The McFarthest Place: 145 Mi to the Nearest Big Mac « Strange Maps

Check out this map at the Strange Maps blog- the contiguous United States mapped as distance to the nearest McDonald’s.  While I should be distressed by the density and number of McDonalds Restaurants… I am instead relieved to know that at most I will only have to drive 145 miles to get my guilty Big Mac fix… if I can’t resist.

413 – The McFarthest Place: 145 Mi to the Nearest Big Mac « Strange Maps

Tips for Writing

Ok, I started outlining for my next attempt at writing, so I find a reference to the 8 rules of writing from Kurt Vonnegut pretty useful this morning.  Copied from Wiki.

In his book Bagombo Snuff Box: Uncollected Short Fiction, Vonnegut listed eight rules for writing a short story:

1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.
2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.
3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
4. Every sentence must do one of two things—reveal character or advance the action.
5. Start as close to the end as possible.
6. Be a Sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them—in order that the reader may see what they are made of.
7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.
8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To hell with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

I’ve long used AVG anti virus on most computers of myself and friends, but maybe I’ll switch now that Microsoft has some free software.  If your a friend or family of mine- and you’re not already running some anti-virus software, now’s your chance.

companies, Microsoft has now finally made the non-beta version of its Security Essentials software available to the general

Microsoft Antivirus Download

Via Engadget @ Microsoft Security Essentials anti-virus software is now live and free

Anderson Farms (http://www.andersonfarms.com) has the oldest yearly corn maze in Colorado. Its huge, confusing, and for the geographically challenged- impossible. I'm Byron Ferguson, and yes, I'm a gps nut. I like cartography, geocaching, and all things gps. So... for multiple years now, I've been using a pocket pc with an image of the maze georeferenced to the maze- to wander through. My wife, Toni, calls this... cheating. I like to think of it as my own personal Kobiashi Maru.

The drawback to this method was that the pocket pc / gps method was a little hardware heavy, battery life was short, and the screen a bit difficult to read. The maze, however, is much more enjoyable to me, when I know where I'm going.


This year, I've created a mapsource / garmin compatible map instead. These things are never perfect, and I make no guarantees. However, I'm guessing it'll work beautifully. Should you want to try it, just take the attached file, unzip it, and edit the registry entrys to point to your file location. Then double click the registry and the new map should show up in mapsource for loading to your Garmin. If you like it, leave a note!


AndersonFarms2009.zip

Here's a gadget that might be worth adding to the traveler's flight bag. This allows for usb power from the audio out on handrest. Price is about $35.

Inflight Power Recharger Cables

Here's some neat software that optimizes your ride visits at Disneyland, or Disneyworld. For roughly $20 you can plan out your ride plan. Definitely gonna buy this the next time we go to Disney World.

RideMax - Spend Less Time in Line at Disney's Theme Parks

If you ever need to find the key for windows software that you've already installed on your PC, this little freeware will do the trick.

Magical Jelly Bean Software - Magical Jelly Bean Keyfinder v1.5

Here's a website with a GREAT list of free useful utilities for Windows. **** for this list!

The Road to Know Where: Ultimate List of Free Windows Software from Microsoft

Here's an interesting site. These folks can turn your 10-30 second video clip into a little flip book. Might be kinda fun for kids to have one of these of themselves... or two turn a computer animated clip into a little flip book.

FlipClips : Turn Your Digital Video Clips into Paper FlipClips!