Have you ever heard the following? "Welcome to the team! Here's a list of 15 applications to install, the instructions are in the team room, somewhere.

Every time my paycheck is direct-deposited, I contemplate purchasing a Chromebook. Long gone are the days of the CR-48 laptops with the clunky interface and frustrating usability. Although I never quite seem to pull the trigger and buy a Chromebook, thanks to the developer Hexxeh, it's possible to run the Chromium OS on a wide variety of hardware combinations.

High-energy physics experiments tend to generate huge amounts of data. While this data is passed through analysis software, very often the first thing you may want to do is to graph it and see what it actually looks like. To this end, a powerful graphing and plotting program is an absolute must.

If you're creating Web apps, you're designing APIs. Here are some things to keep in mind before you begin.

Indiana was the Dog's Name My wife is afraid of snakes. Actually, "afraid" may not be a big enough word. My wife is terrifyingly and abundantly mortified of snakes.

Even if you're not a designer, Bootstrap is a great way to make your sites look nice.

The concept of standalone Web apps isn't new. Anyone using Prism with Firefox or Fluid with OS X understands the concept: a browser that goes to a single Web site and acts like a standalone application—sorta.

I've been interested in 3-D printers ever since I saw one at a Maker Faire a few years ago, but it was only a year ago when I started seriously thinking about having one of my own. At that point, I started to realize just how many different options existed and ultimately started researching the RepRap family of 3-D printers (more on the different printer families below).

I often discuss the Linux port of Scrivener with my writer friend Ken McConnell. We both like Scrivener's interface, and we both prefer to use Linux as our writing platform. Unfortunately, the Linux port of Scrivener just doesn't compare to the OS X version. The other day, Ken told me about Plume Creator.

One area of physics that is hard to wrap your head around is relativity. Basically, relativity breaks down into general and special relativity. General relativity deals with large masses and high energies, and it describes how space-time is warped by these. Special relativity deals with what happens during high velocities.