I gave away some fig treelets yesterday and boy did they go fast. If you have one that gets pruned I urge you to do the same: just throw the stems in a bin, cover with moist sand, and ignore in your basement during the winter. In the spring, just pot them up. Easy peasy. #figs #ficus #plants #gardening #swarthmore

My local arboretum had a plant swap for members and I scored four perennials and a bunch of seed packets from Burpee. It was a mob scene, with numbered admittance so that nobody got into fights about being first. My contribution was nine fig trees, and they went fast, I think. #swarthmore #garden #arboretum #gardening #flowers #plants

Chicken, mushrooms, brie, avocado, pesto, and herbs de Provence on a grilled ciabatta. It's a recreation of my favorite sandwich at Chez Yasmine, a Philadelphia-based food truck that sometimes came to Swarthmore during the summer. The chef, Jihed Chehimi, was a former scientist. #sandwich #food #philadelphia #swarthmore

Tri-Co Hackathon

Science Center, 2015

I had a lot of fun joining the Tri-Co Hackathon this afternoon as a Swarthmore remote alumni judge. There were eight student teams, and all of them had whipped up some really clever and interesting app or service ideas in only 24 hours. Unfortunately we could only pick our top four teams, which involved some difficult deliberation among us judges.

Of course I review and give feedback on project proposals and prototypes all the time at work, but this is the first time I’ve had just a few minutes of presentation and questions to jot down some notes and make a joint decision in a hackathon format. The rubric had us consider factors like concept, design, creativity, utility, and complexity. I think I balanced them well?

I wish we had had a program like this when I was on campus! It was really cool to see all the ideas and energy turned around so quickly. I guess the closest I’ve come is some CTF events through work.

If asked I would definitely do something like this again. It fits with the career advice calls I do with current students and recent graduates via Swarthmore’s alumni platform. I really like hearing from young potential computer scientists and software engineers, and I hope I can give useful advice from a 20+ year career. I just have to not think too hard about current freshmen only being 6 or 7 years old than my kid. 👴🏻

#programming #swarthmore

Seventeen seconds of a red fox having a drink at my mini pond. Swarthmore, PA. #TrailCam #CameraTrap #mammal #fox #vulpes #nature #pond #water #swarthmore

Red fox drinking at the mini pond in my back yard. Swarthmore, Pennsylvania. #CameraTrap #TrailCam #garden #pond #fox #foxes #vulpes #mammal #nature #swarthmore #pennsylvania

Customers at the Swarthmore Co-Op are apparently poking the watermelons. #watermelon #fruit #swarthmore #delco #sign

So are the white flags to deter dogs from digging or are they meant for the owners, to indicate that they shouldn't let their dogs dig? #grass #flags #fencing #lawn #cones #dogs #swarthmore

Nice patch of dodder (Cuscuta sp.) at the restored meadow in the Crum Woods (Swarthmore College). No flowers yet so species ID is hopeless. #swarthmore #dodder #parasite #parasitic #botany #plants #cuscuta #nature #vines #convolvulaceae #ricohgriiix