A recent life change is forcing me to become more organized, and to remove chaos from some areas. One key area is my digital address book(s). Over the years, with my haphazard adoption of new technologies and platforms, it was inevitable that my growing list of contacts split among several services, would fester and be a moldering mess. There are definite epochs in my contacts. The first...
At the beginning of the year, there was a monstrous downtime at my host that was the final straw. I has a VPS there for a little over 2 years, and while at first it was rock solid and awesome, it had become less reliable through the summer of 2015. There were several down times, that were resolved with a reboot, or restarting the Apache server, or the mysql server. Not too big of a deal. Then the...
Who still uses their Yellow Pages local directory? Really, when was the last time you actually looked up a phone number or a service in there? Be honest. Or, are you like 99.3% of the population who just hits google on their smartphone, and off you go? Or checks out Yelp for reviews. For the last 10 years or so, we would get our new directory in the early spring, recycle the old one, and put it...
As I continue on my journey to record and capture some of the music in my head, I have come to a realization. Alas, my preponderance of playing solo, and without others, I lack something of the ability to “fit“. This will take some ‘splaining… When listening to an orchestra, you hear the whole piece together, where all parts fit. From the woodwinds, to the strings, to the...
As I mentioned on Friday, I am taking a break from Facebook. I did a little bit of this in mid 2015, and one of the hard lessons learned was how pervasive Facebook is across the web for the SSO (single sign on) convenience. Sigh. At that time, I was astounded at how many places that Facebook had wormed their way into for validation and authentication. My Strava, Spotify, and others were all tied...
The bad day happened. No, not the actual decision and act to send Tate across the rainbow bridge because his seizures were escalating, and he was beginning to suffer the consequences. That was not a good day, but at least we could comfort ourselves knowing that we did the best we could for him. No, the call came from the vet, Tate’s remains were ready for us. Wow, a ton of bricks...
I am going to step back from the great time suck that is Facebook. Sadly, it it taking too much of my time, and is too addicting. Being on my phone, my ipad, and on the browsers, it is just too damn available, and irresistible. I will be sad that I am going to miss some epic meme’s and other fun stuff, and I will also miss the hilarity of some of the communities I am a part of. Yet, I still...
I have played guitar a long time. Like 33 + years (I hate to think how long it has been, really). While I don’t play out much (or at all) anymore, I did get to a certain level of proficiency. Sitting on the couch, noodling, or jamming in my man-cave, it sounds pretty good, if I do say so myself. Alas, I never had any recording gear, having not prioritized that, but I recently rectified that...
My latest Netflix binging is the ITV adaptations of the Agatha Christie stories “Poirot”. 12 season, beginning in 1989, and concluding in 2012 (not continuously of course), set in the pre-war England, they are intriguing tales of suspense, and the sleuthing of Hercule Poirot, the Belgian investigator. Ok, not really binging, but I have been watching them, and just broke into the 5th...
Continuing on the thread of projects, my ultimate goal is to build a two station weather station that has in interior display of inside and outside temperature, and outside humidity/temperature readings, ultimately logging it to one of my websites, and then displaying it in graphical form. This weekend, I got a little bit closer. I learnt how to hook up an LCD display to an Arduino system, how to...