Gavin’s Digital Diner

[Here's the text of a message about the impending DST change I posted on the Riders-Tech list a few weeks ago. Several people had asked me about it, and I figured it made more sense to post this than keep sending it out as email.]

[Note: Because of system troubles, this was also posted on my [...]

[Here's my follow up message on the DST change from around Valentine's Day (and nobody sent me flowers, even!)]

[Note: Because of system troubles, this was also posted on my old Typepad Blog – so if you're experiencing a vague sense of déjà vu… this would be the reason]

 Dear friends:

It was a couple of weeks ago.  [...]

Call me irascible. When RSS started showing up on this or that, I wasn’t all that thrilled. I was skeptical. Moreover, it reminded of PointCast,” circa 1995. With some shame [looking at my feet and blushing], I admit that I liked PointCast.
I say that with one caveat: PointCast, you see, was designed, inherently, for the [...]

I’m reminded of the Dormouse’s advice to Alice when I start to talk about philosophy.
… "you know you say things are much of a muchness," said the Dormouse, — "did you ever see such a thing as a drawing of a muchness?" "Really, now you ask me," said Alice, very much confused, "I don’t [...]

Carolus von Linnaeus (1707 – 1778) is credited with introducing binomial nomenclature and hierarchical classification as an organized way of naming and describing organisms and their relationships to one another. Linnaeus, by the way, is known as the father of the modern taxonomy. Taxonomy is typically considered the science of classification.
Binomial nomenclature refers to [...]

I’ve always been vaguely uncomfortable with folksonomies. There is something about the concept that just doesn’t sit right with me. Every time I hear people wax on about them, I fidget in my seat; I feel kind of itchy and unsettled at the same time. Perhaps it’s my latent, [...]

Just a couple of updates to my original Blackberry Modem Mash:

After a few experiments on a few different machines, it does appear that you need both the Blackberry Device Manager and the Blackberry Desktop, and they both have to be running.
In a field test (I was in a hotel), it took both. It [...]

I was recently doing some background research on the costs and affordability of using 3G for internet connectivity in South Africa.  Well, as these things tend to happen, that research got me thinking about similar options in the U.S. And, that reminded me that I’ve always meant to try using EDGE now that I have [...]

Every once in a while I stumble across useful tools, things I want in my bag of tricks.  Hamachi is one of those tools.  (Why is it called Hamachi?  Hamachi = Tuna = which sounds like tunnel? That’s a guess.)
With Hamachi, at first blush, you’re left with the question: what do I do with it.  [...]