While it May Not be the Best, You CAN Hydrate with Coffee

Coffee – The study “A randomized trial to assess the potential of different beverages to affect hydration status: development of a beverage hydration index” published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition indicates that coffee does not cause dehydration as previously thought.

A study of the effect of coffee published in 1928 had set the thinking that because coffee is a diuretic, it would not help in hydration. The new, more comprehensive study indicates that coffee will contribute to hydration. While coffee is certainly inferior to water for hydration, coffee will help regardless of the many trips to the restroom it may cause.

Trailer for “Revolt”

Trailers – This isn’t a big budget science fiction movie, but it looks interesting. I checked IMDB and it only indicates 2017 for a US release. Could be it will be digital and DVD only release in the US. The synopsis (from IMDB) is:

The story of humankind’s last stand against a cataclysmic alien invasion. Set in the war-ravaged African countryside, a U.S. soldier and a French foreign aid worker team up to survive the alien onslaught. Their bond will be tested as they search for refuge across a crumbling world.

The main character is played by Lee Pace. He is an American soldier in some war-torn African nation when aliens invade Earth. He, and a French foreign aid worker played by Berenice Marlohe, try to evade the aliens and fight back.

Review of “Death’s Door”

Book Reviews – “Death’s Door” eBook was published in 2012 and was written by James R. Benn (http://www.jamesrbenn.com). Mr. Benn has published 10 novels in his “Billy Boyle World War II Mystery” series. This is the seventh book in the series.

I purchased this novel through Barnes & Nobles for the Nook reader. I categorize this novel as ‘PG’ because it contains scenes of Violence. The story is set in and around Vatican City during 1944. The primary character is Billy Boyle, an American Army Lieutenant.

Rome is occupied by the German army, but the Vatican City has not been invaded. An American monsignor living in the Vatican is murdered. Boyle, along with his sidekick, Polish Baron Lieutenant Piotr “Kaz” Kazimierz, are smuggled into the Vatican under orders to find the murderer. This is a windfall for Boyle, as his girlfriend, Diana Seaton, who had been undercover for the British as a nun at the Vatican, has been arrested. Boyle sees the assignment as an opportunity to rescue her, as well as solve the murder.

Boyle finds the Vatican to be far more complicated than his time as a Catholic alter boy prepared him for. There are many different factions within the Vatican. Not all support the liberation by the Allies. Boyle also finds himself confronted by German agents and old adversaries .

I thoroughly enjoyed the 10+ hours I spent reading this World War II Mystery. I have now read the first seven books in the series and have enjoyed them all. I like the characters of Boyle and Kaz, as well as the other continuing characters in the series. The cover art does give the impression of intrigue between the church and Germany. I give this novel a 5 out of 5.

My book reviews are also published on Goodreads (https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/31181778-john-purvis).

macOS New app Release – AutoMailer 2.5

Product Announcement – Tension Software of Milano, Italy has released AutoMailer 2.5 for macOS. AutoMailer 2.5 allows users to send personalized emails to multiple addresses, in text or web format, each merged with data from an internal database. It users allows to prepare and send an unlimited quantity of emails with a single click, each with custom contents depending of each recipient.

Emails sent by AutoMailer are standard emails. People receiving the emails will not notice any difference compared to standard emails and they will be able to reply to them as usually. AutoMailer is document based and allows to use as many documents you need to manage all the different list and required emails. AutoMailer is a flexible tools to manage your mailing list directly from your Mac.

AutoMailer is able to import from external sources in a smart and simply way. The user can import addresses and any kind of data from any database able to export in text format, both CSV (comma separated value),TSV (Tab separated value), CSV-S (Char separated Value using semicolon). The application is able to automatically detect during imports, the data type and the file encode method to provide imports of data without any problems.

Data imported into AutoMailer are managed in the internal, easy to use, document table. Data can be modified, updated and enlarged with new additional data at any time. Various commands provide manipulation of internal records in a fast and intuitive way. AutoMailer can handle large data array all in memory.

Also available is an ‘Except’ list of address you can maintain, to provide a list of addresses that will never be used to send, to be sure to never send anything to those addresses. The template email used to merge data from the internal database table can be written both in text or in html to send emails in text or web format (also including pictures linked from a support server)

AutoMailer provides for html emails, at any time, a live preview or the email the user is composing. Emails can be previewed also for any address the user want to send to, with all the data merged for any of those users, simply selecting it from a list.

All the emails can be prepared or sent with a single command, with the capability to send them via an email server, one by one, specifying an interval time between each sending. The application can prepare all the emails using the Mail.app installed on any Mac and then manually send them or sending directly all them with a single command (as a standard email client) via an email server you have access to.

AutoMailer can auto-prepare via Mail.app and you have to manually press the send button inside Mail.app, or the app can auto-send accessing directly your Mail server, without the use of Apple Mail.app.

AutoMailer has a new improved mail server connect function (PLAIN, PLAIN SSL, SSL) and can test your connection (without sending) to better set it. It can manage now an unlimited number of servers settings and stores your server passwords encrypted

Settings, data and email templates are saved inside documents, ready to be reused at later time reopening the documents. The user can prepare email templates inserting content of the database table using a simple syntax (a popup offers all the available field tags to access tabled data, without having to type them).

AutoMailer provides a lot of additional functionalities to help the user do his job in the best way, they are too much to list all. Further, one of the goal of AutoMailer is to be easy of use. Anyone with a minimum of familiarity with the Mac will be able to use AutoMailer at best efficiency using all the potentiality of the app in a very intuitive way.

Features:

• Document based, allows to save data and setting and have them ready for successive uses
• Can create and send both text or web (html) emails
• Possibility to manage an infinite number of data and letter template thanks to the document based approach with maximum flexibility of use.
• Big emphases on simplicity and easy of use.
• Elimination of duplicated and invalid emails.
• Extreme easy to import, create and manipulate data to use for merge with letter template
• Imports form various encoding format from Unix, mac, Windows
• Import from Tab separated values, Comma separated values, semicolon separated values
• Table view with possibility to add, delete rows (records) and columns (fields) at any time and to edit in place inside the table
• Easy import with automatic detection of format and with selection of data source elements and destination (data fields) and browsing of source data in advance (before importing)
• Very simple creation of email templates with keywords insertion to put database data inside the emails for any email recipient
• Automatically updated popup to insert data tags inside the email template
• Emails with attachments
• Live preview for any email to send with updated data (you see the email as the recipient will see it) both for text and html emails
• Can send a single email, a subset or all the emails
• Can just prepare the email, to send them at later time manually from inside Mail.app
• Can use and send directly via an external mail server
• Can manage an unlimited number of server
• Store your server passwords encrypted
• Log monitoring of email preparation and sending
• Any area benefits of search features on the contained data
• PDF user guide inside the app.

What’s new:

• Now accept multiple emails in the destination email field, also tag value (resolved at merge time from the internal table) are accepted.
• Various bug fix
• Optimized for macOS 10.12 Sierra

System Requirements:

• OS X 10.10 or later
• Optimized for macOS 10.12 Sierra
• 64-bit processor
• 8.6 MB

AutoMailer 2 – Version 2.5 is $49.99 USD (or an equivalent amount in other currencies) and is available worldwide through the Mac App Store in the Productivity category. It also available through the Tension Software website.

A Look at D-Day, June 6, 1944

WWII – I wish I had seen this back on June 6 so that I could have posted it then, but I only became aware of it today. While this is on YouTube, it is a compilation of slides, both of text and photos, telling the story of the D-Day invasion.

To quote the YouTube posting:

The Normandy landings (codenamed Operation Neptune) were the landing operations on Tuesday, 6 June 1944 (termed D-Day) of the Allied invasion of Normandy in Operation Overlord during World War II. The largest seaborne invasion in history, the operation began the liberation of German-occupied northwestern Europe from Nazi control, and contributed to the Allied victory on the Western Front.

On D-Day, the Allies landed around 156,000 troops in Normandy. The American forces landed numbered 73,000: 23,250 on Utah Beach, 34,250 on Omaha Beach, and 15,500 airborne troops. In the British and Canadian sector, 83,115 troops were landed: 24,970 on Gold Beach, 21,400 on Juno Beach, 28,845 on Sword Beach, and 7900 airborne troops.

11,590 aircraft were available to support the landings. On D-Day, Allied aircraft flew 14,674 sorties, and 127 were lost.

In the airborne landings on both flanks of the beaches, 2,395 aircraft and 867 gliders of the RAF and USAAF were used on D-Day.

Operation Neptune involved huge naval forces, including 6,939 vessels: 1,213 naval combat ships, 4,126 landing ships and landing craft, 736 ancillary craft and 864 merchant vessels. Some 195,700 personnel were assigned to Operation Neptune: 52,889 US, 112,824 British, and 4,988 from other Allied countries.

By the end of 11 June (D + 5), 326,547 troops, 54,186 vehicles and 104,428 tons of supplies had been landed on the beaches.

Short Science Fiction Video “Expo”

This is a well done, short (12:05) Science Fiction video, but I found the dialog a little hard to follow. It was published on YouTube in May of 2017. The synopsis is:

Female astro-miner Shona has been mining under dangerous conditions on the moon for the past two years in order to pay for expensive medical treatments in hopes of saving her bed-ridden daughter Darla, and now that her tour is completed, a younger astronaut Paige has come to replace her. Shona is reluctant to return to the world she once knew, but in meeting Paige realizes that returning to Earth isn’t where she’ll find peace – she will have to return home.

This was produced by DUST, which is the first multi-platform destination for binge watchable sci-fi. We feature science fiction short films and other content from emerging filmmakers with stunning visual effects, captivating plots and complex character explorations. Robots, aliens, space exploration, technology, and human experience are all a part of DUST.

Game of Thrones Fan Made Season 7 “Ultimate Trailer”

Trailers , GoT – This new fan made 3:17 trailer compiles all that has been released thus far from season 7.

It looks to be a good, though regrettably short, season! Fortunately we don’t have long to wait now until season 7 premiers on July 17.

 

macOS New App Release – Notenik 3.0

Product Announcement – PowerSurge Publishing of Seattle, Washington has released Notenik 3.0 for macOS. Does the Mac world really need another note-taking app? Perhaps not, and yet a new one, Notenik, has recently entered this crowded field. For users seeking cutting-edge user interface design, all we can say is: best move along, this is not the app you were looking for. Similarly, for those who have been beguiled by the notion that a “note” consists of all sorts of odds and ends other than text, Notenik will not be their cup of tea.

For those who can get beyond these two limitations, however, Notenik may yet appeal with its unique set of features:

• Free and open-source software
• A simple, consistent user interface that is easy to understand
• All notes stored in plain text in transparent locations easily accessible to users
• Notes organized into as many separate collections as desired
• The ability to add additional fields to notes within a specific collection
• Notes stored in a dead-simple “label-colon-data” format that can be easily created, read and modified with any text editor, on any platform
• Simple syncing using Dropbox, iCloud or any other file-syncing service
• A flexible, powerful tagging scheme that places tags within each note, so that they can be easily transported to any device and any platform
• The ability to format notes using Markdown, and to convert such text to HTML, for use on the Web
• An extensible paradigm that can be used, for example, to store bookmarks and tasks, in addition to plain old notes.

If some of these features sound intriguing, then it may be worth a free download to check out Notenik and give it a trial run. If you find anything missing or amiss, then the developer is happy to receive feedback.

System Requirements:

• macOS Sierra
• 64-bit processor
• 200MB

Notenik 3.0 is free, and is available at the Notenik website.

Star Wars Fam Film “Countdown”

Star Wars – This is another good, short (7:36), but sadly not quite complete, Star Wars Fan film. The film was published on YouTube in February of 2017. The synopsis of the story is:

In a desperate attempt to save the future, Xenia travels back in time to a pivotal moment in history–the untimely assassination of Senator Desera–hoping that by saving the senator, she can change the course of history for the better.

The film was produced by Rogue Zhou Productions. I thought that it was a well done film. Unfortunately, as you will see in the video, one of the actresses was injured preventing completion of the story.

macOS New App Release – URL Extractor 4.5.1

Product Announcement – Tension Software of Milano, Italy has released URL Extractor 4.5.1 for macOS, their app designed to extract emails and other URLs from the web and from local files in batch mode.

URL Extractor can be used to extract thousands of email addresses or other URLs, as example web addresses, in various modes:

Inserting (or importing) a list of web page addresses, the app will use those web pages as a seed to start to collect data and visit linked pages, proceeding in a background navigation to the requested deep level collecting data till the user decide to stop.

Inserting (or importing) a list of keywords and using them as a starting point to run a search on a user specified search engine. The app will use the obtained pages to proceed in a navigation and data collection to the requested deep level till the user decide

Specifying a list of files and folders on the local hard disk to extract from and extracting in all the subfolder at any deep level

It can work attended or in batch mode extracting for hours from the web in a completely autonomous mode. The user can watch, during extraction, the URLs filling the table as they are extracted. Filters can be used to decide what to accept or exclude. The extracted URL will be ready to be saved on disk for later use for any purpose.

The app uses various settings that can be modified to find the right balance for any search and extraction. URL Extractor can extract from any kind of file encoded as text, HTML included and also from PDF files (both locally and online). URL Extractor uses a new extraction engine taking advantage of the latest Cocoa technologies.

Features:

• Can extract email address, web address, ftp address, feed, telnet, local file URL and others.
• Extract from any text file and from PDF
• Has a new modern engine using the latest Cocoa and Objective-C 2.0 technology
• Extracts from multiple file inside folders, to any level of nesting (also thousand and thousand of files)
• Extracts directly from the web cross navigating web pages in background. No user action required!
• Extracts on search engines starting from keywords and navigating in all the linked pages in an unlimited navigation from one page to the successive, all this just starting from a single keyword
• Google and Bing extraction from specific international google sites with URL extraction more focused on individual country and language.
• Url table for live web extraction
• Extracts web address, ftp address, email address, feed, telnet, local file URL, news and generic emails
• Drag and Drop of files and URLs to process
• Option for single domain extraction
• Uses various country search engines .com .it .fr . au .uk .de and .es .ar .au .at .be .br .ca .fi .nl .se .ch .jp .cn
• Each URL is collected with the source URL (URL from where it was extracted) listed in another column
• Advanced URL export capabilities
• Ability to specify a custom client app name to declare connecting to the servers or google
• Black list (do not extract from here)
• Import export to/from black list
• Uses macOS only features as Resume, Auto Save, Versions, Full screen.
• includes a PDF user guide

New in this release:

• Solved a problem sometime arising when collecting web address containing an ampersand
• Solved a bug regarding Reset button of collected URLs
• Introduced warning dialog signaling block by Google
• Other bug fixes
• Optimized for macOS 10.12 Sierra

System Requirements:

• OS X 10.10 or later
• Optimized for macOS Sierra 10.12
• 64-bit processor
• 5.1 MB

URL Extractor 4 – Version 4.5.1 is just $49.99 USD (or an equivalent amount in other currencies) and is available worldwide through the Mac App Store in the Productivity category. The app is also available from the Tension Software website.