Author Archives: Jim Vanderveen

About Jim Vanderveen

I'm a bit of a Renaissance man, with far too many hobbies for my free time! But more important than any hobby is my family. My proudest accomplishment has been raising some great kids! And somehow convincing my wife to put up with me since 1988. ;)

‘vagrant ssh’ errors

I picked up a copy of Learning Puppet 4 shortly after publication and went through some of the examples and exercises. Pretty straightforward, although there were a few glitches in the examples, as is typical with any fast-moving technology. The … Continue reading

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Coffee roasting

Last year my wife bought me a countertop coffee roaster, and I’ve been hooked on home-roasting coffee ever since. Lately I’ve also been roasting in our convection open, which works great for medium- to medium-dark roast. (I use the countertop … Continue reading

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Finally moving to https!

I haven’t been using my blog lately because I’ve been trying to find a reasonably-priced service that offers encrypted web connections, i.e. https://example.com. A few weeks ago my current hosting provider, Pair, started offering that as a free service. Woot! … Continue reading

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Viruses and OSX Time Machine

Argh! I did a full scan of my Mac and discovered a virus on the Time Machine volume. I wrote about this a few years ago, and the tweaks to my mail/anti-virus/Time Machine work flow have served me well. But … Continue reading

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ISS Above installation via Mac OSX

I recently backed the ISS Above wearable project on Kickstarter, which got me thinking about (and tinkering with) my first ISS Above. What is it? Just a super-cool little widget that you can build on top of a Raspberry Pi … Continue reading

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Let’s Make something at Hacker Lab!

Earlier this month I became one of the Facilitators at Hacker Lab in Sacramento. As such, I’ll be working in the Maker Space once or twice a week, helping users with the plethora of tools and equipment they have available. … Continue reading

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iOS7, battery killer!

I finally upgraded my iPhone 4S to iOS7 the other day, plugged in my charger that night, and started the day with a shiny new OS. But in less than an hour, my battery was dead. WTH?!?

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Cranberry-satsuma relish

The 2012 Thanksgiving issue of Bon Appétit had a cranberry-orange-mint relish recipe that looked pretty good, except that my wife can’t stand mint. So I left out the mint, substituted satsumas for the oranges, and used star thistle honey instead of sugar. … Continue reading

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blog software updates

Wow, I had really let this blog fall by the wayside! 🙁 When I started the [30-day challenge][zero-to-hero] earlier this month, I knew one of the urgent things that needed to be done was a full update of the blog … Continue reading

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Tiny Arduinos

I’ve been playing with Arduino boards for the past year or two. These were designed as micro controllers for the masses — easy to program and simple to wire up. You need only the most rudimentary computer and electronics skills … Continue reading

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