Random Blog

This is Fotosen's Random Blog of tutorials he's created, photos, thoughts and other items he's been learning about, thinking about or just plain wasting time with. Maybe a little conspiracy theory thrown in too. He lives in the Nashville, Tennessee area and enjoys taking pictures of any interesting subject he can find. He also enjoys writing music occasionally and has included a few of his tunes on the blog. After all, this is Nashville. (Actually, I've moved again. Hard telling where I will end up) If you're reading this, welcome to his page. Hope you find something interesting.

Downtown Nashville

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Random Things

I created this simple 'hangman' style game learning how to program in javascript. It's interesting that this is a fairly simple game for two humans to play but to get a computer program to automate it takes some thinking and several lines of code just to do one part of the game. You also need to create a database of phrases for the game to display. I ended up creating 365 different phrases over several days and stored them in a database. I can't imagine how large of a system it must take to run Siri, Cortana, Alexis, not to mention Chat GPT. Anyway, this is my simple little AI for playing a 'hangman' style game. Figure out Fotosen's phrase for today. New phrase everyday.

Click Here to Play

(Click Here to Play Previous Frazes)

Random Colors

rgb(0, 0, 0)

Click the Change button to change colors. Colors on the web are managed with various commands. A popular way is using the rgb(red, green, blue) function. It combines the 3 primary colors in different intensities that range from 0 to 255. In the digital world, the primary colors are red, green and blue. (Somehow they get yellow from red and green). This little algorithm puts random numbers in and sees what colors come up. RGB(255,255,255) would be pure white and RGB(0, 0, 0) black. RGB(255, 0 ,0) = red. RGB(0, 255 ,0) = green. RGB(0, 0, 255) = blue. When you mix the numbers up you get different colors. See a color you like? You can use this code in other programs like 'Windows Paint'.

Guess the Number - Hot or Cold

Created this little game learning javascript. Fairly simple game. Guess the number between 1 and 100,000! Easy! The computer picks a random number. You guess it. How many tries will it take you? Source code here for those learning javascript.

Click Here to Play

How fast can you do your times table?

Created this learning javascript. See how fast you can get through your times table with no mistakes. I used to make the kids do this. It helps.

Go to test

One Day

In this world of endless wars there are certain people who attempt to bring hope through social media, art and music. This particular event was put together by Koolulam, an Israeli team dedicated to this purpose. This song was written by Matisyahu (Matthew Paul Miller) and performed in Haifa, Israel, Feb 14, 2018. It is sung in three different languages, English, Hebrew and Arabic by 3000 people who were brought together and learned the song in one hour.

Video - YouTube

My personal experience with covid...

June 24, 2022
So, I've been dealing with COVID for the last couple of weeks. I think I had it a couple of years ago too but didn't get checked at the time. I haven't got the 'vax' yet but I'm seriously considering it now. I really don't want to go through this again and if the vax can help reduce the symptoms then I'm all for that. During this time of being ill I'm reminded that our lives don't go on forever, at least not in these bodies. Whether it's an illness or an accident, war or just plain old age, we're all going one way or another, sooner or later. I believe that most of us most of the time live our lives everyday not thinking that one day, our lives will come to an end. I admit, with being pretty sick this time, I've been thinking about it. I'm not going to get into religion, I'm not the most religious person but I do believe in God. Whether he is the Jewish God or Christian, Muslim, Buddha, Hindu, you name it, I don't know. But I just find it hard to believe that this whole creation with all it's diverse complexities happened by chance. I believe in a personal God, the one I've been praying to all these years who has been watching over me, guiding me, protecting me, sometimes correcting me. I believe that he is good and that he is love. His whole existence has to do with love. I'm finding as I think about these things that as I lay down 'bad' ideas and plans and think of 'good' things that there is a 'load' lifted from my shoulders. I can better face the prospect that one of these days, I will be going on to the other side. I have a better outlook on life and hopefully, I will be a more pleasant person to be around.

99 Red Balloons

This anti-war song by the German band Nena was a big hit in 1983. '99 Luftballons' was originally sung in German and after its success they put out an English version. The last lines of the English version read:
99 dreams I have had
In every one a red balloon
It's all over and I'm standin' pretty
In this dust that was a city
If I could find a souvenier
Just to prove the world was here...
And here is a red balloon
I think of you and let it go

Pray for peace between Russia and Ukraine...

Click picture to listen - YouTube

Ukraine - is it our fault?

John J. Mearsheimer, the R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor in Political Science and Co-director of the Program on International Security Policy at the University of Chicago. This was recorded in 2015!

Monterrey Mexico!

This colorful photo was taken by my friend Alejandra who lives in Mexico. I've been trying to learn Spanish and I joined a language exchange site which pairs you up with people trying to learn each others language. Ale likes photography too and I want to share some of her pictures of Mexican culture.
Photo by A. Rojas
monterrey image

James Webb Delivers

James Webb Space Telescope releases first pictures. Link Here

Link Here for an excellent article from Cosmos Magazine about the progression of the James Webb telescope.

NASA Photo
James Webb Telescope

Alien Portal

Picture taken by Jack Watkins Jr, December 14, 2021, seen over Brooklyn. Actually it's not an alien portal, but what they call a 'fallstreak'. I personally prefer an alien portal but the National Weather Service has a good explanation for how these form. Link here

Introduction to Web Design

Here is a mini-tutorial I created on how to design your own website. You can make webpages for your own use and enjoyment that display on your browser. No worries! They won't go on the internet unless you purposely upload them to a web hosting service. Here is enough information to help you build your own webpage like the one I built here with headings, images, links and different fonts. You don't need any fancy software, I did it on notepad. Cool fun...

Go to tutorial

Pacific Ocean "Big Sur"

Video taken by a relative of an area on the coastline of California known as Big Sur. It has been called the "longest and most scenic stretch of undeveloped coastline in the contiguous United States" (according to Wikipedia). This Nashville boy may have to take a trip out west....
Video:

Gulf Coast

Destin, Florida. Aug 14, 2022. This was taken with a Nikon Coolpix P1000 camera. Demonstration of it's 125X optical zoom.
Video:

Be the Wind

I saw this American flag in the distance at a recent trip to Florida. It was hanging rather motionless but as I watched, a breeze picked it up and it displayed its stars and stripes for me and the camera. And then the breeze died down and the flag slowly quieted down. It caused me to think of our nation how sometimes it shows off it's greatness and then sometimes it's just still. We the people are the ones who are the breeze that makes this nation great. We don't have to be all patriotic and everything but are we doing things that help to contribute to this nation or are we tearing it down.....

Video is in slow motion. Music by G. Dorfe

Rainy Day...

Sometimes I like a rainy day.This is just a relaxing video of a rainy day in Florida on one of our visits there at a nice resort.
Video:

Book Reviews

Finished reading "Gun Ship" by Mark Wayne McGinnis. Scifi. I read a lot of scifi and I've read about every book that this author has written. I enjoy his books. This story is about a teen who discovers that the school janitor is an alien and has a space ship in need of repair. I like the way this author often takes normal everyday people and immerses them into the advanced technology of other worldly races. Good read....

Read "When We Believed in Mermaids" by Barbara O'Neil. Guess I should've read the review better before I downloaded it onto my Kindle. It's like a 'chic flic' version of a book. A 'chic book'? It was ok but had a lot of 'chic drama'. Guess I thought it was SciFi or Fantasy because of the title. I had to read it to the end because it did have an interesting plot. Had to see what happened. Good ending....

More reviews:1 = I didn't like it. 2 = It was ok. 3 = I liked it. 4 = I really liked it.

"The Spaceship Next Door" by Gene Doucette. 4
"The Immortal Chornicles" Gene Coucette 3
"Teleport This" by Christopher M Daniels 3
"Junkyard Pirate" trilogy by Jamie McFarlane. 3.5
"The Wonder Test" Michelle Richmond 4
"Backyard Starship" J N Chaney & Terry Maggert 2.5

Photos

You can take a hundred photos and maybe only 2 or 3 will turn out that have that special something. Most of these were taken with a Nikon D50 or a Nikon D3200. Here's some of my favorite shots.

A lone Bleeding Heart plant that came up from last year in our flower bed.

Click here for more original photos

Music

Been playing guitar since I was a kid. I call this tune "UFO".

Picture not available

Click here for more original music tracks

The Parthenon in Nashville Tennessee

Picture taken Aug 4, 2021 at Centennial Park

Photo by Fotosen

The Parthenon in Nashville, Tn is a full scale replica of the Parthenon in Athens, Greece. It was originally built in 1897 as part of the Tennessee Centennial Exposition celebrating Tennessee's 100th anniversary into the union. It started out as a temporary structure and later in the 1920's it was rebuilt with permanent materials. For more info on the Parthenon in Nashville Click here

Astrophotography

Astrophotography is the art of photographing objects in outerspace. I say art because it's not just a simple process of just snapping a picture of, for example, the Ring Nebula. It requires long exposure photography and specialized software to produce a picture. People think of photos of the moon, the planets or even the Milky Way, but there is much more. There's also nebulas and galaxies, comets and starclusters. This is an example of one of my early attempts with a camera attached to a telescope. This particular object is known as the Ring Nebula discovered first by Charles Messier in 1779. Click Here for Wikipedia's full description

Click on picture for my astrophotography page:

Coons Homemade Candy

I grew up with this guy in Ohio. Used to watch him and his dad make candy at his small town country store. Good stuff. Pretty cool dude. Order online World Famous Toffee

WorldwideShe

A friend of mine in Tennessee created this site. Music for the country ladies...

Helpful Sites

Web hosting

My website hosted on Hostinger

Click here for your website

w3schools

I learned most of my webpage knowledge from w3schools.

What is a Fotosen?

When I was trying to come up with a name for my webpage and also my Soundcloud uploads I wanted to incorporate photos and music. So, I came up with Fotosenmusic, pretty straightforward. My Facebook friend, Karen, asked me what was Fotosen music? I was kind of amused that she didn't get my attempt at being clever with the name, but at the same time, I kind of liked the sound of Fotosen. I needed a unique name for my internet site, so many are already taken, I decided on Fotosen. Thanks Karen!

Rag Doll

This is not 'Dia de los Muertos". Just a little fun for my granddaughter with face paint.

Photo by J. Roberts
image not found

Glory! Sarah Ikumu

16 year old Sarah Ikumu from England blows them away. She is singing 'Glory' written by John Legend, Common and Rhymefest from the 2014 movie 'Selma'. Performing Season 1 Ep. 2 SHOWTIME AT THE APOLLO 2018:
Video:

EarthCam Times Square

Love these 'Earthcams' all over the world. Check this one out:

Click image to view Times Square, New York City live...

Athena

Athena and one of my little ones at the Parthenon in Nashville, Tennessee.

Photo by R. Schaber

The statue of Athena, seen here inside the Parthenon, Nashville, Tn was completed in 1990. For more info on the Parthenon in Nashville Click here

SoundCloud

Musicians can upload their songs to SoundCloud, a site for musicians to get their music exposed to other musicians and the general public. I've uploaded a few of my tunes there also. Click on picture to go to Soundcloud...

How to Make an Animated GIF

This short tutorial shows how to make an animated GIF using VLC and GIMP. VLC is a free popular app for displaying video clips but it does much more. GIMP is a free photo editor along the lines of Photo Shop. With these 2 apps you can make your own GIFs without having to upload your videos online.

Go to tutorial

Learning about Ham Radio

I don't know, years ago ham radio used to be really interesting. You pretty much had to know how to build your own radio to get a license to talk on one. Of course, it was a lot more useful back then too. That's before we had cell phones and internet. A ham radio user could bounce there signal in the atmosphere and talk to people on the other side of the world if the conditions were right. Now we have Facebook and Twitter. But, ham radio is still interesting. Many folks have a small portable radio like the one shown here for walkie talkie use or emergency contact in case cell phone towers go down or any number of other emergency situations happening. There are also several ham radio clubs and organizations that train their members for emergency situations, especially for bad weather situations. To use the ham radio frequencies you must still pass a test. I studied and took the test online to get my technician's license. I passed the test and now have my call sign. If you're interested in this type of thing click 'Read more' for more information.
Read more...

Science Experiment

A close relative of mine who now lives in Ireland doing experiments in his backyard with flammable metals. Interesting stuff. He sent me some videos on 'What's App' and some science lessons. Here's our conversation:

Video:

Click here for rest of experiment and conversation

Basic electronic circuits

Want to learn about basic electronics and the relationship between volts, amps and watts? Who wouldn't? Well, here's a short tutorial with some basic circuits and formulas anyway.

Go to tutorial

Learn how to Yodel!

Let Sofia Shkidchenko from the Ukraine teach you how to yodel. UKRAINE'S GOT TALENT. KIDS (2017)...

Sofia's Response to the War

Since the time that I originally posted the clip of a young Ukrainian girl competing on a Ukrainian version of "America's Got Talent", war has broken out in her country. She was about 11 years old in the first video. She is now 16. She's not yodeling in the second video, she is trying to clarify the situation and asking for help. To the world leaders who caused this war, not just Russia, not just Ukraine, but everyone who set this up to fail, these are the lives you are destroying. How about getting together and work this out once and for all, make some sacrifices instead of sacrificing these precious children....

SQL Basics

SQL is the name of a popular computer language you use to create and manage databases. Here is a short tutorial to help you get started. Click here

Spider Weaving His Web

I was trying to get a video of some flowers in the distance but kept seeing something small and out of focus move across my screen. I thought maybe it was a bird and after adjusting the focus I realized it was a spider weaving his web. I had a little difficulty trying to get a good focus on him but he did give a good demonstration of web weaving. Probably need to go full screen to see the web...
Video:

Chandelier by Sia

The story of the singer who wrote this song is quite interesting. Click here The song came out in 2014 but I just now recently heard it for the first time (Feb 2022). After hearing the song on the radio I was intrigued by the singers vocal gymnastics but couldn't quite make out the lyrics. So I looked them up and was surprised at how shallow they sounded, a drinking song about swinging from a chandelier? The whole feel of the song just didn't match the lyrics. Then I read the lyrics again, and realized it wasn't about drinking. At least not in a good way. It was about the desperation that comes on a person caught up in an addiction. One that Sia beat.

Click picture to listen - YouTube

Micro Controller Doodling

I really should do something more constructive with my life...

This is a microcontroller project programmed with the Arduino IDE. It's kind of a mix of electronics, programming and robotics. The microcontroller boards aren't that expensive and there's plenty of tutorials online on how to build different projects. Just do a search on Amazon for any of the following: Arduino, Elegoo, Sparkfun. Great hobby for young and old alike...

GIMP Basics

You can think of GIMP as a poor man's PhotoShop, except GIMP is anything but poor. It is free, but apparently it comes close to rivaling PhotoShop. Never used PhotoShop but according to some, GIMP operates in a similar way. I've made a short basic tutorial for myself as I've been learning it and now posting it here. There'll be more to it as I learn more but here is a pretty good start.

Click on picture for tutorial

Are you conscious?

Thoughts on consciousness and who has it....by Fotosen

Do all humans have consciousness? That is, an awareness of self-existence as opposed to something that is alive but not aware. One might conclude that everyone has consciousness because they talk, react and act like all other humans but this is where I question this concept. For example, do animals have consciousness?