Slipstream - August 2017

The Tub Club: Tour to Blueberry Hill Farms
By Barbara Madsen
Photos courtesy of the Author
y better half, Doug Madsen, organized a scenic
drive to Blueberry Hill Farms in Edom.
M
Carefully prepared directions were passed
out to the people attending, so everyone
knew the route before beginning the tour.
For the most part, we traveled country roads flanked
by colorful wildflowers on each side. Even many of the
surrounding fields were filled with yellow flowers, adding
to the beauty of the drive. We passed through numerous
ranches with their livestock calmly munching
on the grass. A few of the ranches had Texas longhorn
cattle, and I had to wonder
how they managed to
navigate the terrain with
such immense horns. If I
were one of those cows,
my neck would have
been tired and sore from
holding up the weight of
those gigantic horns!
Our destination not
only had endless fields
filled with blueberry and
blackberry plants; it also
Who else would be peeking
out but Linda Bambina?
had a store containing a variety of delectable delights.
Besides the expected items such as fresh pies and hot
mango salsa, there were many unique items: blueberry
mustard, cherry barbecue sauce, and blueberry nut
honey butter. Of course, we were also able to purchase
fresh blueberries and blackberries. One did not need
to walk away hungry from such a place as this.
Thank you, Doug, for a fun and colorful drive
through East Texas. The blueberry yogurt added just
the right touch to our experience that day.
QR Codes: A Quick Way to Access Online Maverick Content
By Landon Stogner
Image courtesy of the Author
ave you ever wondered what those crazy
H
pixelated pictures are that you see popping
up in magazines and on product packaging?
Did you think that they might be some
inkblot test you must pass so you’re not committed to
the Looney Bin, or maybe, if you stared long enough a
picture would jump into focus? Well the fact is they are
called Quick Response Codes, or QR Codes for short.
QR Codes are a type of two-dimensional barcode
that originally got their start in the mid-90’s in the
automotive industry. They were first used in Japan to
track the vehicles during their different manufacturing
stages of the assembly line. This was done because they
are machine readable optical labels that contains information
about the item of which was attached. These
codes are standardized into four different modes to
help efficiently store data. This is all done by using
numbers, letters, binary and kanji. Kanji is a Japanese
term referring to logographic.
Having the code’s ability of being read at fast speeds
is what helped gain their popular use outside of the
automotive world. The QR codes have greater data
storage than the normal UPC barcodes we see so often.
The QR codes can hold item identification, marketing,
product information, or even redirect you to a website.
Strangely enough this is all done by black squares
arranged in a square grid on a white background. This
pattern allows for imaging devices such as cameras to
read, process, and extract the data so it can presented.
Over the past 20 years or so, many changes have
taken place on the standards used and how the data
is encoded. Thanks to these changes, any person with
an everyday smartphone can now have the power to
scan and read these QR Codes. Just tap on over to your
device’s App Store, search for “QR Code Scanner”, and
choose one of the many free apps to download. I’m
currently using an App called QR Code Reader by Scan.
In the future we would like to start using QR codes
more to benefit us within the
club. We can use them for voting
at People’s Choice Concours,
RVSP’ing to social events, and
registering for Tour & Rally
Drives. Our options are almost
limitless. Give this one a try!
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