Mecworks

    Technology, Linux, Photography, Science, Cycling, Outdoor Activities and other interests.

    Browsing Posts published by marc

    Neti Pot

    Neti Pot

    Using a neti pot or some other similar nasal irrigation system can be helpful in fighting a variety of health problems. On nasal irrigation, Wikipedia states:

    According to its advocates, nasal irrigation promotes good sinus and nasal health. Patients with chronic sinusitis including symptoms of facial pain, headache, halitosis, cough, anterior rhinorrhea (watery discharge) and nasal congestion often find nasal irrigation to provide effective relief. In published studies, “daily hypertonic saline nasal irrigation improves sinus-related quality of life, decreases symptoms, and decreases medication use in patients with frequent sinusitis”, and irrigation is recommended as an adjunctive treatment for chronic sinonasal symptoms.

    I have found that using a neti pot has helped relieve my own sinusitis, congestion and provided relief from allergies and recommend it to friends and family quite often. Over the years I have tried both store-bought and homemade neti solutions. Both work great in my opinion however, some people are worried about purity of homemade solutions. I have found that for me personally, a home made remedy works perfectly fine. Read on for instructions on how I make my own neti salt mixture:

    Neti salt is fairly simple and should be. I only use pure salt (with no added anti-caking agents or iodine) and pure baking soda as a buffer agent. I use the following simple recipe: continue reading…

    Amazon has Adobe lightroom half off today. Not sure how long it will last. Awesome deal. I used Lighroom almost exclusively for my image editing. If you’d like to see some of my work, check out my sets on Flickr.


    Ophir Mine Air Compressor, originally uploaded by Mecworks.

    While visiting the Ophir mine in Utah, I was able to have access to the old mining buildings including the air compressor and electricity generation building.

    Hey everyone!

    We will be having our August meeting on the 24th this month. Chad Butler is mentoring a SANS SEC-560 (Network Penetration Testing and Ethical Hacking) course. SANS has given him approval to present a portion of the course at the Salt Lake Linux Users Group membership.
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    Ice – Homestead, Midway, UT, originally uploaded by Mecworks.

    From the ice castle at the Homestead in Midway, UT – 2004.


    Toledo, Spain, originally uploaded by Mecworks.

    An old street I found while in Toledo, Spain.

    The Salt Lake Linux Users Group March 2011 meeting will be presented by Clinton De Young. Clinton will discuss the various form processing mechanisms available in the Python web framework, Django. The presentation will include instruction on how to use model-based forms, custom forms, form validation, SQL injection and cross-site scripting security, and default and custom form templates. continue reading…

    February, 2011 Salt Lake Linux Users Group meeting will be an introduction to shell scripting (Bash) by (possibly Matt Warnock) and myself. See you there!

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    Hello everyone!

    NOTE: We will have PIZZA (served out in the hall) at this meeting sponsored by Nicole from TEK Systems. RSVP to the sllug-members mailing list if you will be attending so we will know how much pizza to order.

    Joseph Hall will present this month at the Salt Lake Linux Users Group on Advanced Linux filesystem topics at work. With focus on such things as ACLs and possibly quotas and/or basic LVM usage on ext2/3/4

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    My raw chocolate macaroons are healthy and made with all natural ingrediants and with no refined carbohydrates. They’re easy to make and require no baking or dehydrating.

    Raw Vanilla Macaroons

    Raw Chacoloate Macaroons

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    My raw vanilla macaroons are healthy and made with all natural ingrediants and with no refined carbohydrates. They’re easy to make and require no baking or dehydrating.

    Raw Vanilla Macaroons

    Raw Vanilla Macaroons

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    Mono

    Mono 2.8 has been release after over a month from the time we branched. Lots of bug fixes and tons of improvements have been made. Big thanks go out to the Mono team software engineers who fixed all the issues the QA team and community found.

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    Victoria’s Secret, originally uploaded by Mecworks.

    The Provo River Bottoms shopping center is under construction right now while new cobble stone roads are put in place and what was once a through fair for cars will be a pedestrian only shopping area. I’m really happy about this change. It will be a much more inviting place once complete.

    A few days ago, I was returning from an evening hiking at Sundance Ski Resort and stopped by to see how the construction is coming along. One cool thing is that Tucano’s restaurant has free WIFI and it’s open even when they’re closed. As I was walking around, I passed by a bench and noticed that I was in range of the WIFI signal. It also probably helped that there was hardly anyone around using the WIFI. The streets were completely abandoned as a result of most stores either closing early or completely during the construction.

    As I sat down, I looked across the street at the lighted window in the Victoria’s Secret store. The lighting from the window and street light reflecting from the newly laid cobble stones created such a cool effect combined with the empty street. I snapped one picture with my iPhone and this is what I got. Conversion to B&W and post processing done in Adobe Lightroom 3.

    The August 2010 Salt Lake Linux Users Group meeting will be on Research, Writing, Typography, and Design using Linux and presented by Rob Oaks.

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    I made two photographs on my way back from Salt Lake City last night. I was leaving a friend’s house after dropping off some items for the SLLUG meeting tomorrow night. While descending the avenues, I passed by Memory Grove near 9th Avenue where I stopped for an amazing sunset.

    Here are several. The first two are the pictures I made last night and were made on my Nikon D300 camera. The first is looking out at Antelope Island to the West with my Nikon AF-S 24-70mm f/2.8 G ED lens and the second is a view of the Utah state capital and the sunset taken with my Nikon 10.5mm f/2.8 DX Fisheye. (All images Copyright © Marc Christensen, All rights reserved.)

    Sunset at the Capital

    Salt Lake City: Capital at Sunset

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    Michelle 2, originally uploaded by Mecworks.

    Spent an evening in downtown Provo with Michelle and some other models getting some great shots in before sunset last month. A mix of blue skies and overcast made for an interesting day with a variety of shooting conditions. Thanks to Michelle Steph and the others who made the event. I’ve posted a few images from that shoot along with this one.


    Stephanie, originally uploaded by Mecworks.

    My first use of the new Adobe Lightroom 3 film-grain simulation. I really like the texture and feel it gives the photo. It adds depth and character to black and white images. In the future, I’ll be taking a look at using it with cross-processed images to enhance the faded photo on film look. Stephanie is always a great model to work with.

    This month’s Salt Lake Linux Users Group meeting will be on content/web filtering with Dan’s Guardian and presented by Kerry Cox, CIO, Mountain Medical.

    From dansguardian.org:

    “DansGuardian is an award winning Open Source web content filter which currently runs on Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, Mac OS X, HP-UX, and Solaris. It filters the actual content of pages based on many methods including phrase matching, PICS filtering and URL filtering. It does not purely filter based on a banned list of sites like lesser totally commercial filters.

    DansGuardian is designed to be completely flexible and allows you to tailor the filtering to your exact needs. It can be as draconian or as unobstructive as you want. The default settings are geared towards what a primary school might want but DansGuardian puts you in control of what you want to block.”

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    Oh man!!!! :(  Dude!
     
    Sometimes you just can’t believe what you just did…and neither can anyone else.

    Revisiting your photography archives, weeks, months or even years later will help you find great shots overlooked in the initial review.

    A lesson we often learn in life the hard way is that contentment from everyday objects is fairly ephemeral. Things come and go, ice cream cones occasionally end up on the side walk. As we learn from one of the greatest movies ever made, The Princes Bride, we all must “Get used to appointment”. On the other hand, there are times in life when we are presented with opportunities and happiness which we should grab immediately, like when I found I had taken this picture of Matthew and Nate, taken nearly 3 years ago while browsing my photo archives.

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    The Salt Lake Linux Users Group is looking for a presenter for this month’s meeting. The preferred topic is filtering and proxying using Dan’s Guardian on Linux.

    http://dansguardian.org/ continue reading…