I learned that John Peterson, our Director of Systems Engineering and Operations, passed away yesterday evening.  I will miss John.  I can still see the sideways, quizzical glance and smile he gave me yesterday afternoon as the vending machine spit out 4 dollars in quarters.  I can still hear his voice as he said [...]

 
There is a meme that has popped up or, at least, it has suddenly popped into my world – the Quantifiable Self.   The basis of the Quantifiable Self is that you measure things about yourself and then use that data to improve upon yourself.   We all do this to some extent.  We weigh [...]

I’ve had several requests for my turkey brine and herb paste recipes. In a just-in-time fashion, I’ve posted them below. I use an organic, range raised heritage turkey for my Thanksgiving turkey. I also use this brine for pork chops and turkey breasts that I cook on the grill.

I just discovered that there are several twitter feeds for the New York Times. These feeds include a main New York Times feed at
http://twitter.com/nytimes

along with several specific feeds:

NYT Business – http://twitter.com/nyt_biz
NYT Food – http://twitter.com/nyt_food
NYT Metro – http://twitter.com/nyt_metro
NYT World – http://twitter.com/nyt_world
and about a dozen more.

You can find most of them by going [...]

Etsy (http://www.etsy.com) is a store where crafters can sell their objects to the public. Etsy also supports spaces for the crafters to work and share their skills and ideas.
The Etsy website also has cool navigation methods for finding objects. There is a color search system that lets you pick a color to start [...]

Doris Kearns Goodwin opened the EDUCAUSE general meeting this morning, recounting her years as an intern in the Johnson White House and talking about Abraham Lincoln. She received a standing ovation at the end of her talk – the first that I have ever seen at EDUCAUSE.
Her talk was full of great stories [...]

I just took the Learning Style Survey at http://www.metamath.com/lsweb/dvclearn.htm It explains why I’m an I.T. Architect I think. I like diagrams patterns and I have an artsy side.
The results of Jim Phelps’s learning inventory are:
Visual/Nonverbal 36 Visual/Verbal 32 Auditory 26 Kinesthetic 30

Your primary learning [...]

This is one of my favorite Ze Frank episodes. Though, it is a “final act” of sorts. The songs play off of the history of Ze Frank. You won’t get the humor unless you have watched a bunch of the previous episodes.
http://www.zefrank.com/theshow/archives/2007/03/030808.html

play_blip_movie_169197();
I miss Ze Frank. Ze did a year of short [...]

This is a 90 minute presentation on Service Oriented Architecture that I gave at the EDUCAUSE Seminars on Academic Computing in Snowmass Village, Colorado. This talk was given on August 9, 2006
The link below is to the PDF version of the talk.
EDUCAUSE SAC Presentation on Service Oriented Architecture (PDF)

I was struck by a line out of a Burton Group document that I’m reading.
>… the creation of user groups… are the human equivalent of a technology integration strategy.
In Service Oriented Architecture, I.T. Portfolio Management and Model Driven Architecture; Center’s of Excellent (CoE) are a key part of the infrastructure. A key to [...]