I was able to squeeze a bavaweekly in last Tuesday between sets of work waves pounding my spirit. It’s been a ride, and when servers start acting up everything else gets deprioritized. Such is life in the Cloud, but with the issue ostensibly resolved (knock on virtual wood) I can return to the blog and catch up on a few things. First up is this week’s bavaweekly which featured Antonella providing a special medical update, which was really fun. Her cult following amongst the ds106radio faithful is spilling over into my video streaming life:
I touched on a few things, but the big news this week that Antonella reported on was the evolutionary roots of the rare genetic blood disease hemochromatosis, which it’s looking like I have. The long and the short of it is I have too many damn iron-bearing proteins in my blood, which were useful when my ancestors were speaking Gaelic killing the neighboring clans, but not so much when sitting at a computer all day eating Ding Dongs. I’m an anachronistic specimen that missed my calling as a feudal warrior, such is life. But it helps that Antonella loves the whole thing, so as long as it doesn’t kill me I am game 🙂
Beyond that I talked about Boone Gorges bailing me out with a quick fix to a single sign-on plugin, Cassify, that got single sign-on working again on UMW Blogs—nothing but love for the Gorg.es! #4life
Few other bits:
I started running on Sunday of last week, which was big for me. Last time I ran was when I was 19 and did the San Diego marathon and then stopped. That said, as I’m writing this I have a bum knee after my last run, damn it!
On Friday I continued the saga of getting the Italian bootleg arcade cabinets back up and running. It’s been rough. In particular we tried swapping out monitors in Explorer to see if the vertical hold issue was a monitor or board issue because this has been a tough one to track down. After testing the game on two different monitors (they both reproduced the same vertical hold issue) we confirmed it’s an issue with the board, so that and Asterock‘s board need to be fixed. I sent the Explorer board out already and need to find someone who will work on Asterock. Those two games are close!
On Saturday I did do some arcade work on Stargate, swapped out the modded CMOS NVRAM chip that stores high scores with a built-in lithium battery, but that didn’t solve the game resetting problem. So I did some more research and learned a bad 7432N chip leads to similar issues that I’m having so working on replacing that next week.
On Monday and Tuesday I spent much of the time participating and presenting at New York City Digital Humanities Week event. On Monday I was part of the Roundtable “Finding, Cultivating, and Sustaining Support for Your DH Project.” It was an energizing conversation that acknowledged many of the deeper issues across higher ed when it comes to sustaining support. It is a topic many faculty and support staff have been struggling with throughout the pandemic, so it felt timely. And the idea of folks leaving the academy en masse is interesting on many fronts, there was no specific data but there was a broader sense of general burn-out and being fed up. But what are the alternatives…? I guess Reclaim has been that for me, but the fact is often accompanied by a tincture of guilt given I identify so deeply as an educator. Strange days….
On Tuesday I gave a demonstration/workshop on Reclaim Cloud with an overpromising title “Containing DH: How to Use Docker to Run Just About Anything.” There were about 20 people there and we worked through the significance of containerization, what is means more generally for next-generation computing, and then after about 30 minutes w spent the last 90 minutes going through trying to setup applications.We tried 4 and got 2 working, at least 1 of the other 2 works, Discourse, it just needed transactional email setup to be finished. The other app that failed, Datasette, has eluded me thus far, but I will give that another go next week. I did enjoy the idea of sharing my thinking and workflow, and I do think it resulted in us covering a lot of useful, practical elements of working in the Cloud, or so I hope.
After that I jumped on a call with University of North Florida to do another demo of Reclaim Cloud with Taylor, and that meant getting to see the great Andy Rush, which is always a win!.
Movies:
- The Firm (better than I remembered)
- The Requin (worst shark movie ever, Alicia Silverstone’s comeback is not happening)
Finally, missed a desk meeting with Meredith and Taylor wherein we share our setups, although I listened in while doing arcade work. Hopefully next week we will do a stream wherein we discuss home desk setups cause I am getting pretty happy with mine.
Sending warmest wishes. Glad to see you are both enrolling sense of humour in your armoury. Good teamwork, as my grandson would say! My Celtic genes have caused a few problems but Celtic genes overall are still worth having, in the right combination. Stay strong, stay irreverent Reverend, stay funny!
Frances!
Thanks so much for watching and commenting, been thinking about you and yours! Wouldn’t trade those genes for the world, they’re all I know! In fact, I am actually battle sword shopping this weekend, amazing the things you can find in Medieval Trento 🙂
The only solution is to start a club that we can’t talk about.
I can sell you some American leeches if you want.
Can we use swords? Don’t answer that 🙂
Feel blessed that my first bavaweekly watch starred Antonella! I’ll make the effort to watch live sometime soon. Maybe start a collection of medieval weaponry and find some likeminded bloodletters?
Thank you for not mentioning my trouble with the new media 🙂