In addition, in case you hadn’t heard, I changed jobs back in January and now work for iSIGHT Partners. It’s been a blast so far and a major learning experience that I’ve greatly enjoyed.

Other odds and ends – I promised way back in 2007 I’d post the article I got published in ISSA Journal, available now by title: Current and Future Threats to Digital Forensics. Enjoy!

Finally, you might have noticed the monstrous influx of photos on our site recently. These are the result of me being inspired in the last year to kick my interest in photography up to a major hobby – I wonder why? I’ve been working on learning by reading and practicing while acquiring photography equipment (without getting in too much trouble with Allegra). At this point I’m using a Canon 7D, 28-135mm f3/5.-5.6 and 50mm f/1.4 lenses, a 580EX II flash, a Gitzo 2531 tripod with a RRS BH-55 ballhead, and a couple of other accessories. Suffice to say, the number of photos posted online is probably 10-20% of what we’re taking.

Speaking of, we have a ton of photos queued from Eva’s birthday, so keep an eye out, and in the meantime be sure to keep up at our photo page.

I just finished two great classes this past week for the fall, and am now half way to my dissertation! The classes were:

• Contemporary Issues in Science & Technology Studies I
• History of Technology

Yes, this went back on my proclamation from the spring that I would never take two again. Well, this time I really mean it.

We’ve traveled a lot this fall considering our schedules. We’ve been to Long Island for a wedding, Knox NY (outside Albany) to my grandparents’ for Thanksgiving, and of course our August trip to Chile from which we need to finish posting pictures. I’ve also been to Blacksburg VA to Virginia Tech for a department meeting, as well as to Rome NY and of course Cherry Hill NJ numerous times for work.

We’ve also seen numerous friends and family, especially at Patrick (my brother) and Kris’ wedding weekend, Allegra’s parents’ visit, and Ben and Marissa’s wonderful visit a few weekends ago. As usual, their much more artful blog post is a marvel and should definitely be viewed. And I’ve had friends from school move into the area who I owe a visit – they’ve been here about six months, are three miles away or so, and I still haven’t seen them! Not good!

We are still working on moving our photo blog over to the new engine at: http://ajmatt.com/pictures. Hopefully we can get that done in the next couple of weeks, but until then, don’t forget to check it out!

In more mundane news, last weekend we had our red-shouldered hawk visit again. We watched while it shredded and ate a small bird it had apparently caught. We decided it was a bit too gruesome to rate taking pictures, but I’m sure you all can imagine – feathers everywhere!

If you are looking for a personalized (crazy) mix of news, science, technology, military topics, fun items, flash games, and other “stuff”, be sure to keep up on my Google Reader shared items feed. It’s a little easier for me to keep up with during the school year, and I tend to add notes to many of the posts. I’ve been on LinkedIn a long time, as many of you know, and I’ve just succumbed to peer pressure and signed up for Facebook – find and befriend me!

Other than that, I plan on taking full advantage of this wonderfully long holiday by reading, relaxing, and nursery building!

So, now, with my hiatus complete, I am looking forward to class starting again tomorrow. Having vowed never to take two classes at the same time again, this summer I’ve signed up for class number five: Introduction to Science and Technology Policy.

Now that I can anticipate some free time again, perhaps I can get to that blog entry that’s been in draft since December. Here’s hoping!

• I got published in ISSA Journal while I was gone—my article is entitled Current and Future Threats to Digital Forensics [subscribers only]. It’s very exciting (well, at least to me)! I can’t put it up for 18 months, so everyone will have to wait patiently for the thrilling text.
• My summer class ended fabulously, and my next class begins Thursday. It’s History of Science, for those of you who might be interested.
• The more mundane: I updated our travel page to reflect our trip.

I’m taking “History of Military Technology” to start, and am signed up for “History of Science” this fall. Tonight was my first class, and it was very exciting. Besides the usual introductions, we had a presentation by a PhD candidate on his dissertation. It was an intriguing topic, and made me realize I could do something like that too one day! The course is going to keep me busy with a lot of reading – a book a week this summer.

We’ll see how it goes – but I feel smarter already!