginia Interstate when a big traffic jam occured. We were near an exit and she proposed that we go off and let the GPS take us to the next exit. OK, fine. I'm up for an adventure and that's exactly what we had. 10 minutes later we were on a one lane dirt and gravel road winding our way in Deliverance country. 20 minutes later we were on a nice paved highway heading directly back to where we got off the Interstate. Total detour was about 30 minutes and we still had a 15 minute wait in the Traffic Jam. Isn't technology wonderful?

I do like the electronic signs on the interstates that let you know about traffic congesting and give you the opportunity, ahead of time to make alternate plans. That works great in Virginia where I have a fair knowledge of most of the major routes and potential back road detours. You can also go to most state DOT sites and get very current reports of construction delays and alternate routes.

Internet in your car is now here. Verizon and other sell an mini hub you can put in your car and use wireless technology to have Internet on the run. It is a steep cost now, but I'm sure the price will come down with more competition.