OK - I'm impressed!!

I just uploaded Picasa 3.5 a couple days ago and I'm impressed with the Facial Recognition software in it! I think it's pretty good that software can scan a picture and determine what area of the picture is a face. It's even better when it can make an identification of who that face belongs to. If it can scan a photo of a big group of people and pick out all of the faces and identify all of them that's beginning to be kinda mind boggling. It doesn't care if it's a good quality photo or not or how much the person has changed or what angle the image is from. It's doing this at greater than 95% accuracy. And even when it makes mistakes, it's usually close. In some pictures that it was suggesting were Beverly, there were some older, poor quality shots that it got wrong - but every one of the wrong ones was either Bambi, Vicki, or Suzie. When all of this happens on a free software upgrade, what can you say!!



Here's one of the suggestion screens - it thinks each one of these is Deanna and of course, it's right. I can click to verify - one or all.



In this picture, it correctly identified Jill, Caroline, Pam, Bambi, Kevin, and Julie!! (I don't think it's through working on it yet.)

This is Picasa 3.6 on Youtube

Texas got one million fans before any other state!

9:26 PM count was 1,000,006!!

It was fun watching this happen. And, just so you know, Colorado is now at about 225,000, New York about 228,000, California about 235,000.

Another new chapel sign (for my birthday)

The birthday is still three weeks away but when we walked down to the chapel today I found this wrapped up in birthday wrappings! We saw this at a Mineola antique store several months ago but they were asking too much for it. But it finally found its way home and I know this is home because you just don't find many chapels around that need a new sign. This is from an old funeral home and I'm sure it feels a lot better here - out in the woods working for Wildernest Chapel! Alex cleaned it up and put a new coat of paint on it and it looks really nice! Glynda did the lettering and that's an excellent job on that. To explain my appearance - I spent three hours working at the Wildscape Garden this morning, came home and mowed the driveway area (and then went on the walk with G to the chapel). So the attire selection was based on the wildscape work and it's condition (and my condition)is a result of same.



I knew it was gone from the antigue store but had a lot of confidence that it would end up here.

Not my picture but . . .

wanted you to see what this is and we've only seen one of these three times and I've yet to even try to get a picture. This is a Pileated Woodpecker and they are really big birds compared to most of what you see flying around. We were having breakfast on the deck and heard a loud woodpecker thumping from the tree that has the swing on it. Eventually I saw him fly off to another tree. They are impressive! (Vicki has one living in a tree near their house.)

Some new blossoms for us:

I started both of these from seed in the greenhouse this year. The Moonflower has been a project for the last few years for me. Each year I've started them from seed but have failed to get flowers either from errors I've made in getting them started and into the right spot to grow or from creatures making a meal of them. In the spring I picked up a ten cent package of seeds marked "Mixed Sunflowers" and after what looked like an unsuccessful start (they were getting way too leggy in the greenhouse) I did get a dozen or so plants in the garden and now they're taller than me. They're are several of the more familiar yellow ones but this one seems to just sparkle.

Fourth of July fireworks at Cedar Creek Lake

We went with Mary, sig other Chris, and a couple friends to see the fireworks show at Cedar Creek Lake last evening. After some Mexican food, we took the long route to the Pinnacle Golf and Boat Club - that also has some nice homes. When we arrived, an airshow was in progress. We thought it was part of the golf club entertainment but I later found out that it was a show called "Thunder Over Cedar Creek Lake Airshow" sponsored by the Cedar Creek Lake Veterans Foundation.. It had started about and hour and a half before we got there and twenty airplanes were in the show. We saw a couple A-10 Thunderbolts (Warthogs)and a C-130 Hercules cargo plane. Both did numerous very low flyovers but the star of the show was an F-16 that came over many times and sometimes went straight up until he was out of sight or lost in the clouds. It was an impressive show and, if you were wondering, the sound lets you know why the show has the word "thunder" in it's name - really loud! On the lake, many boats had gathered for the airshow and the fireworks and there was really an air of a big event taking place - lots of fire trucks and other "official" groups around like the Viper East F16 Demonstration Team. Glynda had talked me into taking the camera and, although the equipment wasn't up to the event, I took quite a few pictures. Here are a few of them. And we were back home in bed by midnight!

Bougainvillae

We've got this one on the deck in a hanging pot. The blossoms actually have a structure much like the leaves and are called bracts but they also have what looks like tiny flowers within the blossom. A unique plant - but easy to care for.