Authorgander

Product Manager in Tech. Guitar player. Bicycle Rider. Dog rescuer. Techie.

Hand Dryers – The Dyson Airblade

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An embarrassingly long time ago, I had my first encounter with a Dyson Airblade hand dryer. I don’t remember when, or where, but I do recall it being the only touchless, air dryer that actually friggin’ worked to get my hands dry. Insert your hands past your wrists, and slowly withdraw, and BAM, your hands were dry. As dry or even drier than using 3 paper towels. Awesome. Fast forward to today...

Line of Duty

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I have been on a tear, watching British television shows, and especially their police procedurals. It began with Hinterland, then expanded into Broadchurch, and Wallander. All very enjoyable, all top quality. While searching for something in the same vein, Barbara found a recommendation for “Line of Duty“, and while it isn’t on Netflix, it was on Hulu. Unlike the other police...

Recipes and Inaccuracies

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I enjoy cooking. Always have, heck, I worked my way through college in a commercial kitchen as a chef. So, when I get a hankering for something, I just cook it. Either learn to cook it, or just dive in. A few weeks ago, my sister was visiting, and I decided to make a Dutch Baby, and I found this recipe on the Epicurious web page. The recipe is simple, the ingredients aren’t esoteric, and I...

Frustrating Network Issues

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Over the holidays, I bit the bullet and completed digitizing my DVD and BD collection in an effort to make it vastly more convenient to watch from the comfort of my couch. As part of this I bought the components for, and built an Intel NUC box into the Plex Media Server. With me so far? Good. That worked great, and I had a quite robust workflow for creating the digital files needed. I had plenty...

To Convert or Not to Convert

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To convert or not to Convert, that is the question. When processing Bluray discs for adding to my Plex media server, I have a workflow. First, use MakeMKV to rip the media to an .mkv file, then it can be uploaded to the Plex directory and made available. However, these files are large. Scratch that, they are friggin HUGE. Alien for example is 30GB. Disks are cheap, so why even bother converting...

Vintage Nonsense: Retro Mountain Bikes

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Vintage is all the rage. Hipsters and their vinyl LP’s, even cassette tapes (who the hell wants to remember that shitty format), film cameras, and other things “old”. As things go, most of this is harmless, and in fact, while I will not admit that vinyl sounds better, it is different and part of the charm is the physical act of dropping the needle on the album, and having to turn it over after it...

Wallander – Review

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I have been meaning to write about a show that I watched on Netflix that was quite enjoyable, the BBC production of Wallander. A police procedural, with a backstory, right up my alley. The series is adapted from the Wallander thriller novels penned by Henning Mankell, a Swedish author. The series starts with the principal protagonist, Kurt Wallander, just after he become the DI (Detective...

Music in the New Year

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I know that I post often about my musical travails, as I wove my path between the various services, Spotify, Apple, Google, Pandora, and Amazon, so this is another installment. The last episode found me back in Spotify, cancelling my Apple Music service. Partly this was due to my desire to back away from the Apple ecosystem, but also because Spotify is vastly superior to iTunes in streaming on my...

Reflections of 2017, and looking to 2018

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Ah, December 31, the year is about done, and there are some thoughts clanking around my head. Time to extract them before the temptation to eat myself into a coma wins the battle. Number 1 – Work It has been a good and busy year at work. I am currently in the certifications group at Cisco, and while it is product management, it is different from my prior roles. In many ways that is...

Plex Media Server – Workflow

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In the learning path for the population of my media collection as it transitions from disc based media to a disk drive, I have discovered a few truths that I will share. There are some useful tools to “rip” your media. These are the essential first step in the process, to get your media from the source into a format that can be worked with. The next topic is what sort of transcoding...

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