BROOKLYN REBUS REDUX

Here's another simple puzzle.  Can you name the two-word neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York?  Again, ignore the fact that I drew an octopus but it does play a role in the puzzle because of the gear it's in.

BROOKLYN REBUS

I love puzzles, especially those that involve interpreting words or symbols that mean something else.  For example, a cluster of cloud with the number 9 means cloud nine, as in to be on cloud nine, meaning to be extremely happy.  Rebus may be one way to name such puzzles.  With the ongoing quarantine in NYC and elsewhere, I played a few already and finally decided to make one myself.  The puzzles I played have a whole grid of items, hopefully as I devote more time into making my original puzzles I will have a whole grid to share too.  I have a fascination with octopus and have a whole album in Facebook devoted to sighting of them, so my first thought is to both entertain my octopus fans and be unique with my puzzles by always include the creature in my drawings.

Can you guess the neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York depicted in the drawing below?

I HEART iMOVIE, SORT OF

It is indeed true that Necessity is the Mother of Invention.  No, I didn't invent anything that can change the world drastically.  It's just that all these times as a Mac owner I rarely play with iMovie, which is part of the iLife suite of multimedia applications bundled with every Macintosh computer.  When my son was young, I may have dabbled a bit, baby videos and all.  Maybe my Mac back then was too old and slow, or maybe I didn't have the time like I do now during the pandemic quarantine, but I didn't make anything out of iMovie.

I run a very active alumni group for my high school and one day came across a YouTube video that turned out to be popular with the group.  Then some time later I discovered that the video was blocked by YouTube, because of some copyright issue with the music used.  It's still there, maybe viewable in some Communist country that doesn't care about copyright laws, just not available where I live.  I was able to contact the person who posted the video and after much waiting finally got a hold of the video file, some 700 MB in size and in the WMV format.

The entire video is 35 minutes in length and would need to have certain sections having no sound because of copyright.  From my past dealing with uploading videos to Facebook, it's best not to have a big file.  Facebook needs to do some processing and after the long wait to upload the big file, say anything 300 MB or bigger, there would be another delay before the video is viewable.  I was sure iMovie could do that for me - chop up the video into more digestible sections and zero out the sound level anywhere that there's music that may offend some copyright owner's feelings.

If it's something I have no idea how to proceed I would read up, perhaps spending an hour or so going through the online help.  But iMovie looks simple enough so I dove right in.  Making the first few clips was a pain!  Sure I got them made, but I was doing it the hard way.  Eventually I found the correct way, as far as I know, and I was quickly Splitting clips, Joining them, etc.  In the end, I was able to even re-combine all the various clips into one file to re-upload to YouTube, without the offending music.  If you are from Newtown High School of Elmhurst, Queens, New York, Class of 1994, check out the video:


NEWTON HIGH SCHOOL OF ELMHURST, QUEENS NY CLASS OF 1994 SENIOR VIDEO

MORNING ROTATION

I suspected the doves have some internal clocks that tell them when the rotation would happen, which happened yesterday around 9:15 A.M. This morning I camped out by the window since 7 and the rotation occurred around 8:45. Alas I didn’t have the camera ready to catch the birds together. It happened quickly, one came in the other flew away, no peck on the cheek, no “Catch you later, honey”.

HATCHING DUTY SWITCH

Five years ago a pair of mourning doves built a nest outside the window of my home office. I vaguely recalled that the birds took turn hatching the eggs. About a week ago, another pair built a nest but I didn’t happen to see more than one bird at a time. This morning I recorded the birds switching hatch duty. The smaller one is probably the female dove, which, through a simple contest with my Facebook friends, is named Rose. The male bird has no name yet. I hope the chicks will meet a better fate than those from five years ago...

WHAT IS YOUR (WORD) GAME?

As I spend most of my time at home, I find myself much involved in various word games on the smartphone or the laptop computer.  Before the pandemic, I regularly played Lexulous, as a Facebook app, with the only player I can count in the environment, and Words With Friends.  Through one of those ads that kept bombarding the WWF interface, I checked out Scrabble Go and am kinda addicted to it.  I may be wrong but it seems the tiles in Scrabble Go are purposely distributed as really lousy, to nudged players toward using the diamonds collected, or worse (for the players) cough up real money to buy power-ups etc.  The ads are a pain, too, but I just used that down time to close my eyes briefly.  In the Scrabble Go world, good players seem to be difficult to come by.  For me, a good player is someone who moves regularly and not once a day, but also someone with an average point per move similar to mine.

At times, opponents in Scrabble Go took too long to move so I recently resorted to playing Duel games.  Instead of having all the time in the world for each move, there's a time limit, go pass that limit and you lose your turn.  The board is also smaller and the game is limited to five moves.  It sounds stressful and it is.  Not a great way to relax but I hate waiting.  I do wonder if the players are real people.  Words With Friends have that, computer players, somehow I find it unappealing.  I remember in the old days playing chess against computer opponents.  The first few levels the computer would take forever to move, or make quick, totally dumb moves.  Then at some point it got really smart and never make mistakes so there's just no point of playing.  Some of the opponents in Scrabble Go Duel are like that.  They are really awful and try to spell long words but miss the high-score tiles altogether.  Then there are "people" who use fancy words that are found only in some medical dictionaries.

I miss playing the crossword puzzles in the free newspaper Metro New York, which not long ago combined with the other free daily news, AM New York.  I actually play the puzzle in both papers but I prefer Metro's because the grids are larger, easier on these old eyes.  I was really happy that the combined newspaper kept the larger format, same puzzles.  Now that I'm stuck at home as a non-essential non-employee, I cannot pick up the newspaper any more.  Recently I went online and printed out the puzzle for that day, plus the day before.  Yeah, I'm an old-fashioned guy who still prefer pencil and paper.  When you do the puzzle interactively, it's too tempting to click some button to get the answer.  I have lots of pencils anyway.  I rescue them whenever I see one laying on the street.  Happy Word Playing!

THE NEW NORMAL, UGH

The new normal is the new phrase in this trying time.  I hope it won't stay too long and we will eventually go back to the old normal that I was familiar with.  Something as simple as a grocery trip is all too complicated.  I used to just go to the store and buy what I need.  Ordering for delivery or pickup never crossed my mind, but last week I used the service, to avoid spending too much time outside of the house.  At first I thought delivery service was a no-brainer but it turned out delivery would take longer, list a week away.  So the next best thing was pickup service - you order what you want, you pay for it ahead of time, then you go to the store between certain assigned hours to pick the items up.  Simple, right?  There was a mention of a verbal confirmation will be made but it just didn't click in my head what that means.  So I went to the store, with mask and gloves, and learned that they were still one day behind with the order.  I get it, people not working, maybe things didn't get delivered, whatever.  I guess at least the store is still open, that there's a system for people to order online for pickup or delivery.  I'll be back out tomorrow to get the stuff, once verbal confirmation is received.

ZOOMIE ROOMIES

Zoom.us video conference service gained much popularity during this COVID-19 pandemic.  Free for 40 minutes  or available at some reasonable price, the web-based service is used by people quarantined in their houses to interact with other people quarantined in other houses.  I've seen Zoom meetings between members of orchestras, yoga teachers and students, the list goes on and on.  Just prior to me losing my desktop support job, because there's nobody around to need my support, I kept overhearing the manager of the group talk about users wanting to use Zoom.  Now it's everywhere and tonight I had some fun playing a trivia game over Zoom.

It is quite a lot of work to organize the game but I think we got the right people for the job.  Someone came up with all the questions and answers, the format, and someone else tallied the scores and sent the various teams into their Breakout Rooms so they can talk among themselves.  I named my team Zoomie Roomies, to reflect the fact that my team of four are split into two different physical rooms, two per room.  We were roommates of sort, but over Zoom.  I think I coined the phrase Zoomie to refer to users of Zoom.us service, but maybe someone already did that.  It does give me an idea for a cartoon, in a day when the current pandemic is over but we will have other issues related to Zoom.  Stay tuned!

LEARN WITH MAC GEEK GAB

I regularly listen to the Mac Geek Gab podcast.  Cool intro music but what I like the most are the quick tips etc.  Mind you, most of the time I cannot apply the tips but it's still good to know.  My Mac is not at the latest and greatest version of Mac OS X so those tips simply don't apply.  Other tips like WiFi meshing or RAID setup also don't help because I don't have the hardware.  At least not yet.  They do talk about iDevice's iOS and I finally found an applicable tip, namely the Shortcuts app for iPhone and such.  It's sort of like programming for the masses.  I haven't done much with it but quickly cobbled together two Shortcuts "scripts".  One is to turn off Bluetooth then turn on Low Power Mode.  I name it Save Energy.  Supposedly I should use that script each night before going to bed.  In the morning, I would run the Normal Energy script, which undoes those settings.  Just something to explore the Shortcuts app.  There is an Automation portion of Shortcuts that I haven't explored.  Logically, these scripts should run automatically at certain time of the day, as long as the iPhone is on.  Something else I will explore is what to play or act when the iPhone sees my car's Bluetooth system.  Happy Exploring!

NYS ON PAWS

Quarantine and loneliness can go together well.  A few weeks ago Governor Cuomo of New York State stated that the State was to be on P.A.U.S.E., where the acronym translates to some contrived meaning that basically says only essential businesses can stay open.  Shortly afterward the wordsmith in me thought of New York State on P.A.W.S.  My contrived meaning is Pets Are Wovewy Sidekicks, where Wovewy = Lovely, just the way pet owners talk to their pets, kinda like baby talk.  I wouldn't know since I never have a pet but I watch pet videos every now and then.  My little joke/pun is actually behind the time.  I thought the government would declare that everyone needs to have a pet.  On their own, people already ran out to animal shelters and cleared out all dogs and cats etc.  It's totally understandable.

A friend mentioned the lack of nipple rings but I'll them out for now.