Assorted Nerdery

Blog posts - hastily written with poor grammar.

I’m an engineer living in a small city north of Boston with my wife, two kids and two cats.

My webdesign-fu is pretty weak, but I’m aiming for a adequately readable experience with minimal cruft. I recently discovered the Zen Hugo theme and have modified it here. Any suggestions are very welcome!

Security for That Family Member

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We all have a few family members that aren’t quite up to date with technology. Feel free to use this letter. No attribution required.

Dear %FAMILYMEMBER% ,

Thanks for your Internet Security question.

  • Gmail is probably better than AOL security-wise, but it’s not a magic bullet. Security is a process, not a thing you do once. Plenty of my friends have had their Gmail accounts hacked.

  • If you do get a Gmail account, Two Factor Authentication is a necessity. Even though it’s sometimes a pain, you should enable this on all the accounts it’s available for. Facebook supports it, as well as gmail. Please do this, it’s really important. Seriously.

Trip to the Oregon Coast

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At the beginning of the month, I went out to the PDX area with a colleague. We had some nice productive meetings and were able to get out to the Oregon Coast. The Pacific NW is really a wonderful place — good food, good coffee, beautiful scenery.

United Airlines provided some good adventures on the way home. I had to fly a rather ridiculous routing for this trip — BOS-EWR-SFO-PDX and then PDX-SFO-IAD-BOS. I don’t actually mind routings like this too much since I can get a lot of work done during the flights. The flights out were thoroughly uneventful. UA provided some good entertainment on the way back.

Oh Deer!

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While out for a run last week, I came across a deer in the woods. It was quite docile and unafraid of me. Hopefully it stays out of traffic. Click for pictures.

Migrating to Nikola

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UPDATE:

This site is now built using ox-hugo and the Hugo static site generator.

This blog originally started a few years back on Blogspot. Google has since begun making a whole host of changes that I’m not a big fan of – in particular, eliminating Google Reader. This was my notice to begin seeking alternative places to host my email and other services.

The idea of a static site generator for my blog appeals to me. You can host your site anywhere and move it at a moment’s notice. The server you’re hosting it on is more secure since there is no need for databases, PHP, NodeJS, etc. Even backups are really easy to make using version control software (I’m partial to Joey Hess' Git-Annex).

Breakneck Ridge

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A few months back, I hiked Breakneck Ridge at the suggestion of a friend.

I’ll get the GPX track up eventually, but here are some pictures.