Month: June 2020

Reparative Father’s Day Gift Ideas

By Laura Jean On In Tech Tips

Did Father’s Day sneak up on you again this year? Did it sneak up and abruptly pass you by? Well, you can hardly be blamed for not paying attention to your calendar, with all of this going on:

-A deadly pandemic
-The worst economic depression since the Great Depression due to the deadly pandemic
-Recent videos of police officers murdering unarmed Americans
-Ensuing protests due to recent videos of police officers murdering unarmed Americans
-Ensuing use of military force due to protests due to recent videos of police officers murdering unarmed Americans
-The Presidential election
-New allegation that President Trump enlisted the help of China to win said election
-Tiger King on Netflix

Let There Be Light!

By Michael Gregory On In Tech Tips

Situation
Here at Birds, we’re still (mostly) practicing Shelter-in-Place. We have a weekly video meeting, but because my camera faces a window, I’ve been overexposed. On brighter days, the sun completely blows out the image of my face, essentially making me look like an anonymous person in a documentary. I have a lamp in front of me, but it’s not nearly bright enough to combat the sun. And then I realized: I have a strip of LED lights that I used to light my 3D printer. It might be able to create a cheap ring-light that might work quite nicely. I thought about buying a USB ring light, but with all that LED strip sitting around, why not make it myself?

Social Media + Black Lives Matter

By Kristin Imperio On In Misc

I have a love/hate relationship with social media.  I’d love to quit Facebook, but I need it for personal marketing purposes. Scrolling is mindless and endless. It’s been a practice to snap myself out of it, as I look at the larger picture: I don’t want my life to go to waste.

What I do love about it: connection and information.

Social media has heightened and mobilized the Black Lives Matter movement. It is filling our feeds (you must make an effort not to look). After the election in 2016, I was desperately seeking this abundance of information we see now. There are endless tools at our fingertips and access to videos that we would not have seen otherwise. Folks get to share their stories. Education is more easily accessible. We know more about where to donate and how to protest. It’s a platform to amplify voices so they can be heard.

Vertical Monitor

By Will Jay On In Tech Tips

I’ve decided to defend my use of having a monitor in the portrait configuration from all the haters out there. For those not in-the-know, the portrait configuration for your monitor effectively means you have it turned 90 degrees. It is excellent for some things (Outlook works well this way, web pages display better in many cases, I can see my patients’ entire angiograph without scrolling, etc) and horrible for others (flashier webpages don’t always work well, movies/TV only utilize ~1/3rd of the screen due to their aspect ratio). I can’t recommend it if you’re a one-monitor type of person, but if you’ve got two or three, consider giving it a shot to increase productivity, or at least to shake things up during quarantine.