Personal Projects & Interests is my sandbox for life outside the office—where spreadsheets, sensors, and code tackle real-world chores and passions. Here you’ll see data models guiding gear buys, DIY automations that make the house (and gate) smarter, endurance training logged like an experiment, and reflections that tie it all together.
Using my Vera Lite and Z-wave home energy monitor I was able to record a week’s worth of electricity consumption at 30 second intervals. I was surprised how hard it was to use the data to do anything, but amazed with how my behavior changed when I knew our household consumption was being tracked. Again, […] read more
I decided to look at my home energy usage. Below are notes on how I’m approaching it. I wish I could get insight from the MIOS graphing plugin, but it is pretty basic and can’t throw out outliers and has terrible zoom capability. I also never figured out how to set the y-axis. In order […] read more
I struggled for awhile trying to set up the Aeon Labs Aeotec Z-Wave Smart Energy Monitor to monitor my electricity. The manual or any instructions were difficult to find online. The first article that was absolutely necessary explained how to pair the device. After reading this article, pairing was pretty trivial. Great details in the […] read more
For my home automation goals, I chose MiCasaVerde VeraLite due to my friend’s recommendation. The VeraLite is a small linux controller that runs the MIDIbox Operating System MiOS and gives a homeowner the ability to easily control lights, security cameras, door locks, alarm systems, and even the thermostat, among many other home systems. For example, […] read more
Today, I watched the Lone Survivor with two friends and was once again reminded of the brevity of life, the importance of principle and the value of friendship. I found the movie to be a masterful combination of plot, emphasis and character development. It is tough to capture the breadth emotions present in Marcus Luttrell’s […] read more
My previous post on TelexFree was the result of a quick spreadsheet model that assumed a geometric growth rate that was uniformly assumed for all members. On a recent flight, I built an object oriented model in MATLAB to more realistically show how telex works. This is a really fascinating system. read more
Ever wonder why fund managers can’t beat the S&P 500? ‘Cause they’re sheep — and the sheep get slaughtered. I been in the business since ’69. Most of these high paid MBAs from Harvard never make it. You need a system, discipline, good people, no deal junkies, no toreadores, the deal flow burns most people […] read more
As we enter the Christmas/holiday season, I’m asking lots of friends how they are doing and how their year has been. Almost everyone says “it’s busy”. This takes many forms, from “crazy busy” to “absolutely busy” or “scary busy”. Since words often lose their meaning, I’ve thought about a scale we could use to better […] read more
I’ve always been intrigued by the story of the Harvard applicant who penned a three word answer to an essay prompt of “what is courage?” The myth has that he was accepted. I like the story because it highlights the risk and reward trade that we calculate in all our decisions. read more
When I work with WordPress, I am still a ruby coder in a PHP environment. I spent several years doing PHP only and have watched the language develop nicely, but still like to focus on Concept/Design, CSS3, Ruby and JavaScript when I’m doing web development work. In the hope that someone might benefit from my […] read more