Henderson's ICYouSee Handy-Dandy Chicken Chart has Moved to Sage Hen Farm

To the Point:
Here is the new address for ICYouSee Handy-Dandy Chicken Chart. To bad the old name no longer has the fun that ICYouSee, assume it was a play on IC being Ithaca College.
http://www.sagehenfarmlodi.com/chooks/chooks.html

I was recently doing a search for my favorite Handy-Dandy Chicken Chart and using my usual key words "Ithaca Chicken Chart" and noticed all these blogs where turning up with the link to the old address for Henderson's Chicken Chart. Hoping you find my blog before going through all the other blogs with the links to error message 404 address unknown. This is a great chart that gives you information about 60 breeds of chickens including their origin (year, location, breeding to create), nickname (Ameraucana aka The chipmunky blue-egger), how rare the breed is, the variety of colors they come in, expected weight, class and type (ex: layer, fancy, meat bird, five toes, bearded, etc), color of skin, color of comb, color of ears, egg color, egg size, egg quantity, time to maturity, ability to withstand cold and foul (or fowl) weather, broodiness, and my favorite behavior characteristics of the breed. This chart has been great for deciding which type of chicken to try out for the backyard.

I'll be providing a video on my blog in coming days on how to sex your duck. Actually, asking the duck its sex and letting it tell you using its own voice aka voice sexing a duck. Other options include vent sexing within a few days of birth, looks easy but can take some practice. The result is you find males and the rest are either females or males you could not EXPOSE. I tried it and found a male and then could not make it happen again on the same duckling. You can also sex them based on the male having the drake feather, the feather that curls up in the air at the back of the duck. Or you can sex them later when they will mount every duck and often chicken they can get a hold of.

I should mention that Henderson provides great links for more information on each breed with the help of the following sites and many more links specific to each breed:

Barry Koffler's Feather Site with some great pictures
http://www.feathersite.com/

Poultry Pages
http://www.poultrypages.com/index.php

Live Stock Conservancy - more information on breeds.
http://www.livestockconservancy.org/

Go visit John and support the Henderson's/ Sagen Hen Farm at Ithaca farmers' market, if you are in town.
http://www.sagehenfarmlodi.com/sagehenfarm.html

ICYouSee does live on as John's .org and has the cool chicken drawings
http://www.icyousee.org/

Other of my Favorite Sites:
Great sites for your backyard chickens/ducks
http://www.backyardchickens.com/


Here is a screen shot, so get on over there and pick out your next chicken breed.

The old address which is no longer valid and will give you the 404 screen as seen below is:
http://www.ithaca.edu/staff/jhenderson/chooks/chooks.html

Gmail - Have Sent mail showup in your Inbox

Do you use Gmail and want your sent mail to show up in your Inbox?

When you send an email it can be seen in the sent Label/Folder but is not in the Inbox. If you have the conversation thread feature turned on you will see your replies but otherwise you need to go to the sent messages or archive/All Mail. You might not like this and if you use Thunderbird/Outlook or some other external program on your computer or smart phone for reading mail via IMAP. When you reply to someone your answer is in your Sent Folder and not in the Inbox folder of the message you are replying to. You might want them together and usually delete many of the thread except for the last one in the conversation. Personally, I see no reason to keep forever a message saying, "sure meet you in an hour" and all those replies, junk that makes later searches for important emails that much harder. So, you want that message in your Inbox for quick delete. Yes, you can always go to your Sent mail Folder if you want to do it that way but you might not want to jump back and forth between Folders.

Like the feature of Labels instead of folders. Resulting in emails having the ability to have multiple Labels and thereby be visible in multiple Label searches (what you might think of as Folder views).

This is all great and you can create filters to have your mail automatically have added labels and even skip the Inbox. Great way to have all your mail from a certain person, specific subject line, automatically get a special label and even forwarded to others automatically. Unfortunately, there is no obvious add Inbox Label to mail I send.

Solution via Gmail Filters

Create a filter with the From having the two letters "me". This filter will catch all mail coming from you and then in the actions select "Never mark as spam".  This will cause your mail to no longer skip the Inbox and get that special label added. Result, all emails you send will now be visible in Sent and Inbox via GMail web interface and remote access via IMAP driven applications. There is not a solution to have labels added based on the label of the message you are replying to, for that see Thunderbird bonus below.

Solution via Thunderbird

A solution I have used for years is to configure Thunderbird to place a copy of sent messages in the Inbox. This works great with two drawbacks and one nice advantage. Drawback one is every email is sent to the IMAP server twice. Once to send the message and once to place the copy in the Inbox. This results in double bandwidth usage and can be slow when sending large attachments. Second drawback, it only works when sending via Thunderbird and when you use your smartphone or GMail web interface you won't get the message in the Inbox requiring another work around of including yourself to be placed in one of the To/CC/BCC fields. The nice bonus feature of using Thunderbird to copy your sent messages to your Inbox is you can specify in case of reply to put the message in the folder to which you are replying. This mostly works but note if the email a la GMail labels has multiple labels, aka is in more then one folder, Thunderbird will just label it with the folder from which you hit reply and not add all the labels. How to: Open your settings in Thunderbird, select "Copies & Folders", select "Place a copy in:" and select "Other:" put in your GMail Inbox. For the bonus select "Place replies in the folder of the message being replied to".

 

Solution via To/CC/BCC

Another solution is to include your email address in the To, CC, or BCC list of recipients. The message will then show up in your Inbox. This is the oldest solution and works with many mail providers but often results in you being told you have new mail and it might show up as unread vs. the other two solutions which have the message marked as read.

Direct Marketing via External Devices

It's time has finally arrived. We have seen it in the movies for decades but now it is here. This year you will finally see large screens on highway billboards supplying custom advertising. The screen in the mall and in shop windows will do the same. As you are driving on the highway or walking by a store front, the GPS on your phone will announce your presence and the screen in the store window or billboard on the highway will provide a custom advertisement to you.

Based on your shopping habits and needs it will decide what you should see. Your phone bill is too high, it will suggest a price and switch to a new provider. Walk by the Gap and it will see you last bought pants 2 years ago so time to suggest a discount on pants. Already working is your phone will receive a message with a special offer.

Try to stay calm and not get paranoid about our Orwellian existence.