This week, my wife and I welcomed our new son, Brian Dean, into our lives. Born on Thursday, August 21, he weighed five pounds, nine ounces, and was 20″ in length. We weren’t really expecting this for a couple more weeks, but catching us off-guard was just fine as far as we were concerned; we…
In late 2012, Google announced that it was shutting down Google Calendar Sync in mid-2013. This plugin for Microsoft Outlook allows the synchronization of contacts and calendars between the Outlook application and Google’s services (namely GMail and Google Calendar). Google stopped allowing new registrations of the plugin in July 2013, and this week, they shut…
This is a really cool tool created by Nathan Yau at Flowing Data, that models jobs by salary and industry. You can filter by state and highlight by median salary. It’s pretty cool! http://flowingdata.com/2014/07/02/jobs-charted-by-state-and-salary/
I’ve been discussing section 508 compliance and Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) on a project. As an illustration of the importance of adhering to basic standards, I used this video on Vimeo that gives an idea of the experience a vision-impaired user has when viewing the Twitter web site with a screen reader. It’s pretty powerful!…
I recently had the opportunity to take a two-day certification course for the Agile Scrum Master certification offered by the Scrum Alliance. This course is a prerequisite for taking the certification exam, and teaches you the principles you need in order to understand the Scrum methodology and adequately prepare for the exam. The course was…
I hate spam. There’s little in this world I hate more than spam. Junk mail delivered to my house is a close second. Years ago, I had my primary email address on a personal domain, as so many people do. This email address was in various places on the web well before slimy spammer started…
As I’ve said in the past, one of my biggest gripes about Apple’s Mac OS X is that I spend so much time on Windows machines (where I am that stereotypical geek who knows all the speedy keyboard shortcuts) that I never really become more efficient with using my MacBook Pro. Personally, I use QuickSilver…
Looking for a way to keep your online accounts (cloud storage, banking, social media, email, etc.) as secure as possible? Two-factor verification (also known as two-step authentication, abbreviated to TFA) is a process involving two stages to verify the identity of a user trying to access services in a computer or in a network. This is…
If you use an Android device, you’ve undoubtedly noticed that it’s easiest to manage your contacts from your Google account. But what if your record-keeping system for contacts is Microsoft Outlook, which doesn’t sync with Google? If you have a Mac, the whole process is complicated but it doesn’t require manual effort once it’s set up.…
So, as a Six Sigma Black Belt who is fascinated with statistics, I have to wonder about the probability that two artists — and let’s face it, artists are known for being illustrious when they describe themselves — can come up with essentially the exact same bio. A co-worker sent me this last week and…