| Eclipse Chase II: The Wrath of Clouds Stardate 2026.0814: The wife and I just got back from almost a week in Spain chasing the total solar eclipse, and yes, I am officially exhausted. Our first total solar eclipse was Dallas in 2024. We went down there to see it, absolutely loved the experience, and pretty much decided right then that we were hooked. So I guess we're eclipse chasers now, or at least aspiring eclipse chasers. We're only two eclipses in,... |  |
| Out of the Office for a Bit Stardate 2026.0806: Just a quick heads-up... I'll be out of the office for a bit. Just trying to experience what this mysterious thing called "free time" is. Don't worry, I've queued up plenty of videos, so you'll still have fresh content to watch while I'm away. The forums are in the capable hands of our awesome moderators, so if you have technical questions, they'll do a great job keeping things running... |  |
| A Better Way to Parse Financial Data Stardate 2026.0805: A while back I released my Account Balances Database for Microsoft Access. It wasn't intended to replace proper bookkeeping software or accounting software. I still download all of my transactions from my financial institutions every quarter and import them into a different database for budgeting, taxes, expense tracking, and all that fun stuff. This database serves a completely different... |  |
| Autoplay Setting Stardate 2026.0804: I asked you guys last week if you liked having videos autoplay when you go to a page because most of the time, you're going to a page to watch the video. Well, speaking as someone who almost never watches my own videos (I usually watch them once... OK, OK... spot check them once) to make sure that everything's okay with them. Beyond that, every time I go to a page I don't want to have to... |  |
| Video Autoplay Stardate 2026.0731: I just turned video auto-play on across the site. A couple of people emailed me recently to say it's annoying to click Next Lesson and then have to click again to start the video. That makes sense to me - if you're clicking on a video page, chances are you want to watch the video. I don't really notice things like this myself because I don't watch my own videos very often. But when I'm on a... | |
| Get Your Penguin Facts Right Stardate 2026.0724: If you're gonna put out a meme called "Fun Penguin Facts for Kids," you should get your fun facts correct. They could have fixed it by just simply changing "only" to "mostly." |  |
| Strange New Worlds Stardate 2026.0724: I just finished watching this Season 4 premiere for Strange New Worlds. I don't want to give away any spoilers for those of you who haven't caught it yet, but it was amazing. That is all. Carry on. | |
| About the Video Quizzes Stardate 2026.0722: I want to thank everyone for all of the positive feedback on the new video quizzes. The response has been far better than I expected. I'm seeing a lot more comments than usual, and I love it. It's great to see people coming out of their shells, posting their scores, talking about the questions, and even a little friendly competition over who got a perfect 5 out of 5. One of my goals was to get... |  |
| One of Those Days... Stardate 2026.0717: You know those days where you look at the schedule in the morning and think, "I've got plenty of time. I'm going to get so much done today." Then reality says, "Hold my synthohol." I got through customer service this morning, knocked out some website work, and figured the rest of the day was going to be dedicated to recording. Then a couple of unexpected things popped up later in the afternoon... |  |
| LZARS the Customer Service Bot Stardate 2026.0716: So I gave the website's customer service chat bot a new name and a much-needed brain upgrade. Meet LZARS: the Learning Zone Automated Response System. New training. New face. Same attitude. Over the past year, I've been quietly building a much larger knowledge base from the customer service questions people ask me every day. I use it locally all the time, but the website version had fallen... |  |