My ZZ Plant

Thank goodness for plant apps: I tend to under-water, except when I over-water. I don’t fertilize. I only re-pot when the roots are so big and gnarly there’s no dirt left.

“Planta,” for iPhone and Android, rescued me. It puts every task on a schedule without being a Nazi about it. On watering day, for example, it will ask me if the soil is still damp. If so, I can snooze the alert. Different plants are on different schedules. For example, my ZZ plant is over three feet high but almost never needs watering.

Unfortunately, the free version of Planta only gives watering reminders – no plant identification or care advice. The paid version, for $36 a year, gives you everything. It includes alerts when you need to re-pot, fertilize, mist, water or move the plant to a better location. It also offers free tech support.

I started with the free version, and tapped “plant identification.” That’s when I found out that identification requires the premium app.  I tried a work-around, a free app called “PlantSnap.”  Later I decided to go with premium Planta so I would get advice and alerts.

I had a little trouble with plant identification at first. You have to take a picture, then tap the green check mark. The app calls it a “photo scan.” The word “scan” made me think of scanning a QR code, so I just aimed my camera at the plant. Nothing happened. Duh! Anyway, now that Planta Premium is looking out for my green babies, I think it will save me money in the long run. Fewer trips to the plant store!

Shake, Rattle and Roll

If you’ve ever tried to walk around while taking a video, you’ve probably noticed that the results can be shaky. Things go better with Scorp, a handheld camera stabilizer.

You might be thinking that your point-and-shoot camera already has image stabilization. So does your DSLR.  But their capabilities are weak compared to what a camera stabilizer can offer.

FeiyuTech sent me the $429 “Scorp-3 Axis Handheld Gimbal Stabilizer for DSLR Mirrorless Cameras” for review. I didn’t have a DSLR to test it with, so I asked a photography buff to test it for me. He sent me before-and-after videos. I could tell a big difference between a video shot with Scorp and one without.

If you’re a budding video blogger, the Scorp might be worth the investment. You could walk around a convention hall, take videos at a wedding or interview people at your high school reunion. Check out the YouTube video called “Feiyu Scorp Basic Tutorial.” It comes after the videos describing the more expensive model, the Scorp Pro.

Speeding Up Your PC

When my local computer repair shop took out a busted hard drive and put in an SSD (Solid State Drive), my computer became lightning fast. But the SSD was just one reason it became speedy. Lots of RAM, a speedy processor, a PC reset back to its original factory condition, and good maintenance also made a huge difference.

Speaking of good maintenance, the free program “Ccleaner” makes it much easier. It speeds up your computer by updating your software, cleaning up your machine, and helping you disable programs that can slow down its startup. The pro version, for $25 a year, also updates drivers, performs a health check, updates software, monitors your system in real time, and allows you to schedule automatic cleanings. I went with the pro version. Otherwise, I’d never remember to do those cleanings. The pro version also gives you free tech support.

The PC: Who Needs It?

Johan Norberg’s “New and Improved” video podcast series includes a three-minute history of the PC. In the early days, he notes, the “experts” were skeptical about PCs. In 1977, Ken Olsen, founder of Digital Equipment Corp., said: “There is no reason why anyone would want a computer in their home.” In 1982, William F. Buckley Jr. said: “The Pulitzer Prize belongs to the man who figures out what PCs are good for.”

At first, everyone kept suggesting its use as a recipe organizer. The 1969 Honeywell Kitchen computer, sold by Neiman Marcus, weighed 100 pounds, had a built-in cutting board and cost at least $70,000 in today’s dollars. According to Wired Magazine, it could connect to a teletype machine and a paper tape reader to store data. If you didn’t have a teletype machine, you could use the 16 buttons on the front panel. Each one corresponded to one bit. A pressed button was a one, an unpressed button was a zero.

The machine was based on Honeywell’s Series 16 minicomputers. These would later power the Arpanet, the forerunner to the modern internet. Though the Kitchen Computer didn’t sell, it was a great publicity stunt.  Another early PC came with its own ashtray.

Finding Stuff You Forgot to Bookmark

 Do you wonder about the sites you forgot to bookmark and can’t find again? Take a walk back in time by using the “history” command. Just hold down the “Ctrl” key (“Cmd” on the Mac), and tap the “H” key. This brings up all the sites you’ve been to recently. My recent list included “Why Mangoes Are Good for the Gut,” “Six Cups of Coffee Are Enough to Start Damaging Your Brain,” and “Archeologists May Have Discovered why American Rabbits were Never Domesticated.”

Internuts

– TravelTrivia.com has “Six Memorable Tourism Slogans.” My favorite is: “Nebraska, it’s not for everyone.”

– CardCash.com buys your unwanted gift cards. A $25 gift card from Whole Foods Market, for example, is going for $20.25.

Filed under: apps, cameras, education, gadgets, Internuts, troubleshooting