August Adventures - Protect Yourself

Having a secure password is very important in this day and age.  Most times I try to pick a password that is relevant to whatever site I am on to make it easier for me to remember.  I therefore have a ton of different passwords and I have to keep them written down so I won't forget which one goes where.

Thanks to my friend, John, at The Sound of One Hand Typing, who is a wealth of interesting tidbits of all kinds and if you are not following him you should, I was directed to a website that will generate random pass phrases.  You can read John's post about it here.

We've all seen those movies where the hero starts the computer search for the password that will disarm the bomb or open the safe or whatever and it always manages to find the right code in just the nick of time.  Of course, Sherlock Holmes was always able to crack the cipher as well.

The website is called Use a passphrase and it will generate passphrases for you and you can plug your current passwords into it and it will tell you how long it could take someone/a computer to figure out your code.

I knew that phrases were better than just words and I have used the first letter of each word of a phrase sometimes but just for the heck of it I plugged in some of the passwords I use on a regular basis.

I was unhappy with the speed in which someone could crack the password I use on our bank account (608 milliseconds!) so that is one I changed right away.  The new one I picked should take 372 centuries for someone to get so I think our money is safe for a while.  Plus, even though it is a lot safer than then one I was using, it is still something that will be easy for me to remember.

I'll be checking my other passwords as well and you might want to give it a try to see how long it could take someone to get into your business.  Thanks, John, for the tip!

August Adventures - August Break/365 pictures

Some of the pictures I've been taking for the combination August Break and 365 picture project this month include:

#220 - My eyes...open, closed, smiling.  Bags underneath and all.  That's me.  No eye doctor (or anyone else for that matter) has ever said anything about it, but I think my left eye is different than my right.  I don't think it opens as much.  I remember once when I was younger I was hit in the eye with a baseball so hard it left the imprint of the stitches of the ball on my cheek.  Maybe that's it?

218 - Favorite Novel  I can't pick just one.  Little Women and all the Sherlock and Agatha Christie's.  My first racy book was  Lady Chatterley's Lover.  I remember thinking I was gonna get in trouble for reading that!

#221 - Postcards I am going to color.  I think they are kinda cool the way they are though too.

#223 - One Wish...Peace!  This is from a page in my junk journal.  Update on that soon!

                 

This isn't part of the 365 but I had to take something to document the full moon in August, which sadly I couldn't see since it was so cloudy.  I think this picture is kinda neat.  It was taken from our back porch.  No filter.

This is a fun project and definitely easier to capture a picture a day when I have some prompts to guide me.  What do you think?


                                                         

August Adventures - More crafting!

I had such fun making the cake shaped gift card holders that I decided to try a different shape as well.

These are also up on the Etsy site.   Now I am going to start making something else.  Wonder what that will be?

August Adventures - Possible false advertising here

As you may remember (I hope you remember), but if you don't or are new to my blog (I hope I have some newbies out there)...I wrote about this shampoo in February:

I used it as picture #59 in my 365 picture project.  At the time I commented upon the writing on the bottle that said "Up to 100 uses."  The bottle was not full then.  In fact, I had no idea how much was left in it or how many times it had already been used.  It felt about 1/2 full.  We are now up to picture #220 so that's 161 uses.   Subtract 60 uses because sometimes I don't wash my hair every day and the BOTTLE IS NOT EMPTY YET.  I even checked the directions and it does not say "lather, rinse, repeat" as was on some shampoo bottles, so that means I am using it in the proper manner. 

Obviously I'm not really going to complain about getting more than 100 uses out of this shampoo, it just is interesting to me how they picked that particular number and why they would put a limit on the number of times you could use the product.  I might say something about the fact that I don't really get any extra "oomph" to my flat hair, but I think that's a lost cause anyway at this point.  

Got a favorite shampoo?  Get extra uses out of a product?  Anything you use to give your hair "oomph?"  Love to hear about it.  

August Adventures - Crafting time

I've had this idea floating around in my head to try and branch out with my crafting endeavors and we have a couple of local businesses that rent space for birthday parties in their stores.  One is called Busy Bakers.  They sell baking supplies and offer classes in addition to having birthday parties.  My idea was to offer to make a mini-album that could be sold in conjunction with the parties.  Everyone takes pictures at those events, right?  Here is a prototype of the type of thing I could make.  

The cover could be personalized and the colors could be changed.

The inside has spots for pictures and pockets for notes.

I can also add pages if needed.

I just need to figure out pricing and then I'm going to contact the shop owner and see if she is interested.  

In the same general concept, I also made a set of gift card holders in the shape of a cake.

Each one has a matching envelope and a small tag in the spot where the gift card fits.  

These are already on sale in my Etsy shop.  I have a few other shapes I'm going to try as well.  Giving gift cards has become such an easy, popular thing to do and it is nice (I think) to have a cute holder to put them in instead of just putting them in an envelope.  Don't you agree? 

I am going to be participating in some craft fairs around the holiday season so I need to add to my inventory.  What do you think of these so far?  

August Adventures - August Break Days 2 - 5

This August Break with Susannah Conway is so fun to watch unfold.  Each day brings a new prompt and the way that everyone interprets that prompt is personal and there are some amazing photos being shared in the Facebook group.  You can also find some of them on Instagram with the tag #Augustbreak2017.  I am @scr4pl80 if you want to connect with me!

I showed the first photo the other day.  Here are my interpretations of days 2 through 4 with a sneak peak at tomorrow's day 5.  I am using them also as my 365 pictures so the numbers correspond to that.

#214 - Gold

I am not as excited to be offered a Gold American Express card as I am to use the junk mail in one of my journals!

#215 - Roses

I notice a lot of roses when I go for my walks around the neighborhood but I don't take pictures of them very often because I don't want the neighbors to think I am a stalker or something!

#216 - Where I live

 A lot of people interpreted this prompt as in what town or city or country they lived in.  I feel most alive when I am in this room scrapping and creating.  

Sneak peak to tomorrow's entry.  The prompt is Bicycle and this is from a scrapbook I am making to document my husband and I.  He is four years older than I and spent part of his growing up in Germany while I have never lived anywhere but the San Francisco Bay Area.  This page shows that even though we were so far apart, we still did some of the same things, birthday parties and bicycles.

#217 - Bicycle

Fun fact, I just figured out how to put text on my photos, both on my iPhone and in iPhoto on my computer so now I can put my mark on them so no one can steal them!  Ha-ha, like anybody wants my photos :)

It's not to late to join the August Break if you want to play along!

August Adventures - August Break 2017 Begins

Here we are in August!  My goodness this year is flying, even though last month seemed long to me.  We have some more adventures coming up.  One main one is that I will be participating in the August Break 2017 with Susannah Conway and her band of followers.

By break, that doesn't mean I will stop blogging.  The August Break is a month long challenge to take photographs as prompted by Susannah's guide:

I'm not promising to post every day, although I am consciously going to try posting more often, even though some bloggers I follow have been deciding to take some time off.  I'm not established enough to do that yet!  

My picture for the first prompt (morning) is this:

I start every morning with warm lemon water and coffee.  Lemon water is supposed to help with digestion among other things.  I just think that it helps start the day on a positive note.   Coffee helps with that too :)

This list of prompts will make it easier for my 365 picture project too since at least for the next month I have some direction as to the pictures I take although Day #15 looks like it might be a tough one...dragon?

So far the only other things we have planned for the month are two more concerts at the Mountain Winery:  The Fab Four, a Beatles Tribute band, and then Pat Benatar with Toto.  I'm hoping to use the "down time" to get farther along on my ever growing list of things to do and give me time to get some more scrapbooking done.  We shall see.  We do still have the Big City Scavenger Hunt for San Francisco available for us to do and I'd like to get that in this month.    

How about you?  What's your August looking like?  Join me on the August Break picture taking adventure?