Not Quite Abandoned

Mon July 13 2015 by Christopher

Holy smoke it's been almost a year since the last time I added something new here! That is not at all because I haven't had anything new to talk about. Rather, there's been too much going on and I haven't had even half a chance to circle back and write up a blog post.

I do wonder where those folks who write constantly find time. I know when I end up with extra time it either means I can finish doing something I've needed to do to the house (add a new outlet, make a frame for a mirror, build a retaining wall, etc.) or else do something with the kids. Usually that means go exploring with them. Sometimes I have "spare" time at the end of the day but usually if I'm awake, then I'll read.

I DID finally take a little time to convert this blog to Pelican (away from Blogger). Some links might be broken, and I still have a little housekeeping I want to do (like put the content in a git repo and set it to build and publish automatically on each commit for instance). But so far, I think the transition is looking pretty good!

In general though, I'm sorry to say adding new things to the blog is pretty low priority at the moment. Maybe I need to set aside some time once a week to write up some of the interesting stuff I ran across the previous week :)


Pirates!

Sun June 02 2013 by Christopher

The treehouse needed one last thing...

pirate wheel

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Treehouse

Mon May 27 2013 by Christopher

moonrise kingdom treehouse

When I was little, we had a tree house we could play in.  It was a fantastic place to hang out for long stretches, and provided an excellent foundation for countless games of imagination.  I'm pretty sure it was mostly a space ship, but it was probably also a pirate …

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Jeremy Grantham and the stats behind the end of the world

Sun May 26 2013 by Christopher

OK, that's a sensationalist title and was not the topic of this interview, but resource scarcity and the unbounded growth of world population was discussed. It's absolutely worth putting this on and paying attention. You will immediately be more informed on the stats around the global economy than likely anyone …

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From Glance to Boot-From-Volume in 2 minutes flat

Fri May 10 2013 by Christopher

Here’s a quick list of the steps necessary to pull an image or snapshot from Glance, copy it to a Cinder volume, and then boot from that volume.  In an OpenStack environment using local storage for VMs this is a convenient way to run a VM with a need …

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No news is good news

Wed September 26 2012 by Christopher

"Chances are you have one of the most insidiously dangerous objects ever created ' and one of the State's most powerful tools of domination ' in your living room right now. You may very well have one in your bedroom, too, and in your basement.
It's insidious because most Americans don't think …

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Inspired by our founders

Tue August 14 2012 by Christopher

"AMERICA has a proud history of drinking on the job. Craftsmen who built the first government buildings in the 17th century were sometimes paid in brandy. The 19th-century railroaders who laid the foundations of modern America were notoriously thirsty."

The Economist

Obviously for the sake of our country I need …

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Fix your brain!

Sun April 29 2012 by Christopher

Can you make yourself smarter?  There's a lot of evidence you can, but it takes a little effort on your part (15 minutes a day is enough to yield pretty significant improvements.)  You can no doubt find something each day that you're spending 15 minutes (or more on) that you …

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How the f**k do magnets work?!?

Fri April 27 2012 by Christopher

I LOVE this excerpt from a Richard Feynman interview (transcribed here) where he responds to a question about the "feeling" of magnets repelling:

"Of course, it's an excellent question. But the problem, you see, when you ask why something happens, how does a person answer why something happens? For example …

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Your to-do list

Fri April 27 2012 by Christopher

It's easy to lose sight of your dreams when you're neck-deep in the day to day stuff you need to do just to survive.  If you are at least taking time to make lists of things you need to get done, and prioritizing them at that, Paul Graham makes a …

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