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The 2012 Bay Area Maker Faire is coming up this weekend in San Mateo, California. It will be about a mile from the offices of DotNetNuke Corporation so we will be heading over on Saturday as a family, and then I will likely go again on Sunday.

All the info about the faire can be found at https://www.makerfaire.com

After having attended last year, I have a couple of tips if this is your first time going. Here’s a list of what to bring, along with an explanation for each item.

  1. Bike – Ride a bicycle to the Maker Faire, you can save $5 on your ticket, and get access to the bike valet, plus you’ll be doing something good for the environment, get to avoid some of the traffic, and the parking last year was kind of nuts. I think I parked about 1/2 a mile away in a building’s parking garage.
  2. Cash – You will find so many things you want to buy, it will be better to have cash on hand Open-mouthed smile Bring lots of cash if you want to buy something like a 3D printer. I really wanted to last year, and will want to again this year, but the budget just won’t allow it yet. Maybe later this year. You should definitely check out the MakerShed, I did end up spending way more money than I planned last year after making a long stop there. There are also plenty of food options on site as well.
  3. Backpack – There will be plenty of swag to pick up, things to see, things to buy, have a backpack or something else to haul all your scores back.
  4. Camera – Screw it, you won’t need a camera, you need 3 cameras! I think I had 3 last year, seriously. I had my GoPro mounted on my head (video down below), my Motorola Xoom and my Motorola Droid. This year I plan on taking the GoPro, along with multiple batteries and SD cards, my Galaxy Nexus, and perhaps my Canon 5D Mark II. What kind of things might you take pictures of? Cupcake Go-karts, R2-D2, need I say more?
  5. Hat – It will be sunny and most likely sunny, and while a lot of Maker Faire is inside, even more of it is outside. Though if you don’t want to bring a hat there was a pretty cool custom leather hat stand (steam punk style) last year, perhaps I’ll break down and buy one this year.
  6. Family – I went to Maker Faire 2011 expecting it to be a male dominated tech event. Boy was I wrong. As soon as I walked in I regretted not bringing the wife and baby along. This year I won’t make that mistake, and the baby being 19 months now should definitely get a kick out of it. If you’re a single male, don’t let that scare you, it will be well worth attending for you as well.
  7. Time – There is so much at the Maker Faire, be sure to give yourself all day. I got there last year right as they opened up, and spend a good 4 or 5 hours there before I was baked and ready to go home. I’m in much better shape this year, hoping to last all day both days!
  8. Water – it may be warm, bring something to drink, preferably in a refillable container

What to expect at Maker Faire?

I seriously can’t even begin to describe what all you will see at the Maker Faire. Big mechanical dragons spitting flames, little Android robots, R2-D2 robots, steam punk hipsters, the Rally Fighter open source car, Wooden Bicycles, Rocks as big as a car that you can move,

Here are two videos from last year’s Maker Faire

and a time lapse of my day (at least most of it)

The following is an update email that went out to everyone who has donated to my LIVESTRONG fundraising. Wait, you haven’t donated yet? That’s okay, there is still time, head on over to my Philanthropy page and get started.

<begin email>

I wanted to send out a quick thank you to everyone who has donated to my ride for the 2012 Team LIVESTRONG Challenge in Davis. With your help I have already surpassed 50% of my initial goal for fundraising for the ride, I will likely be raising that goal to a larger amount here over the next few months, due in part to your very kind donations.

Year to date riding

I've been riding a lot here over the past couple of months as I try to get my body prepared for a 100 mile bike ride. I've been able to ride three, sometimes 4 days a week just about every week in 2012. In 2011 I rode around 580 miles total for the year, so far this year I am up to 458 miles, I should hit 500 before the end of the month, and if I keep this pace up (it will likely just increase) I should easily exceed 1000 miles before the Challenge on 6/24/2012.

Fundraising efforts

As part of my efforts to increase my fundraising for LIVESTRONG I have been making some changes to the Philanthropy page of my website (https://www.chrishammond.com/philanthropy.aspx) and have decided to include a list of everyone who has donated.

Your name in lights (get a link)

As an added bonus for donating, I am also adding a link with your name, pointing to the website of your choice (within reason of course). Please feel free to email me a link that you would like associated with your name on the Donor list and I will gladly add it to the site.

You've been ranked

On that Donor list I am currently listing of the donors in descending order of the donation amounts. If you are at the top, that's because you've donated the most. If you want to move to the top? Well, you could always donate more.

If you would rather not be included in that ranked list, or even included in the list of donors at all, please let me know and I will remove your name.

Tell a friend

Now that you've donated, perhaps you have a friend who might be interested in donating? If so, send them to the following website: https://www.chrishammond.com/philanthropy.aspx

Future emails

If you would rather not be included in future status emails please let me know, otherwise I will occasionally send out emails like this updating everyone on how things are progressing.

Once again, thank you for taking the time and effort to donate to the cause, no matter how little or big your donation is it is all greatly appreciated.

Chris Hammond

So if you are anything like my mother you probably are wondering what the heck has Chris been up to lately? Well, I am not AWOL, just busy!

I spent last week in Lincoln Nebraska at the SCCA Solo National Championships, what’s that? Car racing. How’d I do? eh, not worth mentioning where I actually finished, but I did get to see friends I haven’t seen since Nationals in 2008, the last time I attended. I couldn’t really believe that I hadn’t been since 2008, but that is the truth, with the move to Colorado in 2009 and then California in 2010 I just didn’t get to go. I’ll have more blog posts/videos/photos from Solo Nationals in the coming week.

 

So I was doing a little digging and according to the Half Moon Bay Review (www.hmbreview.com) it looks like there will be a Fireworks show in Half Moon Bay this year at Pillar Point.
Holy Cow! If you live in the San Francisco Bay Area and don’t have plans tomorrow, or if you do have plans, cancel them. You need to get the Maker Faire at the San Mateo County Event Center. Check out www.makerfaire.com for more info! I went this morning, and I am going to go again tomorrow, this time taking the family with me. This morning I headed over with my GoPro camera attached to my head, with the intention of time lapsing the day. I stuck it to the top of a trusty Boston Red Sox hat, which I hoped would last.

We got our lease on the place in Half Moon Bay today!

I tried to get a moving quote from Stevens Van Lines, the company that moved us here from Colorado, but I haven’t heard back from them. I guess I will have to try a few more companies.

Anyone know any good movers on the peninsula in the Bay Area?

All signs point to yes! So here we are, a year after moving, and what are we going to do again? Move, of course. I hate moving, but you couldn’t tell by my history of moving!

So we got verbal confirmation from the real estate agent in Half Moon Bay that she’ll be getting us a lease this week for the place we looked at over the weekend. Now I need to get a moving company over here for a quote on packing and moving out stuff!

We spent today doing family things, and I must say, it was a great day!

First we all headed down to Half Moon Bay to check out two rental houses down there. We need to find a larger place, I need an office, and Natalie needs a bedroom, so we are looking for a 3br place instead of our current 2br place.

We looked at two places, one that was a 4br with 1100 sq/ft, and one that was 3br and 1700 sq/ft. The 1100 sq/ft house had nicer amenities, new appliances, bathrooms, etc, but the master bedroom was barely big enough to fit our california king bed, there’s no way it would also fit the rest of our bedroom furniture.

The second place was perfect! While the appliances aren’t updated, size wise it should work out great. We told the agent that showed it to us that we were very interested and got an application to fill out. I sent that in this evening, I had intended to do it earlier, but as I was filling it out, I realized that I didn’t have my driver’s license. I left it at Safeway yesterday, so I had to run out and get that.

We’re hoping to hear back on the rental here in a couple of days, it would be nice to lock that down so we can give our current landlord notice about when we are leaving. He’s been great, he understands why we are leaving, and has been very willing to work with us as we look for something else.

After looking at the houses, we drove around Half Moon Bay a bit, realizing it was much larger and nicer than we had originally thought. It’s about 14 miles door to door from the place we want to get, and the office, so that shouldn’t be too bad a drive every day, assuming traffic doesn’t bite me!

From there we went to the mall for pictures with the Easter Bunny. Here’s the result

Jacqueline and the Easter Bunny Jacqueline and the Easter Bunny Jacqueline and the Easter Bunny Jacqueline and the Easter Bunny Jacqueline and the Easter Bunny Jacqueline and the Easter Bunny Jacqueline before the Easter Bunny Jacqueline before the Easter Bunny

So, time for a refresher. Why did we leave St. Louis?

THE WEATHER!

That blog post is from 2008, and it describes the reason we left. Well tonight there is more news, and more reason as to why. There was apparently more major storms in the area, even a Tornado that apparently hit and caused damage to Lambert Airport.

While we’ve had the following here in California over the past 4-6 weeks, no damage that I know of! We also have lost power since we’ve lived here, something that happened a few times a year in Missouri.

  1. Tsunami warning
  2. Earthquake
  3. Thunderstorms
  4. Lots of rain
  5. Tornado warning

I still think things here in California are far better than Missouri. While we were in St. Louis in February we had ice, snow, and lots of rain. All in the period of a week.

Today, Natalie and I took Jacqueline to the park down the street to get outside a bit. We stuck her in the swing and let her play in the grass.

Day 106 of #Baby365Baby in the ParkBaby in the ParkBaby in the Park

The swing just kind of exists for her, she can’t really do much except sit there and hold on! Here’s a video of some of that excitement.

Jacqueline on the Swing

The grass was much more entertaining for her, she has never experienced grass before, and she found it useful to hold on to while trying to maintain her balance.

Baby in the ParkBaby in the ParkBaby in the ParkBaby in the Park

Jacqueline in the Grass

After a team building event tonight after work I was taking Will Strohl home, driving on Woodside we saw a Delorean driving down the road. I think I’ve seen one on the road before, but I couldn’t tell you when.

We were on Woodside road, the same road I saw my first Hell’s Angel on.

You see things in California you definitely wouldn’t see in Missouri!

The past two days I’ve been commuting into San Francisco in the mornings to conduct some onsite DotNetNuke Training for a customer of ours. Rather than try to drive in and find a parking place downtown I took the Caltrain in from the San Carlos Station. Having only taken the CalTrain to the Milbrae station previously and then taking Bart the rest of the way in I wasn’t sure what to expect.

The train left the SC station and I arrived at the client location (after hoping on a Muni bus) in less than 40 minutes! Pretty damn sweet for a cost of about $13/day ($9 for the caltrain day pass and then $2 for the Muni).

Tonight coming home however it was a little more difficult. I managed to miss the Muni ride after I was done, so I had to wait around for the next one. I still managed to make a Caltrain that left the station in SF at 5;27pm. I think I finally got off the train though in San Carlos around 6:40pm, much longer than my trip in. We ended up getting delayed for some reason due to "mechanical difficulties” on a train in front of us.

I don’t think I would like to make that trip every day, but for the past two days it was a nice little change of pace from my 9 mile commute I usually have every morning.

So here we go, this post has been a week coming, I just haven't had the time do get it together. About a month ago, perhaps a little more, I did something that seemed to upset quite a few people, even apparently some people at Nissan! I posted the opportunity to buy my Nissan Leaf on Ebay. That lasted all of a few minutes, I’m not even sure how long the auction was up 24 hours before I was asked to (or really it was suggested that I ) remove it. So down it came, along with the posts that I had put up announcing it.

What people didn’t know was that I had been posting the Leaf on craigslist here in the bay area for a month or more before it was ever listed on Ebay. I had a few inquiries from the Craigslist ad, though many of those inquiries were just your typical internet trolls complaining. Some even took the time to email me and call me an “Idiot” I appreciate that someone took the time to do that.

So back to Ebay, I pulled the ad, I removed the blog/forum posts, I cleared most of my tracks at the threat of losing the right to purchase the Leaf. I even quit posting the ad on Craigslist. After the ad came down from Ebay people started coming out of the wood work asking to buy the car. Fortunately for me I had lined someone up before I even pulled the Ebay ad down. In fact the ad didn’t even have anything to do with getting rid of my car, the Craigslist ad came through.

What? I thought you purchased the Leaf last week?

Well, technically I did, for a little while anyways. I had a guy fly in from Detroit on Monday of last week, we drove from the airport to the dealer, then the bank, then the dealer again. The dealer wouldn’t take a cashier’s check, so we had to go to the bank and have the money wired from their bank, to the dealer’s bank, which was all of 1 block away. Unfortunately the dealer’s bank became a problem and wouldn’t show the transfer as posting until the following day. So in order for us to drive the car off the lot that day I ended up having to take a loan out on the car as a fall back contract, in case the transfer didn’t go through.

After about 4 hours of things we finally left the dealer, I in my 350z and the new owner in the Nissan Leaf. I didn’t even get to drive the thing! Though I did sit in it a few times

So there it is, I no longer own a 2011 Nissan Leaf? Why might you ask? Well it really doesn’t matter what I say, people are going to hate on me. But here goes my explanation with a little backstory.

Back in April of 2010 I got an email from Nissan announcing the preorder process for the Leaf, I jumped on things and signed up, immediately preordering as soon as I could. Shortly after that I setup www.LeafOwner.com with the thought of creating a website dedicated to the Leaf. I got some good traffic, with the help of some key features on Engadget, AutoBlogGreen and even two different tweets from Lance Armstrong!

I was thrilled at the idea of getting a Leaf, I have an 8-9 mile commute, so it was going to work out perfectly for that. I was one of the first people to get the Aerovironment charger inspections, I asked my landlord if we could get an install going. From there things actually started to sour a bit. I got the charger assessment back and it was for $2200, roughly $800 for the charger/shipping, and then the rest for the installation, for about an hour’s worth of labor and maybe $100 worth of equipment.

As the summer progressed I kept up with the Leaf, attending events to see the car when I could, and then went through the ordering process, that is when things really went south for me. I went ahead and ordered the car, as a lease option, but when I started thinking about it, the lease was going to be $420 a month. I started thinking, 420 a month could go towards a very nice car payment, rather than “renting” a very expensive Nissan Versa.

I’ll take some hits for that, but to me that is what the car ultimately became. It’s an economy sized hatchback, that when fully priced out last week was $38k. While there are lots of cool geeky features in the Leaf, the only real addition above and beyond a Versa was the batteries, the electric aspect. So I decided that the car most likely wasn’t for me.

In October I went to the driving events that Nissan was doing, and that pretty much sealed the deal for me. I drove the car, and after driving corvettes, camaros, and 350zs I just couldn’t see myself driving the Leaf, not at the cost.

I’m a car guy, I always have been, and the later it got into 2010 the more I had the itch to start racing cars again. I am now actively autocrossing my 350z (www.project350z.com). Heck, for the price that the Leaf ultimately cost I could have purchased a brand new 2010 Nismo 370z! Though I didn’t want to do that either, spending more money just wasn’t in the cars right now. My 350z cost me $12k, and that’s a lot smaller car payment than a new Leaf would be, and the car ultimately becomes more useful to me as I can autocross it.

So in the end, to sum things up. The price of the electric car killed it for me. I’m not saying I will never own another Leaf, or an electric car, but right now it just didn’t make sense to me. In the future I do hope to own an electric car, heck maybe I’ll build an electric VB Bug for www.projectvw.com in the future. But for now, I’ll let the early adopters help to bring the price of the electric car down.

For those of you who choose to hate me for that, I am sorry that you feel that way, but that’s the beauty of our wonderful country, everyone gets to have their own opinion.

(if you’re interested in purchasing LeafOwner.com let me know!)

I went for a walk/hike today, taking my Garmin Forerunner 305 and my phone with me running SportsTrackLive.com. It’s definitely overkill to have both the garmin and the phone tracking my trip, but interesting to compare the data to see how the match or differ. Making it home both devices say we live right around 800’, that’s quite a change from Parker Colorado where we were at 6k feet or so, but consider I work at a building that is at or near sea level and it is only a few miles away. There are some downfalls to living up here in the hills, and in the clouds.
So it was a year ago today, we signed the papers on our house in Parker Colorado. Our first home purchase, after making a big move from St. Louis Missouri, we had settled down in Parker. Six months later, the house was on the market, and a year later, here we are, in San Carlos California living in a totally different house.

So I found out that there’s an inline skating marathon in Napa valley coming up on June 6th (my dad’s bday).

I haven’t skated, or done much of anything cardio wise in the past 6 months (cept some running on the treadmill back in January). Wonder if I could get myself together enough to skate 26 miles in the next 3 weeks? I obviously wouldn’t be trying to do the marathon for time, just to do it.

I think I might give it a go, though if I am going to I need to get out on my skates this weekend! I’m gonna have to dust them off and charge up my Forerunner 305. Anyone else in the Bay Area up for some skating? I might be a big guy, but I tell you I love to skate, I’ve got four pairs of inline skates :) These are the ones I use for fitness now K2 Radical Pro In-Line Skates.

I will need to get myself a helmet and likely some pads and such before the marathon as I don’t think my hockey pads/helmet will do for that event :)

Keep them doggies rolling, is that how it goes? That’s how we go. We’re in Carlin Nevada tonight, on our way to California hoping to find a truck full of our stuff there on Friday.

Today we went through Wyoming, Utah and some of Nevada. We had sun, rain, wind, fog, sand storms, salt storms, and even got attacked by thousands of tumble weeds. But we made it. Hotel here lost power for a bit due to wind. Here’s a shot of the salt flats today, I’ve got more (near whiteout conditions) on the camera that I will upload when we get to California.

That’s all for tonight, gotta sleep and do some work in the morning before we hopefully complete the rest of the drive to San Carlos.

So things have been really hectic lately, so blogging has taken a backseat. So here’s a brief update on what’s been going on. I’ve been in California for almost three weeks now, minus a few days back home in Colorado for my Birthday. Work at DotNetNuke is going great, I enjoy being back in an office again (after working at home the past 7 months).

I’ve been staying in a hotel this whole time, switching locations after my trip to Colorado so that I could test how I would handle commuting. So far so good with commuting. I’ve been driving about 26 miles each way the past few days, which takes about 40-45 minutes around 8am. On Friday leaving 40 minutes earlier it only took me 25 minutes, so I am going to give that a shot again Monday to see what traffic is like.

Finding a place to live hasn’t gone as smoothly as I would have liked. We were surprised to learn that the rental market on the peninsula is competitive! So far we’ve only actually applied to one place, not getting selected. There are a number of places available, though most of them aren’t what we are looking. We’ve come to accept that we’re going to have settle for about half the square footage of what we have in Colorado. I found a couple of places today that I think are interesting, one that I am really hoping works out. I’ll post more info if it does!

I’ve decided I’m going to sell my 18’ car trailer. We towed it out here to California and it’s in storage. I figure I am not going to be racing much over the next year, so holding onto the trailer isn’t something that is going to be necessary and paying storage fees on it doesn’t make too much sense. I’m going to put it up on Craigslist later this week.

Back in Colorado the house is still on the market. We’ve had 14 different showings in the 6 weeks it has been on the market. We’re hoping that something happens with it this month, we’re working on lowering the price right now. If something doesn’t happen this month we are likely going to rent the place out for a year or two. I figure that putting some money into a mortgage will be better for us than simply paying rent out here in California for a few years and not getting any equity out of things.

Yesterday I got to have a little bit of fun, after being frustrated with the housing search. I went to dinner with my best friend from 8th and 9th grade when we lived in Riverside California. Back in the day Jaysen and I were inseparable. I have only seen him a couple of times since we left Riverside back in the summer of 92, the last time being a few days before Natalie and I got married in 2006. I met him and his girlfriend in San Francisco last night for dinner. We had a great time catching up. I spent the afternoon driving up the coast and taking photos.

Jaysen and Myself

I have a ton of photos to go through, though I am not sure when I’ll get to them! Here are a few that I have uploaded. (you can see more on my California 2010 page)

Golden Gate Bridge Golden Gate Bridge

Today was our first ultrasound, we got the see our baby's heartbeat for the first time. HOLY CRIKEY this just got really real, in a good way. Natalie was brought to tears, I realized this as my cue to get up from my chair and hold her hand!

Our First Ultrasound!

Based on the ultrasound we are now told our due date is 10/1/2010, not near as cool as 10/10/10, but it will have to do! My buddy Jim will be pulling for us to delay a day and go 10/2/10 in honor of his birthday. Dude will be 34 by then, crikey he’s old :)

So we are getting more and more excited about the coming baby. In the doctor’s office today I picked up a flyer for a cord-blood bank, something I had never heard of before this morning. I read through the flyer and the basic gist is they will take your baby’s umbilical cord blood and cryogenically store it for an amount of time in case you need it. They say the stem cells in cord blood can be used to cure all sorts of diseases. I thought this sounded like a cool idea, and figured I would check out the pricing: basically it was $150 for the kit to collect and ship the blood back to the cord-blood bank.

Then you paid something like $1800 for 18 years of storage, or $96/mo, or $65/mo for a two year term. Kind of pricey I thought. So I thought about that, and figured I would do some research over the coming months to see if this is something we wanted to do. Well, low and behold I loaded up MSN.com this evening (putting off packing for the trip to California) and saw a headline talking about cord-blood banks! Off to read it I went.

Take a read yourself, the basic gist of the article, and the feedback from the various doctors and medical societies mentioned in the article is that private cord-blood banks are pretty much a waste of money. So now I have it in my head that we don’t use a cord-blood bank, but we’ve got another 7 months or so to decide, we’ll see what happens in that time frame and what other research says.

Now I’m off to work on packing more, we’ve got a long road trip starting in the morning.

So what was going to be a single big announcement, that I’ve been sitting on for a number of weeks now, recently got trumped. So before I talk about the first announcement, I’ll talk about the one that trumped it!

Natalie and I are having a baby! So far we’re only about 5 or 6 weeks in, with a tentative due date of 10/16/2010, though I am really hoping we can pop that kid out on 10/10/10! We are most definitely excited about this, though it wasn’t exactly planned, it definitely is something we look forward to. I keep telling her I want twin boys, and my good buddy Leigh over the pond suggest that if we do we name them Jack and Daniel, I love it!

Now, for the original announcement ;) We are moving to California! Years ago I left home. I went to Missouri. I went to school. I got a job. I changed jobs (a few times). I lived in Missouri for 14 years, my parents even lived there for a while, but to be honest, I never really considered it home, it was just where I was in life. Just over 6 months ago we moved to Colorado. We purchased our first home. We love it, but even Colorado still doesn’t quite feel like home, it does more so than Missouri ever did, but there is still something missing here. (We actually love Parker Colorado, and have the best neighbors ever, they are some of our closest friends.)

I’ve always thought of home as California. I went to high school (3 of 4 years anyways) in California. I left for college, and I always said I would go back if I could make things work out. Well things are working out. Natalie and I put the house on the market two weeks ago and we are moving to California! I won’t torture everyone in the way I did with our move to Colorado (think goingtocolorado.com) but I will try to keep friends and family who are interested up to date as things progress.

I can’t go into other details just yet, what I’ll be doing there, who I will be working for, but I can tell you that I start working in California on March 1st. I look forward to catching up with friends from high school and ages past, and Natalie looks forward to winters that don’t get below freezing constantly :)

If you are interested in purchasing a great house in Parker Colorado be sure to check out ours, it is for sale!

It’s been a year since I was last in Cali, and I’m heading back! What’s the big deal? Well I half consider California home, even more so than Missouri even though I lived in MO for 14 years. I spent 6-9 grades, and 11-12 in California, in both Southern and Northern California. I got married in California, my brother lives in California, and quite a few of my friends do as well. So any chance I get to go back I look forward to.

This time around I’m heading out to the Bay area for a few days of DotNetNuke Training with a client, I’ll be there later tonight training Tues thru Thursday, and then flying home on Saturday. I’m going to visit with some friends from high school Friday night at a little dinner get together I’ve arranged. I’m also hoping to check out the DotNetNuke offices in San Mateo on Friday while I’m there.

I’ve yet to decide what camera(s) I’m taking with me, I’d like to take both DSLrs but I don’t want to carry them both. If I had a flash attachment for the 5D Mark II I would leave the old Rebel at home, but I currently don’t, so I need the Rebel if I want to shoot any flash shots of the gathering Friday night, though I guess I could just use the point and shoot for that.

It looks like 2010 is going to be another busy travel year, I am headed to Rhode Island next week for 2 days of DNN consulting out there as well.

Stay tuned for some pictures of my Cali travels later this week.

The news stations are reporting a 5.8 magnitude earthquake near Los Angeles California this afternoon. My folks are out there, of course the cell phone networks are so jacked right now I can't get through. "All circuits are busy, please try your call again later"

Update: Dad says he didn't feel it, Greg felt a little bit

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Chris Hammond

Chris Hammond is a father, husband, leader, software developer, photographer and car guy. Chris focuses on the latest in technology including artificial intelligence (AI) and has spent decades becoming an expert in ASP.NET and DotNetNuke (DNN) development. You will find a variety of posts relating to those topics here on the website. For more information check out the about Chris Hammond page.

Find me on Twitter, GitHub and LinkedIn.