OK, so my curious dog managed to try and makes friends with a skunk again tonight. Seems like he manages to do this at least once every summer. Anyhow, I figured I’d post a little info on what to use to clean up your dog when they get sprayed by a skunk since this is becoming pretty much an anual event.

First off let me tell you that tomato juice and vinegar just don’t work. They don’t get out the smell, they just mask it. To really clean the dog up do this:

First, get these ingredient together:

1. quart of hydrogen peroxide (get a fresh, new bottle)
2. cup of baking soda
3. teaspoon of liquid soap

Mix the above stuff together in a bucket, but make sure you’re ready to wash the dog before you do, you want to get this stuff on him while it’s still blubbling. While you wash the dog with water scrub him good with the above mixture. Be as careful as you can around the eyes. Let in soak in a good 10 minutes then rinse the dog off. If you washed him good you should be rid of the skunk smell.

Yes, there are a lot of other tutorials on the web that show you examples of how to embed flash on a web page, but ….. it’s a lot harder to find one that shows you how to do it and still maintain W3C standards compliance.
The easy way to put flash on a page is to use an <embed>tag, which works. It’s widely supported by modern browsers, but it is not a part of the HTML 4 or xHTML 1 specifications. If your desire is to code your html pages to W3C standards, then the <embed> tag is not an option.
Here’s an example that shows a standards compliant implementation of flash that works in IE, Firefox, and Opera:


<object classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000"
codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0"
width="111" height="39">
<param name="movie" value="/three_coral_button.swf?mp3file=/04 Over You NEW.SWF"/>
<param name="quality" value="high"/>
<param name="bgcolor" value="#fffffff"/>
<!--[if !IE]><-->
<object data="/three_coral_button.swf?mp3file=/04 Over You NEW.SWF"
width="111" height="39" type="application/x-shockwave-flash">
<param name="quality" value="high"/>
<param name="bgcolor" value="#ffffff"/>
<param name="pluginurl" value="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer"/>
Falling Forward
</object>
<!--><![endif]-->
</object>


Falling Forward…have you ever heard of them? Probably not, but someday you will. They are a local band made up of a group of 16 year old kids who have a lot of great potential. They’re music falls in to the rock/pop/worship genres. What’s impressive though is that this stuff is all original music, and is very well done. These kids are very talented and are really going to go somewhere if they keep working as hard at it as they have over the past few years.

Personally, I enjoy the rock songs the most, but hey, that’s the type of music I enjoy so it’s only natural. Even so, the music is very well written and a good listen.

The band consists of bassist Chance Edwards, drummer Tyler Thomas (a new addition to the group who is replacing Gerald Meyer), lead vocalist Liz Tindall (my daughter) and lead guitarist Jake Nelson (Liz’s boyfriend).

Not only do the kids play their own original music, but Jake handles all the sound mixing duties as well and is quite talented at it. He does a lot of mixing for other bands under the name Silent Studios

Take a listen to these tracks and let me know what you think. After that, head on over to their website (http://www.myspace.com/fallingforwardintoyou) and let them know too!

 Recently a discussion of furniture came up with some co-workers. I wouldn’t call all of these projects furniture, but a couple of them are. I don’t normally consider myself a ‘crafty’ person, but with enough determination and trial & error I can usually figure most things out. Here are some pics of various stuff I’ve made for the house.

(more…)