Dr. Edward

"Dr. Edward Lack is double board certified in Dermatology and in Dermatologic Cosmetic Surgery." As this quote from the Chicago Dermatology website suggests, Dr. Edward Lack is a talented Dermatologist in the Chicago area. He offers a wide variety of services. If you're in the market for a dermatologist in the Chicago area, check out their Site.

Simple Religion - Part 2

"This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness. "

- Dalai Lama

Another issue that I've seen with today's common religious philosophy is it's tendency to assume that spiritual growth occurs only at special times or in special places. Seeming to think that without a temple there wouldn't be a religion, many of these people simply ignore religion when not in a temple. They show up and pay lip service, but out in the real world they don't show any indication of religious inclinations. The Dalai Lama states in this quote that his Brain and Heart are his temples, implying that he has no need for real temples. This is I'm sure not to say that he shuns temples. From what I understand, he lives in a monastery. However, it sounds like he doesn't feel the need to be in the temple to exercise his religion and spirit. I'm sure it's no secret that you don't need to be Buddhist to practice religion and spiritual growth anywhere you happen to be. Not a secret perhaps, but a fact largely forgotten in America and elsewhere. This isn't necessarily to say that you can conduct the traditional rituals wherever or whenever you decide, but rather to say that you can engage in spiritual development and religious growth at any time, under any circumstances. Take for example the story of Linda, in my second attempt to write a parable. Linda is the 29 year old assistant to the head of a major corporation. Her boss is named Tom. She takes care of all the details in Tom's life, so that he can take care of all the details of the business. Linda was a christian all her life, but after she took this job, she had to stop attending church. Tom has no family, and no interest at all in religion. Tom insists that for the most part that Linda work every day he does, with no extra time off. Tom takes one vacation a year in July for two weeks, and takes Monday and Friday off weekly. Every other day, Tom works. Linda has to work every Sunday, and every Christmas. Linda started off feeling that something wasn't right about her missing church, but she needed the money so she continued to work the job. Five years have passed since then, and now Linda's only spiritual function is a short prayer she says before bed. Over the years, this has become mechanical. Prayer, which was once central to her faith and spiritual life, has become nothing but a hollow gesture, a habit from her childhood which she has yet to break. By now this feels normal for Linda. One Friday, Linda is walking through the rough side of town, taking a short cut on her way home from shopping, when she heard someone being beaten in an alley. She kept walking, but as she walked by the alley from which the sounds were coming she saw the thugs stab the man once and take off, evidently scared off by the appearance of a witness. Their victim slumped helplessly to the ground. Considering how dirty the alley way, how far away the hospital was, and the off chance that those thugs might be waiting to jump her as well, Linda decided it was none of her business and kept walking and soon made it home. Because she had failed to continue her spiritual growth, she not only forgot that her religion included a story relating heavily to the situation she had been in, but failed to even feel the basic compassion that would have normally required her to go and help the wounded man. She didn't act like this because she had stopped attending church. Christian or not, it doesn't take enlightenment to desire to help the poor man slumping in a pool of his own blood. This chain of events is because Linda didn't realize that she could grow spiritually in her day to day life, and when day to day life became her only opportunity for spiritual development, she stopped all together. This is an extreme case of halted moral development I'll admit, but lesser cases are no better. Whether you completely stop observing religion and even basic morality like Linda, or if you simply sin throughout the week, every week and then expect forgiveness every Sunday. Why should one reserve religious thinking for use in the temple and at holidays? Consider for a moment if you will, who would seem more moral to you. The first example is one who ignores morals and spiritual development all through the week, and once every week heads for a temple and begs forgiveness. The second lives morally every day, actively seeking out opportunities for spiritual development, but never visits temples. Consider who is better off among those two, and certainly you will see as I do that it would be the latter, who lives every day morally, rather than assuming endless forgiveness and living heedlessly.

Something's squirrely in here...

If you're a homeowner, I'm sure you've noticed them. Running around in the woods and alleys near your house. They raid your trash cans and your bird feeders, and hide in the trees waiting to devour your children. The threat I'm talking about of course, is squirrels.

Squirrels are small and quick, and it can be challenging trying to keep them out of your home using nothing more than your hands, some rocks, and a foam battle ax. Yet you still have to try, because you know that if they get into your home, they're going to crawl around under your floors and in your walls. They're going to hide in the dark recesses of your home making noises and eating your food like big tailed rats.

The smart home owner though knows that you need more than a foam battle ax and blood stained rocks to keep squirrels at bay. You need squirrel repellent. Havahart® brand anti-squirrel sprays and fluids can come to your aid in your hour of need, protecting your home, saving your children, and driving the dark scourge that is tree rodents back into the depths of the forest from whence they came.

So head over to the Havahart® website, and pick up your squirrel repellent today.

~~~~~~

Attention RSS Readers!

Hey there. I'd like to start off by saying a hearty thank you for subscribing to my blog. Please do not stop reading this until you reach the bottom.

As you have more than likely realized, most of the content on this blog of late has been advertisements or paid reviews.

I know it can get frustrating to subscribe to a feed than then have the content of the blog go down hill or all to often send you information you're not interested in getting.

If you're subscribed to my blog because you've got an interest in my writing or because you find my writing of value to you, please subscribe to this feed instead. There you'll find a continuation of my writing, although I'm taking it in a new direction over there.

My mission at Blogging Guy is to help guys interact with web and world. I seek to provide articles that will help guys live there lives online and off, and interact with the people on every front. I provide articles on a wide range of topics, from making friends to blogging. Anything and everything a Blogging Guy, or regular guy needs to know.

If, on the other hand, you're only interested in me and my personal life, you should add me as a friend on Facebook, MySpace, or Twitter. You could also stay subscribed to this blog, but this blog doesn't include most of my day to day stuff, and it likely to host a lot more new advertisements in coming weeks and months then new posts of value. All my time and energy are going into my new blog, and this blog has become somewhat static.

Thank you for subscribing to the Blog of Jacob Duchaine, but unless you like the kind of posts you've been reading here recently, please click one of the links above, and then unsubscribe from this blog's feed.

Thanks,
Jacob Duchaine

Alviter Concrete Service Inc.

In the market for a concrete layer near Austin Texas? If you answered yes, check out Austin concrete. Austin Concrete is a new business formed in an effort to do their little part to repair the economy. Rather than sitting home and letting the job market get them down, they've formed their own business in an effort to stimulate the economy of their own lives. They can only succeed if other people are willing to do their part too, so please, hire these industrious professionals rather than a faceless money baron.

They may be largely without reputation, but there's only one way to get that reputation, and that's if you're willing to give them a chance. Small business is in general who we need to hire in these times of economic stress, since hiring small businesses helps keep money within the community, and stimulates the economy by keeping the money from getting stuck in the coffers of big business.

The setup of there website is similar to that of an electrician company I reviewed last week, again providing their phone number (512 879 9172) and a form usable to request that they call you provided right on the front page. They too have links at the top pointing to further contact information, images, and an about page listing their various awards.

If you're looking for cement contractors in the area around Austin Texis, then you'll do the economy good if you visit their site and consider them for your concrete project.

Luck of the Draw

I feel lucky these days. To start with, I'm in college. I'm going to college which is fairly lucky by itself. Also, I have a fine young woman who certainly seems to be shaping up to be the ying to my yang. I'm in a country that's so rich that I never go more than a day without food and shelter unless I do so of my own free will, yet I'm poor enough to avoid becoming arrogant and materialistic. Life has already taught me many important lessons, but I've managed to be sheltered from learning most lessons the hard way. I have a family that's functional enough to make me a happy, well adjusted person for the most part, but dysfunctional enough to help me understand that life isn't always easy, and people you love won't always act sane. I've been so sane that I could almost sense the order of the universe, and so insane that I could have sworn I was someone else. I have been handed a taste of the good and the bad on a silver platter; and I would just like to thank everyone who has made my wonderful life possible. Everyone from my mom, to my ex, to the American government as corrupt and evil as I sometimes point out that they are; if we weren't so rich, my life would be a lot harder. Although sometimes I don't show it, I'd like everyone to know that I'm very grateful to all those people who have helped bring about the balance that exists in my life, suspending me between heaven and hell; that I may become neither too privileged nor too wanting. I'm sure most of you won't ever read this, but thank you.

Finals are really stressful, and I hope you all forgive me for being short in my posts during this week, and I apologize again for the long period of relative inactivity. I'll try to be more consistent in the future.

All Phase Electrical Services, LLC

If you're looking for electricians in the St Louis area, then look no further than St.Louis electrician, a site that claims their philosophy is that success comes from serving others. Of course, that doesn't say much since a company's success almost invariably comes from serving others.

I can't attest as to their service, but there website looked like the website of a small business. Of course, small business is who I would want to hire in the event I needed an electrician, since hiring small businesses helps keep money within the community, and stimulates the economy by keeping the money from getting stuck in the coffers of big business.

The setup of there website was actually quite easy to navigate, providing their phone number (314 549 8677) and a form usable to request that they call you provided right on the from page. They had links at the top pointing to further contact information, images, and an about page listing their various awards.

If you're looking for electricians in the St. Louis area, then you'll do yourself and the economy good if you choose to visit their site and consider them for your electrician contracting needs.

Grand Central Reveiw

As you may or may not know, Google has recently acquired Grand Central. For those of you who don't know, Google is a search engine that started out as a research project under the direction of Larry Page, back in January 1996. Today, Google is a corporation worth more than $25 Billion, with a fan base that extends around the globe.

Grand Central on the other hand is an internet communications company founded in late 2005 by Craig Walker. Craig got the idea for the company after becoming frustrated at how many phones he had, and the difficulty he had keeping up with all the different numbers, and voice mailboxes, and such. Today, Grand Central is a part of Google, providing their services free of charge; because like every other Google service that is so vital to the net, Grand Central will be run on Advertising, which if you think about it, brings us all the wonderful Google services that make modern life on the internet possible.

One of the first things I learned about Grand Central is it's ability to ring multiple phones when people call your number. This means that you give out your Grand Central number, and calls coming through your GC number will ring every phone that you've specified for them to ring. This is heavily customizable, allowing you to decide which phone rings when you're called by a member of certain groups (The groups are Friends, Family, Web Button, work, and other. These groups cannot be changed at the current time.) This allows you to specify that when your coworker are calling you, it only goes to your office phone, but if your family members called it will be directed to your cell phone. This of course is an example. You can set up what groups you want to go to which phones however you see fit. At the current time you can only specify six telephone numbers for yourself at a time, but I don't see that being a problem. I don't think I can imagine a situation when anyone would really need to have that many phones while their using Grand Central. You can go even further with this customization and choose who goes to what phone on an individual basis. What your boss and clients to be able to contact you, but want that jerk in the office down the hall to go strait to voice mail? Easy as clicking the check box beside his name. This ability to screen your calls based on group, individual, or moment. When you pick up the phone with Grand Central, you are not connected immediately to the person calling. In stead, Grand Central warns you who it is, and gives you the option to either pick up, send them to voice mail, or send them to voice mail and listen in. This means that if it's a telemarketer, you know about it before they can say the first word to you, and you can add them to your list of blocked callers without having to deal with them, to stop them from ever calling you again. Perhaps you've heard of the national do not call list that prevents telemarketers from calling your home? Well with Grand Central you have a personal do not call list, allowing you to decide if and when you want to be contacted, by anyone.

The listen in feature I mentioned a moment ago allows you to listen while whoever is calling you leaves a voice mail. They go to voice mail and begin leaving a message, and you can listen to what they have to say and decide if you want to pick up based on what they want to tell you. If you should so decide, you can go ahead and "archive" the message before they finish leaving it; on the other hand, you could also choose to press the star button and burst in on them while their leaving a message. I'm still having fun with this feature myself. I hide in my voice mailbox until they get into leaving their message, then I pop out and start talking to them mid message! This shouldn't be mistaken for a toy though, because despite the fact that it's fun, it can be very useful for screening your calls. For example, say you have a fight with your girl, and she's really pissed off at you and just won't stop cursing and arguing and yelling at you. Well, say you just leave, and the next day you get a call from her. You can choose to let her start to leave a message, so that if she's still mad, you can give her a bit longer to cool off before talking to her, but if she's back to normal, you can pop into the voicemail and crack a joke to raise her spirits. Don't think I'm only talking to guys though, this would work equally as well with an angry boyfriend.

Grand Central provides you with many tools that I have yet to see built into any other phone system, and another such service is Call Record. Next time someone goes to give you directions over the phone, just hold down the 4 key for a second or two first and Grand Central records everything that's said till you turn it off by pressing the 4 key again, or hanging up. This can be used to remember anything that's said on the phone, from instructions to warm chats with your loved ones. At least for the time being, this can't be used in stealth mode. When this service activates, a voices says over the line that recording is activated. However, it could be used in stealth if the other person leaves the phone and comes back during the call. During that time you could turn it on and they wouldn't hear; thereafter all you'd have to do is leave it turned on until you hang up. Deactivating it by pressing 4 would produce another voice saying it's turned off, but hanging up the phone doesn't.

I touched on this once already, but I want to go into the benefits of this a little more deeply; the ability to block callers. Blocking numbers is something that phones have never really been good at. You could look at the screen and just not pick up once you had a cell phone invented with an external display, but there was nothing you could do about them calling. Grand Central though finally gives you the power to block people, and the customization of blocking makes it all the more fun. You can just "Always Screen" them, meaning they can't ring your phones, they can only leave you voice mails. Your second choice is to banish them to the spam mailbox, meaning that they not only can't ring your phone, but their voice mails end up in the spam box, to be checked by you only if you have the desire. If you've gone this far, you might want to consider just going ahead and blocking them all the way, which means they can't leave you any voicemails at all. At this stage you can choose to just have them hear an error message that will lie to them and tell them that your number is no longer in service. Any time that they call you, they will get that error message in stead of getting to trash up your inbox with their messages. Everyone else can still call that number, but they will need a new phone to ever call you again, and it's just as easy for you to block their new phone, as it was for you to block their old one, helping to give you the final say over who calls you and who doesn't.

I'm going to take a moment now to go over what I consider one of the more trivial goodies that come with your Grand Central account. The service known as Ring Share, is interesting, but ultimately doesn't seem to be very important. It allows you to choose what it is that people hear when they call you. Originally, and probably in the future, this also let you upload your own tunes and make them your Ring Shares. For the moment however, the Ring Share's selection of rings is mostly just the normal ring backs for other countries, though they have a few cool effects like wind chimes. Even if they had personal uploading turned on though, this service just doesn't catch my eye. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad they have it as it is something that's commonly offered by normal phone companies, but personally, at least for now, I don't want callers to hear anything out of the ordinary until I pick up.

What I do like though is the personalized answering machine messages. This makes it really easy to have one voice mail greeting for your mom, maybe telling her you love her and that she should leave a message, and another for your coworkers, that will sound professional and strait forward. This is, if I'm correct, another first that Grand Central has provided, allowing you to change how an individual interacts with your mailbox on that kind of a caller to caller basis really provides a world of opportunity. One thought: leave a caller a message that when they call, they'll hear from your answering machine. This might not be as big a deal as the ability to have Grand Central call more than one phone from one phone number, and pick up any of them, but it's still a great leap in personal customization of your communications system, which more and more is becoming something everyone uses every day, and this will help make it a little less like something they use, and a little more like something that they love.

The Web call button I can see being useful in a number of capacities. The first and most personal to me being that I can put it on my blog page, and then any readers who want to say something to me can call me up and give me a piece of their minds. (Notice: If anyone calls me I reserve the right to use the recordings and/or the voicemails in the blog.) There are many other potential uses for the webcall button. You could set it up on your companies website to make yourself easier to contact for your clients, or you could put it on dating sights, or many other things. Having a method of being contacted by phone beyond the normal handing out your number is something that I'm sure people will find uses for for years to come.

Google also gives you the option to be contacted when you have a voicemail. You can receive an SMS alert on your phone whenever there's a message in your inbox if you want, or you can choose to be sent an e-mail whenever you get a new message. Either way it's good to have a way to know if theirs mail in the box without walking out to it.

So, on we go to the CallSwitch feature. CallSwitch lets you switch what phone you're using during the conversation by pressing the star key. By pressing the stay key, you set the other phones back to ringing, and you can pick up any of them and switch to that phone in the middle of the conversation, seamlessly. The person on the other end will just here the beep, the two of you won't even need to stop talking when you make the switch. This lets you switch phones easily if your current phone is low on minutes, or batteries, or whatever.

The ability to return calls from your online mailbox is handy for when you're in front of your computer, but it's not really practical for everyday use unless you spend a lot of time at your computer (Like me, but I'm aware many of you don't) Clicking to call has an interesting side effect though. When you click to call, whatever phone you're using counts only as being connected to by an incoming call. your phones don't know it's an incoming call that you initiated. This means that when you combo Grand Central with Gizmo's soft phone, they together act very much like a normal phone. It also tends to use less minutes on cell phones if the call is incoming.

Quick rule allows you to quickly let GC know what phone you're near at the moment, so that they can ring you at the right spot. If you were at a friends house, and it was okay with him, you could use QuickRule to set his house as where your calls come. This feature is another one of those really original helpful features that I get really excited about. With this feature, home is truly were your hat hangs, and as such you can receive phone calls wherever you are, even if you don't have a personal phone. If your in a hotel, or if you're bumming around near some of those defective pay phones that accept incoming calls, you can set your calls to come to you, rather than you having to go to your calls.

Grand Central lets you do what you will with your voicemails more so than any other phone company I've encountered. Grand Central is set up to let you forward or reply to your voice mails, but it doesn't stop there. You can also take notes on the sender, use the built in map to see where their calling from, download an MP3 of the message to take with you, or post the voicemail directly to your blog for the world to see, and no, I won't hesitate to post any voicemails I feel deserve it in this blog, be they from friends, family, or you, the readers.

My complaints about Grand Central are fairly few. For one thing, I wish they had a greater variety of numbers to choose from, and I wish that they would accept vanity numbers. Just in my opinion, they should have a box like they do when your picking your e-mail address, that you can use to check if your desired phone number is taken or not, and if it's free they should give it to you. I guess that might not be reasonable, but I still think it'd be a nice feature. I also wish that you could create custom number groups. The groups they provide are fairly generic, and they work, but the customization of the details is sometimes what makes life so exciting. I just want to be able to tweak that.

Down to my only real complaints that aren't why can't I tweak that related: I only have two for the time being. The first is that the computers sometimes don't pick up. This is a major problem, that I'm sure they'll work out, but it's something that is so common I know they can't not already know about it. When someone calls me or when I call someone, maybe 5% of the time there's just silence on the line, because the computer "picked up" the phone line, but didn't open a channel, so we just sit there in silence until getting bored and hanging up. The second issue I have is that during the phone calls, the words sometimes suffer a delay. One of us will talk, and then there will be silence while the words make the trip over and the reply makes its way back. I delay is not always there, and never more than a second or two, but it's common and long enough to be a nuisance.

Other than those few problems everything works great, and I would defiantly encourage anyone who can to get in on this system and try it out, because it's just so useful. The system is intuitive and strait forward, letting you easily pick up skills that seem like they would be difficult. The collection of phone services available in Grand Central are amazing, useful, and innovative; and they really get my brand loyalty up. I've never had to buy anything form Google because they're so awesome they let you use everything they have for free, and pay for it by putting ads on it. I really like Google as an idea, and as a company. They really seem to hold true to their "Don't be Evil" slogan. Though perhaps that's just what they want us to think.

Insurance Done Right!

If you're looking for a site pitching Van Insurance or really any insurance, you might want to take a look at the AutoNet Insurance Company site. This is a site claiming to have unbeatable van insurance quotes. They actually go so far as to claim that if you can find better rates, they will give you a complete refund.

Their site seems fairly professional, save the fact that their web designer evidently doesn't know what a favicon is, and the offers they have are really rather good. Their van insurance is 70% off, and as I said before they guarantee the lowest rates. As an added bonus, they offer online quotes, and once you're a customer they have a 24 hour a day claims line to make getting your money quick and easy.

Really they seem to offer most of the same feature as the Gecko, with insurance for your house and your car, for when you travel and when you're staying home. They'll even insure your cats and dogs.

If you're interested in their service, you don't have visit their website. You can simply call them at 0-800-019-0933. There site though looks like it could be extremely beneficial to anyone seeking affordable insurance on anything from a house to a gerbil.

Remember, at the insurance company, they love you. They will go out of there way to make sure nothing bad happens to you, because if anything does, they'll have to pay for it. It's always good to have a company filled with smart people on your side.

Seam Carving for Content Aware Image Resizing

Okay, a while back my friend Stephanie showed me a video on Noob.us. The video was about a new computer program that would allow content aware resizing of images. At the time it wasn't named, but now it's called Liquid Resizing. Now, that doesn't sound very exciting at first, but that's probably just because you don't really know what it does yet. Here's the video Stephanie showed me; watching it will help you get a better feel for the kind of things this program does.



As you can see it allows you to make images larger or smaller without pixilization, and without the normal distortion on important objects, like people, or buildings. One of my favorite features however, is it's ability to do this in reverse, and take things out of an image in an intelligent manner. What you can see here is an image taken with a cell phone Camera during a recent family visit to the grand parents house. I'm the one in the center, wearing all black and crouching. To the left of me you see my younger brother Romeo. To the left of me stand my little sister Camma (Top) and my cousin Jesse (Bottom) We're all at a skate park in Tennessee in this picture, which was actually a lot of fun, even though I don't have the slightest idea how to skateboard.

Now, that you know the history of the picture, take a look at this next bunch of pictures. These are all the same, origional picture, edited with the Liquid Resize technology. I use an implementation for Gimp, which is the open source version of Adobe Photo shop. If any of you decide you'd like to try Liquid resizing software, you'd probably be better off with Liquid Resize Re target for Windows. You can download that here.

What you're seeing to the right is an image that was modified using Liquid Resizing plug in for Gimp. You can see that while the rest of us have not moved, my little sister Camma is completely gone. Previous to Liquid Resizing, it would have taken an expert to rub a person out of the picture so completely that you could see the pavement behind where they had been standing. Liquid Resizing though, despite being far from perfect sofar, makes the job that previously took an expert many hours to do, easy as coloring my little sister with the negative weight marker, and letting the program guess what was behind her.



As you can see from these images, I can remove anyone and everyone from these pictures that I feel the desire to, even though I have only minimal experience. I'm not a graphics design genius, this program just makes the previously extremely difficult, easy.. Bear in mind, that despite my descriptions, this program is far from perfect. It can do the amazing, but it can't do the impossible. It fills in the details of what's behind someone based on what's beside them. If you stood one person in front of another, and then removed the person in front, you wouldn't be able to see the parts of the person behind that had been hidden. Also, if you try to do something that the program can't handle, it distorts your picture, taking out parts of it that are noticeable. For example, I tried to remove everyone from a picture of people that had tree's in the background, and the distortion showed fairly badly. I guess what I'm trying to say here is that despite being extremely innovative, this program can only go so far, so don't think I'm touting it as the miracle program that can do the impossible. The usefulness of this program however, far outweigh it's frustrating glitches that you'll often find distorting your images until their almost unrecognizable. A quick press of the undo button fixes the issue though, and I'm free to try to work around the problem. As you saw in the video, the list of things you can do with this doesn't end removing people from cell phone pictures, so if you're into graphic design, or if you'd just find the functions described above useful, I strongly reccomend downloading and trying out this extremely promising program.

The program was recently acquired by onOne Software, a company which makes plug ins for Adobe Photo shop. The good news there is that the release date on the Adobe Photo shop plug in will be about mid summer 2008. The bad news is that I'm pretty sure it's going to cost money. I base this of course on the fact that all their other products cost money, if you want anything other than a 30-day trial. The Liquid Resize website it gone, but you can luckily still download their program from other sources for free. As I understand it though, commercial use of the program is illegal, so for those graphic design professionals out there, here's your solution: Download Gimp, and the Gimp plug in, which are both open source and so can be used in commercial or non commercial situations, indefinitely, for free, and even if you only use it for this one function, it would still be worth the money you save not paying for the Photo shop plug in of the same function. Unless you're loaded with money however, in which case go ahead.