Thoughts, Prayers & Sympathies
To Those In Grief

A NASCAR Legend Dies

If you’ve been around my blog or Facebook page you know my family and I are big fans of racing. Especially Nascar racing.

Nascar fans are a unique group of people. We’re not at all like the stereotypes the media in all it’s forms tries to paint us as. Our range of fans spans way beyond the boundaries of North America as a whole. It touches every part of the world and if some of these critics would go to a race and meet the people, they would learn that.

We’re not all uneducated southern rednecks either. You’ll find people from all walks of life at a race rooting for their favorite driver. Doctors, professors, lawyers, computer professionals, construction engineers and everything in between.

We’re a family; sometimes a dysfunctional family, but still a family. We may not like the same drivers, we may diss on your favorite driver. But at the end of a race, you won’t find any of us beating up or shooting another fan because they happen to like the driver who crashed our guy out of the race. We come together like no other sport does when tragedy strikes in our midst. It’s a phenomenon that has been discussed and written about by sports reporters for decades. Continue reading →

To all the wonderful, supportive and beautiful Moms!

Especially my Mom and my Wife!

© 2013 Evil Wordsmith. Evilwordsmith.com. All Rights Reserved.

Compass Apps

Recently we had an opportunity to watch the Antares Rocket launch from Wallops Island in Virginia. We needed to know the exact direction from our viewing position and Evil forgot his nautical compass. Well there’s an app for that! There are a lot of apps for that. Be careful though, some only display information in their home creators language. I found many for Chinese and Japanese that don’t have options to translate to English. Not all compass apps are accurate, so read the reviews others have left. I downloaded three apps and checked them out. Here’s what I found.   

Compass by Catch.com - ☆☆☆☆☆
Works great on my Galaxy Nexus. We put this app up against my husbands nautical compass when we got home and it’s matched up in accuracy perfectly. It’s great whether you’re standing still in your backyard for star gazing, or on the move in the car driving down the road. I really like it. The free version has several themes that can be used, and there are more you can purchase. Frankly I’m a big fan of the wood/antique look one which is part of the free version. – The only thing I’d like to see added is for the latitude and longitude to be displayed under the address that’s displayed at the top of the screen. That’s very helpful when you’re star gazing.

Smart Compass by Smart Tools Co. – ☆☆☆
If you have Samsung Nexus anything, don’t bother. In its current state as of 04/2013 its erratic and not as accurate as Compass. It has some nice features, but it also has some that are rather annoying. Although you may turn the phone into portrait or landscape mode, the heading is fixed. I don’t want to read sideways. For me, it was kind of useless.

Tiny Compass by Nikolay Ananiev - ☆☆☆☆
No frills! Accurate within 10 feet. It lacks information that is provided by Compass by Catch. But if you’re looking for nothing but a compass where you can derive other information on your own, this would be the app for you. I like a little frill, so I wasn’t impressed with this one. But for what it is, it’s good.

Update: Screen Saver Apps

Photo Slides (Photo Frame) by Softick Ltd. - ☆☆☆☆☆☆  – Yes, that’s 6 stars..I like it that much!
In a recent update Softick has provided an option to display the status bar of your phone while the screen saver is running. I really like this, because some of my alerts for news or weather don’t take over the phone, they display as an icon in the status bar. So I really like this update…especially since it’s one I suggested!

You can see all my Long, Continually Running Android App Reviews on my Android App Review page.

© 2012-2013 Evilwordsmith.com. All Rights Reserved Springwolf D.D., Ph.D.

CSX

Trains, Trains and More Trains

If you like train pictures, we’ve got a new place here on Evil Wordsmith for you. We’ve been visiting our local historic train depot for nearly 10 years now. It’s a great place to sit at the picnic tables, have some pop corn chicken and family time.

Over the years we’ve taken our share of pictures of the CSX Freight trains and the Amtrak Passenger trains that run through this little historic town of Ashland Virginia. We’ve met some really nice folk who live in the area and like to watch trains as much as we do. And we’ve met some travelers who have come here to sit by the tracks and take their own pictures and video.

A few weeks ago we met a guy from New Hampshire who was running down i95 to South Carolina. His name was Joe and he told us he specifically makes a stop for the night here in Ashland so he can watch the trains roll by and take some pictures. During out little visit he said we should put our pictures up on Evil’s blog because there are a lot of folk out there who simply love train pictures. So we picked our favorites so far and posted them here in our new section Trains!

We hope Joe finds his way to our site one day. And sees our tribute to the CSX east coast line in Virginia. Thanks Joe for the suggestion.

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© 2006-2013 Evilwordsmith.com. All Rights Reserved, Springwolf, D.D., Ph.D.