It’s been a while since I posted anything here, so I thought that I should at least push something out to ensure that the pipeline is still working. As with anything that has a few moving parts, it always helps to check in every once in a while to verify that the process is still working as expected. Just Checking In full article
This won’t get posted until I am on the ground, but it is currently being written while flying at 30K+ feet. I can’t say that I am a fan of flying per se, although I do enjoy being in other places for a while. The book that I had assumed would keep me occupied for most of the flight turned out to be a much quicker read than I had anticipated. Up in the Air full article
For all but the most trivial tasks, we almost never actually got to “done.” We get as far as we can with the resources that we have, including time, and then are on to the next thing. I think it was a writer or a musician who said something along the lines of “You never finish a piece, you just abandon it.” You Are Never Done full article
JASP is an open source statistical program that pulls together a number of R packages into a user-friendly, menu-driven interface. It is under active development, and has a number of well-written guides accompanying it, though the screen shots typically lag behind the current version of the program. At the moment, there are not any modules specifically for classical item analysis, which is true of R in general for the most part. Jasp full article
No matter how much planning you do, there is never enough budget to do it all. The more you budget, the more you use. Budget full article
Compared to the rest of the country (and rest of the world, perhaps) we have been fairly lucky in terms of heat. This summer has not (yet) been completely unbearable. But I’m sure that it is only a matter of time before we yearn for a nighttime temperature of under 85 degrees. We were warned. Heat full article
Enjoying a short stay in Arizona. This would be a great place to live if it wasn’t for the weather. It isn’t even the peak of summer, and daytime temps are already over 100. Yes, it is a dry heat, but that doesn’t mean that it isn’t hot. That said, if you are in the area, take a drive up Mount Lemmon for a fantastic view and a chance to cool off a few degrees. Arizona full article
I spent some time today in an O’Reilly session that was all about using Python’s requests library for interacting with REST APIs. Although I knew that I had a lot to learn, now I know how little I know. What's in a Request full article
I’m listening to the Pink Floyd album “Ummagumma” for the first time in a long time (a decade maybe?). I had forgotten how experimental the studio album was. There are two things that I can’t imagine: 1) a current bad creating an album of music like this, and 2) a record company releasing such an album. Grooving_with_a_pict full article
Been playing around with AWS Lambda recently. It is taking a while to get into the whole “serverless” mindset, but things are gradually becoming clearer. The primary gotchas involve using a bunch of external packages (I’m talking about Python here) and having a Lambda that needs access to both the internet and to a resource in a private subnet. It turns out that NAT Gateways are not very cheap…. Lambda full article
Just making sure that the workflow works. More Testing full article
Back on a train heading home from the conference. It’s nice to be able to look out the window and see the world roll by. Too bad I can’t get to Japan by train… Heading Home full article
It’s nice to be out of the office, even though it has taken a little time to get used to interacting with people again. There was an appropriate amount of social distancing and general compliance with the various rules and regulations in all of the restaurants, etc. that I have been in. The only thing I was possibly not used to was the amount of noise that is created when lots of folks congregate over coffee or drinks. Educause 2 full article
EDUCAUSE seems to have far fewer attendees this year. It is nice to be able to actually find a place to sit down. The vendor area is far less packed than previous years. I don’t have any budget authority, so I’m not a very good prospect anyway. Educause 1 full article
Taking an Amtrak train for the first time in a long time. What a nice way to travel! I had forgotten how relaxing the train can be, just watching the scenery go by. (It helps that it is autumn and the leaves are changing.) I’m looking forward to more trips like this in the future. Trains full article
I’ve finally had the chance to spend some “quality time” with my new Mac and I must say that I am enjoying it more than I had anticipated. I found a great site with lots of useful information about tweaking the default shell, and that has created a very nice experience, as I’ve virtually all of my time in one terminal or another. My only gripes so far are a lack of a backspace and delete key that are independent of one another. Liking My Mac full article
Moved to new (and first ever!) Mac and trying to make sure that everything still works in terms of the deployment pipeline – push to Git, deploy to AWS. My Second Post full article
Just making sure that Hugo is up and running. My First Post full article