Travel, Tech, Thoughts…
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Linux – tinyMediaManager on Kubuntu 18.04
I run a network attached storage (NAS) device at home to manage all my media (e.g., music, videos, photos, etc.). I have used various programs over the years to manage the naming and organizing of my music files but just recently discovered tinyMediaManager for managing video files. Since it’s written in Java, it works on…
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WA-Mt. Rainier
Summit Date July 31st, around 6:30 am Party Ryan Cragun & Tom Triplett (plus our guides – Travis and Matt – and two other clients – Drew Herdener and Olivier Colle) Trip Report While I do a fair amount of hiking, mountains like Mt. Rainier are really at the upper end of the types of…
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Salkantay Trek
For my work, a colleague and I decided to propose a new travel study course that would involve a combination of our interests – sociology of sport (hiking, specifically) and exercise science. Our original course proposal wasn’t approved, but our International Programs Office agreed to fund us to scout out a trek in Peru to…
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LibreOffice Calc – Comparing and Aligning Two Lists Using VLOOKUP
One of the tasks I have to do regularly as part of my job is to compare two lists to see which items are missing on one list but not the other. I have been doing this by hand but figured there had to be a way to do this in Excel. I finally figured…
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Linux – Adding and Organizing Music with Clementine
In the almost 15 years I’ve been using Linux I have gone through a number of music playing apps. From Amarok to Banshee to Rhythmbox and at least a few more. My favorite at the moment is Clementine. I’ve grown to really like the basic interface of Clementine and it does a good job with…
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Greece – Mount Olympus
Traveling all the way to Greece for a week-long colloquium for work without taking any time to do some touristy stuff seemed like a waste of a flight across the Atlantic to me. When I thought of what I’d like to do if I had a few extra days in Greece I, of course, thought about…
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Greece Trip – Metochi
Thanks to my work on nonreligion and atheism, I was invited to participate in a week-long colloquium (May 13th through May 20th) in Greece by LeRon Shults in which I would serve as a “subject matter expert” helping LeRon and his team develop computer models to better predict who joins atheist organizations. You can learn more…
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Linux – Fixing the Epson (V33 Perfection) Scanner Issue in Kubuntu 18.04
[NOTE: As of Ubuntu/Kubuntu 20.04, the drivers from Epson work fine without this workaround. Download the driver, then follow the directions to install it.] As of Kubuntu 17.10, my Epson V33 Perfection scanner stopped working with Linux. I bought this scanner specifically because it did work with Linux. That it stopped working was a serious…
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Disingenuous Christian Proselytizing
I get a lot of emails. I try to answer all of my emails but am increasingly realizing that some of it may not be worthy of a response. For instance, a few days ago I received an email from someone claiming to have listened to a podcast I did. Here’s what he wrote: Hi…
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Linux: How to Install Zotero Standalone (in KDE or Kubuntu)
I’ve used Zotero to manage my collection of books, articles, and other citations since Zotero was released. The software has become much more robust over time. As of the latest major milestone release (5.0), Zotero has moved to standalone software exclusively (they no longer piggyback on Firefox). With Mac and Windows, you can download executable…