More Cheese Making

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

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Garage Door Automation

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

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More Reflections on MOOCs

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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What Is Your OTT Strategy?

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

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Common name on common service

With increasing frequency, I’ll receive email intended for another Jim Carson with an account on gmail.  If it’s from an individual, I’ve had moderate success with providing a gentle, personalized note telling them that they’ve got the wrong email address. I’ve given up with any emails from companies as they’ll either go to great lengths

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Windows Update

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

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