Use PhotoRazor to Reduce the File Size of Your Digital Photos

A screen shot of PhotoRazor

Have you ever wanted to reduce the file size of your digital photos? Maybe you wanted to send pictures off to friends via email but since you can't compress zip digital photos with Winzip (or other normal compression software) you were weary about sending those huge files, either because of a storage limit to the size of email attachments that you can send or that your email might exceed the storage limits of the recipiant(s). Maybe you wanted to add a photo to a presentation or documentation but didn’t want the file size to balloon out of control. Maybe you’d like to add some photos to an online service but are worried about reaching the storage limit to quickly. Why not use PhotoRazor to reduce the file size of your photos?

PhotoRazor is a freeware application that can be found at Stormdance. You can read more about it here. It is a relatively simple application that only reduces the file size of photos, so it isn’t bloated with a lot of hard to understand and use features and it is very easy to use. One recent picture that I reduced went from 589 KB down to 57.2 KB, so you can see that PhotoRazor can greatly reduce the file size of your photos.

A folder of mine opened up in PhotoRazor

After downloading and installing it, you can use the “Choose Folder” button to select the file location of your photos, found under “1.Select Photos”. The contents of your selected folder will appear on the right side of the PhotoRazor. Whatever photo you might have selected will be displayed in the center of the application. You also have the ability to rotate your photos here as well. If you move your mouse over any of the photos that are small thumbnail size on the right, a slightly larger version of that photo will pop up (you can see this in use in the second picture that I have included with this post). Next you can decide how small you want to make your picture size in the “2.Size & Quality” section of the application. As you can see I have my picture quality set at 85%. You don’t want to reduce the size so much that your picture quality suffers. Under “3.Resize & Save” you can select all of the photos in the folder to resize and to it in bulk or you can select one or some of your photos. By default PhotoRazor stores your smaller pictures in a new folder created within your original folder called “small photos”. You can change the location here if you’d like or give the folder a different name. Clicking on the “Resize Photos Now” will then create new smaller photos for you. Your new smaller photos will have the same name as the originals but with “m_” placed in front of them. Because new files are created, your originals are still in their folder and unchanged.

There are lots of reasons that you might want to have smaller file sizes made of your photos. PhotoRazor is a handy little application to do this for you that won’t cost you and arm and a leg. Have you used PhotoRazor before? What to you use to reduce the file size of your pictures? If you have any other comments, I’d love to hear them. If you liked this article, please consider subscribing to the blog via RSS or email, share it on del.icio.us or on Digg and pass it on to anyone that you think might appreciate it. Thank you. :)

On Deck…

I’ll be publishing posts about…

• The next in my series of weight loss strategies
• My next Spotlight on the web.
• More on productivity, web 2.0, social networking, family, parenting, health, and other things that you can use.

Other Posts That You Might Also Like to Read…

• Brining Your Kids Art to Web 2.0
• Are Your Managing Your Digital Photos With Picasa?
• Photo Organizing Tip Number 1

Making Healthy Meals Kid Friendly

Anna showing off her creations!

Have you ever had problems getting your kids to eat or maybe you would like to jazz up a boring meal? If you’re a parent, I’m sure you had the situation where your kids either said that they weren’t hungry or didn’t seem interested in what you had planned. For the parents and non-parents alike, I’m sure that you have gone to fix something to eat and not been excited about what your options were or felt that you were making the same boring things over and over again. Since presentation is everything, as some people say, why not add a little fun and pizzazz to your meal?

I was surprised to see how excited my girls were about eating dinner yesterday. One of the biggest reasons that they were excited about it was because they were making it! My wife had taken out some cookie cutter shapes that we have and let the girls apply them to their meal. Our kids are at an age where they love all those arts and crafts and there are many days that I think that would do nothing all day but cut stuff out and glue it! They often enjoy helping to make dinner. I must admit that this is one of the most excited that I have seen them about one of their projects.

A close up of the plates

You can do this with a lot of things, so feel free to improvise. Based on an idea in Koch's noch mal, Mama! the girls applied the cookie cutter to bread, cheese, assorted lunch meats, and cucumbers. For the basics you make this healthy by using low fat cheeses and lunch meats, healthy breads, low fat/salt prezels (or other healthy snacks) for garnish and further appearance. You can also use your cookie cutter to jazz up your peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and give all sorts of fun shapes to carrots, apples, and so on. While the kids will probably like the shapes, they really enjoy that they do it themselves. It also helps if you get excited about their creations. My daughters really enjoyed that I took pictures of their creations. While you might not necessarily want to take pictures, you could do that especially since with digital cameras, you’re in control of what you print.

One word of caution, like many things in life, if you use this took often it will lose its excitement and your kids might just find it boring. You can probably use this idea for a few meals and then store the idea in the back of your mind (or somewhere else) and use it again later, so that it becomes new again. I pasted a link to the book at Amazon.com above, but the book that we have is in German. Cornelia Trischberger is the author listed on our book. The book being offered at Amazon.com is lists as Doreen Paal, I'm assuming that this author translated the German book. Here is the book we have at Amazon.de. Cornelia Trischberger has also written a book called
Jetzt koch' ich, Mama!, which Amazon.com has listed under the author Sybille Engels, so I believe both books have been translated by different people. One of my searches revealed Cornelia Trishcberger and Doreen Paal in a couple of entries together. In the event that you do happen to order either book and end up with the German version by mistake, I'd happy to get whatever receipes you'd like translated into English.

By using a cookie cutter, your family’s imagination, and involving them in creating the meal, you can really make your meal experience much more rewarding for everyone. Do you have any tips that you use to make your meal fun? If you have any other comments, I’d love to hear them. If you liked this article, please consider subscribing to the blog via RSS or email, share it on del.icio.us or on Digg and pass it on to anyone that you think might appreciate it. Thank you. :)

On Deck…

I’ll be publishing posts about…

• The next in my series of weight loss strategies
• My next Spotlight on the web.
• More on productivity, web 2.0, social networking, family, parenting, health, photography and other things that you can use.

Other Post That You Might Also Like to Read…

“Brining Your Kids Art to Web 2.0”

“Teaching Our Kids About Money”

“Family Activities”

“Why Not Have A Fruit Day?”

“The Power of One" as a must have diet book.

“A Winning Attitude And Weight Loss”

Weight loss strategies from the “Lose Weight with The Power of One: A Motivational Journey to Nutritional Sanity”:

• “Why You Should Eat Often”
• “12 Benefits of “Letting Go” of Your Diet”
• “7 Tips to Reduce the Amount of Sugar in Your Daily Life”
• “A Good Breakfast is a Key to Your Weight Loss Success”
• “12 Tips to Help You Drink More Water”
• "7 Tips to Stop Eating Before You Feel "Stuffed" "
• ”10 Tips for Reducing Fat in Your Diet”

Happy Father's Day

Happy Father’s Day! While Father’s Day (Vatertag) is usually celebrated in June in the U.S., May 1^st is when it was celebrated in Germany this year. I thought that I would dedicate this post to my father, John Heron.

This year Father’s Day in Germany happens to fall on May 1^st. May 1^st is also a national holiday celebrated across much of Europe, sometimes called “May Day” and/or “International Workers’ Day”. The observance of Father’s Day in Germany changes yearly dependent upon when Easter occurs because Father’s Day is celebrated at the same time as Ascension Day (Christi Himmelfahrt). This year all of these things came together.

When most of us look at who we are today, a lot of us will immediately give credit to our mothers. Our mothers did an awful lot of us but we should not overlook dear ole dad. While mom might be the glue that holds the family together, the chief care giver (administering band aids and other medicinal remedies when we need them), and a whole slew of other important (and often unglamorous and unrecognised roles) our father’s were the backbone of the family and often the disciplinarians.

When you look at all the kids growing up today in single parent homes or coming from divorces, I realize that I was very fortunate to have a father that was around. A lot of fathers today aren’t really involved in their kids lives and you can see that there is a definite lack of a male role model with many kids growing up today. My dad was there and for that I’m grateful.

Here are some things that he has accomplished in his life or that he should be credited for…

• He quit school to raise his younger brother and sister when his father passed away. While many people have done similar things in their lives, you don’t have to look too far to see cases where people wouldn’t have made such a sacrifice.
• He later received his GED (High School Equivalent degree). While he quit school for one of the “right” reasons, he went to the trouble of getting his GED. You have to admire to adults that go back to get there GED. Many of whom when they were younger didn’t realize the value of an education or circumstances didn’t allow them to finish high school!
• He ran his own business delivering milk to residential homes and businesses (this is how he met my mother). He started out working for someone else and then bought the route. Running his own business helped give him some skills and attitudes that have served him well in life.
• When he saw that the writing on the wall about the milk delivery business drying up, he became a plumber. He didn’t cry over spilled milk, but moved forward and started working in a new profession. Mom helped him study and ultimately pass the exam and his certification.
• He was willing to work on the other side of the state or in another state, in order to provide for his family.
• He taught himself about the stock market and managed to put together a nice retirement within a relatively short period to time.
• He and my mother wanted us kids to have the chance to grow up outside of the city. They bought a house in the Ortonville, Michigan area. They owned that house for almost 20 years. My dad was born and raised in Detroit, so he wanted to show his family something other than city life. Prior to Ortonville, we had lived in Livonia, a suburb of Detroit.
• He spent countless hours trying to keep that old Ford tractor running so that he could mow the lawn or whatever else that he needed to do. Because we lived on a good size piece of property when we lived in the Ortonville area, he had to mow a couple of acres with a tractor, because a push mower would never have finished the job. He also used the tractor to clear the drive way of snow and to maintain the gravel driveway that we had (especially after a lot of rain had shifted things around).
• He was one of six bothers and three sisters, so I think that he passed on some of his big family ways to us. He used to say things like, “he who eats the fastest gets the mostest”, being silly, but if you didn’t eat quickly in the house that he grew up in, your portions would have been greatly reduced.
• He gave me a love of music. He is a far better singer than I am, but he has all sorts of music trivia that he seems to have passed on to me. Much of the music that I like can be attributed to his interest in the Beatles, Motown, and so on.
• He is proud of his Scottish heritage. He parents came over from Scotland and even came from the same town. I was fortunate enough to take a trip with him and my Aunt Betty to Scotland last year. It is a trip full of memories that I won’t forget! My sisters and I used to love to hear him sing the Scottish songs that he new (I still love to hear him sing them).
• He encouraged all of us to get a college education. My sister Heather learned the skilled trade of being a wood model maker and my sister Nicole did get an Associates Degree in medical billing, and I graduated from the University of North Texas, so we all did this to varying degrees (pun not intended)
• He taught all of us how to drive a car (and a manual transmission no less)! While we all had the driver’s education classes that were offered at our local high school, it was dad that took us all out in the car for the practice that we needed and where we really learned the mechanics of driving. The driver’s ed class only had automatic transmissions, so we all learned how to drive a stick from him.
• He showed mom a great deal of respect and you could tell that she was the love of his life.
• He has demonstrated that there is life after retirement. He always enjoyed his work and thought that he wouldn’t be able to retire, but he has found that he enjoys himself and has been able to travels a lot. Since I moved to Germany he has been here three times.
• He is optimistic, always looking at the bright side of things.
• He has perseverance. Michigan’s economy has always been boom or bust. Things tend to go well when the auto industry does well and badly when the auto industry is down. These boom and but cycles really affected the skilled trades (including plumbers) but he always managed to find a job. Looking back, he probably took some jobs that didn’t really excite him, but you never heard him complain about any of the jobs. He did eventually get a job with General Motors, where he was able to work at for several years before retiring.
• Since my mother passed away in 2001, he has had to take over some of her roles in the family. My sisters and I were all grown, so it isn’t like he had to be both parents for us as we were growing up, but families continue after the kids are grown (sometimes they might not be fully functional but life goes on). Sometimes he will do things with the grandkids to help out my sisters. Of course he doesn’t do things the way that mom would or did, but then nobody else can ever be mom.
• He moved back to Michigan to be near his family. I think that Michigan has always been in my dad’s heart, so I was surprised that mom was able to talk him into moving to the warmer climate of Las Vegas. They both loved it out there. After age and health seemed to have caught up to his siblings and two of his brothers passed away, he decided that he wanted to be nearer to his family back in Michigan, so he sold his place in Vegas. He seems to have sold that house at a good time, because the market has dropped in Vegas since then.
• This year he and a friend decided to go to Florida to experience baseball’s spring training. They watched a few games. When I heard about this I was reminded of those fantasy baseball camps that some people go to. I thought that he must have had a ball.
• He joined the “70” club. In March he became the 7^th of his siblings to turn 70. When I see the lifestyle that he leads, I can’t really imagine him being 70.
• In October, 2007 he had a heart attack and by-pass surgery. We were all surprised that he had a heart attack since he has led an active and mostly healthy lifestyle. He has been more active and concerned about his diet than most people his age. We were all relieved that he made it through the surgery alright and he recovered very well.

I have posted a picture of my dad holding me by his old milk truck in addition to a collage that I did of pictures from our trip to Paris in 2007. I feel most fortunate to have had dad as my dad! Maybe you can take some time out to let you dad know how much you care about him and thank him for some of those things that he did for you. For those of you celebrating Father’s Day later in the year, you still have time to do something nice for your dad, and even if your Father’s Day already passed, I’m sure that he would appreciate your thoughts and gestures later on as well! Has you father been there for you too? Do you have some fond memories of your father? If you have any other comments, I’d love to hear them. If you liked this article, please consider subscribing to the blog via RSS or email, share it on del.icio.us or on Digg and pass it on to anyone that you think might appreciate it. Thank you. :)

I recently posted an article about 100 posts at the DC Heron Family blog, feel free to check it out.

On Deck…

I’ll be publishing posts about…

• The next in my series of weight loss strategies
• My next Spotlight on the web.
• More on productivity, web 2.0, social networking, family, parenting, health, and other things that you can use.

Other Post That You Might Also Like to Read…

• Heart Check
• Who Mentored You
• Treat Others The Way That You Wish To Be Treated
• Easter Greeting…14 Principles for Dealing With Other People
• Are Your Assumptions Holding You Back?
• A Good Breakfast Is A Key To Your Weight Loss Success
• 7 Tips to Reduce the Amount of Sugar in Your Daily Diet
• 12 Tips to Help You Drink More Water
• 7 Tips to Help Stop Eating Before You Feel “Stuffed”
• 10 Tips for Reducing Fat in Your Diet
• 12 Benefits of “Letting Go”of Your Diet
• Why Not Have A Fruit Day?
• GTD Overview
• Gift Ideas for Those That Have Everything
• Keep Your Projects Simple Stupid
• Why Aren’t You Working Your “Someday/Maybe’ Projects?
• Teaching Our Kids About Money