Welcome to the New Home for My Blog!

For the last nine years, my blog, Misty Midwest Mossiness, has languished as a ‘free’ site hosted at WordPress.com. That ‘free’ came with a slight headache, which eventually morphed into a migraine. My ability to host for ‘free’ meant being saddled with advertisements, the content of which I could not control.

I took a huge leap this week and dived into the Digital Ocean. I’ve created a couple of droplets, their term for virtual machines hosted in their cloud. I created this new home using one of their prefab Droplets in their Marketplace. I did have to buy a new domain name, mostly because I didn’t want to mess up and re-configure my existing domain name just yet. My new domain name – hennethannun.net – which reflects my ongoing love for all things Tolkien and sunsets. For more information about Henneth Annûn visit this brief article at the TolkienGateway.

I was able to export my blog (overnight) from WordPress.com and import it this morning in just a few minutes. I will leave the old blog in place for the rest of the year and monitor this new blog home to see if this is cost effective and won’t break my pocketbook.

I will be adjusting the look-and-feel of this new blog – rebranded as “Into the West” – over the next few days. Let me know what you think.

Foci and Mirrors

This week’s discussion topic will attempt to answer the question:

Suppose your Newtonian reflector has a mirror with a diameter of 20 cm and a focal length of 2 m. What magnification do you get with eyepieces whose focal lengths are: a. 9 mm, b. 20 mm, and c. 55 mm?

From my textbook:

The magnification of a reflecting telescope is equal to the focal length of the primary mirror divided by the focal length of the eyepiece lens:

Magnification = Focal Length of Primary / Focal Length of Eyepiece

In the question stated above, the three different eyepieces will result in the following magnifications:

2000 mm / 9 mm = 222X
2000 mm / 20 mm = 100X
2000 mm / 55 mm = 36X

Continue reading “Foci and Mirrors”

So Your Home Printer Just Ran Out of Ink . . .

Home printing and printers are the bane of my existence.  I’m very spoiled.  My employer is a large law firm.  Law firms excel at killing trees (i.e. printing reams and reams and reams of paper).  I’ve had access to exceptional printers (actually the modern-day term is ‘multi-function device’ or MFD for short) for decades.  Of course, the flip side to this is I hate printed materials.  I don’t want to store them, file them, fold them, dust them, move them, etc.  You can’t search for a printed item like you can an electronic copy.  So a piece of paper is of no use to me whatsoever.  My husband, however, is not so enlightened.  Neither are most of my relatives, none of whom have followed me into the realm of paperless nirvana.

Continue reading “So Your Home Printer Just Ran Out of Ink . . .”

Local Library Makes Computer Access Easy as Pie

Easy as pie?  For me, it is way easier.  I’ll explain that later.

My local library, the Lansing Community Library, recently installed software created by EnvisionWare which makes accessing a computer a snap.

Here’s a quick ‘how to’ to give you an idea of just how easy this is.

Don’t have a library card?  No worries.  Just stop at the front desk and the friendly library techs will give you a guest pass or issue you a brand new shiny Lansing Community Library card.

Continue reading “Local Library Makes Computer Access Easy as Pie”

Windows 10? Here are privacy issues you should consider

http://thenextweb.com/microsoft/2015/07/29/wind-nos/

More and more reasons to try or switch to Linux.  Beware of Windows 10 “Free” upgrade … it will only cost your privacy.

Posted from WordPress for Android via my Samsung smartphone. Please excuse any misspellings. Ciao, Jon

How Chess Has Changed Over The Last 150 Years

http://io9.com/how-chess-has-changed-over-the-last-150-years-1707692642

Chess is one of those games I know how to play but have no desire to play. As noted in this article, the rise of the machine has made human play almost an afterthought.

I like computers but I prefer to tell them what to do. Computers excel at trillions of calculations and quick logical comparisons. They do not sweat nor do they forget or fatigue.  They will always win the every – possible – move grind.

Posted from WordPress for Android via my Samsung smartphone. Please excuse any misspellings. Ciao, Jon

Article: Google executives explain why the MBA approach to building things is ‘stupid’

Google executives explain why the MBA approach to building things is ‘stupid’

http://venturebeat.com/2015/02/06/google-executives-explain-why-the-mba-approach-to-building-things-is-stupid/

Expect the unexpected.

Posted from WordPress for Android via my Samsung smartphone. Please excuse any misspellings. Ciao, Jon

Article: Virtual desktops don’t replace EMM

Virtual desktops don’t replace EMM

https://gigaom.com/2015/01/18/virtual-desktops-dont-replace-emm/

The firm I work for does both MDM and VDI. That’s the nature of IT support in legal firms. Access whenever wherever and however but still securely.

Posted from WordPress for Android via my Samsung smartphone. Please excuse any misspellings. Ciao, Jon