The MBTA has for years now had available a “stored value” type of card for subway, buses, commuter rail, etc. All very neat. You can go to a vending machine at subway stations and refill the card with cash or use a debit or credit card. It’s even possible to refill them on the bus, [...]
Archive for category Technology
Winter Hobbies
Jan 21
During the good weather, I enjoy riding my bike a bit with my free time, but in the winter I am often de-motivated. That makes it a good time to focus on one of my other hobbies: electronics. I had a pretty fruitful weekend (so far!) on the electronics front. For Christmas, I had bought [...]
Sign Switcher
Jan 11
For our church pageant, we retold the Christmas story in the guise of a Christmas Trivia game show. There was going to be a person responsible for holding up signs like “Applause!” etc. but I thought to myself, “I have some scrolling LED signs. I bet with a little effort, I can build/program a device [...]
Virtually Impossible
Oct 16
I received a new laptop at work, which is always a treat, but also always a pain trying to get the necessary programs and data migrated from the old one to the new one. My usual crutch is to create a “virtual” copy of the old laptop to run on the new one for the [...]
Useful
Mar 19
On Thursday (2 days ago) I ordered an electronics prototyping kit based around an Atmel ATmega8U2 microcontroller. The kit is called an Arduino, and I ordered it from Adafruit Industries (funny name, I know), and paid for UPS ground shipping. I’m glad I didn’t pay for 2-day or 3-day “Priority” shipping, because it arrived Friday, [...]
iPad, therefore iAm
Apr 5
I ordered an iPad the first day that Apple was taking orders. I thought (still think…) it will make a great internet appliance for my elderly mom, who has no real experience with computers. Some of those characteristics that are perceived as negatives for techies I think will be positives for her. It has a [...]
It’s been a while
Nov 24
I’m not much of a blogger. Having the summer trip provided me with an endless supply of material to write about. But (my) ordinary life hardly seems worth writing about. Another roadblock for me was that I wanted to “preserve” the trip blog as a sort of whole. And in fits and starts, I have, [...]
Feature Creep
Aug 18
I’ve added a couple of new pages (see the “tabs” along the top) for a photo gallery and a map showing pictures along our route. Enjoy!
C8H10N4O2
Jul 30
Mmmm…
Shaving Hotel Costs
Jul 30
In two or three of the hotels we’ve visited, the pop-up drain plug has been missing. In two or three others, the sink wouldn’t hold water in spite of the presence of a plug. This makes shaving rather less efficient. I tried to fix one of the non-water-holding ones, but failed. Are the missing ones [...]
