This is the story of Usenet, an obsession with astronauts, a deep dive into NASA history, a delightful discovery, forgetting that discovery for a quarter century, and my inability to successfully carry out a Google search. This story begins in the 1990s, deep in the bowels of Usenet, which was social media in the days…
At a recent doctor appointment, as the medical tech ran through my history he asked if I’d had my flu shot. I had, and he updated his records. He asked if I’d gotten my Covid booster. I had, but I couldn’t recall the date. He asked if I had a photo of my Covid card.…
More than a year ago I began exploring the Shortcuts feature that Apple introduced to iOS (and later, into MacOS). It took me a while to figure out what the shortcuts were all about and longer to figure out a practical use for shortcuts. There were plenty of examples of things that people were using…
We need a new term for the devices many (if not most) of us carry around in our pockets. I have an iPhone, as do the other members of the family. Several times a day, I hear things like, “Has anyone seen my phone?” “There’s an alarm going off on your phone.” “Mom, you just…
Now and then, when I find myself taking technology for granted, I try to step back for a few minutes and imagine what my grandfather would have thought about the technology advance over the last 17 years since he died. My grandfather always seemed surprised and delighted by advances in technology. He would marvel at…
Any time I find myself thinking how great the Internet is, my thoughts drift to the one area in which I find it sorely lacking: a native annotation capability. The notion of hypertext and the linking of documents in a digital network is genius. It seems to me that if you can conceive of this,…
I didn’t watch Steve Job’s keynote address yesterday, but like everyone else in the universe, I did catch some news of Apple’s new iPad. Despite being a big fan of Apple products, I wasn’t overly impressed. Here are some of my thoughts: Useful for note-taking, so I imagine it will be useful in classrooms (including…
I checked out Journey to the Center of the Earth from the library and haven’t gotten around to it yet. The other day, I renewed it. This morning, after talking to John, it occurred to me that maybe this is anopportunity for me to give eReader on my iPhone another shot. Turns out the book…
I took at short break at 11 am after wrapping up the Day 2 slide deck (209 slides!) finally! I headed over to the Apple store because after nearly 2 years, I’ve been having some problems with my iPhone (which I never bought Apple Care for). Turns out the problems were caused by a small crack in glass…
I’ve mentioned over the last few days that I am in the process of consolidating my on-line presence. Let me describe the why and how of this for folks who might be interested.
I am in the process of consolidating my online presence. I’ll have more to say about what this entails once it’s all finished. The key thing for now is that my main email address is going to change. I’ll be notifying folks of the change over the next few days. If you haven’t heard from…
It was near 70 degrees here in the Metro DC area today–unusual for late December, to say the least. It was almost like we were back in Florida. I slept in until about 8:30 or so. But we still managed to get an early start on our day. First, we headed over to the Apple…