Archive for the Category » Oh! There’s a App For That! «

26
Sep

What! Do I need an Anemometer? A Psychrometer? You tell me.

I consider myself a intermediate gardener. I think I could do better but for what I have to work with I think I do okay. Well, I thought I did until I read an article in the recent Farmer’s Almanac about weather instruments.

I have a rain barrel, rain gauge, barometer and weather vane. Okay, I do not check them often to know if the warm southern winds are moving in or we will be getting an inch of rain to fill the rain barrel. But I do watch the weather reports. And I rely on my good old fashion arthritis to tell me when the humidity or colder weather is moving in.

So when I read about “anemometers” I recognized immediately what they were for because I had seen them before. They catch the wind in their rounded cups rotating measuring the speed of the wind. For me I really just need a wind sock to let me know that the wind is starting up or which direction it is coming from.

Living in the humid south I watch the Weather Channel daily during hurricane season so I know what to expect.

I have a barometer and a thermometer combo that works pretty well. I think I rely on the thermometer above all other instruments because I go out every single day rain or shine to walk or work in the garden unless we get a warning to stay inside. First thing I do in the morning is check my “Weather Channel” app to see what to expect and what time sunrise is. Then I am up and rolling. Sometimes I can tell by how I feel how bad it is going to be for the day.

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I had never heard of a “psychrometer”. The two measure relative humidity. It has two thermometers. There is a process that sounds a bit complicated. To find the relative humidity you compare temperatures of the two thermometors. If you have used one you know how they work.

I think it is a bit more advanced for me when I am checking weather conditions. However while figuring how this worked I ran across some old timer weather forecasting tools I found very interesting and that are still in use.

One are “weather sticks” that are pretty neat. They work on the theory of air pressure affecting wood branches. However, it is not a guarantee at any time. So if at first you do not succeed then try another tree!

Only you can decide what weather tools you will want to use for your needs. But I think you will find that the tools I have mentioned here are worthy of checking out. Both the psychrometer and the anemometer are very interesting weather tools as are weather sticks.

 

 

 

 

Category: Oh! There's a App For That!, The Impatient Gardener  Leave a Comment
11
Sep

Clothing to Prefabricated Homes…….so what else is new?

I have gotten so use to getting on the Internet to find a sale item before making a purchase that it has become second nature. I wait a couple of days and it shows up in the Post, UPS or by Fedex. It never occurred to me to question this method of shopping as I have done it for so long.

Then I began to wonder where did mail order get started? Today you can buy for yourself, for a third party and even get an immediate shopping experience such as Kindle books or Itunes purchases. But there was a time a mail order catalogue was just that, a catalog.

So off I went to find out where it all started. The first recorded instance I found was when Benjamin Franklin set up a mail order concept in which he sold scientific and academic books. That was about 1744. It took another 140 years before Montgomery Wards started their mail order service. Sears, Roebuck and Company hitched their tail to that star and also began offering goods by mail order.

 


 

James Cash Penney jumped on the band wagon in 1902 in Kemmerer, WY. It reminded me of a short time I lived in a small town in Nevada in the 1970s. There was a Montgomery Wards and Sears store front that only had catalogs. You went in and browsed the catalog, the woman would take down your order and tell you to come back at a set time to pick up your purchase. Ah, that was catalog purchasing!

The catalog concept was not just a United States idea that mercantile vendors used. Canada was not to be left behind. T. Eaton Company Ltd held the title to Canada’s largest retail department store introducing a small catalog in 1884. They had three major mail order warehouses.

 

Sir John Moore of Great Britain joined in as well when he started Littlewoods, a mail order sports store. That was in 1932 and it has continued to grow.

Now we jump on the Internet with no thought. I have been shopping at Amazon since 1998 and have bought everything but the kitchen sink, which I probably could have done that too! Because when my husband and I got around to buying a kitchen sink sure enough we looked online first. In fact we looked online to see about buying a house.

I do not think we will be getting catalogs in the Postal mail much longer. Many stores are simply emailing their customer catalogs or sale items. The only backlash is the United States Postal Service is losing its productivity because less people and businesses are using mail these days. Well, I use it to get the purchase sent to me so that counts, right?

It is so fascinating to see where we have started with consumerism through mail order. I just got so use to it that I lost sight of its humble beginnings. Thanks to the Internet I can jump online and find anything I want. Mail order was my search today.

To add to this new age shopping we have an “app for that”. One is called Google Catalogs that you can have an interactive experience flipping through catalogs. Consumerism has kept up with the age of Technology. We have come along way baby!





Category: Books. Elctronic Reader, History, The Way It Was..., Oh! There's a App For That!  Leave a Comment
22
May

Oooooga! Dive! Dive!

Meltdown. I am overdosing on technology. I have been working on Windows with Microsoft products for over thirty years. A few years ago I decided to go to college so I bought an Apple laptop, in fact a Macbook. I was already overwhelmed with the school thing so I do not know what possessed me to change from Windows to Apple right when I was starting school. I did not have the time to learn the way Apple sets up their computer. So I ended up ditching that laptop for a Windows laptop to get through school. My husband traded laptops with me and eventually passed it on to our Apple savvy son.

Once I was done with school I decided since I already have a Shuffle, iPhone and iPod why not try again so I got a iPad 2. Wow, just little things like the placement of the menu bar on the screen or learning shortcuts using command, function key instead of control, function key (depending on what option I want for example: save, copy, paste or print) I have been feeling my brain trying to switch over to the dark side.

Okay I am doing pretty good I think. Well, maybe not as good as the “Generation Y, also known as the Millennial Generation (or Millennials), Generation Next, Net Generation, Echo Boomers. This describes the demographic cohort following following Generation X”, but considering that I am using a part of my brain that has been in default mode for quite some time I think I am doing okay.

Until I introduced the keyboard to iPad 2. It is a cute little light weight aluminum keyboard that easily synced with the iPad 2 (which from here forward I will affectionately call “Paddy”). Great, how exciting, because now I can take it anywhere while I email, surf the web and get apps that are for iPads.

The most exciting app I found is for magazines that I would normally buy. Now I can read on Paddy. I got one magazine app from Martha Stewart Living and was so excited that it was animated! That never would happen in a paper magazine. Very exciting. However, the big kahuna for Paddy is the ability to do facetime. I love facetime because I can call the grandkids and follow them around while they are doing whatever they do. It is great to see them in real time.

But the meltdown came this morning. I have a small Acer netbook that I use for one thing specifically. So far I have not downloaded the option off of it to Paddy. However, last week when I got the keyboard I had thought I had effectively learned how to type and do the touch screen options. Okay at least well enough that I was feeling I had made it through the transition. Woot! Gramma in the twenty-first century. Go granny! I was feeling pretty smug I have kept up with the technology until I tried to touch screen on my Acer, which as you techies all know it DOES NOT have that option. That was when my right brain and left brain went cachink and I immediately felt myself begin to go “Oooooga, dive, dive” back into the familiar. Overload had taken place and I needed a break.

Thankfully I was able to dive right on my blog to let you (and me) know what was happening. I think I am okay now. It was close, real close but my brain cells recovered and I am “back in the saddle again” ready for another run at technology. I love my iPad 2. It was gift from my husband for our anniversary and I was ready to get it. A grandmother needs to stay in touch. But the learning curve was a tad more than I expected each time I learned something new. The keyboard was the overdose but! I made it, I crossed over to Apple! And now I am using it for everything. Who needs to waste paper anyway now I can go completely green. And as a avid tree hugger that is extremely appealing.

Cited: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_Y

 

Category: Hee, Hee, A touch of Humor, Oh! There's a App For That!  2 Comments
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