Mayo Jordanov; software developer, photographer, climber, runner, hiker, adventurer, explorer
The power utility here uses smart meters, and only a few approved devices can interface with them. Most require cloud access, which I wanted to avoid, so I had only one option: the EMU-2 by Rainforest Automation. The EMU-2 is a simple device with a display listing a set of pre-set data view options. It has a micro USB port for power and communication, and a battery for backup. Fortunately, the USB…
I haven't updated this site in a while, and as is my custom every few years, I tinkered more with redesign and the site generators than with actual content. The site is now generated with Zola . I enjoyed working on Hana, but maintaining a custom built site generator and number of plugins just for a handful of sites was getting too time consuming. Plus, there is always the chore of dealing…
DeMarco points out that any increase in efficiency, in an organisation or an individual life, necessitates a trade-off: you get rid of unused expanses of time, but you also get rid of the benefits of that extra time. In the accident and emergency department, by contrast, remaining "inefficient" in this sense is a matter of life and death. If there is an exclusive focus on using the staff’s time as…
Use this not to capture and log every moment of every day; but as a window, through which to frame a handful of moments, forever. — Nate Townsend
I really really want to like Hugo . I like the elegance of having a single binary, not having to worry about Python versions and dependencies, and most importantly not being responsible for maintaining the codebase. I've tried migrating my site to Hugo over the last couple of years, but I always run into some issues or major annoyances. On my last attempt, I was almost there, and then…
What happened was fairly simple, I’ve come to believe. It was an accident. A virus spent some time in a laboratory, and eventually it got out. SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, began its existence inside a bat, then it learned how to infect people in a claustrophobic mine shaft, and then it was made more infectious in one or more laboratories, perhaps as part of a scientist’s…
For more than half a century, governments all over the world trusted a single company to keep the communications of their spies, soldiers and diplomats secret.
I've had the need to do some light network emulation and conditioning on macOS Mojave, but it seems most of the information out there is outdated, relies on unnecessary external software, or is just plain wrong. There is the handy Network Link Conditioner Tool that comes with Xcode, but that affects the whole machine, rather than a limited setup or specific network interfaces. It turns out…
Belated photo of the supermoon eclipse from January 20, 2019.
The Opportunity rover stopped communicating with Earth when a severe Mars-wide dust storm blanketed its location in June 2018. After more than a thousand commands to restore contact, engineers in the Space Flight Operations Facility at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) made their last attempt to revive Opportunity Tuesday, to no avail. The solar-powered rover's final communication…
How did we get through the Neolithic Era without sunscreen? Actually, perfectly well. What’s counterintuitive is that dermatologists run around saying, "Don’t go outside, you might die."
Technology is imposed on the land, but technique means conforming to the landscape. They work in opposite ways, one forcing a passage while the other discovers it. The goal of developing technique is to conform to the most improbable landscape by means of the greatest degree of skill and boldness supported by the least equipment.
2018 Photo Picks At the beginning of this year, I ran across Alex Burke's blog, while researching about film scanning. Among loads of other useful posts, I noticed Alex' "The Bets Of ..." posts, where he picks of 9(ish) of his best shots of the year. I really like this idea. It's a great opportunity to go through all the photos I've taken over the year, remember and re-live…
If you view what happened to the diplomats in Havana as an “attack,” you must look for something capable of producing such an assault. It would have to emit a sound that varied widely from listener to listener. It would have to strike only people who worked at the embassy. It would have to assail them wherever they happened to be, whether in their homes or staying at a hotel. It would have to…
Your genuine talent will find its way to success. Thanks, fortune cookie! I'm ready to see what 2019 will bring.
In agricultural applications, LED lights are used in ways that seem to border on alchemy, changing how plants grow, when they flower, how they taste and even their levels of vitamins and antioxidants. The lights can also prolong their shelf life.
You’re telling me that there are three things you love and you want me to tell you which two to cut off…so you can limp along on the other one? This is not how things work. The advice I have for you is: don’t discard. Find a way to keep all three of these things in the mix.
It seems to me, that if we love, we grieve. That’s the deal. That’s the pact. Grief and love are forever intertwined. Grief is the terrible reminder of the depths of our love and, like love, grief is non-negotiable. There is a vastness to grief that overwhelms our minuscule selves. We are tiny, trembling clusters of atoms subsumed within grief’s awesome presence. It occupies the core of our being…
Imagine a horizontal line, with 0 on the left and 20 on the right. I want to be in the middle, at 10. But I’m at 17. No amount of adding will get me where I want to be. The adding mindset is deeply ingrained. It’s easy to think I need something else. It’s hard to look instead at what to remove.
Where I had expertise before, I don’t necessarily now. People ask my advice on things I knew well years ago. It’s tempting to think I still know the answer, but instead I have to admit, "Sorry. I don’t know."