Posts in "articles"

A Recommendation for Trying AI

The following is a message I shared with my organization today. In light of NASA’s push to train up the workforce on AI, I wanted to share a tool that I’ve been using in my day-to-day. This is a simple tool that would be a good introduction for folks who haven’t been using AI much. Perplexity AI is a conversational AI assistant and search engine that provides citations for sources it is using.

How to Write a Kickass Article

I would like to note that as I write this, I am not following the advice contained within whatsoever. I want to write better articles. I want to use them to reason and think. I would like to do some research and link to sources, so that my articles have some ground to stand on and they provide real value. To this end, I’ve been doing some research on writing a good article and I made the cheat sheet below for myself.

An Analog Blog Post

A journal and Lamy Safari fountain pen on a dark stained wood table

The following was transcribed from the pictured journal entry. I used Google Lens and a LOT of editing.

It has been easy to not make time to write recently. “Busyness” is the main culprit, but I’ve also been spending time with its less boisterous sibling, distraction. And so here I find myself, back at the roots of my writing practice. The journal. I’ve missed the empty page. The empty screen is nice too, in my writing software of choice, but I can’t help feeling the weight of the myriad windows/apps/messages vying for my attention. So I’ve returned to my empty page. It welcomes my attention and thought, but does not compete for them. It is an escape in plain sight.

Check the Categorization of Your Domain in Cloudflare Radar to Make Sure Federal Employees Can Visit Your Site

My blog is available on the NASA network now! For anyone else who wants their site to show up on a federal network, make sure you scan your domain at https://radar.cloudflare.com/. CISA uses Protective DNS, and Cloudflare is the provider behind that service. After scanning the URL, check the security tab to see if there are any security risks.

Is this a blog or a node in a botnet?

I finally found out why my blog was blocked on the NASA network! Cloudflare had it categorized as a DGA Domain, so they thought it was an autogenerated domain that was part of an evil botnet 🤦‍♂️ I’ve submitted a request for Cloudflare to recategorize it under “Personal Blogs” so it doesn’t show up as a security threat any more. I guess my last name does look a little suspect and not quite like a real word someone would use for a domain…

Compound and Leverage

Compound and leverage are powerful forces to move us toward our desired outcomes.

I’ve been thinking about these two forces and how they can be used not only to improve finances, but they also apply to other areas of life.