Sending Kids Back to School in a Pandemic, some thoughts

By | March 14, 2021

This last year has been a tough one on many different levels. I don’t even know where to start. The loss of life we’ve experienced in this country and globally is at a level most of us have never seen, and hopefully will never see again. It’s difficult to even comprehend the scale of it. This post is… Read More »

marc

EmberJS, VueJS, React, Angular, etc. Which one to choose?

By | June 4, 2019

For the last couple of years, I’ve been dabbling with a few side/hobby projects. Several of these have been in the form of a Single Page App (SPA). There is a lot of appeal to that with the modern web. The question always comes up, though, which framework should I use to create my new app? There are… Read More »

marc

I Want To Play

By | April 12, 2019

So I’ve been working on bringing a new project to light in my spare time over the last few years, dittos.io. It is a communications platform for teachers to more effectively communicate with parents. The goal is to build stronger communities and hopefully create more parental involvement. We recently launched the website, and the app will be available… Read More »

marc

Finally installed Ubuntu 18.04 LTS on Asus ZenBook UX501VW

By | December 1, 2018

I’ve had this laptop for a few years now, and it’s still quite the nice machine.  About a month ago, I decided to do the distribution upgrade and upgrade it from 16.04 to 18.04.  It worked, mostly, sort of.  I spent a bit of time having to tweak things and after a few weeks, the machine was once… Read More »

marc

Dead Synology DS1515+

By | November 27, 2017

So last March I purchased a Synology DS1515+ and wrote about it in one of my posts “Who Shall Control My Media? Part 4 – Backend Storage” and up until this weekend, it had been performing very well. On Saturday we went to watch a video and after hitting “Play”, the indicator that it was loading just spun.  Since… Read More »

marc

Paid Memberships Pro Require CVV/CVC When Using Stripe

By | March 28, 2017

Paid Memberships Pro is a great WordPress plugin that allows paid subscriptions to your WordPress site.  It has tons of features and is incredibly flexible with handling subscriptions. One of my company’s clients uses it for managing all of their memberships and uses Stripe as the payment gateway.  Stripe is also a great company — I use it for my… Read More »

marc

Sony DualShock 4 USB Wireless Adapter Controller Pairing

By | March 19, 2017

It took me way too long to figure this out, but there is no documentation at all on Sony’s store website, and google kept referring me to Windows 10 setups.  We’re running a Windows 7 gaming setup, so things are quite a bit different.  I’m putting there here so others might have something so search for. To pair a… Read More »

marc

Google WiFi Review

By | January 7, 2017

Google WiFi promises an attractive, easy to setup, easy to manage, and relatively inexpensive home router that is mesh capable. Mesh networks help to eliminate “dead spots” in larger homes or homes with too many obstacles for strong WiFi coverage from a single router. It also promises simple parental control and the ability to easily disable kids internet access.… Read More »

marc

HexBug Vex Robotics Spider Review

By | January 1, 2017

Our oldest son has been wanting one of these since he first saw them.  We’ve got several of the HexBugs already, including HexBug nanos, beetles, spiders, larvae, fish and tarantulas.  He also loves Lego and K’nex toys.  Imagine how excited he was when his sister got him the Vex Robotics Spider for Christmas.  It was the first thing he… Read More »

marc

Elementary School Homework Studies

By | December 28, 2016

Jessica informed me that I rambled quite a bit on my last post about homework and wasn’t coherant enough.  She’s right.  I did ramble quite a bit but that’s only because this is an emotional subject for me.  I’m quite impassioned about it and its proving to be very difficult to be impartial and just look at the studies.… Read More »

marc