Over the years, I have taught many different scouting skills to Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts between 9 to 18 years old.  One of my favorite subjects to teach is knot tying. One of the main reasons knot tying is my favorite, is because once someone learns the basics, they will be able to tie more difficult knots based on the foundations they’ve already learned. The square knot is one of those classics that every scout learns first. The knots based on the half hitch are: Clove Hitch Two-half hitches Taut-line hitch The timberline hitch is one of those knots that is simple once the knot...

Have you ever been in the situation where there are several Powerpoint presentations that need to be presented in the same meeting?  Or how about that last minute correction to the powerpoint  just before a presentation starts.  Or someone brings in a CD with a bunch of images and wants you to display them in a particular order.  When you’re in the Multimedia booth, it seems to happen all the time. A few years ago, I was introduced to this wonderful presentation application called MedaShout.  It helps make the Multimedia staff look good. Some of its features are: drag...

I recently experienced a missing page error on my website.  It didn’t match the theme at all.  I was kind of disappointed, since the rest of theme had been done so nicely.  I figured, no problem, I’ll just install and activate one of them handy dandy Plugins to resolve the error and then it will display nicely within the the content window of my theme. I’ll admit at the moment, I’m a newbie to the WordPress framework.  So, I have a little learning to do.  After doing a some googling on the subject, I discovered, that the missing file error is handled in the...

During my career as a software engineer I have been frustrated most by user interface design of consumer electronics. My biggest pet peeve is when a device is partially functional.  The user interface appears to be running or kind of running, you can touch a button or touch the screen or click on a remote control and see some response, but it’s obvious that the device is not really performing the requested task.  It’s stuck somewhere waiting for an event that may or may not happen.  The old “race condition” has reared it’s ugly head.  What caused it? ...

When I was a kid my grandfather taught me how to fly a single line kite.  The type of kite I learned to fly was the typical diamond shape with a long tail.  I grew up in an area close to the beach so we always had a decent breeze for flying kites.  As I grew older, my love for flying kites continued.  I would fly different shaped kites and see how high they would fly. It wasn’t until I went to the San Ramon Art and Wind festival that I saw some amazing two-line stunt kite flying.  I was so impressed that I decided to buy a small one and started learning how to fly it. ...