Holiday

My Last Binary Day (probably) #NerdNewYear

Happy Binary Day! So in addition to being Veteran’s Day , today, November 11, 2011, happens to be the last “Binary Day” I am ever likely to live through. There have been 36 so-called “Binary Days” in the last 11 years (9 each in 2000, 2001, 2010, and 2011), where all the days of the date (except...

Nov 11, 2011 2 minute read.

Holiday

Thank you Veterans

This Veteran’s Day, I would like to honor family members who have served this country. I would like to honor my Father, Richard V. Moline III, who served this country in the US Navy before I was born. I would like to honor my Sister in Law, Betina Garcia, who currently serves this country as an...

Nov 11, 2011 2 minute read.

Math

On the Difficulty of Pottermore House Cup Competitions

My last 2 posts were both about cheats on earning and keeping House Points on Pottermore. Continuing that series, I thought I would write a little bit on task-based point competitions. “Now, as I understand it, the house cup here needs awarding, and the points stand thus…” The first problem with...

Sep 18, 2011 4 minute read.

Web

Pottermore Cheats Update: Potions are Better now, but the site still has a way to go

I don’t know if the people from TH_NK read my post about cheating on Pottermore by purposeful failing at potion making, or one of the many other online forums posting about the issue, but a few days after my post went live, they posted on the Pottermore Insider blog that potions are being tweaked...

Sep 14, 2011 3 minute read.

Web

Pottermore Cheats: Earning more house points through failure then success in potion making

UPDATE 9/14/2011: TH_NK has updated Pottermore so that you no longer earn house points when you fail to brew a potion, this simple fix nullifies the cheating method mentioned below, Hurrah! I’m going to preface what I’m going to say below with the statement that I am not putting this post up as...

Aug 27, 2011 3 minute read.

Charity

Rachel Beckwith's Amazing Gift

For her 9th birthday, Rachel Beckwith asked people to donate to charity:water rather then give her presents. Sadly when her birthday arrived she was $80 short of her goal of raising just $300 for charity:water. A month after her birthday she died in a car crash, in the month since her death,...

Aug 19, 2011 2 minute read.

Technology

Saved Chrome Profiles Feature moves to Beta Build

Ever since the Profiles feature was first announced in the canary build I was excited, but it was limited (biggest limitation, these profiles weren’t saved) and the canary build was very unstable at the time. Eventually that early version moved into later builds, but the canary build updated...

Aug 12, 2011 1 minute read.

Technology

Want to post to lists in Facebook like you can post to a Circle in Google+? You can!

So I really like Google+ and happily post away to my Google+ Profile. Unfortunately, not everybody has access to G+ yet. Facebook still is the king of the ring, but I’ve long wanted to do what Google+ does natively, which is to say specify who should see my posts based on groupings. It turns out,...

Jul 07, 2011 2 minute read.

Wearable Technology

Fitbit Tracking

Several months ago I got a Fitbit tracker as a prize for a contest. While I generally dislike exercise (as much as I know I should), I love gadgets, and this thing is as geeky as a pedometer can get (note, the @fitbit folks are very adamant that this is not a pedometer, but it accomplishes the...

Jun 03, 2011 1 minute read.