Emphasis on “the trades” as an alternative to a traditional four-year-just-after-high-school option has been a hot topic recently. Politicians, educators, commentators, and parents all have opinions on the topic. What comes to mind when we hear “the trades?” Mechanics, welders, carpenters, electricians – yes, these are all trades as we use the term. We use…
Let’s just have some fun. I love a good cliche, and I love the twist of a term, so today I’m going to toss out a bunch of twisted cliches. Curiosity thrilled the cat When life gives you lemons, squirt them in life’s eye You can’t teach an old dog new tricks – unless you…
“They call me Baby Driver…and once, upon a pair of wheels”… No, not that kind of driver, more’s the pity. Today I’m going to tell you about drivers of a different type. They’re small programs that let your operating system talk to your hardware. We need to know about drivers because outdated drivers can cause…
We love exploring new places. There’s something exciting about discovering what we’ve never seen before. But there are places my family loves to visit time and again. We build memories of the people we were with, the things we did there, and the places themselves. We shouldn’t overlook the things we’ve already seen. Revisiting old…
We’ve been on a journey through the different regions of Machine Learning. We’ve explored Supervised Learning, Unsupervised Learning, and Reinforcement Learning. If you haven’t had a chance to read those posts, that’s fine; you don’t need to read them in any particular order to make sense of the topic. We’ll conclude the trek with Deep…
A podcaster recently joked about how he saw a psychic’s disclaimer that his advice should not be used for financial planning. I’m already a skeptic on the whole realm of astrology/psychics/fortune-telling. As a result, the irony of claiming supernatural insight but hedging on financial advice wasn’t lost on me. It brought up a question I’ve…
It was a voyage in which everything that could go wrong, did. A Dutch fleet of five ships left Rotterdam in June of 1598. The destination was the Spice Islands, what we call Indonesia today. Over the next two years, four of those ships were lost to mutiny, storms, and hostile encounters. Ultimately, the lone…
A traditional desktop computer is pretty much worthless without being connected to a keyboard and monitor. Most modern applications also want a mouse. Even laptops — and pretty much all modern electronics — require at least one type of connection. They all need power, and most of them get it through a charger. Understanding ports…
I brushed my teeth this morning without giving it much thought. I sweep the kitchen floor, and I don’t agonize over it. There are a lot of actions that we take without having to think much about them. Brushing our teeth and tying our shoes, scrambling eggs, maybe driving to the store, don’t ask for…
On December 26, 2004, my husband suffered a crisis of faith. That was the day that a devastating tsunami washed over the island nation of Indonesia, triggered by a massive undersea earthquake. A dozen or so countries were ultimately affected, and more than 230,000 people lost their lives. Millions more lost everything except their lives….
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