October 11, 2021

Cyber Security Awareness Month (October)

October has been declared Cybersecurity Awareness month. Do you know your cybersecurity safety status, both on the computer and on your smartphone?

View the video presentation or read the transcript to learn basic tips for protecting your digital assets and online privacy. Check out the anti-virus software we’ve recommended below.


Enhance your cybersecurity protection with the antivirus softwares recommended below.

Webroot Internet Security Complete with Antivirus Software 2021 - 5 Device, Includes Android, IOS, Password Manager, System Optimizer and Cloud Backup, 2 Year (PC Download)



McAfee Total Protection 2021 Unlimited Devices, Antivirus Internet Security Software Password Manager, Parental Control, Privacy, 1 Year Subscription - Download Code

Norton 360 Platinum 2021 – Antivirus software for 20 Devices with Auto Renewal - 3 Months FREE - Includes VPN, PC Cloud Backup & Dark Web Monitoring [Download]

ESET Multi-Device Internet Security Premium | 2021 Edition | 3 Devices | 1 Year | Antivirus Software | Password Manager | Privacy Protection | Antispam | Anti-Theft | Digital Download [PC/Mac/Android/Linux Online Code]



Norton 360 Deluxe 2021 | Antivirus software for 5 Devices [Key Card] and Microsoft 365 Family | 3 Months Free, Plus 12-Month Subscription [PC/Mac Download] (Both renew to 12-Month Subscriptions)



 

AVG Internet Security 2021 | Antivirus Protection Software | 10 Devices, 2 Years [PC/Mac/Mobile Download]



 

Avast Premium Security 2021 | Antivirus Protection Software | 1 PC, 1 Year [Download]

 
#amberclee #Cybersecurity #CyberSecurityAwarenessMonth #CommissionsEarned #Ad
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October 9, 2021

Chip Shortages, Surging Raw Material Prices, Transportation Bottlenecks... and Christmas Trees

You might have heard on the news recently about the global supply chain and production shortages occurring throughout many nations. Some industries are having difficultly finding workers while other industry's workers are retiring or opting out due to the risk of Covid illness. While the world struggles to cope with the pandemic recovery, these bottlenecks cause rippling effects in other industries that rely on the chain of products and supplies.

Even once a loaded container ship makes the journey into a congested port there are still issues with the offloading process due to the ongoing Covid pandemic: many transportation container ships and their crew are having to wait in port and are not allowed to disembark to unload their products. Some countries are requiring the crews to quarantine for a week or more on their ship, forcing these large vessels to anchor offshore while they await clearance to dock.

The world anxiously awaits computer chips from Malaysia and electronics, clothes, and toys from China. No computer semiconductor chips equals no new vehicles, new computers, or PS5s for the rest of the consuming world. Surely you have seen the jump in new vehicle prices and the low inventory being kept by many vehicle dealers.

There even continues to be a shortage of liquor and alcohol products right now. Some manufacturers pivoted during the Covid pandemic to begin producing hand sanitizer instead of alcohols, while other producers are simply experiencing extreme supply chain shortages for the materials they need to make their products: raw material precursors, bottling, and packaging supply lines are all squeezed right now.

America is recovering from the pandemic but the rest of the world is not recovering as fast. As we recover and open up again, the demand for many products is beginning to go up. Other countries that supply the US with their manufactured products are not having as great of success yet in fighting the Covid pandemic. Lock downs are still present in several parts of the world, with many countries closing commerce production and slowing global distribution as the virus surges locally.

On a related side note – did you see that the US Postal Service will intentionally be slowing their mail services to save money in addition to the regular holiday slow down experienced each winter? Covid has already slowed all regular mail in the last couple of years: The US Postal Service might be crafting its own demise.

For another year, expect Christmas to be quite different. I’ll be making many of my gifts this year by hand or ordering special gifts NOW. For my parents, I’m planning to make a farmers gift basket for their Christmas gift, including a hand-knit scarf, fresh eggs from my chickens, a fresh loaf of homemade bread, a small tray of live baby greens, a handmade card, and whatever else I can grow, craft, or find for free before December.

Amber's "Christmas Tree Farm"

Christmas trees are rumored to be the hot item of 2021 - so buy a tree now if you need a new one. Prices are already rising quickly on Amazon due to the shipping bottlenecks and the manufacturing slowdown.


Below are some recommended Christmas trees that won't break the bank and are highly rated on Amazon - but you'll have to move fast, since prices are quickly rising for the holiday rush and stores are expected to sell out.

7ft Artificial Colorful Rainbow Full Fir Christmas Tree

7.5ft Premium Spruce Artificial Holiday Christmas Tree

 

Buy 7.5ft Premium Spruce Artificial Holiday Christmas Tree

6ft Pre-Lit Snow Flocked Artificial Holiday Christmas Pine Tree

Pre-lit Artificial Mini Christmas Tree, Includes Small Lights and Cloth Bag Base, Burlap-4 ft



Check out my other sites for Christmas gifts if you’re looking for unique Viking jewelry treasures at Viking Merchant or value-priced outdoor/ survival prepping supplies at Gritty Duck Supply Shop.

#amberclee #CommissionsEarned #Ad

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October 7, 2021

Hiking With the Cows at Orange Creek Restoration Area, North Tract (Gainesville)

Location: near Island Grove community, off of Highway 329, at 29.45881° N, 82.08476° W

Nestled about 15 minutes south of Gainesville and not far from Highway 301, Orange Creek Restoration Area is a lightly trafficked hiking and horseback trails system approximately 5 miles long. Trails wander through shady pine and Florida scrub, with several sections of trail that are underwater after rain accumulates in rainier months.
 
Orange creek is a great opportunity to see many kinds of Florida wildlife. On our hikes we’ve encountered snakes, lizards, wild hogs, lots of bird species, and many kinds of insects. Non native residents of the park that are fun to view include a herd of (female) grazing cows that sometimes have calves nursing with the group.



Remember to always give wildlife appropriate space so that they don’t become agitated or possibly attack. Do not try to approach the cows.

This wildlife restoration area is used for hunting during some times of the year. Hunting season dates and notices will be posted at the gates, so be sure to keep your eyes out for these notifications. Hunters search for turkey and deer here during the appropriate seasons.

The five mile trail passes easily with its easy grade and plenty of shade from the Florida heat. There is a huge parking lot if you’re in a horse trailer or bringing friends.

One interesting stop towards the center of the park, and also accessible by an old dirt road, is the Carlton Cemetery, also known as the Old Sykes Cemetery. This beautiful old cemetery holds graves from pre-1900 from the original settlers to the area, primarily the Sykes family. Many of the headstones are showing their age. It’s a peaceful resting place and a nice break on the hike.



Make sure you wear a good pair of hiking boots or supportive shoes when you attempt this hike to protect your feet properly. A good pair of hiking boots will also come in handy if you run into a snake or any swamped areas of the trail.

The Columbia Men's Vent Shoes are my favorite footwear for hiking Florida trails. They’re lightweight and breathable, so my feet keep cool and don’t get sweaty. I’m always getting compliments on the bright blue and lime colors. I’ve had my current pair for about a year of frequent hikes and bike rides, so they are holding up well to frequent wear. Columbia has also made these shoes with an antimicrobial fabric to keep foot germs at bay.

Check out my favorite trail shoes by Columbia at the links to Amazon below if you’re looking for a great pair.



Amazon also offers the Columbia Vent Shoes in Green, Sea Salt/Canvas Tan, Black/White, and Monument/Rocket colors.

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October 4, 2021

What Happened to the Geese at Gainesville Duckpond?

One of our favorite stops on our daily Gainesville bike ride is to visit the Duckpond neighborhood to view the ducks and swans, and sit for a few minutes at the peaceful water. Duckpond is a historical neighborhood of Gainesville with the majority of homes built in the late 1800s to the early 1900s.

Many Duckpond homes have been preserved and carry plaques certifying their age: the neighborhood stands as a living history of the early settlers to the area. There are cottage, colonial, Victorian, Mediterranean, and farmhouse-styled homes lining the whimsical winding street. And if you’re into rock music - this is the childhood neighborhood of famed rocker Tom Petty.

A small river meanders through the middle of the street that splits the neighborhood. Towards the south end of the river there is a large pond with an island in the middle that for years has housed a pair of geese: a white older one and a younger black goose. The white goose always reminded me of the one from the children’s fairy tale stories of old mother Goose.


In 2019 the Gainesville neighborhood also added a pair of swimming black swans with beautiful ruffled black feathers on their back. These four large birds have been beautiful to watch on every bike ride we take. They are often very friendly and will squawk back to you as if they are saying hello. I can imagine that the people who live in Duckpond neighborhood are also very fond of their birds - they are such majestic animals!

Twin cypress trees grow over 100 feet tall from the island, which also provides a great habitat for critters. A number of fish and amphibians and reptiles live around the island. You can see the frogs where they have laid their eggs around the rim of the concrete island. Gainesville as a whole has quite a bit of biodiversity in flora and fauna, and this neighborhood has worked to protect this serene slice of land.

The river flows above ground for about half a mile through this beautiful neighborhood section of Gainesville. It’s a great place to sit and study, or to have a few minutes of quiet meditation. While enjoying the natural space, there is not a lot of sound from traffic or city noises. There’s also a couple of benches by the pond.


 

As you can see from the photos, Gainesville Duckpond is such a peaceful oasis right in the heart of the city. It’s easy to see why the homes hold such high real estate and social value in this area.

Unfortunately on our most recent bike ride, we noticed that all of the birds were missing from the pond.

A cleaning was conducted on the pond six months or more ago where they completely drained the water, cleaned out most of the brush and trash that had accumulated in the pond, and placed the birds in a temporary home. Since these birds had been at Duckpond for years I never imagined that they would not bring them back yet.

Where have the geese and swans from Duckpond neighborhood gone to? No one seems to have an answer online. Do you know where the geese and swans are now living? Leave us a comment to help us figure out this Gainesville mystery.

#amberclee

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October 3, 2021

Digital Currency and Blockchain Explained: The Good and the Bad

Are you curious about how digital currencies and blockchain technologies work? These two technology giants are changing the face of many essential industries and won’t be leaving the digital frontier anytime soon.

Digital currency is a decentralized financial system that utilizes nodes to verify digital transaction requests and blockchain to permanently record verified transactions. A transaction can include cryptocurrency, contracts, records, or other information.

Here’s how a digital currency transaction and blockchain work together to create a permanent transaction:
  1. Someone requests a digital transaction.
  2. The requested transaction is broadcast to a P2P network of computers known as nodes.
  3. The transaction is verified when the 64 alphanumeric target is guessed by a node.
  4. Once verified, the transaction is combined with other transactions to create a chain of data to create a new block of data for the ledger.
  5. The new block is then added to a chain of verified data blocks, the blockchain, in a way that is permanent and unalterable.
And that’s it! Here’s an infographic on the digital transaction verification process:




The Good

Digital currency and Blockchain are truly revolutionary technologies touted as a democratic solution that unhinges financial and other transactions from any one government or one currency system. Blockchain records are unchangeable, permanent, and verifiable records that theoretically will exist forever as a part of the chain created.

Many different types of digital currency exist. You’ve probably heard of Bitcoin, Dogecoin, Ethereum, or the growing handful of other popular digital currencies currently taking over the market. They each make their claim that they are the best.

The same is true of blockchain verifiers - there are many permanent blockchain records already created. They also each claim to be the best in some way. Some blockchains allow you larger storage blocks and some are quite limited at 2MB of verified data block size. Some blockchains offer the person conducting the transaction complete privacy of who they are to others; while other blockchain records are completely public, showing who initiated the transaction, the type of transaction, and the blockchain sequence identifier.

These blockchain verifiers each have a number of minors independently working to verify their transactions. The verification process is a little bit like a guessing game. A random 64 digit alphanumeric code is generated and the winning miner has to essentially guess the 64 digit alphanumeric number that is closest to that target number, winning the digital currency value for that verified block of information. A 64 digit alphanumeric code allows for millions of possibilities to guess.

Blockchain is creating an ecosystem for projects in currencies, developer tools, sovereignty and security, financial technology, currency exchange, sharing data and amassing big data, and identity authentication. These named project types are just the start of the many possible technologies growing out of blockchain technology.


Image by Josh Nussbaum


The Bad

Even with all of the benefits that bitcoin Blockchain technologies bring, there are still some negatives that need to be solved. One of the primary negative aspects of all the mining activity is the generation of copious amounts of computer hardware waste and the large amounts of energy consumed to power these super-processing computers.

A regular everyday business or home computer is not capable of mining for bitcoin as the market currently stands. In order to even compete to win a blockchain validation, the miner needs a powerful gaming-type computer processor and most likely you will need many of these machines in a network together to generate the computing power necessary.

All of this computing power uses a lot of energy. And building all of the computer chips, which only lasts for a few years, creates a lot of additional waste. Digital currency miners are quite open about the cost to continually change out their computer processors for newer, faster chips; the power needed to run those machines, the power needed to cool the room that the computers are kept in, and the subsequent waste being generated by their quest to mine [to guess numbers and validate digital transactions] faster than the next miner, and ultimately win the digital currency bounty.

Digital currencies and blockchain technologies hold many opportunities for our future, if they can get over the hurdles of waste generation and energy consumption that they face today.
 

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#amberclee #blockchain #cryptocurrency
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September 29, 2021

First Carbon Net Zero Soccer Game: Tottenham Hotspurs vs Chelsea 9.19.2021

Sports bring us together. They give us entertainment and they allow us to settle our political differences in ways other than wars. In almost every American household there is at least one sport regularly playing on the television. In our house that sport is football -- or "soccer" as us Americans know this sport by.

Popular all around the world and huge in every country other than the United States, soccer has been a catalyst for youth in some of the poorest places of the world. It’s popular in these poor places because of tradition but also because it only takes a simple ball and a small target to use as a goal, whereas other sports usually take much more gear or need more people on the team to be a good game.

One of the largest and most well-funded soccer leagues, with some of the best players in the world, is the English Premier League in the United Kingdom. The Premier League and Tottenham Hotspurs Football Club recently made an exciting sustainable leadership choice: to hold the first ever carbon net zero soccer game between teams Tottenham and Chelsea on September 19, 2021. Tottenham Hotspurs partnered with Sky news and the UK government to tackle this monumental reduction in carbon footprint and to bring attention to the climate emergency we're all currently fighting.


Tottenham Hotspurs Football Club Stadium


Carbon net zero status for events and buildings means that the emissions of carbon produced by that venue has been calculated and that sustainability strategies have been put in place to reduce the carbon being generated to zero, with nothing harmful being emitted into our planet's environment.

Calculations for carbon emissions for the soccer game would have captured everything from how the stadium is powered, how far the food travels to get to the stadium and how it is grown; emissions created by how players and attendees travel to the game; and impacts of the water used throughout the stadium. Greenhouse gas emissions calculations are a very complex data gathering and analysis process with many different indicators weighing in on the carbon emissions calculation.

Sustainability efforts are also incomplete without social justice as a key component. The Premier League, its players, and staff are already well known for their progressive support of human equality.

Carbon zero status was achieved through many different methods for the Tottenham-Chelsea soccer game, including the purchasing and planting of carbon offsets. Offsets will unfortunately always need to be used for large scale events and structures to reach carbon net zero status no matter the reduction techniques used, so this isn’t something we’re going to change soon.

Some of the techniques that Tottenham Football Club used to make this a sustainable soccer game were reducing the overall energy usage to power the game and using sustainable sources for energy; encouraging proper waste management and recycling; and making dietary choices at the stadium that reduced travel distance of food and encouraged meatless or meat-alternative options. The club also encouraged their fans to make sustainable choices, such as taking transportation to the games in a way other than driving and to consider water conservation at home and at the stadium.

What’s really exciting is that the Premier League even chose to promote sustainability in this way. With millions of viewers across the world watching their games they can really make a statement about issues essential to human kind.

Remember that even really big things begin with really small steps: How can you positively affect our resources and our planet? Can you be a little more conscious about water or energy use throughout your day? As Gandhi once said, change begins with me. Changing our own behavior is the only effective route to saving our planet.

If you want to change the world, start with yourself.
Mohandas Gandhi


Tottenham Hotspurs soccer players and staff are passionate about their climate goals for the planet, calling themselves the Premier league‘s greenest club. Great job, Tottenham Hotspurs, for setting the new standard for soccer games around the world!

#amberclee #gamezero

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September 21, 2021

Hiking at Turkey Creek (Gainesville/Alachua)

Nestled between the Gainesville-Alachua area, the Turkey Creek trail system is a little gem of North Florida. Horse riders, bikers, hikers, and dog walkers are all welcome on these trails. The main trail we traveled through the woods on was 2.5 miles long and had an elevation change of over 85 feet. Rated as “easy” due to the broad, even surfaces on the main trails; the elevation change did make this trail a little more challenging than easy.

Peeking from under a mushroom.

The day we went hiking it had been raining off and on over the last month and the trails were still a little damp. One section of the main trail Turkey Creek actually passes over the roadway so we had to hop over the water. The trail has adequate shade for the majority of the hike.

This is really one of the best trail systems in the Gainesville area. Pick a day to visit when it hasn’t rained too much in the previous week and make sure to wear bug spray - there are definitely a lot of swarming mosquitoes and horseflies as you get into boggier (lower elevation) areas.

This is the bug spray I use:

Buy OFF! Deep Woods Bug Spray (2-pack)

 

Along the trail there are several sinkholes and deep washes where water has cut through the terrain. Since Gainesville has had quite a bit of rain over the summer there were also many different kinds of mushrooms growing everywhere in the damp ground.

 
White, wavy mushrooms cover this fallen log.
 
Another huge mushroom.
 
We even saw a family of four deer while we were there: a small buck, a doe, and two fawns hiding just off the road. The buck and doe stood just breathing and looking at us about 10 feet from our vehicle - they were small deer, but truly beautiful to see wildlife so close. Other reviewers have noted seeing turkeys, deer, snakes, alligators, and even bobcat while hiking Turkey Creek.

Two deer by the side of the road: a small buck and a doe.

In addition to the main broad, easy trail; there are many side trails and cut-throughs that are not as well-maintained, but still passable if you are on horseback or mountain bike. There’s even a fitness course that cuts through the middle of the park with fitness equipment installed along the route. We will definitely be coming back with our mountain bikes so that we can take some of the side trails more easily and cover more ground to get to some of the back trails.

You might want to bring a hiking stick with you when on foot at Turkey Creek. A hiking stick would come in handy in some of the higher grass areas or if you ran into some of those poisonous snakes that are advertised everywhere. I almost always carry a hiking stick for snakes or wild animal protection as dangerous situations can arise quickly when you’re out in the wild.

This is the hiking stick I recommend:



Buy Hickory Wood Hiking Stick


I also bring a fanny pack with my phone, keys, and water. A fanny pack doesn’t hold heat against your body like a backpack does, it provides plenty of caring space, and you’re still hands-free.

This is the exact fanny pack I carry (blue/yellow camo):

Buy Blue/Yellow Camo Fanny Pack


Here's a red/grey camo version:

Buy Red/Grey Camo Fanny Pack

 

If you haven’t hiked this really neat trail in the Gainesville area yet, then I highly encourage you to make a trip. It’s so quiet and rural while you’re on the trails that you don’t hear any traffic. It’s a peaceful slice of Florida that you have to visit!

A large tree had fallen across the main trail.

 
A green Florida anole.
 
#amberclee #CommissionsEarned #Ad  
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