Dagmar just got her teeth cleaned. I was waiting in the front office for the tech to bring her out and one of the staff asked me if she was smart. I was nonplussed. I never even thought about it. I said she’d never done the kid’s math homework. I should have said I haveContinue reading “Smart”
Author Archives: pirateguillermo
Remembering my People
Tonight is All Souls’ eve. The QBCPS tradition for this evening is to have our family dinner and, during dinner, we go around the table and tell stories about our loved ones who’ve died. But this year, we are all in different places. I’m at home with the creatures, the Goddess is at a sleepover,Continue reading “Remembering my People”
Going Anonymous
A friend posted a link to this story about the crypto and anonymity tools Edward Snowden used to communicate with journalists before his big reveal. It’s an interesting read, by itself, with lots of links out to various privacy tools. One that especially caught my attention was Tails, an operating system that, “you can startContinue reading “Going Anonymous”
Morning News
This morning’s news brief was just full of delightful bits. My head is whirling. We have the story about the Russian government performing cyberespionage. This will probably surprise someone; not anyone who has been checking their spam folder over the past 20 years, but yeah, the Russians have lots of programmers who write malware. AndContinue reading “Morning News”
Restricted Knowledge
I’m not really sure how to tell this story. I’ll start with the event that got me writing this post, but there’s a lot of backstory that explains why I even started writing, and then there are my observations of my changed thoughts and feelings about the phenomenon. It’s untidy in my mind; it doesn’tContinue reading “Restricted Knowledge”
Retro Bubble, Order’s Up!
I just read this article that says that Angela Merkel wants Europe to have its own network. Now, maybe I’m not understanding the story, and maybe the reporter didn’t understand what the chancellor said, and maybe the chancellor doesn’t understand how the Internet works. But it seems to me that if a laptop in BerlinContinue reading “Retro Bubble, Order’s Up!”
Simulation Distractibility
Yesterday I wrote about solving a problem using SmartThings. Thinking about some of the frustrations I felt during the process has led me back to thinking about the Salamander Simulation Engine. You know what it would be great for? Programming home automation.
SmartThings and the Recirculating Pump
A couple of years ago, we got a recirculating pump to run the hot water line from the master bathroom back to the water heater so we could get actual hot showers. The pump came with a built-in timer so that we could schedule times for it to run. That’s swell if you live byContinue reading “SmartThings and the Recirculating Pump”
Spam Poetry
Got a weird spam email this morning. It’s a time of year when relatives are sending out random e-cards all the time, with no announcement, so I wasn’t quite sure whether this was legit. Not wanting to click any links or fetch any images in a dodgy-looking email, I went to the source. Lo! ItContinue reading “Spam Poetry”
Audio Kryptonite
You know that thing where you start imitating the accents and speech patterns of people around you? Yeah, I’m really susceptible to that. Audio books with compelling readers are the worst. It’s bad enough when I’m reading an actual printed book and really getting into it and find myself using turns of phrase from theContinue reading “Audio Kryptonite”