More website security

February 19, 2024 – Not really news from your point of view, but it’s what I’ve been up to lately. Another security plugin showed me that unauthorized people (well, probably unauthorized bots) were trying to gain access to my administrator account several times a day. I get the impression this is pretty common, but it

More website security Read More »

Confluence 2023

August 7, 2023 – I went to the Friday evening session of Confluence, the convention by Parsec (https://parsec-sff.org/), Pittsburgh’s science fiction club, on July 21. A good time as always, highly recommended for all science fiction and fantasy readers and writers. I particularly enjoyed the session on hopepunk and solarpunk. They’re sort of the opposite

Confluence 2023 Read More »

COVID

April 14, 2023 – I was just about to start cardiac rehab from the heart surgery, when COVID suddenly came roaring through the household and hit us all. It wasn’t too bad for three of us–all that vaxing and boosting apparently paid off–but my oldest son got slammed–he always gets everything worse than anyone else,

COVID Read More »

Heart valve

February 1, 2023 – I just had surgery to replace my heart’s aortic valve. I’d known for a couple of years it had aortic stenosis (inability to pass enough flow) caused by a combination of a birth defect and aging, but only recently did the condition suddenly jump into the “severe” category and require surgery

Heart valve Read More »

Robot experiment

September 3, 2022 – A perfect nerd’s holiday! I went to Carnegie-Mellon University’s Robotics Makerspace AI lab and participated in an experiment learning to drive a robot by a combination of voice commands and tilting my head while wearing a hat with sensors in it! And they said they’d pay me for doing it! I’d

Robot experiment Read More »