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...
This morning, I had a meeting with someone who was interested in collaborating on a project. We picked a small boutique coffee shop near my office (that I selfishly could walk to) and a time that seemed to be between the morning rush, and their noontime bump. Fortunately, the person I was meeting got there plenty early to grab a table. Holy shit, that place was packed at 9:45. People talking...
As a long time Apple person, and a dedicated Mac user, starting with Mavericks, I had stopped using Apple’s built in mail client. I stopped using it for a variety of reasons, but essentially, the integration with Google mail really became, uh, shitty. Really weird, unreliable connections to the Gmail IMAP server, and finally I just gave up. I also subscribe to a mailing list of some really...
As a voracious reader, who primarily focuses on Science Fiction, I do branch out. One genre that I enjoy is the detective thriller. This penchant can be traced to my love of the Doc Savage stories of my youth, and has jumped into some more or less serious threads of what I read. From the flippant Stephanie Plum novels (a guilty, fun pleasure) to the work by J.A. Jance, I have enjoyed many a cliff...
Back to the real world. I have re-immersed myself in the learning required to build a little automated, web connected weather station. I have been learning a lot about working with the Arduino (proto boards built around the Atmel ATMega 328 microcontroller), and have added some goodies around connecting sensors, working first with a 1 wire humidity and temperature sensor, and soon to come some...