As my family did with our father's last year, my cousin Patty has had my Uncle Ken's 8mm home movies digitized. He got an even earlier start and took twice as much footage, almost two hours going back to 1958: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?p=363258CDC87905EA There's even a few seconds of a three-year-old ring bearer, who (I'm told) broke…
Ending PBS Pledge Drives
I've always thought that the best thank-you for a donation that a public television pledge drive could offer would be to stop the pledge drive. It feels like punishment, not a reward, to call in your pledge, then sit through six more days of your local station reps begging and begging your fellow viewers.…
How to donate your body to science
Twelve years ago, I wrote some thoughts about what to do with our bodies when we're finished with them. I'd put it more sensitively now, but still think it's a good idea to donate as much as possible to Medicine and Science, then turn the rest over to Nature. In the course of making a…
How we cut our phone bill by 80%
Phone service is quickly becoming a commodity of negligible value, like email. (How much did you pay to send your last email message? You could work out your cost in network access, electricity usage, etc., but the time lost in calculating would be more than a month of messages sent.) "Making a phone call" is…
Medicare: Pick a drug plan this week
[Executive summary: If you know anyone using a Medicare Prescription Drug Plan, point them to https://medicare.gov/find-a-plan/ this week.] Nelson Minar recently gave an example of government agencies beginning to catch up with the private sector with regard to web services. I'll offer another, not so fancy (though plenty of AJAX is on display), but very…
jeffcovey.net 