Fred's Ramblings

Well I bet that the TV network that will carry this year’s World Series are worried about how much time people will spend watching this classic. No one could have imagined a World Series between the Arizona Diamondbacks and the Texas Rangers. If memory serves, the last time the Diamondbacks were involved in a world series was in 2001 when they beat the NY Yankees after 9/11 took place. As for the Rangers, the last time they were in a world series was in 2011. This should be interesting.

In spite of all the discussions that took place regarding the MLB playoff format, you have to give these two teams credit for gelling at the right time and that is usually the formula needed to pull off this playoff run for both teams. It will now be up to which of them can continue their run to become the latest World Series champion. My pick is the Texas Rangers…I have been wrong before believe it or not so don’t take my prediction to the bank.

When I was stationed in Germany during my Air Force enlistment, I bought many Vinyl LP’s that were then available in the PX. Making that statement should give you a pretty good idea of the decade I am talking about so I have had some of these LP’s for over 50 years. Lately I’ve been thinking that I need to convert these albums to digital music so I set on the journey I am currently traveling to accomplish my goal. I keep thinking that I’m coming up on life span of an LP and don’t want the music to go away.

You would think that with today’s technology, this shouldn’t be a big project but when you don’t have the tools needed to accomplish the project, then it is a big deal. First of all, the turntable I have does not have any means to output any of the music…no rca output, no usb output, no nothing. So the first purchase I had to make was to get a turntable that would have one or both of those options. Got that out of the way when I bought a relatively “cheap” turntable that has both of those outputs and also has two small speakers. I am good to go.

The next thing I needed was a piece of software that would manage the music as it came from the new turntable to my laptop. As you might expect, there are quite a few pieces of software that will accomplish that feat, but for the most part they are not free or open source. I found an application that is free and does the job needed to move the music to my laptop. Unfortunately, it converts the music in a .wav format which plays the music just fine, but will take up a lot of hard disc space considering the number of albums I will be converting. Audacity is another piece of software that is free and does a good job converting music but it requires too many steps to accomplish the same thing, although it converts the music directly to mp3, which is the format I need/want.

After some research, I found another open source application that converts all types of format into whatever format is needed. That application is called Freac. So, now all I need is the time to convert the music. Luckily for me I am retired and have the time that I can spend finishing this project.

I recently came across a small backup utility that has quite a few options. What is appealing to me is that it is easier to manage than many of the more complex backup software that is available for purchase or download. It is called Toucan and it can be found on GitHub or on the PortableApps site. I downloaded it as a standalone installation from the PortableApps site and installed it as I would any other piece of software.

Rather than trying to list the features of the software here, it will be just as easy for you to navigate to the site and read all about them while the software is being downloaded. It is a small download of 6MB and will take up 21MB of space once it is installed. I think it is well worth the download and will allow you to back up your important data. Here is the link for it. Toucan Backup Utility

I will be interested to hear your thoughts about it…use the comments module attached to this article.

A little over 4 years ago, I was diagnosed with Celiac disease. I certainly wasn’t expecting it and I didn’t really know what that was. Here is how Beyond Celiac defines it…

Celiac disease is an autoimmune disease that’s triggered by consuming gluten and results in damage to the small intestine. When a person with celiac disease eats gluten, the immune system sees gluten as a threat and mounts an attack. However, it ends up damaging the villi of the intestines, which help to digest food. Damaged villi make it nearly impossible for the body to absorb nutrients, leading to undernourishment and a host of other issues.

I was having some stomach issues and lots of diarrhea which seemed to last longer than I thought it should. It took quite a while to finally get the diagnoses…an endoscopy and blood work finally confirmed the diagnosis and all of a sudden, the way I ate and specifically what I ate became a big deal. Until you deal with this issue, you have no idea how many foods contain gluten. Wheat, barley and all of their derivatives all contain gluten. Such foods as pasta, bread, beer all contain gluten and as such are no longer on my list of edible foods. Whenever I buy anything new, I always check the ingredients to make sure that I don’t get glutened eating something I shouldn’t. There are applications out there that will tell you if a product contains gluten…it is one of the most used applications on my phone. Granted, finding gluten free foods is considerably easier today than it was 5-10 years ago, but there is no cure for the disease, so I am stuck with it.

What has also happened is that I can’t go out to a restaurant and feel comfortable that I won’t be affected, even though they will carry menu items that are “gluten free”. The problem is that at a restaurant, the preparation of their menu items are all done in the same general area and for a celiac patient, that is a problem due to the cross contamination that is almost assuredly happening. I understand…the profit margin at a restaurant is quite small so having a separate prep area for gluten free items does not make sense. Therefore, a night out is most likely going to end up with at a minimum, a stomach ache and likely also many trips to the bathroom. On the positive side, I have just confirmed that I can drink Scotch because all of the gluten has been distilled out of the wheat used in most Scotches.