Lost planet

Saw this article on Discover.com earlier this month and thought it was really interesting: The Solar System’s Lost Planet. Nesvorny, who runs computer simulations to study how the solar system evolved over time, kept encountering the same problem: The four giant gas planets, whose orbits are comfortably far apart from each other today, kept violently jostling… Continue reading Lost planet

Leap Day

This is only the third Leap Day we’ve had since I’ve started this blog, and this is the first time I’ve made a point of noting it. Aside from being the one extra day every four years (and, technically, only every 400 years on the century marks), the only other notable thing I can think… Continue reading Leap Day

Anatomy of a blog hack

So, last weekend I found out that my blogs had been hacked. Actually, it wasn’t just my blogs, nothing personal involved or anything like that: the shared server space my sites were hosted on was compromised, and a good number of other sites and files were hacked as well. Based on what I can piece… Continue reading Anatomy of a blog hack

Ignite Bend 7

We attended Ignite Bend 7 the other night (merely watching this time, rather than as a presenter) and it continues to amaze me how good and fun an event this is; I’d venture to say this was the best one yet. (Though I might need to watch the previous ones again to be sure.) Since… Continue reading Ignite Bend 7

Cascadia, State of Jefferson and other secessionist movements

Being in Portland several times over the past several weeks for beer happenings got me thinking about the (mostly inconsequential) debate about “Cascadian Dark Ales” (versus the other names of “Black IPA”, “American Black Ale” and so on) and about the “Cascadia” part of that name. See, here in the Pacific Northwest “Cascadia” can refer… Continue reading Cascadia, State of Jefferson and other secessionist movements

Items of recent awesomeness

Some of these links aren’t as shiny-new as they were when I started this post, but even so: The CDC’s zombie apocalypse preparedness plan: Yes, the CDC is all over the possibility of a zombie apocalypse. For real. If zombies did start roaming the streets, CDC would conduct an investigation much like any other disease… Continue reading Items of recent awesomeness

My Ignite Bend presentation

Yes, it’s been weeks, but I’m finally talking about my Ignite Bend presentation—it helps that it’s finally on YouTube, since I’m going to embed it here. I didn’t have to present until after intermission, and for the most part I was fine the first half, with occasional bouts of nerves. But standing to the side,… Continue reading My Ignite Bend presentation

On the road to Ignite Bend

In my previous post I talked about submitting a proposal to Ignite Bend (and what Ignite actually is). Today was the official “reveal” of the nine speakers selected to present, and yes, I was picked. (I actually received the official email yesterday.) Now of course the real nerves and doubts set in. I’ve already started… Continue reading On the road to Ignite Bend

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Ignite Bend

So I went and did something today I’ve never really done before, and is already making me nervous: I submitted a proposal to do a presentation at the next Ignite Bend event. First, though, some backstory. Ignite Bend is the local version of the “Ignite” series of events started by O’Reilly; it’s a fun, high-energy… Continue reading Ignite Bend