August 25, 2006 by erw.

Paranormal investigator and author Ed Warren passed on August 23rd. His wife is Lorraine Warren, noted psychic and co-author of their nine published books. Here’s a link to their site

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August 24, 2006 by erw.

Last week I became very frustrated when I discovered a hornet nest in the back of the stop sign at the corner of my yard. It took me several days and 10-15 stings to finally get rid of them. But things could aways be worse, take a look at this!

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August 17, 2006 by erw.

I ran across an interesting article the other day. It’s by Stephen Wagner, who writes for the paranormal section of about.com. His article titled “Top Paranormal Experts: A Call for Professionalism”. In it Stephen laments the “Top few paranormal experts” are ignored by TV and instead “TV executives prefer to dip into a pool of amateurs and novices in an attempt to give credibility to their TV shows”. The article goes on to say “in the last five or so years, primarily as a result of enormously popular TV programming of the late 1980s and ’90s, hundreds upon hundreds of new self-proclaimed paranormal researchers and investigators have appeared, flooding the world of the paranormal. Ironically enough, if it were not for the ‘real experts,’ previously mentioned, and the extraordinary research they had conducted, the majority of these recent novices and wannabes would have never been inspired to follow in their footsteps.”

While I agree that people like Loyd Auerbach and another of my other favorite authors Brad Steiger are really the godfathers of modern paranormal research and thinking, I am concerned with some of the implications of his article. It almost implies that if you’re not one of the chosen few or trained in a specific fashion, you’ve got no business being involved in (or profiting from) the paranormal experience. Why this attitude? I think everyone should be interested in the secrets of the universe! While we’re not all qualified to fly a plane or manage power for a nuclear reactor, the paranormal world is an integral part of the human experience. Also, it’s important to note that deciphering just one of these mysteries could change the direction of mankind forever. Trying to exclude certain groups of people from research because they haven’t had the same experience (or possibly education) as some of the more senior personalities is ridiculous. So as long as people act with integrity and take the proper precautions, there are should be no exclusiveness to this club. Everyone that’s interested in ghosts benefits from the entertainment provided by Ghost Hunters and Most Haunted. After all most TV shows are for entertainment and not educational purposes. When these sort of shows stir interests, more books get written, more classes are taken, and more research is conducted.

Let’s be careful with promoting any sort of elitism in this field. More minds, more eyes, and more shows can go a long way to legitimizing what so many have been struggling to bring to the forefront for so long…

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August 14, 2006 by erw.

Some lucky child has found a wad of whale vomit on the beach in North Wales. If only dog or cat puke brought in that kind of cash!

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August 6, 2006 by erw.

Recently I decided that it would be good to start managing my bookmarks. Now, that may sound silly, but I’m one of those people that end up reloading Windows three or four times a year. So even though I bookmark web sites with my browser, I tend to lose them every time I re-install Windows. So with that in mind I started hunting for bookmark management tools.

My quest led me to some interesting apps. Some were very image oriented storing thumbnails of the site. Others were glorified text lists that were barely usable. So I created the following criteria for my idea bookmark manager. First, it had to have backup capabilities (after all, thats how the search started). Second, it have to be reasonable with my resources and not consume too much CPU and memory. Third, it had to work with most browsers. I’m not a big Internet Explorer fan, so I need a flexible tool. Fourth, it had to store additional info about a site like passwords and maybe a description. Finally, it needed to have working search function, so I could find sites in the database easily.

After installing, testing, and deleting several applications, Bookmark Buddy by Edward Leigh was the only one that fit all my needs. Version 3.5.4 installed without complications, added requirements, or conflicts on my XP Home system. The program imported my existing browser bookmarks without any issues and allowed me to categorize them myself. The categorization of bookmarks in BB is straight forward with the use of categories and subcategories. Using the “Save Copy” selection in the file menu I can easily backup my bookmarks in case of a tragedy. Other features include (but are not limited to) encrypting the database, web site user/password saving, notes, keywords, checking status of bookmarked sites, and duplicate management.

For me, there is no real down side to the tool, but some may be bothered from a lack of GUI beauty. The interface is basic and functional, which I always prefer over “pretty”. The only other thing worth mentioning is that the registration process is a bit tedious. But it’s well worth the effort…

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