Categories
Technology

Smart Home, Older House, Cold House

Update: Several publications have come out today, including one from the New York Times, about a software update being responsible for the battery drain. That’s one bad bug, and Nest is going to take a major credibility hit because of it. We also had problems with our Nest Protects (smoke/carbon monoxide detection) a few weeks […]

Categories
JavaScript Writing

My latest, and last, book for O’Reilly

I said a few years back that when Node.js released version 1.0, I’d issue an update for my book, Learning Node. Little did I know that waiting for Node.js 1.0 was like waiting for Godot, but in JavaScript. I did try to do an update on the first edition of Learning Node earlier this year, but […]

Categories
Technology

Alexa as service, Echo as interface

Today, Amazon released new versions of its tablets, as well as a new Fire TV. The latter is generating interest in part because Alexa has been added to it. This means you can use the new Fire TV in a manner similar to the Echo, and be able to play favorite TV shows, too. The […]

Categories
Burningbird Technology

Server is moved

Moving to a new VPN (Virtual Private Network) was as simple as signing up for a second Linode instance, and then building it to my specs. Eliminating half the cruft I had on my old system saved about 40GB of space. Now I have room for all new cruft. I decided to stay with Drupal […]

Categories
Burningbird Technology

Mind the scaffolding

I have attempted to upgrade to Ubuntu 14.04 from 12.04.5 three times, failing each time. The points of failure are complex and seemingly many. I can ignore the necessary upgrade until 12.04.5 hits end of life in 2017, but whatever cruft is preventing a clean upgrade may be allowing all sorts of bad things. I […]