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I've been really quiet lately. I should have made a post about that guy in Colorado who got strangled by his pet python. That meets my definition of noteworthy news. Anyway, I've been working on some web stuff, doing some programming, making some thesis progress, and doing some job hunting. I can't say that I've made any truly significant progress in any of those areas, but I've gained in each one. I guess that's just how it goes sometimes...

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My heart is in Boulder but my brain is needed in Denver, so I'm putting my body in Broomfield

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I wasn't really joking when I told people the university hands you an eviction notice with your diploma.

The university doesn't do this for everyone, of course, just those of us who live in student housing. I lived in Smiley Court for more than 9 years, longer than I've lived anywhere other than the house I grew up in. It was home, and home can be hard to leave.

Admittedly, the apartment had gotten a bit cramped. It was tight from the start, since I was downsizing from a two-bedroom apartment into a one-bedroom. Adding an extra bicycle and a few hundred books along the way didn't help. The apartment was also miserably hot in the summer, with south- and west-facing brick walls and a location on the top floor. Even with a small air conditioner wedged in the too-small windows, running all day, the temperatures could get over 85 degrees and stay that way past midnight. So it wasn't perfect. But then again, it had this view:

From this apartment I managed to turn myself …
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Last.fm and Ten Years of Web 2.0

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Ten years ago yesterday I scrobbled my first tracks to last.fm. What's scrobbling? On last.fm, scrobbling refers to automatic music track logging to the internet. For me, uploading a record of my music listening habits was my first real experience with "Web 2.0." Remember Web 2.0? It referred to websites of user-generated content that enabled virtual communities and interoperability. Now such sites are too ubiquitous on the web to warrant a special designation — they're just the web. But that wasn't true in 2006, and even though I'd been putting content on the internet since 1996, at the time it was enough to make me a little nervous. What did these strangers want with my data, and what was in it for me?

Ten years and 24,941 scrobbles later, I have my answer: I have a really cool record of all the music I've listened to the past 10 years! Well, not "all," technically: I've certainly listened to music in places and on devices that didn't …
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Hibernation

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It's the last half-hour of 2017 and I'm pushing out a post to keep my blogging streak alive. I can't imagine this is interesting to anyone else, but that's never really been what this blog is for. I could write more, and maybe I should write more, but the only goal I've had for this blog for a while is to write at least once a year.

The last week of the year has become what I call my period of "hibernation." Between Christmas and the New Year, I stay home, do whatever I want on whatever schedule I want. This year, that meant a lot of nights staying up until 4 am and sleeping until 10 or 11. Other than trips to get food, I pretty much had no social interaction for the week. I don't know that I purposely take this time as a mental vacation, but that's sort of what it is.
I had several goals for this year's hibernation, but the one I've done best to stick to is physical: pedaling my stationary bike 40 miles each day. There is a Strava challe…
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