This is the time of year there are many
bugs going around to make us miserable. Worse yet, some come
back during the same season. In
general, flu symptoms tend to be more severe than cold
symptoms, but do not last as long. Here are a few ways
to tell whether you have a cold or the flu.
- Symptoms of a cold
usually come on gradually, but symptoms of the flu can
appear suddenly.
- Symptoms such as
sneezing, stuffy nose, and sore throat are more common with
colds than with the flu.
- People with the
flu usually develop a fever, but people with colds rarely
do.
- The flu often
causes body aches and headaches, which can be severe. If you
have a cold, aches are usually mild.
- The flu can cause
serious complications, such as pneumonia or bacterial
infections, but such compilations are rare with colds.
- You can get a
seasonal flu vaccine to reduce the severity of flu each
year, but there is no vaccine to protect from the common
cold.
- Washing your hands
frequently can help prevent either cold or flu.
There is no cure for the
common cold, but relief includes: stay hydrated, get rest,
soothe a sore throat, combat stuffiness, relieve pain. etc. All
are common sense, and should help you feel better for the week
or two it takes to shake that nasty cold. Antibiotics attack
bacteria, but they are no help against cold viruses.
Antiviral medications do not cure, but can help alleviate some
of flu symptoms, and many of the remedies for cold apply to the
flu as well, including taking medicine for headaches. Flu
symptoms usually are gone in a short time and do not linger as a
cold does.
Regardless of whether you have a cold or the flu, the illness
will usually go away on its own, but you should visit your
doctor if your symptoms change or get worse. If you get
either a cold or flu, please stay home and do not share.
Laughter is like a
push-up bra for your personality.
Now I understand why I like laughter so much, especially on a
Happy Friday!
If you
have a 4th generation Apple TV box and want to reduce the loud
sounds to equalize volume during some parts of shows, press the
microphone on your Apple remote and say to Siri, "Reduce loud
sounds." It will change the internal settings until you change
it again.
Since the
last time I wrote about TVs some new acronyms have popped up. If
you are buying a TV for the future these are important, but if
you are buying a TV for short term, (the next few years) almost
all of these are not important. The reason they are not
important is because almost no one is broadcasting to take
advantage of 4K, HDR-10, (Dolby), except some Netflix and Bluray
DVDs.
Smart TV - These sets are good to have now and the
majority of new TVs are smart TVs. They allow access to the
internet from your home WiFi and provide access to Netflix,
YouTube, Hulu, and more without the need for a separate box. Many Smart TVs give you a full web browser,
so you can use a search engine or visit websites. Some let you
play interactive online games.
4K UHD - these ultra-high-definition televisions offer
four times the resolution of a standard 1080p HDTV. Instead of a
screen that has about 2 million pixels, these televisions show
about 8 million pixels.
HDR-10, Dolby Vision - I lump these two, High Dynamic
Range and Dolby10 together, because they are competing
technologies, kind of like the old Betamax / VHS argument. Some
manufactures are using one vs. the other and some have both. HDR
is currently winning, because it is open source while
manufacturers must pay royalties to Dolby for its technology.
Many advertisements refer to them simply as Dolby and HDR.
The first of the two
major differences between Dolby Vision and HDR-10 is that Dolby
uses 12 bits per color (red, green, and blue), where HDR-10 uses
10 bits per color. The second, Dolby Vision uses dynamic, or
continuous metadata so that color and brightness levels can be
adjusted per scene, or even frame-by-frame basis. HDR-10 uses
static metadata that is sent only once at the beginning of the
video. Both reproduce a wider range of brightness levels, higher
contrast ratio, and richer colors. Contrast ratio is the
measurement of the difference in brightness between the whitest
white and the darkest black. When seen side by side with non-HDR
content, HDR-enhanced video is incredibly bright and with
vibrant colors. Samples show a very positive marked difference.
Some TVs use OLED (Organic Light Emitting Diode)
screens for a superior image and other benefits. Televisions
packed with organic light-emitting diodes are incredibly thin,
because each pixel is its own light source, so backlighting is
not required. These televisions are more energy efficient than
other TV panel types. Some LG TVs are as thin as four credit
cards. Quantum
dot or QLED TVs can match the contrast ratio of OLED.
Quantum dots are microscopic dots about a fraction of the width
of a human hair.Samsung uses the term Quantum Dot.
Bottom line, you can
get 4K UHD, HDR (Dolby), OLED on one TV. Every 4K is UHD by
definition. Almost all TVs are LED, but very few are OLED or
Quantum dot. Most TVs are now Smart TVs.
Incidentally, DolbyVision is for pictures and Dolby Atmos is
for sound.
In the
winter of 1949, BB King played at a dance hall in Twist,
Arkansas. The hall was heated by a barrel half-filled with
burning kerosene, a fairly common practice at the time. During a
performance, two men began to fight, knocking over the barrel
and sending burning fuel across the floor. The hall burst into
flames, and the building was evacuated.
Once outside, King
realized that he had left his guitar inside so he went back into
the burning building to retrieve his beloved $30 Gibson guitar.
King learned the next day that the two men that started the fire
had been fighting over a woman who worked at the hall named
Lucille. King named that guitar, and every guitar he
subsequently owned, Lucille, as a reminder never again to do
something as stupid as run into a burning building or fight over
a woman.
“Like a
welcome summer rain, humor may suddenly cleanse and cool the
earth, the air and you." ~ Langston Hughes
For those of you who may wish to get an antenna and ditch cable,
check the TV you have and the next one you buy. Some
manufacturers have begun to eliminate the tuner in order to save
costs.
A TV tuner is a device
that converts digital over-the-air channels for viewing on
compatible displays and TVs. If you get a TV without a tuner,
you will need some kind of converter box, such as an HDTV
Digital TV Converter box with HDMI output. You can also get a
DVR that will turn an antenna into HDMI cable. This way not only
do you get OTA but a DVR to record your shows.
External TV tuners cost
from fifteen US dollars up to multiple hundreds of dollars and
can be as small as a USB stick up to the size of a cigar box.
You can also buy a TV tuner card for a PC and turn it into a
television.
The natural tendency to see faces in objects or patterns.
It is the
psychological phenomenon that causes some people to see or hear
a vague or random image or sound as something significant.
Pronounced par-i-DOH-lee-a.
If happiness lives in
your soul, a smile will adorn your face.
My soul keeps me
smiling, especially on a Happy Friday!
