This past Sunday we observed Father's Day here in the United States. As I understand it, a very well-meaning young lady had an idea that Mothers should have a special day set aside for them, and Mother's Day came into being. After that, greeting card companies caught on, and then (I'm OVERSIMPLIFYING here and probably making a ton of assumptions)... and then came Father's Day, Grandparent's Day, Mother in Law Day and Law Day, just to highlight a few of the myriad of (fill in the blank) Days.
Now, before anyone gets all upset about my seemingly callous position, let me backtrack just a bit. If someone wishes me a happy Father's Day, I'll gladly accept it. I really think its neat to have a special day to honor Moms and Motherhood, and Fathers and Fatherhood, and you can probably extend that a bit in a lot of different directions. According to Wikipedia, though, Anna Jarvis, the founder of Mother's day was concerned about the commercialization of the holiday not long after it had become established- and I think she and I might have some similiar thoughts about what are now known as "greeting card" holidays. Jennifer and I have three kids, and I can't remember the last time I got a card from any of them. And honestly? I could care less. I think Jennifer feels pretty much the same way. We generally try to do a little something special on these days (meals, mostly), but its more about family time than spending money on cards and gifts.
I think one of the best gifts one can give is time. This past Sunday was hot AND humid, so Jennifer was in no mood for going outside to do much of anything. On the other hand, it was not raining, so I thought it would be a great opportunity to go out and take some photos of the tollway expansion. I asked her to be polite, pretty much expecting what her response would be. She did not disappoint, but suggested Mr. T be invited. Much to my surprise, when I told him where I planned to go, he cheerfully accepted. When the spare batteries for my trusty Nikon D3200 were charged, I grabbed the backpack and we were off.
Mr. T was quite interested in the construction. What's happening is somewhat out of the ordinary: this is not a new highway. It is the widening by one lane in each direction of an existing highway. We were probably out for two hours or less, but had a blast! He's not a photographer, but has a bit of graphic design experience, so he makes a great assistant. And, he was ready for a bit of adventure. As my gear is really lightweight and all fits neatly into a small backpack, I kept it with me on my back. There were one or two shots where the tripod would have been nice, but in the end I had ~140 frames, several of which were very nice.
We also had the opportunity to climb up hill and down dale, so to speak.
And lastly, as I am fond of saying in this blog, we come to data. Except today, I don't want to talk about data per se, but rather data handling.
As frequent readers may be aware, the Secret Underground Lair (SUL) is in the midst of a major overhaul. Furniture has been moved out, and furniture has been moved in. Up until now it's been something of a minor disaster (think S.S. Minnow rather than R.M.S. Titanic). Still, it's been quite the challenge as displaced items seem to occupy more space than they used to. So, I suppose it isn't so much data handling even as it is data display: we've eliminated al of the CRTs in the SUL and now only have flat panels. This means we'll soon be goint to visit our local Goodwill donation center with eight monitors- the oldest one was manufactured in 1990!
I still need to hook up the Raspberry Pi- we might be back in programming mode soon! Also, with the new setup, I can easily jack my work laptop into one of the new monitors and work effectively from home. There's also room on the desktop for my personal laptop, so I can get back to the Arduino as well!
As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.
Tuesday, June 23, 2015
Monday, June 22, 2015
Data Science, pt 1
I'm calling this "Data Science, pt 1" because it's the beginning, and to be honest, I'm not sure where it end.
To be honest, if you're not interested in Twitter or data, you probably won't be interested in this post. One of my coworkers and I often have discussions about Twitter, partly because I'm a regular poster there and partly because he does not post there. Our inside joke about Twitter, though, is about my posting.
If you follow my twitter posts (hochspeyer@CJoelHarrison), you'll see an account that is focused primarily on Big Data, IoT and programming. We have some good-natured interplay about this-
"You're a fraud," he says.
"I tell the truth," I reply.
This can, and sometimes does- go on all night. I'm not mentioning his name because of my personal blogging rules: if I don't have permission, then I don't have permission.
In the end, we agree to disagree. So, why the Big Preface?
Well, mostly because this blog is about data. And, although data seems to be the furthest thing from a theme, I try to keep data as the unifying theme.
Believe it or not, Twitter is a two-way street. As with all other social media, marketing is important. In the world of social media, I have this blog. I have a Facebook account with many friends. I have a LinkedIn account with many connections. I have Google+ and a Pinterest account. I used to be active on a few forums. I even had a mySpace account. Of all of these, I regard Twitter as my primary and most premium e-presence.
Why? Chicago's own Ides of March really expressed it well: it's my vehicle. More precisely, it's my e-vehicle: it puts my name where I want it to be on the internet. I don't remember exactly how the old truism about publicity went, but it was something like this: "Any publicity is better than no publicity." This is largely (but not entirely) true for someone who is trying to find a job or build a reputation on the internet: almost 100% of the time, any internet presence is better than none. If you're looking for job, you should have an established social media presence, and probably on at least LinkedIn and Twitter- and it had better damn well be squeaky clean. Please make no mistake: I very seldom (that is, exceedingly rarely) use a word such as "damn" online- and this is HIGHLY intentional. Any reputable firm will probably be have at least a concern about online vulgarity or profanity.
But I digress... back to me and Twitter. I have more than one Twitter account- I don't think this is unusual: one is fairly general, and the other is pretty tightly subject focused. I really don't do too much on my "general" account, and I have no special reason for the lack of activity there. My primary account, though, currently has a few hundred followers, and I follow a few more. What's interesting about this account, though, is my relative level of education to that of my followers. Here's where the ride gets interesting, so buckle up, kiddos!
The subject matter that I generally tweet about is Big Data, Internet of Things, Programming and, to a lesser extent, Technology (Computer, Electronic and Otherwise). I researched this a bit- probably at least thirty minutes on Google (this is the equivalent of 1.21 eternities in Internet time) and could not come up with a definitive answer. However, I know that I have no fewer than five PhD's and one PhD candidate in a population of ~225 followers, which means that ~2% of my FOLLOWERS have doctoral degrees. As best as I could tell through my "extensive" research, approximately 1% of ALL college students in the United States of America complete a doctorate. So as far as my followers are concerned, I think I'm pretty top-heavy in the academic department, even though I'm a card-carrying member of the unwashed masses that check the "some college completed" box.
In fact, in some circles I may even be classified as a "savant".
In any event, I'm going to leave "this" alone for now. When (and/or if) I gain further insights, I will continue this train of thought.
Until then, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.
To be honest, if you're not interested in Twitter or data, you probably won't be interested in this post. One of my coworkers and I often have discussions about Twitter, partly because I'm a regular poster there and partly because he does not post there. Our inside joke about Twitter, though, is about my posting.
If you follow my twitter posts (hochspeyer@CJoelHarrison), you'll see an account that is focused primarily on Big Data, IoT and programming. We have some good-natured interplay about this-
"You're a fraud," he says.
"I tell the truth," I reply.
This can, and sometimes does- go on all night. I'm not mentioning his name because of my personal blogging rules: if I don't have permission, then I don't have permission.
In the end, we agree to disagree. So, why the Big Preface?
Well, mostly because this blog is about data. And, although data seems to be the furthest thing from a theme, I try to keep data as the unifying theme.
Believe it or not, Twitter is a two-way street. As with all other social media, marketing is important. In the world of social media, I have this blog. I have a Facebook account with many friends. I have a LinkedIn account with many connections. I have Google+ and a Pinterest account. I used to be active on a few forums. I even had a mySpace account. Of all of these, I regard Twitter as my primary and most premium e-presence.
Why? Chicago's own Ides of March really expressed it well: it's my vehicle. More precisely, it's my e-vehicle: it puts my name where I want it to be on the internet. I don't remember exactly how the old truism about publicity went, but it was something like this: "Any publicity is better than no publicity." This is largely (but not entirely) true for someone who is trying to find a job or build a reputation on the internet: almost 100% of the time, any internet presence is better than none. If you're looking for job, you should have an established social media presence, and probably on at least LinkedIn and Twitter- and it had better damn well be squeaky clean. Please make no mistake: I very seldom (that is, exceedingly rarely) use a word such as "damn" online- and this is HIGHLY intentional. Any reputable firm will probably be have at least a concern about online vulgarity or profanity.
But I digress... back to me and Twitter. I have more than one Twitter account- I don't think this is unusual: one is fairly general, and the other is pretty tightly subject focused. I really don't do too much on my "general" account, and I have no special reason for the lack of activity there. My primary account, though, currently has a few hundred followers, and I follow a few more. What's interesting about this account, though, is my relative level of education to that of my followers. Here's where the ride gets interesting, so buckle up, kiddos!
The subject matter that I generally tweet about is Big Data, Internet of Things, Programming and, to a lesser extent, Technology (Computer, Electronic and Otherwise). I researched this a bit- probably at least thirty minutes on Google (this is the equivalent of 1.21 eternities in Internet time) and could not come up with a definitive answer. However, I know that I have no fewer than five PhD's and one PhD candidate in a population of ~225 followers, which means that ~2% of my FOLLOWERS have doctoral degrees. As best as I could tell through my "extensive" research, approximately 1% of ALL college students in the United States of America complete a doctorate. So as far as my followers are concerned, I think I'm pretty top-heavy in the academic department, even though I'm a card-carrying member of the unwashed masses that check the "some college completed" box.
In fact, in some circles I may even be classified as a "savant".
In any event, I'm going to leave "this" alone for now. When (and/or if) I gain further insights, I will continue this train of thought.
Until then, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.
Saturday, June 20, 2015
Joe Cool, etc.
One of the things that is really pretty nifty about blogging (and yes, I do talk this way in real life) is that it is creative writing which does not need to be tied to a plot. I think I've had the desire to write a book since around my high school years, and have yet to do it. I'm sometimes a little jealous of some folks who are actually published, like my good e-buddy J. S. Frankel. He's written a few books and if you follow the link you'll get to see his Young Adult offerings on Amazon. The extent of my creative writing (apart from things required in school) was some reporting I did for my college newspaper, The Reporter ( I kid you NOT!), Twitter (known in some circles as "microblogging"), this blog, and an infrequently updated blog on Wordpress. Oh, and a slew of incomplete and unpublished science fiction and/or fantasy stories, as well as one incomplete collaboration from college with my good friend Mark. We were once best friends, but once he became engaged, he felt it was his duty to inform me that I was being demoted in favor of his soon-to-be-bride. Not to be outdone, Jennifer appeared in my life not long after that, and we were married in the same year that Mark and Mary were.
Although I've only used "Potpourri" as part of a blog title twice, and even though that is an apt description of this blog, I've decided to reserve the use of that word for another blog. "Joe Cool" was/is an alter ego of Snoopy, along with the famous World War One fighter ace. I think I grew up during the heyday of the Peanuts comic strip- Peanuts seemed to be all over pop culture, and the Peanuts holiday cartoons on television were a must-see, even if it was the third or fourth or more time of watching them. They were special, and they were really family time.
This blog, though, borrows thematically from- of all things- a tee shirt I bought in the 80's.
For a brief period in the 80's, I worked at J.C. Penney's in the Brickyard, the first "real" shopping center in Chicago. I actually ended up working at a few stores in the Brickyard, but I worked at Penney's before the mall actually opened. At some point, Penney's carried a line of Peanuts-themed shirts. I purchased several (with an employee discount) and one of them had a picture of Snoopy (in his Joe Cool persona). The graphic featured Joe Cool in his signature dark sunglasses flipping a flying disk (a.k.a. "Frisbee") with the following text:
"What else is there to do on a Saturday afternoon when there's nothing on TV, your clothes are in the laundry and your girlfriend has left you?"
That's pretty close to a quote, in any event. I tried Googling it and came up with nothing.
Finally, in the world of news, I'd like to introduce someone new to my blog- my sister-in-law Donna. In true Love American Style fashion, we've known "of" each other for nearly thirty years, but have only really connected in the past year. She's a good egg- anyone who enjoys my particular brand of humor deserves a pat on the back. And a job- she got caught in the recent bout of Schlumberger layoffs. So if you're in Houston (or maybe Dallas) and reading this- she's lookin'.
Someone recently asked me (okay, it was Donna, who is new to blogging) how I find all of these readers in countries outside of the United States? The answers is: I don't know. I was checking my view stats just before getting back to the blog, and discovered twenty-five new page views from Portugal.
Go figure.
I need to close this out, but one or two more topics are left. First, as I am a proud member of that special group of I.T. workers known to the world only as Nightstalkers, I have to update our grass. At home, that is... the lawn. We seem to have had a good deal of rain during May and June it seems, and as I enjoy cutting the grass (probably an Air Force flashback, but more than likely because it was one of my chores as a youngster), I generally get to do the mowing. And, I'm quicker than Jennifer. So, I happily cut the grass. The problem, though, is that I'm a Nightstalker, and as such, my grasscutting hours are sometimes a bit constrained. For example, we are allowed to "start our engines" after 0700, and are requested to cease power equipment operation by 1900 by our local municipality. The Chicago area is known to be rather humid, so the grass is often dewy in the morning... difficult to cut. My "morning" during the workweek is 1900, so my best opportunities for lawn maintenance are the weekend and Monday. Although there's been no rain for a few days, I ended up cutting the grass in two stages- Thursday before work, and this morning (Saturday) after work. Our compost bin is nearly overflowing from the clippings, and the lawn was still quite wet, so I think more grass clippings got left on the lawn than those which made it to the compost.
I'm not sure how much can bee seen from these pictures, but the grass in many areas was close to 4" (10cm) tall. It was so tall that I'd started to get calls from conservation agencies around the world asking me to kindly return their endangered species.
Well, not quite, but it was certainly buggier the closer I got to the lushest, least-trafficked area behind the garage.
Also, not sure about the rest of the world, but here in the United States, tomorrow (Sunday) is Father's Day. Happy Father's Day to all of the Dads out there.
No data to report this week, but I have a programming update.
My employer uses a very interesting software package for programming our products. As you may know, we produce what is known in the United States as "direct mail"; that is, advertising pieces that are sent through the postal service to named recipients. The client gives us their designs, tells us what specific information that a particular addressee should receive, and we- through composition, layout and programming- will produce a mailpiece that is tailored to each recipient's anticipated needs. On Thursday night, I had to do a bit of break/fox on one of these programs, and then on Friday I was able to pass this newfound knowledge to a few colleagues.
One other bit of very informal data- actually closer to conjecture: I may quite possibly have the highest percentage of folks with PH.D.'s that follow a non-degreed poster than any other non-degreed poster on Twitter... maybe just a hunch... maybe!
As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.
Although I've only used "Potpourri" as part of a blog title twice, and even though that is an apt description of this blog, I've decided to reserve the use of that word for another blog. "Joe Cool" was/is an alter ego of Snoopy, along with the famous World War One fighter ace. I think I grew up during the heyday of the Peanuts comic strip- Peanuts seemed to be all over pop culture, and the Peanuts holiday cartoons on television were a must-see, even if it was the third or fourth or more time of watching them. They were special, and they were really family time.
This blog, though, borrows thematically from- of all things- a tee shirt I bought in the 80's.
For a brief period in the 80's, I worked at J.C. Penney's in the Brickyard, the first "real" shopping center in Chicago. I actually ended up working at a few stores in the Brickyard, but I worked at Penney's before the mall actually opened. At some point, Penney's carried a line of Peanuts-themed shirts. I purchased several (with an employee discount) and one of them had a picture of Snoopy (in his Joe Cool persona). The graphic featured Joe Cool in his signature dark sunglasses flipping a flying disk (a.k.a. "Frisbee") with the following text:
"What else is there to do on a Saturday afternoon when there's nothing on TV, your clothes are in the laundry and your girlfriend has left you?"
That's pretty close to a quote, in any event. I tried Googling it and came up with nothing.
Finally, in the world of news, I'd like to introduce someone new to my blog- my sister-in-law Donna. In true Love American Style fashion, we've known "of" each other for nearly thirty years, but have only really connected in the past year. She's a good egg- anyone who enjoys my particular brand of humor deserves a pat on the back. And a job- she got caught in the recent bout of Schlumberger layoffs. So if you're in Houston (or maybe Dallas) and reading this- she's lookin'.
Someone recently asked me (okay, it was Donna, who is new to blogging) how I find all of these readers in countries outside of the United States? The answers is: I don't know. I was checking my view stats just before getting back to the blog, and discovered twenty-five new page views from Portugal.
Go figure.
I need to close this out, but one or two more topics are left. First, as I am a proud member of that special group of I.T. workers known to the world only as Nightstalkers, I have to update our grass. At home, that is... the lawn. We seem to have had a good deal of rain during May and June it seems, and as I enjoy cutting the grass (probably an Air Force flashback, but more than likely because it was one of my chores as a youngster), I generally get to do the mowing. And, I'm quicker than Jennifer. So, I happily cut the grass. The problem, though, is that I'm a Nightstalker, and as such, my grasscutting hours are sometimes a bit constrained. For example, we are allowed to "start our engines" after 0700, and are requested to cease power equipment operation by 1900 by our local municipality. The Chicago area is known to be rather humid, so the grass is often dewy in the morning... difficult to cut. My "morning" during the workweek is 1900, so my best opportunities for lawn maintenance are the weekend and Monday. Although there's been no rain for a few days, I ended up cutting the grass in two stages- Thursday before work, and this morning (Saturday) after work. Our compost bin is nearly overflowing from the clippings, and the lawn was still quite wet, so I think more grass clippings got left on the lawn than those which made it to the compost.
 |
| At the start |
 | ||||||
| Compost overflowing |
Well, not quite, but it was certainly buggier the closer I got to the lushest, least-trafficked area behind the garage.
Also, not sure about the rest of the world, but here in the United States, tomorrow (Sunday) is Father's Day. Happy Father's Day to all of the Dads out there.
No data to report this week, but I have a programming update.
My employer uses a very interesting software package for programming our products. As you may know, we produce what is known in the United States as "direct mail"; that is, advertising pieces that are sent through the postal service to named recipients. The client gives us their designs, tells us what specific information that a particular addressee should receive, and we- through composition, layout and programming- will produce a mailpiece that is tailored to each recipient's anticipated needs. On Thursday night, I had to do a bit of break/fox on one of these programs, and then on Friday I was able to pass this newfound knowledge to a few colleagues.
One other bit of very informal data- actually closer to conjecture: I may quite possibly have the highest percentage of folks with PH.D.'s that follow a non-degreed poster than any other non-degreed poster on Twitter... maybe just a hunch... maybe!
As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.
Wednesday, June 10, 2015
Suburbia 302: Nightstalkers
"He says there's a storm coming."
"Tell him I know. I know," Sarah Connor replies to the gas station owner at the end of the original Terminator movie just before she drives off towards the mountains, the storm and the epic Terminator music score.
I sorta knew what Sarah Connor was thinking when I pulled into my driveway this past Saturday morning. I opened the door of Meerkat, our trusty Subaru Outback, and did a quick survey of our yard. Yep, the grass was due for mowing- and the local meteorologists all agreed that the Chicago area was going to be hammered by wind, heavy rain and hail on Sunday- all day. Four letter words, each and every one of them!
Time for an aside here.... Back in my college days, I used to do a fair amount of creative writing, both for class and for personal enjoyment. Stream of consciousness was often used, partly because my typewriter (my manual typewriter) was horrid, and the "t" did not work properly. It was so bad that I once wrote a short paper for a freshman English class and I was struggling so badly that I slipped into stream of consciousness (SOC) without even knowing what SOC was whilst writing this essay. The paper itself was bad, but my salvation was my viewpoint- after several typos, I started SOC and the paper ended up getting a very good grade simply because I took the topic and a bad situation, and managed to get a laugh out of my classmates and our instructor through my commentary.
That was English 102. Fast forward thirty-odd years to 2015. I present Suburbia 302: Nightstalkers. And actually, this is not really for Nightstalkers. It is about Nightstalkers, and why we do things in the manner that we do.
Let's set the stage properly. At 0700, do you want to be wakened or have your morning disturbed by a lawnmower? Of course not! I'm not certain if this is a local ordinance, but the convention seems to be no mowers or other noisy equipment are to be in operation prior to 0800. I generally arrive home sometime between 0500 and 0700. Apart from the fact its bloody early, its also generally fairly wet, as the grass is covered with dew. So, I have the following windows available for grass cutting: Tuesday through Friday 1700-1900, Saturday 1800-2000 and pretty much all day Sunday and Monday. (And Sunday is the only full day of the entire week that I do not normally have to work for my employer.)
The bottom line, though, is that the grass does get cut, although sometimes because of meteorological conditions, it sometimes gets a bit shaggier than some of our neighbors' lawns who employ lawn services. For example, in May when Jennifer was out of town, I was always behind in my grass cutting because of Mother Nature's gleeful demonstrations of deluges, downpours and general dampness. Many of our neighbors had lawn services that seemed to suddenly appear with their high-powered self-propelled mowers the moment the rain stopped. Me? I had to wait until the grass dried- often a day or more. I once cut the grass in the rain, just because it was in dire need.
Its not quite like I see our suburb anywhere near the Monkees' Pleasant Valley Sunday, but I try to make our home and property look nice. And yes, I am aware that the song is NOT about nice or pretty (for 60's fans, please see also Proud Mary)
On the data front, not much has been going on. As some may be aware the Secret Underground Lair (SUL) has been undergoing a remodel. Mr. T., in an honest effort to move things along, committed a tactical error which has created a setback. In my previous blog, (Around) 2.5 Years Ago, or, my personal Interwebz v2.1, I had noted that the major moves were complete, and what was left was arguably the hard part- getting everything back in the office. Mr. T. decided to expedite the process by unboxing a great deal of old software to save some room. The net result of this was the complete occupation (wasted space) of nearly two shelves of formerly unoccupied space. It has been a week since he did this, and I'm still trying to figure out the best way to re-package this software.
Lego data has not been worked on. But- some Lego elements have been organized for ease of counting.
Lastly, Jennifer came to me with an odd problem- she was trying to read a document, but it would not download properly. At first, the website was blamed, but after a bit of troubleshooting, I discovered a much simpler error: Microsoft Office was not installed on her PC. Fiften minutes later, everything was good.
Now if I could only find the interface cable for my DSLR....
As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.
"Tell him I know. I know," Sarah Connor replies to the gas station owner at the end of the original Terminator movie just before she drives off towards the mountains, the storm and the epic Terminator music score.
I sorta knew what Sarah Connor was thinking when I pulled into my driveway this past Saturday morning. I opened the door of Meerkat, our trusty Subaru Outback, and did a quick survey of our yard. Yep, the grass was due for mowing- and the local meteorologists all agreed that the Chicago area was going to be hammered by wind, heavy rain and hail on Sunday- all day. Four letter words, each and every one of them!
Time for an aside here.... Back in my college days, I used to do a fair amount of creative writing, both for class and for personal enjoyment. Stream of consciousness was often used, partly because my typewriter (my manual typewriter) was horrid, and the "t" did not work properly. It was so bad that I once wrote a short paper for a freshman English class and I was struggling so badly that I slipped into stream of consciousness (SOC) without even knowing what SOC was whilst writing this essay. The paper itself was bad, but my salvation was my viewpoint- after several typos, I started SOC and the paper ended up getting a very good grade simply because I took the topic and a bad situation, and managed to get a laugh out of my classmates and our instructor through my commentary.
That was English 102. Fast forward thirty-odd years to 2015. I present Suburbia 302: Nightstalkers. And actually, this is not really for Nightstalkers. It is about Nightstalkers, and why we do things in the manner that we do.
Let's set the stage properly. At 0700, do you want to be wakened or have your morning disturbed by a lawnmower? Of course not! I'm not certain if this is a local ordinance, but the convention seems to be no mowers or other noisy equipment are to be in operation prior to 0800. I generally arrive home sometime between 0500 and 0700. Apart from the fact its bloody early, its also generally fairly wet, as the grass is covered with dew. So, I have the following windows available for grass cutting: Tuesday through Friday 1700-1900, Saturday 1800-2000 and pretty much all day Sunday and Monday. (And Sunday is the only full day of the entire week that I do not normally have to work for my employer.)
The bottom line, though, is that the grass does get cut, although sometimes because of meteorological conditions, it sometimes gets a bit shaggier than some of our neighbors' lawns who employ lawn services. For example, in May when Jennifer was out of town, I was always behind in my grass cutting because of Mother Nature's gleeful demonstrations of deluges, downpours and general dampness. Many of our neighbors had lawn services that seemed to suddenly appear with their high-powered self-propelled mowers the moment the rain stopped. Me? I had to wait until the grass dried- often a day or more. I once cut the grass in the rain, just because it was in dire need.
Its not quite like I see our suburb anywhere near the Monkees' Pleasant Valley Sunday, but I try to make our home and property look nice. And yes, I am aware that the song is NOT about nice or pretty (for 60's fans, please see also Proud Mary)
On the data front, not much has been going on. As some may be aware the Secret Underground Lair (SUL) has been undergoing a remodel. Mr. T., in an honest effort to move things along, committed a tactical error which has created a setback. In my previous blog, (Around) 2.5 Years Ago, or, my personal Interwebz v2.1, I had noted that the major moves were complete, and what was left was arguably the hard part- getting everything back in the office. Mr. T. decided to expedite the process by unboxing a great deal of old software to save some room. The net result of this was the complete occupation (wasted space) of nearly two shelves of formerly unoccupied space. It has been a week since he did this, and I'm still trying to figure out the best way to re-package this software.
Lego data has not been worked on. But- some Lego elements have been organized for ease of counting.
Lastly, Jennifer came to me with an odd problem- she was trying to read a document, but it would not download properly. At first, the website was blamed, but after a bit of troubleshooting, I discovered a much simpler error: Microsoft Office was not installed on her PC. Fiften minutes later, everything was good.
Now if I could only find the interface cable for my DSLR....
As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.
Thursday, June 4, 2015
(Around) 2.5 years, or, my personal Interwebz v2.1
Around two and a half years ago, I posted my first blog- December 4th, 2012 (it's a pretty short post- even by my current blogging standards!). Even way back then (figuratively speaking) I strove to keep data in the mix as the unifying theme of this blog. And at the end of May, 2015, I'm still blogging about life in general with data as the underlying theme.
It's June of 2015 now, and I've been working on my Twitter account. I consider Twitter serious work primarily because it is an integral element of my online presence strategy- and two and a half years ago, I didn't even know what an online presence strategy was, let alone seeing the need for one. After all, Twitter is one of the places where this blogs posts, but more importantly, it's where I interact with the world of #bigdata and #IoT.
I'm a firm believer in cross-pollenization and shameless self-promotion when it comes to creating a larger presence on the internet, so here's an invitation: if you have an understanding of any of the following terms, have a personal or professional interest in them, or possibly have heard one or more of them before and would like to learn more about them... here's a sample of the topics I address on my (hochspeyer) account on twitter:
#bigdata, #notsobigdata, #smalldata, #microdata, #database, #analytics, #stats, #IoT (Internet of Things), #IoE (Internet of Everything), #M2M (machine to machine), #machinelearning and, of course, #hadoop and #python. I touch on a lot of related topics on that account, but if Big Data and the Internet of Things are topics which you are interested in, you may enjoy following.
My other twitter account (hochspeyer1) still has a tech focus, but has more of a personal touch, looking more at #maker and #programming topics, as well as life in general.
Whew!
The state of the state of my microdata projects: as of today (Jun 4, 2015), the SUL (Secret Underground Lair) is still theoretically experiencing remodeling; by this I mean that while all of the furniture and shelving are in their (probable) final positions, everything that came out and came from upstairs still is in need of homes. Forty-two. my database project, is currently on hold. The Lego database (currently an Excel 2007 workbook) is currently in a data entry phase, and will eventually be a part of Forty-two. Even the Raspberry Pi, Arduino and Python projects are all on hold pending the completion of the SUL upgrade/remodel. Lastly, I'm building my media library, one song at a time. I'm using Windows Media Player, which I suppose is extremely lazy, but the interface is familiar and it does pretty much all that I want, so for now it suffices.
That's all from the SUL for now. As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.
It's June of 2015 now, and I've been working on my Twitter account. I consider Twitter serious work primarily because it is an integral element of my online presence strategy- and two and a half years ago, I didn't even know what an online presence strategy was, let alone seeing the need for one. After all, Twitter is one of the places where this blogs posts, but more importantly, it's where I interact with the world of #bigdata and #IoT.
I'm a firm believer in cross-pollenization and shameless self-promotion when it comes to creating a larger presence on the internet, so here's an invitation: if you have an understanding of any of the following terms, have a personal or professional interest in them, or possibly have heard one or more of them before and would like to learn more about them... here's a sample of the topics I address on my (hochspeyer) account on twitter:
#bigdata, #notsobigdata, #smalldata, #microdata, #database, #analytics, #stats, #IoT (Internet of Things), #IoE (Internet of Everything), #M2M (machine to machine), #machinelearning and, of course, #hadoop and #python. I touch on a lot of related topics on that account, but if Big Data and the Internet of Things are topics which you are interested in, you may enjoy following.
My other twitter account (hochspeyer1) still has a tech focus, but has more of a personal touch, looking more at #maker and #programming topics, as well as life in general.
Whew!
The state of the state of my microdata projects: as of today (Jun 4, 2015), the SUL (Secret Underground Lair) is still theoretically experiencing remodeling; by this I mean that while all of the furniture and shelving are in their (probable) final positions, everything that came out and came from upstairs still is in need of homes. Forty-two. my database project, is currently on hold. The Lego database (currently an Excel 2007 workbook) is currently in a data entry phase, and will eventually be a part of Forty-two. Even the Raspberry Pi, Arduino and Python projects are all on hold pending the completion of the SUL upgrade/remodel. Lastly, I'm building my media library, one song at a time. I'm using Windows Media Player, which I suppose is extremely lazy, but the interface is familiar and it does pretty much all that I want, so for now it suffices.
That's all from the SUL for now. As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.
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