Christine Rose

Technical Writer.
Scrum Master (PSM).
Tech Nomad.

Tarides & Hyper: Partners in Agricultural Innovation

We are thrilled to announce a partnership between Tarides and Hyper, a technology provider in the agritech space who’s building an "operating system for high-performing farms." Indoor and vertical farms are becoming tech businesses that require scalable, flexible, and easy-to-use tools to facilitate data analysis and thereby increase productivity. According to the State of Indoor Farming 2020 Report, “40% of vertical and indoor farms are implementing data analytics and control automation to incr

SCoP Passed Phase 1 of the DAPSI Initiative!

In April, we announced that the DAPSI initiative accepted the proposal for our Secure-by-Design Communication Protocols (SCoP) project. Today, we are thrilled to announce that SCoP has passed the initiative’s Phase 1, and we are now on our way to Phase 2! SCoP is an open, secure, and resource-efficient infrastructure to engineer a modern basis for open messaging (for existing and emerging protocols) using type-safe languages and unikernels—to ensure your private information remains secure. Afte

Tezos Storage / Irmin 2021 Update

Irmin is an OCaml library for building mergeable, branchable distributed data stores. You can choose the way you store information with this open-source database, originally written for use by MirageOS unikernels. Whether it’s in-memory or on your hard disk, you can choose where to store your data. With its built-in snapshotting and git compatibility, you can ensure it’s safe and recoverable in the event of a crash. Plus, you can customize data types and run it on Linux or web browsers, among ot

Custom Storage Volumes with LXD

Canonical Ltd. provides a container system similar to the popular Docker, but it can do so much more. For instance, it can run multiple processes inside the same container simultaneously, whereas Docker can only run one at a time. LXD (pronounced Lex-Dee) is an image-based system that enables the user to create a container from a pre-existing Linux image from one of its remote image servers, which reduces your workload considerably. The user feels as if they’re running an OS inside the container

Set Up a Static Site with Gatsby

It appears that many companies are now hosting their technical documentation on static sites made through services like Jekyll and Gatsby, so as a technical writer, it’s beneficial to learn how to use these tools. Whereas the static site generator Jekyll is built on Ruby, Gatsby is built on React, which is a JavaScript library full of self-contained components. In short, React is a collection of really cool pre-coded things to help you build a working site more quickly.

Use These 25 Keyboard Shortcuts to Stave Off RSI

If you’re in your 20s or even 30s, sitting on the couch hunched over your laptop might be a comfortable way to work; however after working like that for ten years, you’ll likely find your back has become weak and rounded, your head craned perpetually forward, and the nerves in your arms, wrists, or hands often in pain. After 15 years of computer work, I lost the ability to use a mouse without significant pain. I switched to a trackpad, which I can use with either hand, but after another decade, that can be painful as well. Nerve and tendon damage from 25 years of repetitive motion has caused a Repetitive Motion Injury (RMI), also referred to a Repetitive Stress Injury (RSI).

The Great Data Migration

At least several times a week, I get calls asking for help transferring files from one computer to another. This usually happens when someone gets a new computer, and they want to transfer files from their old computer. Apple has created such a simple way to do this, and it's built right into OS X. It's called Migration Assistant. You can find Migration Assistant in your Applications folder (Applications > Utilities > Migration Assistant). The best and simplest way to transfer data from one machine to another is from a Time Machine backup.

Travel Back in Time

It was the singular greatest moment I’ve ever experienced in my entire work history (WARNING: I’m prone to hyperbole). Yesterday afternoon, I was writing website copy at my workstation when I distinctly heard someone say the words “Doctor” and “Dalek.” My ears perked up, and it took every ounce of self control not to beam directly across the office. Instead, I took the mundane way in this muggle environment and walked over there, albeit quickly.] “Did I hear someone say Dalek?” I asked. Sure enough, they were talking about Doctor Who, one of the greatest television shows of all time. As any Whovian knows, The Doctor travels through time and space in something called the T.A.R.D.I.S. (Time And Relative Dimension in Space). It's a time machine on steroids; a living, sentient machine (like Skynet, only it serves to save humanity, not destroy it).

Remote Possibilities

As we slide further into the 21st century, technology continues to progress at impressive rates. Yesterday I saw a meme on Facebook that cleverly showed the technological progress from science fiction to reality. Using images from Star Trek over the past 40 years, it effectively illustrated how fantasized technology has become part of our everyday life. In the 1987 TV show Star Trek, The Next Generation, Captain Picard held a thin piece of glass on which he read transmissions from other crew members as well as essential facts and figures needed to command the USS Enterprise. Today, we have the iPad and iPad mini on which we can do everything from read the news to write a news article. We can even produce music and movies, right from a thin piece of glass in our hands. Examples of how technology has changed our lives and fulfilled fanciful imaginings are endless.

Creating Safety: How the Dog Monitor App Reduces Stress

You’ve got your to-go coffee cup in hand, lunch bag, and work attaché, ready for another productive day at the office. Your adorable furry friend is sleeping soundly on the couch. After tiptoeing past him, you gently pick up your keys, but they make the slightest jingle. Oh no. You stop short in your loafers and hold your breath. Slowly you turn. Sure enough. As if he beamed from the sofa directly to the front door, your dog is now at your feet. Those big, sad, brown eyes, brimming with tears, shoot into your soul like a icy arrow of guilt. He knows what the keys mean. You’re leaving. Without him. Forever. At least that’s what he thinks.

The Mysterious Case of the InsomniMac

A couple of weeks ago, a customer called in with a technical problem: his iMac wouldn’t stay asleep. Computers are temperamental. If I’ve learned anything in the past twenty years working with technology, it’s that. Software that works fine on 99% of machines, won’t work on another. Same OS. Same configs. Same everything, really. This iMac wasn’t only temperamental, the poor thing was an insomniMac. It must’ve been exhausted! Never sleeping. Working continuously. I felt for the poor iMac and its frustrated user.

7 Storytelling Elements to Improve Your Podcast

If you plan to incorporate a more narrative style to your podcast, either as a whole or to use vignettes as a portion of the show, it would be really useful to understand the elements of storytelling. When I taught “Analyzing Short Fiction” in college, I’d cover the seven elements of fiction as part of learning how to analyze and understand literature. Every story has a central idea, character, conflict, point of view (POV), setting, tone, and language. Although not all writers take each into consideration when writing, the best ones do. Sometimes greatness happens by accident, but more often than not, it’s a result of a long process of planning, decisions, execution, and multiple revisions.

Digital Storytelling: Telling Stories Through a Podcast

Over the past few weeks, I’ve talked about ways to make your podcast more interesting by engaging your audience with a narrative or a digital storytelling aspect. I’ve also provided some tips on how to organize your podcast to help achieve that. When you want to tell a compelling story, it’s essential you understand the structure of a story and how to apply it to your style. This will move you toward a more dynamic podcast.

Help Yourself | PowerMax

There’s an old proverb that goes: “Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish, and you’ll feed him for a lifetime.” As a vegetarian, I say leave those fish alone in either case. Teach him to grow veggies! Although as someone in technical support, I can appreciate the concept as it applies to technological frustration, maintenance, and repair. Just this morning, two of my tech calls had fixed their own issue in a span of the 30 minutes it took to return their call, and
Load More Articles