• Diet Orange Crush does not have the bite I remember from regular Orange Crush. That was decades ago so my memory might be off or my taste buds have changed.

• Diet Sprite is no longer called “Diet”. Tastes funny. It’s called Zero Sugar or some such. Tastes funny.

• I always preferred old time 7-Up before they ruined it, decades ago, by making it taste more like Sprite.

• I miss Canfield’s pop. Particularly 50/50 and their Root Beer. People outside of Chicagoland won’t understand.

• Canada Dry Ginger Ale (both regular and diet) is still being made. Yay!

• Most of the good root beer brands have disappeared from the shelves. What’s with that?

Buying recycled paper products locally has become a challenge. Local supermarkets that 10 years ago had a wide range of recycled paper now seem to have gone dry. Seems like corporate America has taken over this niche with products that imply eco-friendlyness on their packaging with marketing words like “responsible” and “Sustainable” but are short on details like actual percentage of pre and post consumer waste, the use of chlorine in their process and even where it’s made.

It all seems a little dodgy to me.

Fortunately there is Amazon where you can better sort through the details, even though the price seems to be constantly rising on all recycled paper there.

I’m trying a different route from recycling by trying renewable bamboo based facial tissue. We’ll see how this goes although I admit to being skeptical.

Of course, every time I find a product that I really like it gets discontinued or so expensive and hard to find that it might as well be discontinued. This happens so much that I’m afraid to give anything my Brad Seal of Approval lest it disappear.

I stumbled across one of the best reviews/essays for a TV series collection on DVD that I have ever read. It’s a DVDtalk.com review of the complete Danger Man a/k/a Secret Agent series. If you like spy films, if you like vintage British Cult TV, if you like noirish films I urge you to watch Danger Man, which is one of my favorite TV shows.

Don’t take my word for it, read the review (above), which is long but well worth it.

Starting Your Own Webring on Webringo.com

You need a ring host. I have used Webringo.com recently and everything there is in working order, with no spam from Webringo and no ads being inserted into rings. Honest and clean.

1. Register an account at Webringo.
   
2. Read through Webringo’s Help and FAQ section. This helped me a lot.
3. You are registered and logged in. Now you want to find the link to “Create a Ring” from the left menu.
4. Fill in all the spaces on the Create a Ring page. After you hit create you should get to a section where you can customize the colors, style, type, logo design of the default ring code that will be given to anyone that registers to join your ring. Save your edits.
5. My memory is a little rusty here so bare with me. At this point you may need to add the ring code to your own webpage. You may have to sign your own site up as the first member to do that. You will get your choice of the default ring codes and you add that code to the page you have designated.

This is about where my memory ends. It was pretty straight forward. It’s free so you can play around with it and learn. Feel free to create a demo ring first to learn on, you can always delete it.

Tips:

• Be specific about who can join the ring.
• If you already have a community of people interested in your topic that qualify for ring membership, contact them individually before to step #3 above and see if they are interested in joining the webring. It’s hard to get people to join a webring that only has one or two sites.
• Joining an existing ring is easier than creating one.
• Make the ring code easy to find. Preferably it should be on the same page people entered on.
• As Ring Master, you must preserve the integrity of the ring. This means 1. sites should be qualified to be a member, 2. Ring codes must be working, 3. ring codes must be easily findable. Suspend members that don’t display the ring code. Visitors will not use a ring that is broken or too hard to navigate.
• The ring code is there not only for navigation but is also there to recruit new ring members and/or new readers.
• Webringo has it’s own Private Messenger system called “Ring Mail”. As Ring Master you should check this regularly to see notifications of new applicants or messages from members.

On the evening of D-Day, 6 June 1944, President Franklin D. Roosevelt addresed the American nation with this prayer:

“My fellow Americans: Last night, when I spoke with you about the fall of Rome, I knew at that moment that troops of the United States and our allies were crossing the Channel in another and greater operation. It has come to pass with success thus far.

“And so, in this poignant hour, I ask you to join with me in prayer:

“Almighty God: Our sons, pride of our nation, this day have set upon a mighty endeavour, a struggle to preserve our Republic, our religion, and our civilisation, and to set free a suffering humanity.

“Lead them straight and true; give strength to their arms, stoutness to their hearts, steadfastness in their faith.

“They will need thy blessings. Their road will be long and hard. For the enemy is strong. He may hurl back our forces. Success may not come with rushing speed, but we shall return again and again; and we know that by thy grace, and by the righteousness of our cause, our sons will triumph.

“They will be sore tried, by night and by day, without rest-until the victory is won. The darkness will be rent by noise and flame. Men’s souls will be shaken with the violences of war.

“For these men are lately drawn from the ways of peace. They fight not for the lust of conquest. They fight to end conquest. They fight to liberate. They fight to let justice arise, and tolerance and good will among all thy people. They yearn but for the end of battle, for their return to the haven of home.

“Some will never return. Embrace these, Father, and receive them, Thy heroic servants, into thy kingdom.”

On a trip to Iowa, well off the Interstates. All two lane highways here. Here in the Heartland, it’s a mixed bag, some small towns are dying and some seem to be doing better than they were 30 years ago.

I brought only the iPhone and the iPad but that is working out well. Also, this older motel has decent WiFi so I can stream a show on the tablet in the evenings. Basic cable is kinda bad.

Democratic Presidential Candidates:

I think we’re up to a gaggle of 20 at last count. I’m going to seperate out the 3 that I think have potential. (All subject change.)

• Berine Sanders - he’s farther Left than I’m comfortable with, but he’s the only one that has truely new ideas. This is the guy we should have run against Trump the first time. I like his ideas on health care. He would offer a kinder, and more reasoned Populist alternative to Trump.

• Elizabeth Warren - perhaps a little too intellectual for prime time but I generally agree with her. I’m not sure she can capture the public imagination, she’s about as exciting as watching cement set. So far she has not done well in her skirmishes with Trump. Still, she would be way better than Trump.

• Joe Biden - I consider him the “safe candidate” I think Joe, flawed as he is, has the moxie to take on Trump without leaving “The Establishment” wing of elites in the Democratic Party. Which means he won’t step too far out of the status quo and there is a danger to that because we need some bold reforms and I’m afraid Joe isn’t up for that. Still I like Joe.

It’s really early days so my lineup might change. Just thinking out loud.

Brinkmanship with Iran is a dangerous policy. One would think we have had enough of getting entangled in Middle East conflicts as it is, let alone seek out yet another one. I’m sure Iran is a bad actor, but our side ie. Saudi Arabia dosen’t fill me warm fuzzies either.

Underlying all the national and oil rivalry in the region is a sectarian Sunni vs. Shia Islam conflict, which we Westerners would be well advised to stay out of. This Islamic sectarian conflict is something that only the Islamic world can deal with and it will probably be bloody just like The Reformation in Europe was bloody. It’s sad, but lasting peace cannot be imposed from outside the Islamic world.

What the US should be doing is working hard to decrease our dependancy on Middle East oil so we have little cause to get involved. Instead we build bigger pickup trucks and more roads and more fuel guzzling airports. It’s time for a rethink both in the US and Europe too.

EU will get these first.

e Foundation announced last week that they would be releasing refurbished phones with eOS pre installed in early June.

Now, it appears, that these are only for EU residents. e Foundation did not make this clear in their announcement because they probably wanted to see where the demand was coming from. The Foundation is set up in the EU, plus I think worries about privacy are deeper in the EU, so it makes sense for the EU to get first release.

Still it’s disappointing.

I just hope the US doesn’t get abandoned or frozen out in this.

Anyway, it was nice to see a good line-up of phones for the EU.

Watching: The Undertaker Mystery series, Swiss in German with English subtitles. Approx. 60 min. Quirky series about an ex-cop who has become an undertaker but still solves mysteries. I’ve watched the first 3 episodes of season 1 and this is pretty good. Has a quirky dry wit about it but it can be dark without a lot of gore. There are 5 seasons available on Mhz and it’s good so far.

Acquired: Ruined by Design by Mike Monteiro

As part of the Indieweb Book Club for Ruined by Design by Mike Monteiro I just acquired a paperback copy of this book.

Just did a fast skim page through: I expect I’ll agree with some of Monteiro’s basic premises about design, I also noticed that the author paints with a pretty broad brush. (That’s not always bad, since I do the same thing.) As part of that he makes some assertions like religions are designed to hate each other and that “cultural appropriation” is universally accepted as being a Bad Thing. I understand that these are not the main thrust of his arguments but his misuse of them undermines his argument and his authority - at least with this reader. The first rule of debate is to examine the other person’s “givens”. If the “givens” are faulty then that weakens their whole argument.

I won’t get into nit picking on these, because that would take me off topic.

This was also posted to /en/bookclub.

Two things about fast food, single use plastics: 1. I think the corporate world is sufficiantly on notice that they need to phase these out, 2. I’m pretty confident we can come up with acceptable alternatives from natural sources.

The problem is one of scale. Take plastic straws and think about how many straws just McDonald’s goes through just in the US. I’m willing to bet that all the American paper straw plants in the US right now can’t supply enough paper straws if they tried producing flat out. And of course there is the supply chain: are the paper straw producers suppliers ready to provide enough material for the demand? And the merials also need to be sustainably sourced. Now add all the other US fast food chains: DQ, Burger King, Wendy’s, Hardees all switching over to paper straws. Now add in the mom and pop food joints. In the US alone the demand is going to be tremendous. On top of this, we really have not been making paper straws in the US since the 1960’s - we’ve almost forgotten how.

Plus I’m sure there are other materials we can make disposable drinking straws from besides paper. Equally, I’m pretty sure these are being, frantically, developed.

That’s just straws.

Now add in serving containers, things your condiments come in, disposable eating utensils and changing away from plastics become huge.

And we have not even added in the EU and the rest of the developed and semi-developed world yet. The scale is immense. The opportunity is immense and it boggles the mind.

All this is to say that the problem won’t be solved overnight. It’s going to take a few years, but we need to keep the pressure on lest the food industry will continue using plastics.

I’m on Season 2 of Magellan. Weird French mystery show. They keep changing Inspector Magellan’s sidekick. The house he lives in with his two daughters has changed. The actors playing the daughters have changed, but worse one daughter has gotten like 4 years younger - before she was a tween now she’s a little kid! Last night, replacement older daughter was gone, they said she went to England she only lasted one episode. Magellan’s office set has changed.

Frankly the acting isn’t that good and I don’t care about the characters that much. There is a mystery in each episode which is okay but I don’t think the producers really know what they want this show to be a mystery or a family show. The biggest mystery is how the daughter actually got younger.

The good news is that the police can always drive right up to the door of each destination and there is always a parking space - this is how you know it is fiction. Frankly, you can skip this show and never miss it.

I’ve mentioned other efforts to De-Google your phone (link at bottom) and I should mention other efforts.

e Foundation has made a comprehensive list of the suite of apps they are working on which will run on their fork of Android which has been purged of Google Services. (This means their version of Android has been purged of Google’s spyware.)

Use of the apps for these services (email, messenger, maps, search, etc.) presumes you have managed to flash e’s operating system onto your device or you have had someone do it for you.

As you can see from the link above: e Foundation’s suite of apps and services are much more extensive than Librem One’s. The inclusion of things like an alternative for Google Maps, weather, cloud storage go well beyond Librem’s suite and frankly, better address the things we use our phone for (ie. navigation) in real life.

Like Librem, the e Foundation OS only exists in Beta form, although progress is rapidly progressing towards a ver. 1.0 stable release in 2019. I’m waiting for that stable release to come out before trying it.

Reference: Librem One: Escape Google, Increase Privacy

See also: e Foundation website

Puri.sm is starting a campaign to create a suite of online services and apps to help you regain some privacy. OMGUbuntu Article Here And the Librem One website here. No ads, no tracking. There is a small monthly fee, because free stuff online comes with tracking and ads.

Apps are available for Android, iOS and eventually for the Librem 5 privacy phone which is due out in the third quarter of 2019.

This is a smart move, because:

1. It gives current Android and iOS users a suite of more private alternatives that they can use and get used to right now.
2. It will make it easier for Android and iOS users to switch to a Librem 5 phone in the future and should make sales easier.
3. It reassures Librem 5 buyers, that there will be a core suite of needed cloud services and apps for that device.
4. It eliminates totally depending on the open source community to develop these critical apps for the Librem 5. I’m sure the open source community will develop similar apps, but this takes the guess work out of it.

Android users will get the most immediate if they adopt these Librem One apps and quit using the free apps from Google and others, that they replace. iOS has more privacy built in - Apple does some tracking they just don’t sell their tracking data to others. But still, if you are using third party apps on iOS they may be tracking you. Apple’s App Store privacy guidelines are tighter, but they are not 100%.

I like the fact that they have included a VPN app called “Tunnel” in with the price of the standard suite. That makes the US $7.99 monthly price seem much more reasonable.

I don’t see any mention of a calendar app in Librem One. I suspect this will be a freebie that will come with the Librem 5 phone.

Anyway, this is a good move and well worth looking into.

I’m saving an old post of mine from a personal blog I had on Blogger, preserving this for posterity.

The following was originally published by me on April 7, 2010:

I got a message on the internets yesterday asking me if I had put the Great Zombie Coverup info about Burns Harbor, IN in Wikipedia. Unfortunately no I didn’t, but I am jealous as heck of whoever did! I am on record as saying I thought zombies might be lurking in Porter Co., but I was thinking Hebron (still think so,) not Burns Harbor.

Upon finding out about the article I lost no time in emailing my friends and neighbors. I sent them a copy of the text of the “Zombie Coverup” paragraph about Burns Harbor from Wikipedia (which has since been redacted):

It is speculated that The Great Zombie Invasion of 1949 almost destroyed any chances of an incorporated Burns Harbor. It was in this year that the reanimated corpses began to invade the southern tip of Lake Michigan. With the Port of Indiana and Bethlehem Steel being easy access points for the walking dead to come ashore as well as very noisy areas that attracted the attention of the flesh-seekers, it was no surprise that this area of Porter County Indiana was a prime feeding ground for the undead. Little is known how the zombies came to be un-alive, but the fact remains that they decimated the socioeconomical infrastructure of this region. While the dead walked, consumed, and turned the majority of the residents to their own, a plan was being formed.

The Citizens of Westchester for Zombie Annihilation and Reform(COWZAR) formed a plan, and with the assistance of the National Guard and Bethlehem Steel this plan, known as “Plan Z” came to fruition. In this plan, the remaining survivors were evacuated, examined thoroughly for signs of infection, and in the event that signs were found, creamated(sometimes while still alive), leaving only the zombies. Once the bombers were assured that civilian casualties would be at a minimum, the area was blanketed with bombs. This took out the majority of the undead, but a few stragglers happened to be in the wrong place and remained animated. The second stage of Plan Z entailed ground forces performing a sweep to rid the area of the remaining zombies. After several weeks and more casualties than anticipated the area was considered clean, but quarantined until it could be sterilized. Over the next few years, the National Guard performed tactical strikes at vital, classified areas for further sterilization. It is speculated that there may still be a secret detail on guard at areas of the shore to this day, but this has not been proven nor confirmed. In 1953 the area was re-opened for habitation, but the flow of residents was slow. In mid 1953 the steel mill donated a large amount of money to build houses and stimulate the local economy in order to re-habitate this area. Houses were sold cheap and bonuses were given to mill employees who utilized this. Within a year, the area that would become Burns Harbor was beginning to resemble what it is today. Evidence of the outbreak are still apparent in street signs for “Restricted Areas” as well as heavily secured entrances to various hot spots disguised as steel mill gates. Many current residents believe that if you enter these areas, there is a high chance of infection and that some of the fenced in and guarded areas are being used for experimentation on the living dead. Some believe that there are in fact several “specimens” still roaming, kept at bay only by new residents “placed” by the government and zombie hunters disguised as paramedics, firefighters, and police. Spread the word, as wikipedia won’t let this stay up long.

The local Chesterton Tribune reported on the Wikipedia Zombie Burns Harbor article: Wikipedia exposes Great Zombie Coverup in Burns Harbor. Great article. I love the quote from Town Marshall Jerry Price in the Tribune article.

My sources speculate that the paragraph was added to the Burns Harbor, IN entry on or about April 1st, April Fools Day. What a wonderful prank and it also shows that the people of Burns Harbor have a great sense of humor.

I wonder if Zombies will be the costume of choice for Halloween trick or treaters this year?

Webrings might have some life left in them if a new generation adopts them. Here is a new boilerplate for hosting your own webring created by Max Bock.

I think this comes as part of an ongoing conversation by Charlie Owen on reviving webrings I’m glad to see Max has put the effort into this and I hope others will find his webring system useful.

Further reference at Indieweb.org: webrings

I’ve been streaming the French murder mystery series “Murder In…” each episode is set in a lesser known but beautiful part of France (to gin up tourist interest.) The mysteries range from competent to so-so, but the subtitles are well done, the scenary excellent and the women, by and large attractive (this is French TV after all).

What gets me, is both the protagonists and the antagonists, all seem to find parking spaces effortlessly. They just pull up their car in the middle of a pictureque square and park whereever they please! No hunting for a space, no circling around the block, no manuvering to parallel park, no line of honking cars behind you. In short: a fantasy paradise!

Structure:

1. The EU Commission: Commissioners, one per state, are appointed by each member state’s leader. They are not elected.
2. Commissioners work for the interests of the EU not the individual member states.
3. The Commission proposes all new laws, rules and regulations. The people actually writing the EU laws are carrier bureaucrats, loyal not to any elected authority or state but loyal only to the un-elected Commission
4. The EU Parliament is democratically elected.
5. However, the EU Parliament can only amend rules and regulations proposed by The EU Commission. They cannot themselves, propose new laws, rules and regulations. This is not real political power in the only elected assembly.
6. The MEP’s of any one country are not enough to change a law, they must gain the votes of enough MEP’s from other nations to do that.
7. Laws from the EU can supersede national laws passed by a democratically elected national parliament or legislature.

My thoughts:

A. So nobody in the EU, directly elected, is looking out for the interests of the people of Hamburg, Normandy or Yorkshire.

B. The farther away The People are from The Mothership (seat of power), the more layers of government there are between the electorate and the rulers (both elected and appointed) the less responsive that government is to the will of the people.

C. This was probably a fine system when it was completely confined to governing just trade, but this is not democratic enough for true political rule.

D. This is not to say that national governments have no power or influence in EU governance. But, as we have seen, the big economic powers within the EU, (read Germany and France) can pretty much get what they want if they stay united. The rest of the EU pretty much has to go along with it. Long term this is going to cause * * the people** of smaller countries to chafe under non-representative laws from Brussels.

E. Bureaucracies like to expand their own power. It’s a hard and fast rule. This is a creeping doom as slowly, sometimes over years, sometimes over decades or generations, power is eroded from the sovereign and elected national governments and surrendered to the largely un-elected EU. This may be welcome in nation states who’s governments have little political legitimacy, but this cannot go down well in countries that have long standing political institutions that have great legitimacy, nor will it go down well with countries that have just recently thrown off the yoke of occupation by the late Soviet empire.

F. The idea of the EU as the United States of Europe, seems to be about giving up on the idea of national governments. This is a sad abdication of power and loss of national confidence.

G. The cynical side of me thinks that the EU is the illusion of democracy with less of the actual substance of representative government. It’s “blue smoke and mirrors”. Is the deception an intentional means of getting people to give up their representation?

H. On the positive side: insulation - isolation from the massed electorate, works both ways and it may have the effect that the EU is better able to stand up to and regulate massive multi-national industries and business interests better than a small nation state can.

A lot of people are going to equate this with Brexit, and frankly the concerns do apply. However, most of my education is in political science and history, and I have been thinking about this for many years before Brexit was even a word. Also, I believe in representative democracy and I do not believe in rule by plebiscite.

As Edmund Burke said:

Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays instead of serving you if he sacrifices it to your opinion.

This remains a problem: Google has locked up all the Android smartphone OSM’s with contracts restricting what other operating systems they can put on the phones they manufacture. Especially restricting forks of Android.

While Google may claim they are keeping Android from fragmenting, the reality is that this is anti-competative, while giving Google control over the entire smartphone industry except for Apple. This is not Capitalism, this is predatory corporatism that needs to be broken up.

When looked at through this lens it makes Microsoft giving up on Windows Phone and HP’s giving up on webOS doubly tragic.

What is populism? Is all populism the same? Is all populism bad? Is populism a symptom of governments, political parties and ruling classes who have lost touch with the electorate?

This short video from the BBC got me thinking about how we throw that word around without really understanding it. And yes, the Left uses it to dismiss the concerns of others as being backward hicks or old or racists when they disagree without truly listening to the other side’s concerns. The Right does the same with different words: socialist, fake being the top ones, because the Left has their populists too (ie. Bernie Sanders.) And the problem is that both sides try to rule or motivate through fear rather than build a national (or at least political) consensous.

Lest anyone try to call me a Trumpie: I don’t like the man, but I don’t think he is 100% wrong on every issue. I do think he’s about 95% wrong in the way he goes about trying to fix issues both real and imagined. IMHO he’s a mean and nasty piece of work. And I’m not sure deep down he’s really a reformer, because he almost always sides with Big Business not the people.

But different forms of populism are spreading throughout the civilized world from both the Right and Left. There seem to be a lot of people upset with the New World Order and the Establishment that oversees it. Perhaps we should listen to the underlying complains more and see what the causes are before dismissing the complains out of hand. Yeah, I’m not holding my breath that either the Left or Right will do the right thing, but don’t say I didn’t warn you. Anyway, watch the short video, above, it will make you think.

📚 I just got done binge reading all 15 books of the Dresden Files series by author Jim Butcher. Dresden Files are action packed urban fantasy novels with a nice dose of humor. They combine the genres of a “Philip Marlowe” type hard boiled detective noir with urban fantasy in the form of Harry Dresden, wizard for hire in Chicago. He’s in the yellow pages under “Wizard.”

The first two books are non-stop action. They are good but not great page turners with some good world and character building. While I enjoyed the first two books, I wasn’t sure if I would continue until @kitt tipped me off that they got really good with Book #3 and on. And Kitt was right, by Book #3 the author has noticeably grown in skill as an author and throughout the series he just keeps getting better and better. The plotting gets better, the characters, including Dresden grow and the world keeps expanding. It’s hard to put these books down.

Each book can pretty much stand on it’s own - but you really should read them in order because there are story arcs like Buffy the Vampire Slayer TV series had and characters and situations introduced in an earlier book show up again several books later.

I highly recommend this series to anyone. I was disappointed when I finished Book #15, because I wasn’t ready to quit reading (and it was a lot of reading.) Book #16 is not yet out so I’m waiting, which is probably good because I can get some real life stuff done. The author thinks he’s good for about 24ish books total for the series. Be warned, all the books are page turners. I think grown up Harry Potter fans might like the Dresden Files as well as fans of Glen Cook’s “Garrett P.I.” series.

The books are published by Penguin under the Roc imprint. The ebook editions on Kobo Reader were well done and graphic novels as well as audio books are available too. Amazon has both print copies, Kindle versions, sets, audio books and collections. so you are covered.

There is a role playing game based on the books, which I have bought (yes I liked it that much) since I collect RPG’s, and I’ll comment on it once I have looked it over.

I have hit my 1st Anniversary on Micro.blog. “On This Day” has started to show posts from 2018. I might have missed the actual start date but it was around the end of March 2018. Micro.blog has been one of the best discoveries I’ve made on the Web. Thank you to all the community of Micro.blog members plus @manton and @macgenie for making it so.

I’m not talking about the name or the logo. I’m talking about the Accutron watch with a real tuning fork in it. These were great watches that paved the way for quartz watches.

Sure, a modern Accutron, tuning fork watch is not going to be as accurate as a quartz watch. I get that. But Bulova still make really handsome mechanical watches, along side quartz watches, and the mechanicals can’t be as accurate as quartz. I’d think a tuning fork watch would be somewhere in between.

But here is what I loved about the Accutron:

• the sweep second hand
• the hum
• the accuracy
• An Accutron went to the Moon

I think Millennials, who like old tech, would love a “real” Accutron and I think older people who had one once would like to have one again. I think it’s time to bring it back. It’s Bulova Time.

I have business cards, they advertise the business I’m a partner in. They don’t advertise me as an individual. Every once in awhile I run into somebody socially who wants my contact details, not business but about me. So I thought I would get cards that represent just me.

This is nothing new, people used to have calling cards or visiting cards and the Victorians, in particular had elaborate rules of etiquette surrounding their use. Calling cards were important in an urban world before telephones and internet and at a time when many servants may well be illiterate. The business card evolved out of the calling card. Anyway, it would be accurate to call what I ordered calling cards.

I ordered business cards (“Me cards” really) that don’t mention my business interests, just my contact info:

• Name
• Street address
• Telephone number
• URL of my personal blog (important)
• Twitter Name
• My Micro.blog URL (this I really wanted on there)

Normally I leave the back blank, so I can write on it, but the design I chose called for a logo, which I don’t have. However, I could substitute a QR Code which will take people to my blog if scanned so I used that. Still enough room to jot a note.

The printer offered a bewildering choice of card papers, I chose cards made from 100% cotton sourced from scraps in the making of T-Shirts. No trees.

I ordered from Moo on the recommendation of both @Ron and @dejus and they turned out great. (Thanks guys!)

I like the idea of having a QR Code somewhere on the card. I personally don’t use them except when exhibits have them, like at an arboretum or a museum, but others might so no harm in having it there.

That’s it - Me Cards. I don’t need them often, but darn handy when I do.