The tradition of Hallowe’en originated in Ireland and marked the end of the summer harvest with feasts, the slaughter of animals to be preserved for the winter ahead, and where the bones of animals where thrown into bon fires. It was believed that the dead revisited the mortal world on the eve of November 1st, and that the bon fires would ward off evil spirits. Pope Gregory IV later standardized the observation of the Catholic Church’s All Saints Day to November 1 in the year 837, which coincided with the Celtic pagan celebration. 

In present-day Ireland, adults and children dress up as creatures of the underworld (ghosts, ghouls, zombies, witches and goblins), light bonfires, and enjoy spectacular fireworks displays. The city of Derry is home to the largest organized Hallowe’en celebration, where it is common for fireworks to be set off for the entire month preceding Hallowe’en. It was believed necessary to dress as a spirit or otherworldly creature when venturing outdoors to blend in with the dead souls walking the earth. The tradition on trick-or-treating began because children would knock on neighbors’ doors in order to gather fruit, nuts and sweets for the Hallowe’en festival. Salt was once sprinkled in the hair of the children to protect against evil spirits. A traditional Hallowe’en cake called “barmbrack” was baked with small items in it such as a pea, a stick, a piece of cloth, a small coin and a ring in it. Each item, when received in a slice of cake, would foretell good or bad fortune, such as prosperity, happiness or marriage, in the following year.

I just created this LinkedIn presentation using the Google tools.

LinkedIn just introduced the ability to import your blog to your LinkedIn profile (Facebook has had this features for awhile), as well as added other new features including adding a PowerPoint-style presentation to your profile. I have presentations I have used to promote my business, but as they are filled with graphics, they exceed the 10MB size limit. LinkedIn gives you the option of creating a presentation using a Google presentation tool for online publishing, and you can import that to your profile, and even embed it in a Web page. I used the text I had already written for a one-sheet description of my business (available at http://www.wowpromotions.com/contact.html), and inserted just a half dozen graphics into the presentation. It works great! My opening slide is depicted above.

With a number of great Halloween events planned for Saturday including the Halloween Swing and Hustle Thing in Orange County, and other dance parties in local dance studios, Jane and I are planning on attending the “Marie Laveau Voodoo Queen Halloween Ball” at War Memorial Building, Balboa Park. Everyone is encouraged to come in costume as your “favorite saint,” so recycling our pirate costumes will take some creative modifications. “Saint of Wall Street Plunder,” “Saint of Negative Campaign Advertising,” or “CEO of Goldman Sachs” are possibilities. T-Lou and His Super Hot Zydeco Band will be playing the lively tunes, and there will be a seance skit and funeral procession/second line parade at the band break. The crowd is always fun-loving, and dancers of all skill levels are welcome.

Entourage is the Macintosh equivalent of Microsoft Outlook for the PC. I use it for managing several email accounts and creating a history of my correspondences. All emails, attachments, calendar events, and contact information are stored in database documents within a folder called “Office 2008 Identities.” Other programs in the Microsoft Office suite also rely on the Entourage database files.

I send and receive many emails which have large attachments, such as PDF files and photos. It was inevitable that I would run into problems eventually with so many files being stored in the database.

I ran into such a problem today where Entourage crashed multiple times. Attempting to reinstall the Office applications, even the utility Microsoft Database Utility crashed each time I attempted to restore my email database. The database of email messages had grown to more than 13 GB in size. I had been running the current version of Entourage for about 6 months without purging any of the old mail. My only option was to delete the entire ”Office 2008 Identities” folder and let Entourage start fresh. 

My recommendation is to purge your old email every three months, and perhaps check the size of your database files. If your files are close to 10 MB of data, it is time to purge your files.

On Macintosh, you can find the database files here: hard drive > Users > Your Name > Documents > Microsoft User Data [folder].

One workaround for the problem of running out of capacity in your email program might be to forward your email to an extra large G mail account. Having each of my email accounts forwarded to my G mail account, I discovered a backup of my recent email. I noticed that I am showing 280 MB of backed up mail, only 3% of my 7.2GB space. That is fine, but I had accumulated 13GB in my Entourage database. It easy to see that I will need hundreds of GB of space for email if I don’t purge my system.

One final note about Macs: Perhaps because of the “Time Machine” feature built into Mac’s 10.5 operating system (which makes automatic backups of your computer at regular intervals), my Entourage repopulated itself with most of my deleted and “inbox” messages within a few hours of deleting the old bloated database, and put them in my new “inbox.” I am, of course, deleting the old messages now which I don’t need to revisit. 

What is your solution? Mine will be to purge.

Catering company Dining Details owned by Julie Ellard was named to the Top Ten list of caterers in SignOn San Diego Readers’ Poll of the “Best of San Diego 2008.” She emailed clients and friends to vote for her company, and it paid off. Most of the other caterers in the top ten list are popular San Diego restaurants with multiple locations, or well-established catering companies which provide their services on a large scale to convention groups. Julie’s company specializes in providing nutritious and flavorful meals which meet the highest standards and dietary requirements of her clients, usually smaller gatherings. That type of approach requires more time, more preparation, and sometimes better ingredients than other catering companies will provide. Congratulations, Julie, for the honor of being named to the top ten list of SignOn San Diego’s Readers’ Poll, and showing other small companies how it’s done. You can learn more about Dining Details, and get sample menus, recipes, or subscribe to Julie’s newsletter at their Website, http://www.dining-details.com.

A “conversational style” engages and persuades people. An informal conversational style in sales materials, Websites, eBay listings and marketing collateral can be more persuasive and effective in selling products and ideas. A book entitled Presentational Zen: Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery by Garr Reynolds describes what conversational style is.

“When you are in a conversation with someone you are naturally more engaged because you have an obligation to participate. You are involved. Formal speech and formal writing devoid of any emotion whatsoever is extremely difficult to stay with for more than a few minutes. Your conscious mind has to remind you to “stay away, this is important!” But someone who speaks in a natural, human, conversational style is far easier to stay engaged with.”

“I get up every morning determined both to change the world and to have one heck of a good time. Sometimes this makes planning the day difficult.” — Author Unknown

I went up the hill to get a photo of the Vandenberg launch, and didn’t see anything. So I took this photo of our house and Lakeside community in the background. Photo was taken with a 15-second exposure, F-stop 3.5, manual focus using a Nikon D70 digital SLR. Since it was pitch-dark outside, and I was using a manual setting for lens focus, it was wasn’t a sharp as I would like. So I made additional exposure and sharpness adjustments in Photoshop to get this affect. It’s 8:30 pm on October 24, 2008. Somewhere in this photo someone is probably stealing a campaign sign from someone’s yard.

Look to the west around 7:30 and you might catch a view similar to the photo above of a Delta II rocket with a COSMO-SkyMed 3 earth observation satellite in the night sky. Exact launch time is 19:28:21 on October 24, 2008. Caption for photographer Brian Webb’s image above (taken November 8, 1997) reads:

“The Delta II carries the Iridium 38, 39, 40, 41, and 43 satellites into orbit as its sunlit contrail is suspended in the dusk sky. The webmaster took this photo during the late portion of the first stage burn just before main engine cut-off (MECO). The bright white dot on the right is the planet Venus.”

The rocket’s trail will likely appear differently depending on where you view it.

Additional information: http://www.spacearchive.info/vafbsked.htm

In times like these, you can never be too smart. Here are some ideas I read somewhere to increase your intelligence.

1) Get some sleep. An adequate amount of sleep is an important component of brain function.

2) Increase your exercise. Exercise is shown to increase mental sharpness. It reduces stress, anxiety and depression, all major obstacles to learning and sleeping.

3) Improve your diet. Eat more fresh fruits and vegetables.

4) Read more often. Reading helps to sharpen both memory and reasoning abilities.

5) Write more often. Writing exercises the imagination and makes you a better writer. 

6) Watch less TV. Brain activity is passive while watching television.

7) Play games. As you advance in skill, seek more challenging games.

Keep memorizing. There is a strong correlation between memory and intelligence.

9) Challenge yourself. Do something different each day.

10) Refer a business person you know to Jim Hance Graphic Communications for graphic design, copywriting, Web design, product brochures, and corporate communications projects. You’ll feel smart for referring him. Samples of his work are at www.wowpromotions.com.

Carbon molecules discovered in outer space may become the super lightweight materials of future automobiles and airplanes, according to MIT’s Technology Review.

In 1985, British scientist Harry Kroto and two other researchers discovered a molecule with 60 carbon atoms shaped like a soccer ball, and that molecule became named “Buckyballs” (after Buckminster Fuller). This molecule is evident in space, and its discovery earned Kroto the Nobel Prize for chemistry in 1996.  

What they have since been able to do with the carbon molecules is make thin sheets of material 10x lighter and 500x stronger than steel. This new material, dubbed “Buckypaper,” also conducts electricity like copper or silicon, and disperses heat like steel or brass.

Buckypaper is possibly the material which will go into lightweight, energy-efficient aircraft and automobiles, more powerful computers, improved TV screens and other products.

“If this thing goes into production, this very well could be a very, very game-changing or revolutionary technology to the aerospace business,” said Les Kramer, chief technologist for Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control, which is helping fund the Florida State research.