[amazon_link id=”B0044DEDCA” target=”_blank” container=”” container_class=”” ][/amazon_link]In a clear case of the shoemaker’s children, I’ve been living with a pretty crude connection between my media PC and my sound system. The PC itself is an old HP Pavilion that died and got resurrected with a new copy of Windows 7 Home Pro and a new power supply. As far as serving up media and surfing the web, its 4 GB ram and 2.4GHz processor keep up with most anything I ask of it. The audio outputs on the back however, don’t do justice to the sound from either videos or mp3s, and since I’ve ripped every CD we own onto it, I really should have done something about that a while ago. Continue reading →

Pmi prep course

So, I’m spending the weekend taking a prepncourse for the Project MAnagementb Professional certification. Which I already hold. 

I’ve gotten number of certs in my life, mostly IT oriented, and a few degrees along the way. Certs are about current practice, while courses tend towards meta-knowledge, and as a result certs expire after a few years, while course learning, though less useful in the trenches, lasts forever. More or less.

Unlike my IT certs, the PMP is one I mean to keep active. 

Why? Don’t I care about the tech side?  Continue reading →

[amazon_link id=”1897350279″ target=”_blank” container=”” container_class=”” ][/amazon_link]Twenty two years after Verne rushed his character around the world in 80 days another science fiction writer set out to best the fictional Fogg’s time more than two weeks. George Griffith was his name, and he’d cut his teeth on Verne as a child, then moved on to roam the world in search of adventures of his own. In 1894 the adventurer set off on his exploit, chronicling it London’s Pearson Weekly, and offering a narrative that contrasts with Verne (and Hollywood’s) sugar coated travelogue. While it’s not as spicy as the fictional voyage, it’s considerably more illuminating.

The actual record had already fallen to Nellie Bly, a reporter from the NY Herald, who had made the trip in 72 days in 1889 (the forward gives this as 74 days and doesn’t name Bly, but I got this from Wikipedia, so it must be true).

The travelouge is interesting, though fairly dry, and one guesses that there wasn’t quite the fervor that Nellie’s trip caused, but still, it’s quite an adventure.

The small book includes a number of shorter travelogues to wild and exotic places like the mountains of Peru, or across the channel by balloon (Hurrah!), and it’s easy to see why the jacket copy offers him up as the spiritual father of Steampunk.  Fair enough, I say.