Retirement Living, Including Golf.
This website is NOT limited to discussion, opinion, news, and/or information about any ONE particular place or matter. We provide a wide variety of general interest journalistic subject matter tailored mainly to the interests of retired persons in general. Besides news and opinion, we include stories about hobbies, politics, travel, housing, golf & any related club, food, computers, interesting YouTube videos, cartoons, and music, etc. Due to both local and national economic issues much of the journalistic material is also written on these subjects with the thoughts towards retired people in mind. Those people who do not accept the journalistic nature of the website content, including that content found in the forum as posted by the website owner, are asked to exit this website at this time.
The owner of this website is now fully five years removed from living in any golfing community in Florida. For that reason, most stories presented here are a reflection of the expected life style of New Mexico (where the website owner now lives), Arizona, Florida in general, and other places as trends happen.
The
main and founding Internet domain name: www. black diamond
ranch
residents
online.com
That domain name clearly references the
residents
, and
as people only,
NOT the
community, the owners,
the management
& employees,
and/or
the golf club or it's members, where any of the
latter type of related information is
not openly presented on this website.
Only residents & ex-residents, as those
people, are knowledgeable enough to answer the
password protection access question in
order to gain access to the private forum where those same residents &
ex-residents only (is limited to), are permitted to read posted messages
and exchange written opinions.
The content available to the public
excludes direct community,
management,
or golf club
related information
except for that which is public
knowledge anyway, or can be intuitively obvious from publicly available
information.
The password protected member
(as defined)
based forum is a place for the
non-allied residents &
ex-residents (not connected to
management) to both read & express
written opinions among themselves, and is not intended for either the public at large, or
the community's present and past
-> management, mgm't allies & relatives & friends,
employees, owners, and/or related legal staff; without the expressed
written consent from the website owner.
Audra
Mae - Ne'er Do Wells
How Appropriate.....
Matraca Berg - "Your Husband's Cheating On Us"
Some seriously good blues, featured Saturday night, 2/11/2012 on -- "The Air Castle Of The South"
50,000 Watts, Clear Channel 650 AM, WSM, Nashville, Tennessee (and streaming live on the Internet.)
The Grand Ole Opry streams live and in perfect
stereo on WSM for about 4 hours every Saturday night.
Bob will be there most Saturday nights ! WSM features
"traditional" country music.
48 Year Old
Matraca Berg appeared on the Opry On 2-18-2012 and was met with wild
acclaim.
Matraca Berg wrote
"You And Tequila" (Posted below)
and about 30 other hits for various artists.
This "Hall of Fame" songwriter also wrote
"Strawberry Wine"
and other number one hits.
Where Flight Simulation Is Heading - Posted 11 Days Ago.
Uses Outerra Simulation Module - Hit Full Screen Arrows.
Outerra Beta Video from Richard Vaucher on Vimeo.
Grace Potter and Kenny Chesney
Stealing the Show at Last Night's 45Th
Annual CMA Awards
"You and Tequila Make Me Crazy"
Written by -
Matraca Berg - Song Above.
This relatively new rendition is
something special.
"One more is never enough".
> Been there, many times....... Bob
Photoshop - Not Just a Picture Editor !
A Dynamite Video Editor Too -- A Hidden Secret.
(And you can add sound !)
It may surprise
you to know that Photoshop is a dynamite
video
editor. When a video is dragged onto the screen, it loads as a single
layer. Then to work on it you must click the double arrow with a black
background (top - right in the header) and choose
"Motion"
from the alternatives. This activates the video player controls so you
can get to work on the video.
Now for the amazing part. Everything that works in Photoshop works on
the entire video. That includes masks, selections, copy, paste,
adjustment layers, and filters.
Everything. You can even change
the size or move it around on the screen canvas with "transform". And
you can crop it too. The trick to make these modifications to effect the
entire video, rather than just a single frame, is to make the video
layer a "Smart Object"
by right clicking on the
layers pallet
and choosing "Convert To Smart
Object". Now you are in some
serious business.
But it's video capability has some limitations,
all of which you can get around.
Not all video formats are supported. Right now they're MPEG-1,
MPEG-4, MOV, AVI (some, not Xvid), and MPEG-2. Divx and Xvid
are not supported at all except on a MAC. The other limitation is that
you must have Quicktime 7.1
or later installed on your machine.
Quicktime is a free
download from their website. Also, some really high-resolution
videos must first be downsized, or you will lose part of the picture.
The major work around for all this
is to use an external
video format converter. That way you can load ALL videos. I use the
"AVS Video Converter"
which is a leader in that technology. Just convert it to a
Quicktime ".MOV" file and
you are good to go. The AVS Video
Converter supports all known
formats.
The other thing to know is that when you use the
"File, Export"
command in Photoshop to render your finished video, it only renders
through the installed Quicktime.
Photoshop itself takes care of
this happening. But the options there are numerous, and again you can
later use the video converter if that is not satisfactory.
With all the corrective functions, filters, other overlay layers,
adjustment layers, and etc. of Photoshop (CS5 Extended, in my case),
this makes this video editor as perhaps the most sophisticated that you
can get. For example, those half cartoon/half human commercials seen on
TV take less than 5 minutes to
make by simply loading a video,
making it a Smart Object,
turning on one of the "artistic" filters, and
exporting
it for rendering into a finished movie. Another example is that you can
download a free "paintings" filter and every frame in the video will be
changed to look like a painted object. Every filter works, even
lighting effects !
Now for adding sound. You just drag your mp3, etc, into Quicktime and use the little tabs on the sliders to select a piece of that audio that is what you want to hear, and about the same length of time as the already loaded video. Then save it as a .MOV movie file even though it is just sound. Next drag that file into Photoshop and you are done. To hear the audio, be sure and select the sound icon before you start the playback. Also you can convert the video to another format in your external converter if the sound does not play in your particular viewer. The Divx Pro player and converter is another player/converter option.
Also the
online VLC video player is a dynamite player
that can be downloaded for free. It is much better than the Quicktime
player. The Windows Media Player is also much better, as is the Divx
Plus player. But remember, you may have to convert the video to another
format to hear the sound that is contained on the .MOV file. That sound
is still there even though you can't hear it.
Photoshop is very strong on
Animation, whose pallet can be
found in the "Window"
header. Now this is another whole and
different subject, but it can relate to videos if one desires. Using
"Frame Animation Mode"
(of the 2 modes provided, not Line
Mode)
will produce animated
.gif
pictures when combined with "File,
Save For Web & Devices" (with 256 colors)
to render the animated .gif.
So what, as it relates to videos ? Well, think of this ! As you play
your video you can capture specific frames, with it's one-frame only
forwards and/or backwards advance feature, to new layers, with the copy
and paste commands. Then later delete the original video layer itself,
and render each layer onto a separate frame in the
Frame Animator
(not the Timeline option in the animator). When finished with that,
render the animator frames either into a moving
.gif
or export
them to make a high-quality new movie with just the specific frames you
saved (copy and pasted to new layers) !!!!! The
Frame Animator
can be extremely tricky and is not for the weak hearted computer users.
At some point I will do a story on that alone. Knowing how it works is
the key to using it, and that is not very clear even from tutorials and
documentation. The key
is that any highlighted animator frame
only displays layer(s)
with a star in the left column of the layers pallet. And these can be
changed at will. The animation frame, and the layer(s)
displayed in the layers pallett are totally separate things, where the
animator frame only displays the changeable "starred" layer(s)
of choice. The "starred"
(not highlighted) layers are the
important thing in animations. That's what ties any given frame to
any given layer(s).
And the 3 "Unify" buttons at the top of the layers pallet are just
shortcut buttons to add a starred
and highlighted layer or layer
position across all the frames without doing it manually. Also, because
an animation is just that, any manual change to position of things in a
layer will record as a new position in only the animation frames that
are highlighted. That is why there is a unify position button for
cloning a position to all highlighted animation frames.
Whew.... Back to
videos.....
What you can do with videos is unbelievable, and is the hidden secret of
Photoshop. Experts say it is every bit as good as a movie editor as it
is a photo editor. I would agree. -- Bob
PS - While I do not either recommend or condemn the practice, a search
of a program name when combined with the word "free" on YouTube will
almost all of the time reveal working and registered serial codes/number
when one presses the "Show More"
icon below the video. Those codes are used on trial versions downloaded
from the producer website to register the product. These videos are
disclaimed as being for educational purposes only. That's just a simple
fact, like it or not.
Hank Williams Jr. - Keep The
Change
(Fox and Friends and ESPN Monday Night Football firing version)
Johnny Cashless's New Song
Ray Stevens - As Seen On Fox's Mike Huckabee This Week
How to live using Obamanomics -- Or -- Why my story below this is true !!!!
Flight Simulation - Where It's
Heading
(If you want to really blow your
brains out, kick it into full screen at the lower right part of the
YoutTube screen. - Simply Amazing !!!)
As I have said before, a computer based flight simulator is a marvel of the world. People have no concept about how far PC's have come and a typical $1300 PC with a good video card now has what amounts to a couple of billion transistors on microchips in it. And video cards are rendering in the trillions of cycles per second. While Microsoft is back in the flight simulation business after a two year hiatus with it's upcoming new simulator called "Flight", others see big money making opportunities by building a world-wide or even universe graphics generating engine as a turnkey package to integrate into any game manufacture's own product. In flight simulation there are two main carrots. Those that like to fly in a technically correct flying environment, and those that like to fly to see the "eye candy" of the world. I'm in the later category. I want to get up in the air anyplace in the world and see that location pretty much as it really exists. If I want to see the beauty of Sarah Palin's Wasilla, Alaska as was shown on her popular cable TV show, I want to take off from some airstrip in Wasilla and explore the area on my own. And the more "eye candy" the better.
Outerra is a start up company that is developing a new world based rendering engine, as a licensed core product for simulation game businesses. This is an example of the type of technically perfect world one will be flying around in on their home PC's over the next few years.
Outerra's Water Generation Part Of
Their New Base Engine.
They are also developing an engine that will
allow you to drive
anywhere on the earth with an amazing amount of reality as it relates to
the roads & highways, the surrounding scenery & terrain, and with the
proper elevation data.
They even include back roads like logging trails. It's amazing and
all generated from satellite photos.
The waves and water effects are so perfect because the are generated from the actual and real complex math formulas involved in wave generation of water itself including the depth of the water, as found in the real world.
Note - All "Flash" animations and related text on this website represent editorial opinion and /or parody only.)
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