Site closed

For the moment, this site is no longer seeing updates. I am moving away from Google tools and services for a long list of reasons, including privacy, concerns about monopoly status, politics, security, and their tendency to just close down useful tools/projects with little warning and no alternative.

I am (slowly) searching for an alternative and will post here if I find something.

Dystopia

An image series that I was really impressed by: A Very Boring Dystopia

Windows drive space

A look at various free tools to visualize disk usage on your machine.  This is also a great introduction for data analysis / data visualization as a concept.  Also an excellent (unfortunately Windows 7-centric) guide to cleaning up disk space on Windows.

Privacy fingerprinting

An excellent look at how privacy violations can still happen from "anonymized" data dumps. If you have the ability to turn off tracking, data collection, and anything else, you should do so.

Great flash game

This blog hasn't seen a lot of updates as I've been getting hit from all sides in the last few months but my one source of relaxation is an excellent tower defense game:

Kingdom Rush: Frontiers

The game is also up on Steam for a few bucks in case you don't want to use Flash or want to more easily save your progress (I have a program that deletes Flash cookies).

Disable Facebook connections

Since I haven't read one good thing about using Facebook in what seems like a year now (increasingly disturbing privacy concerns, negative influence from other nations, getting money from oppressive governments, sucking up to China, etc.), I thought I'd point out this Firefox add-on I'm enjoying: Disconnect for Facebook to help avoid any connection with their tracking services.

What is a "Coal Gaffe"?

At first blush, it looks like another "double standards in politics article" but in my struggle to understand what's wrong with political reporting, this is an excellent article on how backwards it's become.

Rule 1: Things that aren't controversial aren't real. 
Rule 2: Things that are incomplete/false are normal because it satisfies rule 1.
Rule 3: Everyone -- including participants -- should know that this is how it works.

Changing minds

Country Guitarist changes mind on gun control

Guns again

In wake of the latest and so far worst mass shooting, some interesting notes about the NRA's lack of response and stats on gun ownership in the US.

Lock him up?

In one of those moments that makes up a gaping chasm of a double-standard, a top official used a private email server.  Some really astonishing hypocrisy and/or stupidity right here.

Does this mean we start calling the guy "Crooked Jared"?

Oracle UPK users

I was surprised by the lack of information available for the very mature Oracle UPK software package.  I may dig into this more in the future but a few quick tips about that program:

1. I strongly recommend exploring the PowerPoint export and edit function.  There are a number of oddities with this program, but it drastically sped up minor changes to the UPK file edit process.  If your company has not enabled this feature, make a BIG fuss about making it available.  This can save a huge amount of time both editing and re-recording UPK sequences.
2. There were a few places where LibreOffice Impress was able to do some things that Microsoft PowerPoint couldn't, especially around creating precise, full screen presentations to import individual frames into.  Having that program handy can compliment PowerPoint in a few areas.
3. If you haven't checked it out yet, definitely look into the excellent ActivePresenter program, which has quite a bit of overlap with the Oracle program.  Additionally, there may be areas where the two are compatible by using ActivePresenter export to PowerPoint and then importing to Oracle.  This is especially useful if your version of the program was as slow and problematic as ours.

Why I went to Auschwitz

I really enjoyed this: a short, very clear article that made me feel a lot better about the world around me.

Printer tracking dots

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20170607-why-printers-add-secret-tracking-dots

I've always wondered about tracking dots - here's a really cool breakdown.  Always thought they'd be on the edge of the paper, but turns out they're in the middle.

Recent places (Win7 trick)

This is an old trick that I'm sure has been highlighted elsewhere at length, but to me felt like a new discovery.  There's a place on your computer where the machine automatically saves things you've been doing.  It works like a browser history and is helpful if you just can't find what you were working on yesterday.

On Win7, you can find this here:

C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Recent\

If I remember correctly, this had a standard presence on your start menu back on Win2k and before, but somehow got pushed out, and I had a hard time finding it.  Right now I'm working day to day on any one of a hundred different files on my machine so this has become increasingly important.

Note that unlike browser history, if you want additional privacy, just clearing this folder is not the answer.  Definitely look into disk encryption and programs like CCleaner and BleachBit.