Since it has been so long since the last post, there is a need to do some catching up. First and foremost, I’m now a professor at Montgomery College. Actually, I’ve been there since January. While I will miss teaching some of the more advanced courses, I look forward to focussing on teaching and student …
Category Archives: Personal
Software Engineering Class Projects
I’m still debating the best project for this semester’s class project. We’re probably going to have 10-12 people per team, with two competing teams. Some of my current thoughts: Cross-Platform Synchronizing Chore management system Software Tool/Environment for teaching children to program The chore management system is needed around our house, and we have a group …
Spring 2014 Courses
This semester’s schedule is going to be interesting: ITEC 325 – System Administration COSC 412 – Software Engineering COSC 485/670 – Reverse Engineering / Malware Analysis The reverse engineering class is a new one, and I’ll be dusting off some old-school skills to pass along to a new generation. This is either going to be …
New Job
I’ve been keeping quiet on my job search to prevent this blog from unduly affecting the process. But, now that I’ve signed and delivered the contract, I’m comfortable admitting that I’ve accepted a position at Towson University as an Assistant Professor. The position is part of the Computer Science/Information System/Information Technology department, though my position …
Server Migration, part 1
I just started migrating processes from the old server to the new hosting vendor. First up, karmadogs.com. The e-mail has already been migrated, and I’m cloning over the web page data now. As always let me know if any problems are spotted.
Evil is as Evil Does
Google’s slogan used to be “Don’t be evil.”, but whether by accident or design Google’s new privacy policy — really a “you have no privacy” policy — is evil. Giving Google information had been acceptable, because they did not aggregate all of the bits of knowledge we entrusted them with into a single profile. On …
Electronics fun for the Whole Family
I’ve been struggling with how to help our 11-year old develop her attention to detail and critical thinking skills. I spent some time trying to interest her in programming, but it didn’t take. Anyway, I think I’m too close to that topic, and I don’t know that I’m the best person to teach programming to …
Updated my TeX install
Just updated my BasicTeX-2008 install to the 2011 edition. Pretty simple really. I deleted the old installation using: tlmgr uninstall then downloaded the latest incarnation from http://www.tug.org/mactex/2011/morepackages.html, then installed it. I had to update the path in my .tcshrc to point to the new bin directory, and voila! Latest and greatest TeX install. I then …
Handmade Cables
Tonight I find myself putting together good old DB-9 connectors, and I realized that it’s been a long time since I have had need (or even seen) these connectors. They were once pretty ubiquitous, first on my Atari 2600 joysticks, and then as RS-232 cable connections. These cables are actually for connecting stepper motors to …
Christmas Day 2010
Now that the orgy of torn wrapping paper and discarded cardboard is over. The gifts I gave seem to have been mostly duds. Kim doesn’t like the sheets for the bed, and the girls don’t seem interested in building any of their projects. I had planned on spending the afternoon busily assembling the minor DIY …