Since my Fitbit Force was recalled earlier this year, I’d been pining for a simple motivational aid. Microsoft’s Band looks awesome, but it’s sold out as soon as they get another batch of units. The Garmin VivoSmart had some interesting features, but lacks stair climbs (important to me because I do so much of that in a […]
Fitbit Charge HR review Read More »
(Continued from part 1.) Day 5 was a rest day in Jasper. Unlike Day 2, when I really wanted a rest day, I was feeling well enough that I would have preferred continuing. On the other hand, I seriously enjoyed the slow, sit-down meals where I wasn’t swatting mosquitos off my legs. I wandered around town, avoiding the anchovy-loving
Cycle Canada – Icefields Parkway Part 2 Read More »
Cycle Canada – Icefields Parkway trip summary: 9 days, 582 miles, 26k elevation gain, 95 geocaches and a hundred insect bites. Back in the darkest weeks of December, while visiting my parents in the Houston area, I was hunkered down on the couch, enjoying an escape (summer) fantasy with a copy of Adventure Cycling’s smörgåsbord of 2014 rides. While
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It’s been a couple of years since I took the Cheese-Making class at PCC, but while thumbing through their course list again, I had the urge to try it again. The last couple of weeks have been experimenting with: Yogurt – I picked up a used “yogurt maker,” which is a just a fancy hotplate with
More Cheese Making Read More »
A few times a year, the last person coming into the house via the garage will forget to shut the door, leaving its contents vulnerable to critters or the unruly, post-apocalyptic mobs speeding through our quiet suburban streets at night. The obvious solution is to check it each night before I go to bed. But that’s a
Garage Door Automation Read More »
I was forwarded Owen Youngman’s article in The Atlantic by a friend who wanted me to reflect further on my over-zealous consumption of Massively Open Online Courses (or MOOCs). It seems about right: When I took my first in 2011, the concept was very new. I’d planned to take one, but opted for all three courses, intending
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As I was walking through the exhibits of O’Reilly’s “Making Data Work” Conference a few weeks ago, a vendor stepped in my path: Vendor: “What is your organization’s Hadoop strategy?” Having done a metric crap-ton of events as a vendor, I was sympathetic to what he was trying to do. However, his premise of a tool being the
What Is Your OTT Strategy? Read More »
Another, big batch (27) of security patches landed on my Windows 7 desktop. Since I’m likely to be running long, data-intensive jobs, I have it not apply them right away. Sensing this large group would necessitate a reboot, I avoided installation until lunch time today. The philosophy is simple: computing should not be about constantly