Another Trip to the UK

As I teased before, I was back in the UK for some meetings.  The original plan got all sideways when my main person I was meeting with left for paternity leave just before I got over there.  No worries, as I was able to use the time to meet with others and get some good work done.

This time, I brought my main camera over with me, and spent some of the downtime taking pictures, mainly in Bournemouth, as I was only in London for the Monday, and was in meetings all day.

Anyway, here are some of the pictures I took.  Enjoy!

Move along, little web site

So, I decided that I did not like the performance of the site where I was hosting it, so I went over to Digital Ocean (referral link).

The process was pretty easy.  I used the native tools to back up the old site, then after using the ‘one-click install’ process over at DO, I used the import function to import the backup.  As an added bonus, the pictures and everything imported as well.   After a few checks, I updated DNS, and bam! Running on new host with better performance.  Easy-peasy.

Also, I have turned off any integration with Facebook as I feel that they have not been good stewards of the data they collect.

#NeverAgain

March For Our Lives

 

The numbers are unbelievable.  As I write this, we are 12 weeks into 2018, and there have been 17 school shootings in the US where someone was injured or killed.  1.4 per week.  And, if you look outside of schools, there have been to date 50 mass shootings where 4 or more people were injured or killed, not counting the shooter.  50 since January 1, 2018.

Never Again.

I plan to talk to my US and Texas Representatives and Senators about the issue.  Yesterday, I went with my two oldest to the March For Our Lives protest in Houston.  I am proud to say, it was my kids who wanted to go.

Naturally, I took my camera and tried to capture the spirit of the event with photos of the signs and a couple of videos.  They are posted in the photos section.

February, Already?

AR Test
AR Test

I am shocked to look at the calendar, and realize that February is almost over.

Where to begin?  Well, the test with ChromeOS is going well.  I have found that I need the access to my R810 less and less as I move things over to the Pixelbook.  I have even found myself doing some light python coding on it.  The flexibility and the speed is very nice.  I have also been enjoying one of the major benefits of the Chromebook life style: major battery life.  I can take my Pixel out of the bag when I get to the office and not plug it in all day, and still have a couple of hours of juice left over when I get home.

On of the things that I am still not totally sure about is doing my photo workflow.  I have been doing some reading, and finding a few tools to play with.  To that end, I am going to set myself a challenge of taking, processing, and posting a photo at least once a week.  As I get more comfortable, I might even move that up to many a week.  It will be good to get back into that as I have done that in the past, but I did fail the last time I tried daily.

The photo above is from my playing around with ‘Augmented Reality’ which is all the fade now days with ‘virtual stickers’ you can insert into photos.

A month in, using ChromeOS only

As I pointed out a while back that I was moving to ChromeOS more seriously.  Well, since Christmas day, I have parked my R810 to the side, and installed Chromium OS on my Lenovo X260 and started using it full time.  What is Chromium OS?  It is the open source version of ChromeOS.

So far, everything has been working great.  The only thing that has not worked for me is DRM protected video stream, things like Netflix, Hulu, or Amazon Video.  Not a major lost, but I missed it on a recent trip.

The other major issue I have run into is photo processing and management.  Under ChromeOS, there is not many options for this, only pure web-based solutions like Google Photos.  There are some pretty decent solutions in the Android world.  How does this help me?  Well, the newer version of ChromeOS running on newer Chromebooks can run Android apps.

Sadly, my Acer C720 and HP Chrombook 11 G1 are both too old to get the Android solutions.  Additionally, both systems are starting showing their age in running modern web apps.  So, my solution?  I am buying a Google Pixelbook.  I opted for the smaller of the versions which should have more than enough horsepower for me to run for many years.  It arrives today, so I will be having some fun setting it up.