Modify mp3 Exif/Tag Data for Free

I used mp3Tag editor to modify tag data for some of my mp3's. I was having trouble with Sync on my Ford recognizing some of the songs and it was because I was missing some tag data. mp3Tag is free and very easy to use. I was able to load >6000 mp3's and view tag data. This was handy as I could scroll through the data to see what was missing. It did take awhile to load that many songs as you might expect.

I even found out by looking at the data that I had some .wma files mixed in with my mp3's so I deleted them. They can be deleted from the program.

I found mp3Tag very useful and easy to use.

Bamboo Trellis for Passion Flower (Maypop)

If you are lucky (or unlucky) enough to have or have access to a bamboo grove and can harvest a few trees, then you can easily make a trellis for plants. I have some maypop plants which need some support, so I got a few sticks of bamboo and made a trellis. I constructed mine in place. I stuck three pieces in the ground about one foot apart. I hammered them in so that they were secure. Next I wove in shorter cross pieces. The green bamboo was easy to work. The cross pieces were made of 1/2" diameter pieces and smaller. Although there was good tension due to the weave, I tied each joint with green plant string. The finished product had a sort of oriental look which I like.

Plastic for making square tubing

I found the Plastruct company which has material for making square tubing. Here is a clip from their catalog. This could be a good way to make plastic grids.

Creating an EBook? Find Help Here

The following link:

http://www.digitalbookworld.com/resources-going-from-indesign-to-ebook/

will take you to a page with numerous ebook resources. If you are interested in creating ebooks, this site is well worth a look.

Taking care of your skin tags

I don't normally write of such personal stuff, but if you have skin tags and you want to remove them yourself, you can do it.

I had tags under my arms which I successfully removed by snipping them off. I have tried various removal potions with no success. So I did the usual google search and saw where many had successfully clipped their own tags - so I decided to give it a try.

Requirements:

1) Small stainless steel manicure type scissors
2) Alcohol
3) Cotton balls
4) Bandages

Clean the area around the tag with alcohol using a cotton ball.
Soak the scissor in alcohol to disinfect.
Wash your hands thoroughly.
Grab the tag with your fingers and gently pull.
With the other hand, use the scissors to cut the tag.
After cutting - soak the scissors in alcohol before cutting another tag.

There is a slight twinge of pain when the cut is made, but it is not bad and lasts only briefly.

The tag area may bleed some. Apply pressure to stop the bleeding. Cover with a Bandage. You may want to add a little antibiotic to the area as well. Within a day or two, the area will be healed and the majority of the tag will be gone.

Of-course, you are accepting responsibility for doing this procedure. In my case, If things went badly I planned to suck it up and go to the doctor. Just remember - Cleanliness is of utmost importance.

WIndows 7 - Exporer Crashing

Over the past weekend my computer died. Not a noble death but a long excruciatingly painful death. Out of the blue, the computer shut down. When I rebooted, it took forever to boot up, approximately 15 mins. It did a checkdsk and found some bad sectors, They must have been important, because once booted up, I continuously got a failure on explorer. It would fail and need to be restarted. Every 30 secs or so.  So after a couple of hours trying to solve the issue I decided it was time to reload windows. I removed the system hard drive and replaced with one I had but wasn't using. I installed Windows 7 on the new old disk and all is well again. Except I have to reload all my software. Fortunately I have my financial info, photos, and music on another disk. What a pain. But at least it was fixable. I wasn't ready to buy anything new.

Shuffle images in file using Faststone Image Viewer

This past weekend, I was creating slideshows from some of my images. I was using Lightroom 4. The slideshow module in LR4 does a pretty decent job, but is limited in transition and pan and zoom effects. So I searched for some other solutions. Of all the solutions I downloaded and tried, on LR4 had the "image shuffle" feature. I think this should be a very common feature but it isn't, at least not in the software I tried.

How to shuffle image files? Use Faststone Image Viewer. I have talked about this versatile program before. Here's how I did it.

1) Export jpg's of my images from LR4 to a folder on the desktop.
2) Right click on the folder and select "Browse with Faststone"
3) In Fastsone Image Viewer, select all images

4) Press "F7" to shuffle images

5) Select all images. Select Tool-->Batch Rename All Images (F4)

6) Select Rename

7) Now the folder will have the shuffled images.