Matt's Blog

Having done it before, I thought I’d blog about plants some more, since I can’t think of anything more exciting to read about than someone else’s plants. Last time I was at Ikea, I picked up a little $2.99 thing of basil. It has a little compressed disc of dehydrated soil; you just add water [...]

It’s easy to think of security as a negative action: keeping the bad guys out. A security guard is supposed to keep anyone bad from getting in, and question anyone suspicious. A firewall keeps out malicious network traffic. Anti-virus keeps bad software from running. Locks keep criminals and creeps from letting themselves in. But security [...]

I realized a while ago that I didn’t really have a “dream computer” build in my mind, but a “dream network” with a few interconnected machines. I’m kind of thinking out loud with this configuration; input is welcome. I need a desktop. It’ll run Mac OS, but I can always boot into Windows when I [...]

Fry’s has a refurbished HP p6177c desktop for $499.99. Q8200 quad-core (2.33 GHz), 8GB RAM, and a 1TB hard drive. Integrated graphics. It does have a DVD burner and slots for many common digital camera cards.

Lifehacker has a roundup of a lot of deals that are even better than the Lifehacker ones I posted.

I know I’m not the only geek here who shops regularly at NewEgg. I’m also pretty confident that I’m not the only person who won’t set foot in a store on Black Friday, but who loves deals. Here are some of the NewEgg deals I saw that jumped out at me: Garmin’s Nuvi 205W GPS [...]

I’ve been on the fence about buying TuneUp for a long time. On one hand, it’s a really neat way to fill in missing metadata and cover art for songs, and I have a lot of photos that need to be “tuned up” that way. On the other hand, it costs money and I’m frugal. [...]

I admit it, I have an unhealthy obsession with typography. A really nice font can really be the difference between a blob of text and something really aesthetically pleasing and fun to read. I just found The League of Moveable Type. Be still, my beating heart. Only a handful, but they’re all great. The other [...]

One thing I love about my job is that, being a startup, I do it all. I came on as a systems administrator, and then became a developer. So you’d think I hung out on the back end. And I do. But I also do UI. I picked up CSS and JavaScript. I learned SEO. [...]

I’d like to describe a new way of keeping the date. To simplify the current system, we’re going to wrap the day of the month at 16. So November 16 is “November 16, first-half,” and the next day, it’s “November 1, second-half,” because 17 would exceed the limit of 16, so you just start again [...]