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Sunday, June 30, 2019

Super Sunday Tech Roundup #5


On the road this week for PI Planning for my current client and walking around in the Mall Of America I had a chance to visit the Lego Store and the MindStorms EV3 looks pretty amazing!  The software is as impressive as the hardware, making it easy to transition between complexity levels as a child grows in understanding.
MindStorms EV3
https://www.lego.com/en-us/mindstorms/about-ev3
I also am getting ready to put Schroeder on a plane for Texas and loaded his Kindle PaperWhite with books using Calibre.  Whenever I need to use it I remember what an awesome piece of software it is.  It just works, and does an amazing job.

Calibre ebook management
https://calibre-ebook.com/


Sunday, June 23, 2019

Super Sunday Tech Roundup #4

I am getting more and more into Kubernetes, and want to do some cluster work on my desk with multiple machines and Dell 710 servers are just too heavy to carry around.  So, I started looking into smaller machines and thought about Raspberry Pi’s and how to work with a stack of them and found the PicoCluster site and fell in love.  I know what I want for my next birthday!

Less is More
https://www.picocluster.com/

As part of my rabbit hole search above, I was talking with a colleague and he said ‘I have these 2 Android phones, could you use them?’ And after some searching, I found the answer was no but we can do some cool stuff on it.

How to Turn an Android Device Into a Web Server
https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/turn-android-device-web-server/

Sunday, June 16, 2019

Super Sunday Tech Roundup #3

I am not a Git Guru, but I found Write yourself a Git and interesting article.  I am inspired to build out a similar tutorial in C# but  I doubt I will take the time.  Too many other things drawing my attention and limited time.
Write yourself a Git
https://wyag.thb.lt/
Last year I got one of the Intel Compute Sticks to play around with.  My initial goal was to use it to front playing games or to do a media player at home.  But it just hung from the back of a monitor at work for 6 months gathering dust.  But now!  I am going to install Fedora Linux on it and make it my Kubernetes Master for a portable cluster.  I should get an article or two out of that.
Intel Compute Stick
https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/boards-kits/compute-stick.html

Sunday, June 9, 2019

Super Sunday Tech Roundup #2

I am getting back into Linux as part of installing Kubernetes and found the Cockpit project.  It makes Linux accessible through a web interface.  This lets me work with my play systems without having to ssh in.  For my Fedora installation, I installed a specialty dashboard to control my Kubernetes cluster by issuing dnf -y install cockpit-kubernetes

Cockpit makes GNU/Linux discoverable. See your server in a web browser and perform system tasks with a mouse. It’s easy to start containers, administer storage, configure networks, and inspect logs.https://cockpit-project.org/

I am not a Java devote, but it is great for all that Pivotal has decided to back OpenJDK.  Sharing is caring, and open wins hearts and minds.
Pivotal Throws Its Weight Behind Open JDK with Spring Runtime
https://thenewstack.io/pivotal-throws-its-weight-behind-openjdk-with-spring-runtime/


Sunday, June 2, 2019

Cloud Foundry and DotNet

The talk that Nathan and I did at Cloud Foundry went well.  Here is a video of it: Deep Dive: .NET & CF Pipeline.  Enjoy!

Super Sunday Tech Roundup #1

I work with clients all the time, and never have enough space for a set of keyboards and mice for all of the machines I work with. I have tried different KVM switches and other hardware and software solutions to share keyboard and mouse with the various machines, but all have fallen short. Until now. I missed the launch, but a colleague mentioned it and I finally have a solution that just works. If you have similar needs for connecting a single keyboard and mouse to multiple Windows computers, I cannot recommend this highly enough:
Mouse Without Borders
http://aka.ms/mm
My wife gave me a Herman Miller Aeron chair for our 5th anniversary, and I have loved it and used it daily for 14 years now. I worked from home for most of those 14 years, so the chair got heavy use. It is still going strong. Last year, I took my chair into work since I am now working more there than at home. The move to New York had us in a tiny place that didn't have room for a home office.  After our 18 month lease ended, we moved to where we are now, a place with office space for me again.  I took advantage of the fact that there is a Herman Miller show room to take a peek at some furnishings.  I love the Aeron, but my new Embody is a winner.

Embody by Herman Miller
https://store.hermanmiller.com/office/office-chairs/embody-task-chair/4737.html?lang=en_US

Headphones are a personal thing, I get that.  I have been wagging my Logitech H800s back and forth from the office for over a year now, but getting a home office set up forced me to re-visit my solution.  The H800s fold up and pack away easily.  I really like the size and weight of the H800s, but I really don't like the base foam ear pads.  They cheapen an otherwise solid product.  I first tried some Microsoft LifeChat LX-3000s for home, but a microphone error and issue with not being able to un-mute Skype calls left me frustrated. I ended up going with a wired Logitech H540 and have been very happy.  Here at home, I don't really need portability or wireless, so it works out well.  Plus, they have the leatherette ear pads.
Logitech H540 USB Computer Headset
https://www.logitech.com/en-us/product/usb-headset-h540?crid=36

That is all for this week, see you next Sunday!