Blocking Ads on Web Sites

For a long time I have been using Firefox as my default web browser, and I have been very happy with it.  One of the reasons I was happy with it was I was using an extension which blocks ads on the web sites that I visited.  I find ads to be annoying, and they can clutter a web page.  I almost never read an ad, so I was happy being able to block them.

A few weeks ago, I switched to Google Chrome as my default we browser.  I find Google Chrome to be a noticeably faster web browser than Firefox.   I was happy with it, but I was not completely happy because I could not find a way to block the ads I was now seeing on the web pages.  Then on January 3, I read an article by Craighton Miller on lockergnome.com concerning Google Chrome extensions (click here if you would like to read the article).  I proceeded to figure how to get to the extensions on Google Chrome (it just takes two clicks of the mouse), and then I saw saw what I was looking for, an extension called AdBlock, which unsurprisingly blocks ads on web pages.  Ah, the holy grail!  Now I see no ads, no clutter, just the stuff I want to see.

But wait!  At the end of Craighton Miller's article on extensions, there is a paragraph on why one should not use an ad blocker.  Ads on web sites are sources of revenue for the people who produce the web sites.  Thus if you are using an ad blocker, you in effect are stealing from these people.  You are not getting that money, but the producers of the web site are not getting the money either.  That money helps to defray the cost of producing that web site.  I felt a little guilty after reading that paragraph, but not guilty enough.  I went ahead and installed AdBlock.

A day or two later on one of the The Lockergnome Daily Report (TLDR) videos, Chris Pirillo said that if you are using an ad blocker on the lockergnome web sites, you are not really a supporter of the lockergnome community.  Guilt, and more guilt.  Well, I wondered if there was a way to customize AdBlock so that I would not be blocking ads on the lockergnome sites.  Yes indeed, there is a way to not block ads on a particular site. So I am now not blocking ads on lockergnome web sites, but my guilt has not gone completely away.

What about the producers of other web sites?  Are I not keeping them from potential revenue (they only get the revenue if I click on an ad on their web site)?  Maybe I should not be using AdBlock at all.  Now this instant, I have just uninstalled AdBlock.  I am no longer blocking ads on any web site that I visit.  My guilt is gone.  I will see more stuff on the web pages, but I will learn to deal with it.  Perhaps I might see something that I might benefit from in an ad.  Maybe this change will actually be a win-win situation for both the web site producers and myself.  Certainly nothing wrong with that.

What If Certain Events Had Not Occurred?

Time travel has often been used in novels, TV shows, and movies, especially of the science fiction variety.  Even if you are not a science fiction fan, I am sure you have wondered what it would be like to travel back in time to witness historical events.  Maybe you have wanted to go back in time to do something differently, whether that is for someone else's benefit or for your own benefit.  I know I have.  When I was at Washington and Lee University my freshman year, I had the choice of going to second visits of two fraternities.  One fraternity had a studious reputation while the other had more of a party atmosphere.  I chose to go to the second fraternity's party, in part because they paid a lot of attention to me at their first visit, and I ended up not being asked to join that fraternity.  There certainly was no guarantee that I would have been asked to join the first fraternity if I had chosen to go to their second visit, but I have a feeling my life would have been different if I had gone to their party.  I ended up not joining a fraternity at W & L, and I transferred to the University of Florida after my sophomore year.  I am not saying my life would have been better or worse if I had joined a fraternity and stayed at W & L.  I think my life would have been different.  It is not often that you can look back on your life and see crossroads where your life could have been different if you had made a different decision.  I think that fraternity visit decision was such a crossroad for me.

Well, what made you think about this, you may ask me. A few days ago I read an article on lockergnome.com called 11/22/63: The Stephen King Novel for Science Fiction Fans.  The article is by Robert Glen Fogarty, and you can read the article by clicking here.  In case you do not know, 11/22/63 is the day when President John Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, TX.  In the book 11/22/63 (this is not a horror story),  someone goes back in time to prevent the assassination.  The rest of the book concerns the change in the timeline that results from President Kennedy not being killed then.  I have just started reading this book on my Nook, so I don't know what changes to history Stephen King has written in this book.  I know I have often thought about how things would have been different.  I certainly do not think President Kennedy would have sent troops to Vietnam if he had lived.  Who knows what else may have been different.  It is all speculation anyway.  We will never know one way or another.  I have just finished reading another book called Jack Kennedy:  Elusive Hero by Chris Matthews, so President Kennedy has been on my mind of late.

I believe Kennedy's assassination was a crossroad for our country.  I think possibly our country would be different today if this event had not happened.  Similar to my own crossroad, I am not saying things would be better if he had lived.  Things might be worse.  Again, we will never know one way or another.  However, that does not mean we can't think about such possibilities.  It is fun to do so.  Perhaps though we should not think about such things too much.  We can't change the past no matter how much we may want to.  We can change our future by learning from the past.  That would worth spending our time on.

Combining Blogs?

On December 29, 2010, I wrote my first posting on a blog.  I guess that means I just passed my first anniversary as a blogger.  There was no notice of that milestone in Time magazine.  How could they have missed that?  If you want to read that posting and the other postings I have made, click here.

But wait!  You don't see any of my recent postings on that blog?  What happened?  This past summer I bought a T-Mobile smartphone.  The saleslady said I needed to setup a Google account since I was buying an Android smartphone.  In all of the excitement of buying this new phone, I forgot that I had already had a Google account, blugatr.  I wish I had remembered that name since I like the blugatr name better than the name bradto36, the Google account name this blog is under.  What I would like to do combine the blog under the blugatr Google account with the bradto36 account.  In case you don't know, a Google account contains an email account, Google+ account, blogs, Google docs account, and a YouTube account as well as other types of accounts.

Everyone now has my email address under the bradto36 name.  My main email address was an AOL email address, so I do not want to go through the same process of changing my email address from the AOL one to the bradto36 one to change the bradto36 email address to the blugatr email address even though I like the blugatr address better.  Thus my question is can I combine the two blogs?  Can I move my blugatr blog postings with any of their comments to the bradto36 blog postings?  Both blogs are blogspot blogs, which are hosted by Google.  I would appreciate any help you can give me.  Much thanks!

Backing Up Your Data in the Cloud

All of us know how important it is to backup the data that is on your computer.  I found that the hard way myself when a hard drive in one of my laptops crashed a few years ago.  I didn't have any personal data on that laptop, so it could have been a worse disaster.  Now I backup up the data on my laptop onto an external hard drive which is attached to my laptop.  However, that does not mean you are fully protected when you backup your data onto an external drive..  What if you lose your external hard drive?What if it is stolen?  What if your external hard drive fills up to capacity (buy a bigger hard drive)?  What if there is a fire or something that destroys your house along with your laptop and any external hard drives?

I was reminded of these concerns when I read an article about backing up your data, the article being called "How (and Why) to Backup Your Data" by Eddie Ringle (click here to read the article).  These days there is an alternate way to backing up your data.  You can backup your data to the "cloud".  The cloud really is referring to servers located who knows where, certainly not in your house, but servers that your data is stored on.  Several companies offer storing your data in their version of the cloud, three companies being Amazon, Google, and Apple.  For a few weeks now I have been storing my music in the cloud via Google Music.  Now I can access my music from my mobile phone wherever I go, and I don't have to worry about running out of storage space for my music on my phone. My music is in the cloud.

Google's version of the cloud is called Google Docs.  One part of that is called Google Cloud Connect.  With this, you can store all your Microsoft Office documents, those being Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and the like, in Google Docs.  This takes a little time to do as I am storing them by syncing them one document at a time (I don't know if there is a faster way to do this).  For those documents that are now in the cloud, it takes a little longer to access them and a little longer to save them.  Perhaps if I had a faster WiFi connection, I would have faster access to my data in the cloud.  So far this cloud service is free.  The only real concern I see about storing data in the cloud is the case either my internet connection goes down or the cloud goes down.  I have not had such a problem in the short time I have had any of my data in the cloud, but there is a chance of such a problem occurring.  If companies that offer cloud services cannot provide reliable access to the data in the cloud,  storing data in the cloud will not be a good alternative for backing up your data.

Addendum - After I wrote this posting, I signed up to backup all my documents, pictures, financial data, and the like to Apple's iDrive.  It took over two days to upload my data to the iDrive, but the reason for that is largely due to my slower router (the slower g router versus the faster n router) and my DSL internet connection.  I have taken a big step to protect my data.  I hope the cloud does not let me down.

Searching for Intelligent Extra-Terrestrials

Do you believe that there is life on other places besides the earth?  Do you believe that there is intelligent life not on the earth (the jury is out on there being intelligent life on earth, I sometimes wonder)?  I certainly believe that there is life on other planets.  I even believe that there is intelligent life on other planets.

The earth is a very special place.  It is our home.  But the earth is not that special.  We have discovered planets around other stars in our galaxy, some of them being almost earth-like, and that search for other planets has just scratched the surface.  Are there planets out there that can support life?  Of the planets discovered so far, the number being hundreds of them, there are very few that might support life, at least life as we know it.  However, there are over 300 billion stars in our galaxy, so I think the chances are good that there are other planets that support life.

Do any of those planets support intelligent life?  There is less of a chance that there is intelligent life on other planets, but I don't think that chance is zero.  However, intelligent life has not been on earth very long.  Earth is about 4 billion years old.  Homo sapiens, our species, has been around for only 160,000 years.  That is not a long time when you compare it to the age of the earth.  Thus when we are looking for intelligent life in other star systems, those planets there may have life, but they may not have intelligent life at that time, if ever, when you consider how long it has taken intelligent life to evolve here on earth.

Does that mean that we should not look for intelligent life elsewhere.  Certainly not.  If we do detect intelligent life on other planets, we will have the answer to perhaps our most important question, are we alone.  If the answer is we are not alone, that can change how we think of ourselves and maybe how we act.  Maybe we can really act intelligent and start solving some really important problems we have, like poverty, hunger, and illiteracy, among others.

Several years ago I participated in the search for intelligent life.  I automatically downloaded data from SETI@home (SETI stands for Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence) and processed the data using their software to see if there were non-natural signals in the data obtained from star systems.  I quit that search when the laptop I was using broke, and I never resumed that search on another PC until yesterday.  A couple of days ago, I read an article about SETI (if you want to read that article, click here).  Yesterday I downloaded the software, and now I am processing my first data packet.  At this moment, I am 36% complete after processing for 6 hours, and I have 8 hours of processing to go.  The software runs when your PC is not doing much else.  I don't really think I will get any hits, but the prospect of doing so is quite thrilling.

Will we actually meet aliens or talk with aliens?  I don't think so because the distances between star systems is so great.  However, just knowing that we are not alone may have a great positive impact on our society.

A New Web Browser

A couple of weeks ago, I decided to try the web browser by Google called Google Chrome.  I have been using the browser Firefox for quite sometime, but I have been slowly using Google applications more and more ever since I bought my Android smartphone this summer.  So I wanted to see what Google Chrome is like.  Google Chrome seems to be a simpler browser with less functions than Firefox (I can't find a way to block ads in Google Chrome like I can in Firefox), but it is a faster browser than Firefox as a result.  I have noticed that the Scrabble game in Facebook loads faster in Google than in Firefox and that web pages overall are loading faster in Google Chrome.  As a result, I have made Google Chrome my default browser, at least for now.  I may change my mind, but so far I am happy with Google Chrome.

If you want to try Google Chrome yourself, click here.

Yesterday I saw an article about "Top 10 Essential Google Chrome Apps".  If you want to read the article, click here.  I am trying one of the apps now, Wunderlist.  This apps lets you create lists of tasks you wish to accomplish, and you have the option to assign a due date.  I have even downloaded the mobile version of this app onto my smartphone.  I hope this will help me do a better job of organizing my work.  I will report later how successful I am with this app.

A Man Behind the Times

As many of you may know, I primarily teach GED classes for a living.  This past week in one of my classes, I brought two laptops to the class so that two of my students could work on GED questions and problems by using the GED software on the laptops.  One of my students has used this program many times.  To my surprise, the other student had never even used a laptop, or any computer, before.  He said the only technology of any consequence he used was a cell phone that made and received phone calls and texted messages.  He was very content not to use technology in his work.  He was used to doing things that way and did not see a reason to change.  I encouraged him to learn how to use the technology of the day because it can make him more productive.  He finally said that the reason he did not use technology was that he had seen people become addicted to technology, and he did not want that to happen to him.

It has been a while since I have taught anyone how to use a computer.  Kids these days seem to know how to use technology from the time they are born.  I enjoyed showing my GED student how to use the cursor to navigate around the laptop.  I am not sure he will remember everything I told him, but he said he enjoyed working on the laptop.  He also said he wanted to continue working on the laptop, and I said I would start bringing the laptop to class all the time for him to work on.  Now that I think back on it, I was being like a drug pusher when I told my student how productive he can be using technology, and I am enabling him by bringing the laptop to class all the time.  I have put him on the path of addiction, addiction to technology.  Yes, technology can be addictive.  I even wrote a blog post this summer about my addiction to my smartphone.  There is both a good side and bad side to just about anything.  I really don't think my student will become addicted to technology, if nothing else because he is aware of the danger.  We all have to be aware of the danger.

My student being behind the times and not using technology sure blew apart one of my assumptions about people.  I thought everyone knows their way around a computer.  Even if you don't have a computer, you should be exposed to computers via school or work.  However, my student comes from another country.  Perhaps his family did not have the means to get a computer.  Perhaps the schools he went to did not have computers.  If I remember correctly, I don't think he finished 9th grade.  Perhaps he had jobs that did not use computers.  Not everyone has been raised in the environment we have in the United States, and it is not the same environment everywhere in this country.  You just can't assume everyone has the same knowledge base.  I found that out this week, for sure.

I even found out last night that I am not up to speed on akk technology subjects.  I had heard about QR codes, but I did not realize how much information they contain and how many uses there are for them.  I just thought they are another version of the barcode that we find on all the items we buy.  Not so.  They can contain contact information.  They can open up a web site for you on your smartphone.  I am sure there are other uses for QR codes.  Our knowledge base is always evolving.  If your knowledge base is not evolving, you are not learning.  If you are not learning, then you must be dead.  We are all learning something everyday no matter if we realize it or not.