Tag Archives: online

Safety in a box

The PolyBlog
January 15 2020

I have a decent physical backup plan for my existing desktop and files, although primarily I’m interested in the safety of our family photos in digital format, the best of which are also shared to my website in full original size. So I haven’t felt the need for a separate cloud-storage option for those. Other files are either backed up through email or on other backup drives.

But one downside to backup drives is where do you keep them. Some people take them to their office. Some people have “backup buddies” the same way they exchange house keys with neighbours. Or they store them with family. And still there are those few souls who follow some good online advice and keep them with their important documents and jewelry in a safe-deposit box.

There are some unfortunate souls who say, “No problem, I keep my backup drives in a fire-proof safe” and think that actually keeps them safe. First of all, “fire-proof” is not the same as “heat-proof”. While paper is safe up until 451 degrees Fahrenheit, more or less, your hard drives will melt LONG before that. Plus, many of those safes are fire-proof but not water-proof. Fires in homes attract firefighters who soak the entire house, often deluging the safe with tons of water. The end result is a perfectly safe set of contents that never caught fire but did melt and sit in water. Neither are good for backup drives. And some of the safes come with guarantees — where the guarantee is just that they’ll refund the purchase cost of your safe if you lose everything on your drive. That first word of your child? Gone. But they’ll give you a couple of hundred dollars to make up for it. Maybe.

I admit that I have been burned in the past from not having a regular enough backup schedule, and that can still happen (I don’t do daily backups for instance). But for the most part, I won’t lose much anymore. At the moment. But my files are growing with my astrophotography work and a bunch of my current photo gallery work. So a home for my disk drives is in order, but it needs to be something that I can access regularly to do swap outs with new backups or it doesn’t work.

I have two good drives for that, small, portable, and capable of one set of backups from my desktop, Andrea’s desktop, Jacob’s desktop, and my laptop. With a bit of room to spare. And then I have a big multi-terrabyte drive that can hold lots of things, plus Network-Attached-Storage that I don’t use properly as it’s kind of slow. I don’t have an off-site location to store things with friends or family that would work, nor do I want to take it to work (although I have in a pinch). No, what I need is a paid storage option.

Enter the Safety Deposit Boxes

The most obvious solution is to get a safety deposit box that I can access easily and swap the small drives out. Or put the big one in it. The question is cost vs. the cost for a cloud storage option capable of holding everything.

While having an SDB used to be a sign of “adulthood” in a sense, it is now more like “Okay, Grandpa”. People put bonds in them (I have none), jewelry (I have none), house and will documents (kept with the lawyer), and other investment certificates. If you DO keep investment stuff in it, it is theoretically tax-deductible as an expense on said investments. I also don’t have coin collections or important business contracts. It really is just about my disk drives.

Almost every SDB is big enough to hold business size envelopes. 5″ wide is a relatively standard dimension, 24″ long, and of varying heights. My small drives are less than 4″ in width so would easily fit. My larger drive is more like 5.5″ x 6.5″, and 3″ thick. Not a great option to find a cheap box to fit. On the other hand, some banks give you a free box if you have your investments or accounts with them and maintain over a certain balance. We use a virtual bank (Simplii) so that doesn’t help, and others with CIBC don’t come with any freebies.

Looking around, I see:

  • Scotiabank: $55/year for their smallest box which would hold the small drives; the larger drive would necessitate one at $125/year;
  • TD Trust: Free if you meet certain requirements, or $60 for a small, $100 a medium, but size isn’t clear, could require a large for the big drive, $150/year;
  • RBC: $60 for small, $90 for medium;
  • CIBC: $60 for small, unsure for medium;

Apparently credit unions are often a bit cheaper although I don’t see obvious choices nearby. And then there is the off-site storage option. Places like Dymon Storage also rent them. And while they are supposed to be “cheaper”, they aren’t when it comes to the sizes I need. For example, Dymon has one size for $120 a year (and right now, if you ACT NOW!, you get 3 months free). But there’s no minimum when you sign up, $10 a month, easy access, etc. You can even insure the contents, which you can’t do at the banks. Although proving your claim is always a challenge, but I digress.

So they’re in the middle on cost between a small and a medium box, right? Not really. They’re actually a really good deal because they have decent security and access like they have for the rest of their stuff, but the box itself is 12″ x 12″ x 12″, much bigger than the basic ones at the banks. It basically holds a banker’s box size set of files. That would run you well into the $200+ range at any bank. But it is WAY more than I need.

Which means I’m in the small box option of around $60 somewhere. Or finding an alternative.

Enter the cloud servers

As I said above, I don’t particularly want to go the cloud storage route as my files are too big a collection, now representing more than a terrabyte of info. Which includes:

  • Data Drive 1 — astronomy info, creative stuff I’ve done with memes and graphics for websites, etc., documents going all the way back to my university days, all carefully organized, along with some key work things I kept, my ebook collection, music collection, some learning materials, materials about photography, backups of my website content, and, last but certainly not least, all my writing. Total size: 374 GB.
  • Data Drive 2 — mostly photos and pictures, photobooks, videos, apps I’ve installed, a backup of my music folders, and a small clipart collection that I use with my graphics. Total size: 869 GB
  • Data Drive 3 — this is mostly current stuff, bookmarks, and my “current” photo repository, which much of Data Drive 2 will migrate to over time. Total size: 35 GB.

Overall, that’s 1.278 GB of data that I would rather not pay to store as the plans get expensive above 500GB-1TB. There is some redundance built in, so maybe call it 1.1 GB in active data, but still. And it is that 1 terrabyte limit that will bite me in the heinie.

If I go with Apple, for example, their 2TB plan is $12.99 a month. Or $156 a year, although cheaper with some annual discount in there, I believe, and shareable across the family. It’s certainly a viable option.

Google Drive could be an option, although I don’t really like it for these types of things, I find it clunky. It is $13.00 a month. $139.99 annually (as I said, there’s a discount).

Microsoft One Drive is great at only $6.40 per month, but only 1TB. Pooh.

Dropbox Plus is an obvious option, but at $12.99 a month for 2TB, not ideal.

Sync.com offers a $5/TB option, but you have to have a minimum of two users so a TB each or $10/month.

Box.com offers small storage plans (100GB) and $7 / user per month, minimum 3 users. Umm, how about no?

Pcloud gets good kudos but have a $350 LIFETIME charge, but who would commit to that? Monthly is $8 with annual discount applied for 2TB.

Egnyte sounds great at $8 for 5TB except that is per user, minimum 5 users. So $40 a month. Again, how about no?

Opendrive is probably the best deal for growing data, as my astronomy is going to do for bytes. Open drive is $10/mth with unlimited storage. Not the most feature-rich though. And it has some strange wording about not storing media libraries there, although that could be more about cross-listing “public” libraries more than backups.

And then it gets complicated

You see, I have Amazon Prime, so that is already paid for. And with it comes unlimited storage for full resolution photos. Like all my astro data to come. But Amazon wants $125 for 1 TB of non-photos…so all my photos would be free to backup, but not other files. They start at $25 for 100GB. Which I would over-ride in about 10 seconds.

They also have a limit of 5GB of total video storage, but beggars can’t be choosers. Particularly if, for example, I was to use Amazon Prime for all my photos, maybe my videos, and another online tool for my other documents. A hybrid online solution. Not as neat, but potentially cheaper than an SDB or any of the other options.

Conclusion

I don’t really know yet. I have a couple of other things to work out. But if I could do online storage of my photos and videos with Amazon as an “extra” for free, and then “deposit” my harddrives at some place like Royal Bank which is two blocks from my house for $5 a month, that’s not a bad solution. I don’t think I’m ready to go all in on cloud storage. At least not until I get around to sorting those extra digital files a bit more into docs and other. My biggest worry is astrophotography. It won’t take long for large files to start overwhelming any of my existing solutions.

What do you do?

Articles I Like: The five ways we read online

The PolyBlog
May 6 2018

ThePassiveVoice shared an article about a paper from the Web Conference related to metrics for how people read online posts, news articles, etc.

Interesting developments on how they are developing metrics based not on the clickbait sites that spread an article over several click-through pages so they can load more ads, but just how you go through a single article on the page.

Grinberg was able to identify five types of reading behaviors: “Scan,” “Read,” “Read (long),” “Idle,” and “Shallow” (plus bounce backs, in the case that someone gets to a page and almost immediately leaves). Not surprisingly, different kinds of news sites see different kinds of reading behavior. On the sports site, for instance, “we see there is a lot of scanning. I think what’s going on there is a lot of people go to sports sites in order to find a result, like the outcome of a game, and don’t read the full thing. Another example that stood out is the how-to site, where we see that there’s more idling — people read an article, idle for a little bit, then continue. From looking at the articles themselves, it looks as if people are following instructions on how to do something in the real world.” On the magazine site, meanwhile, people really seemed to be reading for extended periods of time.

[…]

SIG can be useful for publishers, Grinberg says, because it ends up being highly predictive of how engaged someone will be with an article, and they should consider it along the other metrics tracked by companies like Chartbeat.

“There’s no one-size-fits-all solution,” he said. “The magazine site provided a lot of information up front, and people still engaged in long reading. In contrast, for sports and financial sites, it seems like withholding information at the beginning is associated with longer reads. But publishers could start looking at SIG as they make decisions about strategy and experiment with different story structures to see what works for their audience.”

The five ways we read online (and what publishers can do to encourage the “good” ones) » Nieman Journalism Lab

Some of the advanced stuff looks highly subjective to me as legitimate calculations (basically trying to estimate how quickly an article gets to a specific point and where it is in the article), and would vary drastically by writer and subject matter, not to mention whether it is truly “news” or mostly filler. But interesting nevertheless…

My interest in psychology…

The PolyBlog
October 22 2015

Way back in the dark ages of high school, I took a course that was an introduction to psychology and sociology. I don’t remember what it was called, and I seem to think it was supposed to be one or the other, but ended up being done as a combination when enrolment was low. I don’t remember that much from the course. It was okay, semi-interesting, but it didn’t compel me to want to do a degree in it or anything. Later, when I had electives available in university, it didn’t make my list. Mind you, that was some 30 years ago, when I think they still lobotomized people to let their demons out, so probably not all that useful to me even if I had taken it. 🙂

But as I got older and went through difficult periods in my life, or even just large periods of change and self-reflection, I started to think more and more about how the brain works, how personalities develop, how people misuse their brain to trick themselves into ways of thinking that are not optimal, efficient or even helpful. Self-sabotaging behaviour that your brain either hides or actively encourages vs. ways it helps itself heal. Some moments in my life stand out.

First and foremost was my change in “who I was” going from high school to university to law school to working stiff, through my “tadpole years” of self-reflection and change, and who I became. What pieces were engrained, immutable, part of my bedrock personality and how did they become so? Nature vs. nurture, on a micro-level.

Second, there was the loss of my parents. Similarities in experience yet vast differences too. Was it my age? Change in my support network? Had I just grown more?

Third, the elements of family. I was the youngest of six kids. I discount most of the pop psych about birth order, mostly because I think psych is about individuals, not statistics about groups, but I find one area intriguing. Growing up, I didn’t know my one brother very well. He moved out of the house when I was 5 or 6, and I didn’t interact with him a lot in the next 20 years. It wasn’t like we didn’t see each other, but we were never “close”. In fact, of my five siblings, I would say he was the farthest away in relations. Yet, when we reconnected when I was 30 and he was 40, we experienced a natural bond we had never felt before. It happened over dinner one night — a dinner that almost didn’t happen. He was in town for work, and it wasn’t like “Oh, obviously we’ll do this or that together.” It was more like, “Hey, so, he’s in town. We should probably see each other. Maybe dinner or something?”. Very tentative, like, we *should* do something, shouldn’t we? Wouldn’t most siblings see each other if they were in town? Yeah, we agreed on dinner. And part of the night was like we were finishing each other’s sentences. Even though we have led very different lives — he had been married, had six kids, was very independent early in life, and had been in the military for 20 years; I was the pampered youngest child, not married, no kids, lived at home up until law school — there was an immediate real connection, way beyond friendship, beyond just family. Like somehow our souls knew each other from some other time and place and met up for a beer. Now, I consider him one of my closest siblings and friends. How do our different yet similar beginnings produce vastly different lives and outcomes yet our psyches retain some common elements that look like genetics? Again, nurture vs. nature. Equally, I’ve heard lots of people talk about how they’ve always been close to a sibling, while I’ve been close to different siblings at different parts of my life — close to my next-oldest sibling, a brother, when I was young, say up to age 14; close to my second-oldest sibling in my late teen years; close to my oldest sister and her son when I came back from university and up until my Dad died, and then again more recently; close to my other sister, third oldest, after my dad died and for a number of years afterwards; and closest to my “middle” brother (fourth-oldest) as mentioned above. A wax-and-wane type experience.

Fourth, I became an aspiring writer. I need to know how to access the psyche of a fictional character, how to get into their head and write what THEY would do, not what I would do if I was pretending to be them. To figure out how to flesh the character out fully — the role of hero, villain, mistress, husband — and how to make them real, not names or formulaic archetypes.

Lastly, I became a husband and a father within the same year. Huge changes in my life and in my roles as a person. What role does my behaviour play in my son’s development? He has had some physical challenges, and almost everything he has faced, regardless of what we have done to help him, it really is just him overcoming them on his own. Outgrowing some stuff, ignoring others, figuring out the rest. We help, but the biggest difference over time is just him being awesome. Is it just nature?

All of which has led to a renewed interest in psychology. I don’t want to do a full degree, with electives, exams, papers, etc. I just want the knowledge, not a piece of paper to certify it. And while I can find it just about anywhere (library, internet, Amazon, etc.), what I really wanted is what I always want when looking at a new area — curated content. The fruits of the labour of someone who has already trod the same path before me, who says, “Here is a good framework to understand an issue” and “Here’s some stuff you should read”. I may develop strong interest in certain areas of psychology like child development, but to start, I really wanted a good overview to show me the whole canvas, not the exciting brush strokes in one corner.

Instead of just buying a textbook and reading it, I found a free online psych course, with credentials behind it to reassure me it’s not some quack throwing stuff up on a blog (hey, wait a minute, says my id, but we’ll ignore him for now).

Enter the MOOC…stay tuned.

More learning opportunities…

The PolyBlog
January 21 2015

One of my goals for 2015 is to take some online courses, and I already wrote about it earlier. I knew of Coursera, and thought it was one of the few decent “biggies” for massive open online courses (MOOCs). Somehow though I completely skipped over EDX, thinking it had merged with Coursera or all of their courses were included. Apparently not. Let’s see, another 409 courses to consider. Oh joy, oh bliss, oh joyful bliss! 🙂 Let’s see what’s out there:

  • PSYCHOLOGY: UC Berkeley has one on the “The Science of Happiness”, part of the positive psychology” field that is self-coalescing / emerging. It is self-paced, start anytime, which is attractive;
  • ECONOMICS: Cornell is offering “Networks, Crowds and Markets”, which combines some of the other areas I looked at earlier – economics, psychology, game theory. It starts in mid-February. Equally, UofT is offering “Behavioural Economics in Action”, although might be just as useful to read one of the texts;
  • A WIRED WORLD: “Wiretaps to Big Data: Privacy and Surveillance in the Age of Interconnection” looks interesting too, also at Cornell but self-paced. Uof Cambridge has one on “Economics of Cybersecurity” and Notre Dame has “Understanding Wireless: Technology, Economics, and Policy”, but it looks a little basic and dry.
  • COMPUTING: I already have plans for computing courses, but Harvard has one called “Introduction to Computer Science” that surprisingly uses C, Java, etc. One of Harvard’s largest courses? Ooook.
  • ASTRONOMY: Near the end of the year, I might aim for “Exoplanets”, a self-paced one offered by Australian National University. It is part of a larger series that starts with “Greatest Unsolved Mysteries of the Universe”. There’s also one called “Super-Earths And Life” at Harvard, which is attracting some press as it is one of the new ones with a decent professor.
  • PERSONAL: I could file this under psychology, but it looks much more like a personal power-type course –> “Unlocking the Immunity to Change: A New Approach to Personal Improvement” from Harvard. Not currently active, unfortunately. I also see a course in “Jazz Appreciation” by UTex @ Austin that looks interesting, but I’ll probably stick with the Great Courses version. Given my interest in stress, there’s an interesting course called “Becoming a Resilient Person – The Science of Stress Management” that could be good, but not completely compelling. Heck, I even might consider doing Dante’s Inferno as a personal study of freedom and identity. It would be on the weird side of the plan though.

I’m blown away by a couple of other things I found though.

First, a brilliant version of something that I’ve seen in amateur or “open source” format of course — an online book club. Namely BerkeleyX Book Club. Except it isn’t wine, noshing and conversation, these are discussions of famous titles led by English profs. For example, The Picture of Dorian Gray or Dracula. Looks like they do one a month, with Jane Eyre for this month. Fascinating model, but none of the books were on my list for this year. Might give it a whirl after September though.

For philanthropy, I’ve been on the LearningbyGiving site in the past, and look, they have a course to take — “Giving With Purpose: How to get the most out of your charitable giving”. Perfect for my goals for the year. Not sure when to do it though.

Finally, there is one that looks relevant to the stuff I want to do, and maybe is a sign as I actually thought earlier today about ditching the area from my official list or at least moving it to the bottom. UofT has an extension course starting in just a couple of weeks called “Library Advocacy Unshushed”. Looks pretty cool. Might have to consider committing to it.

2015 – Learning for life…

The PolyBlog
January 7 2015

One of my goals for 2015 is to think more coherently (i.e. plan) for online learning that I’m interested in. I have little interest in a formal degree at this point, nor even sitting in lecture halls. I have far more interest in online options, at least where it is not short-term or local or highly specialized (like a camera course).

For example, I basically see three main options for myself. First and foremost is the ad hoc stuff of TedX talks. I don’t take near enough advantage of the posts over there.

Secondly, iTunes and Youtube have lots of podcasts and videos where one expert or another has done the curation for me of some decent content, distilling it down to the bits I probably care about, and giving me enough of an overview that if I want to go further, I’ll have a good starting point.

Last, there is the dual-prong options of downloadable courses (such as The Great Courses) and online courses (such as are Coursera). For those who aren’t familiar with either, here’s the bumpf.

The Great Courses option is designed as a “cream of the crop” approach to lectures. Based on a variety of sources of info to identify who the best professors are around the world, they then hire them to record their lectures in audio or video format and then sell the courses to people. They have a huge catalog that they send out six times a year with massive discounts listed — for example, it is not uncommon for 75% discounts off the web-listed price. I’ve seen samples of some of the courses and they are pretty good.

Coursera takes a different approach — they offer a central repository for universities offering potentially-large enrolment online courses, usually with two options. One option is you pay, get graded, and get a certificate for finishing the course; second is free and you just audit the courses.

For me, the lists of courses are like fueling a drug habit. I ran through the Coursera listing over the last little while, and my list of courses in which I might be interested, noting that I was actually HARD in whittling out ones that sounded okay but really were a bit too off in their approach, is still quite large. 126 courses large. Of course, I could never DO that many courses, but it feels a lot like my undergrad where there were so many options and electives to initially consider. And these aren’t slouch courses — some of them are offered by Yale, Princeton, UofT, UBC, etc. My full list of possible Coursera courses is below. Unfortunately, many of them are not currently scheduled yet this year, and some of them are too long to sustain my interest, but I’m probably going to commit to at least three this year.

My interests fall into some pretty simple categories, except for the long nature of the original list:

  1. Gamification — There are lots of aspects to this including online game design, original game theory, visual design, and programming;
  2. Psychology — if this one seems odd, go back and read the first post of the year, it will all be come clear;
  3. History — including both human history as well as paleobiology;
  4. Music appreciation — classical, rock and roll, etc.;
  5. Publishing — it may not seem directly evident at first, but it is the source of the review of economic principles, different genres of writing;
  6. Astronomy — again, for obvious reasons;
  7. Writing — including forensics;
  8. Business, philanthropy, organizations, law, etc. — a few unifying themes there that all tie into governance;

Now I just have to get around to choosing my courses!

The Great Courses

  • 1 Fundamentals of Photography
  • 3 National Geographic Masters of Photography
  • Practicing Mindfulness: An Introduction to Meditation
  • Building Great Sentences: Exploring the Writer’s Craft
  • Our Night SkySale
  • Experiencing Hubble: Understanding the Greatest Images of the UniverseSale
  • Old TestamentSale
  • Writing Creative NonfictionSale
  • The Art of Storytelling: From Parents to ProfessionalsSale
  • Art of Public Speaking: Lessons from the Greatest Speeches in History
  • Understanding the Fundamentals of Music
  • Understanding the Mysteries of Human Behavior
  • Writing Great Fiction: Storytelling Tips and Techniques
  • Foundations of Western Civilization
  • How to Listen to and Understand Great Music, 3rd Edition
  • Thinking like an Economist: A Guide to Rational Decision Making
  • Stress and Your Body
  • Understanding the Universe: An Introduction to Astronomy, 2nd Edition
  • The Mathematics of Games and Puzzles: From Cards to SudokuSale
  • The World Was Never the Same: Events That Changed History
  • Art of Teaching: Best Practices from a Master Educator
  • The Inexplicable Universe: Unsolved Mysteries
  • History of the Bible: The Making of the New Testament Canon
  • A Visual Guide to the Universe with the Smithsonian
  • Origins of Great Ancient Civilizations
  • Physics and Our Universe: How It All Works
  • Forensic History: Crimes, Frauds, and Scandals
  • Elements of Jazz: From Cakewalks to Fusion
  • How the Stock Market Works
  • Lifelong Health: Achieving Optimum Well-Being at Any Age
  • The 30 Greatest Orchestral Works
  • My Favorite Universe
  • The Entrepreneur’s ToolkitSale
  • Understanding Greek and Roman Technology: From Catapult to the Pantheon
  • Mysteries of Modern Physics: Time
  • The Creative Thinker’s Toolkit
  • How Ideas SpreadFoundations of Western Civilization II: A History of the Modern Western WorldSale
  • Black Holes, Tides, and Curved Spacetime: Understanding Gravity
  • 12 Essential Scientific Concepts
  • Heroes and Legends: The Most Influential Characters of Literature
  • Mastering Differential Equations: The Visual Method
  • Foundations of Eastern Civilization
  • Medieval World
  • From Jesus to Constantine: A History of Early Christianity
  • Economics, 3rd Edition
  • Behavioral Economics: When Psychology and Economics Collide
  • Dark Matter, Dark Energy: The Dark Side of the Universe
  • Cultural Literacy for Religion: Everything the Well-Educated Person Should Know
  • History of the Ancient World: A Global Perspective
  • Games People Play: Game Theory in Life, Business, and Beyond
  • How to Read and Understand Shakespeare
  • Turning Points in Modern History
  • Trails of Evidence: How Forensic Science Works
  • Classical Mythology
  • Great American Music: Broadway Musicals
  • Cosmology: The History and Nature of Our Universe
  • The Symphony
  • Story of Medieval England: From King Arthur to the Tudor ConquestSale
  • Art of Reading
  • Iliad of Homer
  • Early Middle Ages
  • Confucius, Buddha, Jesus, and MuhammadSale
  • The Life and Death of Stars
  • Skywatching: Seeing and Understanding Cosmic Wonders
  • Odyssey of HomerSale
  • The Art of War
  • The History of Christianity: From the Disciples to the Dawn of the Reformation
  • Introduction to Judaism
  • Masterpieces of Short Fiction
  • 36 Books That Changed the World
  • Dante’s Divine ComedySale
  • Joyce’s Ulysses
  • Espionage and Covert Operations: A Global History
  • Life Lessons from the Great Myths
  • String Quartets of BeethovenSale
  • Beginnings of Judaism
  • Religions of the Axial Age: An Approach to the World’s Religions
  • Great World Religions: Islam
  • Great World Religions: Hinduism
  • Great World Religions: Buddhism
  • History of Ancient R ome
  • Bach and the High Baroque
  • Beethoven’s Piano Sonatas
  • A Brief History of the World
  • Late Middle Ages
  • Comparative Religion
  • Great World Religions: Judaism
  • Great World Religions: Christianity
  • Fall and Rise of China
  • Physics in Your Life
  • From Yao to Mao: 5000 Years of Chinese History
  • Terror of History: Mystics, Heretics, and Witches in the Western Tradition
  • Black Holes Explained
  • Great Masters: Mozart-His Life and Music
  • Great Ideas of Psychology
  • Books That Have Made History: Books That Can Change Your Life
  • Why Evil Exists
  • Symphonies of BeethovenSale
  • Shakespeare: Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies
  • Life in Our Universe
  • Classic Novels: Meeting the Challenge of Great Literature
  • Understanding the Science for Tomorrow: Myth and Reality
  • Theories of Human Development
  • The English Novel
  • Special Collection – The Joy of Ancient HistorySale
  • Great Masters: Tchaikovsky-His Life and Music
  • Classics of American Literature
  • Greece and Rome: An Integrated History of the Ancient Mediterranean
  • Exploring the Roots of Religion
  • Music of Richard Wagner
  • Life Lessons from the Great Books
  • Unexpected Economics
  • Concert Masterworks
  • Classics of British Literature
  • Psychology of Human Behavior
  • Great Thinkers, Great Theorems
  • A Day’s Read
  • Reason & Faith: Philosophy in the Middle Ages
  • Why Economies Rise or Fall
  • Turning Points in Medieval History
  • Peoples and Cultures of the World
  • Science of Self
  • Shakespeare: The Word and the Action
  • Masterpieces of the Imaginative Mind: Literature’s Most Fantastic Works
  • Machiavelli in Context
  • Great Masters: Mahler-His Life and Music
  • Masterworks of Early 20th-Century Literature
  • Great Masters: Brahms-His Life and Music
  • Great Masters: Haydn-His Life and Music
  • Great Masters: Shostakovich-His Life and Music
  • Great Masters: Stravinsky-His Life and Music
  • God and Mankind: Comparative Religions
  • Between the Rivers: The History of Ancient Mesopotamia
  • History of World Literature
  • The Concerto
  • Mystical Tradition: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam
  • Human Prehistory and the First Civilizations
  • Skeptics and Believers: Religious Debate in the Western Intellectual Tradition
  • Science in the 20th Century: A Social-Intellectual SurveySale
  • Philosophy and Religion in the West
  • Long Shadow of the Ancient Greek World
  • Popes and the Papacy: A History
  • Philosophy, Religion, and the Meaning of Life
  • Myth in Human History
  • Origin of Civilization
  • Masterpieces of Ancient Greek Literature
  • Natural Law and Human Nature
  • Introduction to the Study of Religion
  • Great Masters: Liszt-His Life and Music
  • Great Masters: Robert and Clara Schumann-Their Lives and Music
  • The Skeptic’s Guide to the Great Books
  • Business Law: Negligence and Torts
  • Roots of Human Behavior
  • Life and Writings of Geoffrey Chaucer
  • Great Authors of the Western Literary Tradition, 2nd Edition
  • Development of European Civilization
  • War and World History
  • Understanding Literature and Life: Drama, Poetry and Narrative
  • Philosophy of Religion
  • Long 19th Century: European History from 1789 to 1917
  • From Plato to Post-modernism: Understanding the Essence of Literature and the Role of the Author
  • 20th-Century American Fiction
  • History of Science: Antiquity to 1700
  • History of Science: 1700-1900
  • Modern British Drama
  • Medieval Heroines in History and Legend
  • Greek Legacy: Classical Origins of the Modern World
  • Freedom: The Philosophy of Liberation
  • Representing Justice: Stories of Law and Literature

Coursera Courses

  • Active
    • Understanding Video Games
    • Dino 101: Dinosaur Paleobiology
    • Introduction to Psychology
  • Arts
    • Ignite Your Everyday Creativity
    • Introduction to Classical Music
    • Advertising and Society
    • Plagues, Witches, and War: The Worlds of Historical Fiction
    • Online Games: Literature, New Media, and Narrative
    • Comic Books and Graphic Novels
  • Biology and Life Sciences:
    • Astrobiology and the Search for Extraterrestrial Life
    • Astronomy: Exploring Time and Space
    • Origins – Formation of the Universe, Solar System, Earth and Life
    • An Introduction to Consumer Neuroscience & Neuromarketing
    • Introduction to Forensic Science
    • Introduction to Neuroeconomics: how the brain makes decisions
    • Childbirth: A Global Perspective
    • Abortion: Quality Care and Public Health Implications
  • Business:
    • Developing Innovative Ideas for New Companies: The First Step in Entrepreneurship
    • New Venture Finance: Startup Funding for Entrepreneurs
    • Innovation for Entrepreneurs: From Idea to Marketplace
    • Gamification
    • The Governance of Nonprofit Organizations
    • Marketing in a Digital World
    • Digital Marketing Channels: Planning
    • Essentials of Entrepreneurship: Thinking & Action
    • Social Psychology
    • Law and the Entrepreneur
    • What’s Your Big Idea?
    • A Beginner’s Guide to Irrational Behavior
    • Forensic Accounting and Fraud Examination
    • Social Entrepreneurship
    • Unethical Decision Making in Organizations
    • International Organizations Management
    • The Power of Macroeconomics: Economic Principles in the Real World
    • An Introduction to Marketing
    • Giving 2.0: The MOOC
    • Surviving Disruptive Technologies
  • Computers
    • Image and video processing: From Mars to Hollywood with a stop at the hospital
    • Welcome to Game Theory
    • Game Theory II: Advanced Applications
    • Fundamentals of Digital Image and Video Processing
    • Game Theory
    • General Game Playing
    • Computational Photography
  • Software
    • Programming Mobile Applications for Android Handheld Systems: Part 1
    • Programming Mobile Applications for Android Handheld Systems: Part 2
    • Code Yourself! An Introduction to Programming
    • Beginning Game Programming with C#
    • Human-Computer Interaction Design
    • Learn to Program: The Fundamentals
    • Learn to Program: Crafting Quality Code
    • Creative, Serious and Playful Science of Android Apps
    • Creative Programming for Digital Media & Mobile Apps
  • Security
    • Cryptography I
    • Cryptography II
    • Surveillance Law
    • Securing Digital Democracy
  • Economics
    • Microeconomics Principles
    • Economics of Transition and Emerging Markets
    • Making Better Group Decisions: Voting, Judgement Aggregation and Fair Division
    • Understanding Media by Understanding Google
    • Public Economics
    • Property and Liability: An Introduction to Law and Economics
    • The Power of Microeconomics: Economic Principles in the Real World
    • Principles of Macroeconomics
    • Principles of Microeconomics
    • Principles of Economics for Scientists
    • e-Learning Ecologies
  • Education
    • Metaliteracy: Empowering Yourself in a Connected World
    • The Age of Sustainable Development
    • Video Games and Learning
    • ICT in Primary Education: Transforming children’s learning across the curriculum
    • Supporting children with difficulties in reading and writing
  • Health
    • Useful Genetics Part 1
    • The Clinical Psychology of Children and Young People
    • Social Epidemiology
  • Humanities
    • Fantasy and Science Fiction: The Human Mind, Our Modern World
    • An Introduction to American Law
    • Soul Beliefs: Causes and Consequences
    • Moralities of Everyday Life
    • Greek and Roman Mythology
    • Technology and Ethics
    • A History of the World since 1300
    • The Modern World: Global History since 1760
    • Practical Ethics
    • The Ancient Greeks
  • IT
    • Visual Design
    • Content Strategy for Professionals: Growing Audiences for Your Content
    • Content Strategy for Professionals: Engaging Audiences for Your Organization
    • Introduction to User Interface Design (Part 2)
    • Powerful Tools for Teaching and Learning: Digital Storytelling
  • Law
    • Introduction to International Criminal Law
    • Law and the Entrepreneur
    • International Human Rights Law: Prospects and Challenges
    • Presumed Innocent? The Social Science of Wrongful Conviction
    • The Global Student’s Introduction to U.S. Law
  • Math
    • General Game Playing
    • Games without Chance: Combinatorial Game Theory
  • Music
    • The Music of the Rolling Stones, 1962-1974
    • Music’s Big Bang: The Genesis of Rock ‘n’ Roll
    • History of Rock, Part Two
    • History of Rock, Part One
    • The Music of the Beatles
  • Physics
    • Galaxies and Cosmology
    • Astronomy: Exploring Time and Space
    • Origins – Formation of the Universe, Solar System, Earth and Life
    • The Science of the Solar System
    • Introduction to Astronomy
    • Analyzing the Universe
    • Imagining Other Earths
    • How Things Work 1
    • From the Big Bang to Dark Energy
    • The Diversity of Exoplanets
    • AstroTech: The Science and Technology behind Astronomical Discovery
    • Exploring Quantum Physics
  • Social Sciences
    • Moral Foundations of Politics
    • Living with Dementia: Impact on Individuals, Caregivers, Communities and Societies
    • Positive Psychology
    • Resilience in Children Exposed to Trauma, Disaster and War: Global Perspectives
    • Organizational Analysis (Self-Paced)
    • Paradoxes of War
    • Introduction to Psychology as a Science
    • Democratic Development
    • Human Trafficking