Category: Internet

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Confessions of a tinkerer

One thing about reading up on so many blogs and websites through RSS feeds is that you have to make an effort to actually see how some one’s design to their site looks.  If that applies to you, then you never notice how I constantly tweek the design to my site.  I can’t help it.  It’s a tad bit on the obsessive side, but I never find myself happy with what I have when it’s so easy for me to change it.

If you are one of those people who still go the “old school” route and surf into my site everyday(like all good boys and girls should), then you notice these changes.  Over the past day, I’ve done a variety of subtle to not so subtle changes to different things.  And when you start in one place, you end up doing one of two things.  You screw something else up, or that one change leads you down a path of wanting to change even more things.  It can be addictive.

I doubt that what you see will remain exactly the same for very long.  At least now you know.  I tinker.  It’s what I do.

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Obadiah Parker doing a cover of Radiohead’s “Idioteque”

Rebecca posted something about their cover of “Hey Ya” by Outkast yesterday, and while that is absolutely brilliant, I liked this one just as much. And you can find out more about Obadiah Parker at their website.

Covers are delicate things. I’m all for them, as long as you make the song more than just a carbon copy of the original. Of course, there are some folks out there, like bands you find at The Roxy, that it works for. Well, “works” can be taken lightly. Ok, maybe poorly, but you see what I’m getting at, right?

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My blog was hacked

When I woke up this morning, I went to delete a spam comment that got through my defenses, but WordPress wouldn’t let me log in. I tried my login and password a few different times and got nothing. That’s when I started to get that feeling. You know that one I’m talking about?

“This site hacked by” whatever the name was. I’m kicking myself for not getting a screenshot of it, but there was a large wolf image with some language that I was unfamiliar with. There was also a sound file that was posted along with it. It started out with some deep voiced man saying something very foreign, followed by some drums and horns. I was still sleepy eyed and increasingly pissed off that I didn’t take in all the details.

I was able to work around WordPress and get into the SQL database, delete the post, and get my user accounts reset. On top of that, I was running WordPress 2.0.3. I might have waited too long to do the 2.0.4 upgrade that apparently had some “important security updates”.

I’m not sure how this person hacked my site, but everything seems to be back to normal. I’ve done all the neccesary steps. Backed up my site, changed all my passwords, and done needed upgrades. All this after being knocked down with a troubling sinus cold thing all this week, this morning being the first day that I’ve woke up and actually felt good. I’m totally going running right now because that’s a lot better than punching a wall.

Update: Rebecca was able to grab a screenshot of it this morning and has it on this post.

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Podcasting and the Meta Argument

At BarCampVancouver, Ryan Cousineau[wiredcola] led a session called “Sturgeon’s Revelation”[wiki]. The idea that “ninety percent of everything is crud” was the center piece of this session, applying it to pretty much everything that exists in the world of Web 2.0[wiki]. The main topic of focus, however, was podcasting[wiki].

Darren Barefoot made a recent post regarding social networks and podcasting, citing that the resources are not there for the medium as there is for photo, video, or link sharing. This idea speaks a lot to what Cousineau was getting at with his session, and much of his thoughts on the topic is posted on his blog.

When it comes down to it, there is not an easy way to share content within a podcast unless you listen to it. You can’t Google search for information that can be found in a podcast. There are such things as show notes and tags that people apply to the material that they publish, but not everyone does it, nor does everyone do it the same way.

The only solution to this problem is to transcribe podcasts in their entirty so that anyone searching for a topic can locate it in your podcast as well as anywhere else on the web. Quite often, this is where people with low opinions about podcasting derive their argument, and I’ve heard this thought propelled by a lot of bloggers. Yes, blogging is a very quick way of publishing information for the world to read in nearly real time. It is instantly indexed, searchable, and archived.

Generating audio for a podcast can be done in the same way, but often is delayed and ineffective with being timely. The podcast itself, in its raw form, is a bunch of ones and zeros, and no one has developed a way to index the contents of a podcast so that it is searchable across the internet. No matter how great of material that you have in a podcast, some one finding that gem of information inside forty minutes of a mp3 won’t happen unless they download it and listen.

This is where I start to agree with the point that Cousineau is saying and the thoughts presented in Barefoot’s post. The conversation that you can get from podcasting is vastly different for the ones that happen through blogging, Flickr, or YouTube. “Feedback” is the better word for what goes on with a podcast. Continue reading “Podcasting and the Meta Argument”

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Skype releases 2.0 Beta for Mac; Video for everyone

I use iChat to video chat with my family back home all the time. That’s a strict, Mac-to-Mac application. Skype 2.0 Beta for the Mac[download] bridges video chatting with PC users of the VoIP/IM client.

System requirements

  • Mac computer with G4 800 Mhz processor or faster
  • Mac OS X v10.3.9 Panther or newer
  • 512 MB RAM
  • 40 MB free disk space on your hard drive
  • Microphone
  • Webcam: Suggested webcams include Apple iSight, Philips SPC900NC, or Logitech QuickCam Pro 400. Drivers for the Philips and Logitech webcams can be downloaded from http://webcam-osx.sourceforge.net/.
  • Internet connection (broadband is best, GPRS is not supported for voice calls, and results may vary on a satellite connection).

I have yet to put it through the ranks, but if you wanna talk and see your buddies over long distances, this is worth checking out.

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Vancouver could do Wi-Fi better

I’m surprised that there isn’t city-wide Wi-FI already established in Vancouver. I could stand to never have the need to hunker down in a cafe and avoid people trying to peak over my shoulder. It’s a pity that Toronto will have this before we do on the west coast.

Toronto Hydro rolled out the city’s free Wi-Fi – or wireless Internet access – Wednesday morning. The service will be free for six months – and will allow people wireless access to the World Wide Web throughout the downtown rather than solely at pre-existing Wi-Fi hotspots, generally cafes and restaurants.

The project is the largest of its kind in North America, and Mayor David Miller is enthusiastic it’ll be successful.

The signal will be available from Jarvis St. in the east to Spadina Ave. in the west, and from Front St. to the south, north as far as Bloor St. Customers will also be able to make phone calls over the Internet and, in time, watch video. [citynews]

Being such the tech friendly city that Vancouver is, there is probably talk that I’m not aware of. Still, everything I have experienced up to this point, in terms of the tech community that exists in this city, tells me that a Wi-Fi setup like the one going up in Toronto could be dwarfed by one setup in Vancouver.

A good friend of mine from college, Andy Stoll, was apart of a non-profit group trying to setup something like this in the “technology corridor” of eastern Iowa(the area between Cedar Rapids and Iowa City) I’m not too sure how well the operation is going, but the initative was pretty bold. cFree Wireless Network still exists, but I can’t say anything about the network itself.

With the amount of high rises that populate downtown Vancouver, one would think that this could be easily done. You just have to get past the asethetics police and those that feel the frequencies used to transmit wireless signals don’t cause tumors to grow all over your body.

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WOXY.com is calling it quits

If you are a fan of independent music and internet radio, then you are just as sad as I am to here about the recent decision by the folks at WOXY.com[wiki] to pull the plug.

This is the moment all of us hoped would never come. After plugging away at this for the past two years, it’s become pretty clear that operating woxy.com as a stand-alone Internet “radio station” is not going to cut it. Our operating costs are higher than you might think, and the revenue we were able to generate from advertising isn’t close to supporting what we’re doing. Even membership revenue wasn’t enough to get us there. When your business doesn’t make money, you eventually go out of business.

With this in mind, we’ve been looking for either a significant partner – someone with a larger plan into which woxy.com could be plugged – or an outright buyer. That search hasn’t been fruitful. We’re still willing to entertain offers and explore possibilities (email bryan@woxy.com), but our time is short. We thought it was time to share our situation with you … to give you a heads-up. […]

Barring something exceptional happening in the next two weeks, we will silence our broadcasts on Friday, September 15th.

Sometimes no matter how hard you try and how special the thing you do, it simply isn’t enough to beat the odds. It’s the cold reality of business that not even we could escape. When September 15th comes, we’ll meet it proudly with heads held high and celebrate the past two years of woxy.com and the spirit of 97X. For those lucky enough to have been part of it, The Future of Rock and Roll will forever be in our minds and hearts. [woxy]

Heartbreaking. I nearly cried the day I found out that the radio station that used to be 97.7FM, WOXY, was sold off to some radio group and dismantled, only to become some variety hits station(aka crap). It was the, “97X! Bam! The future of rock and roll.” Real DJs playing real music. Totally awesome stuff that I would listen to via their online streams.

The beauty of the operation is that even though the broadcast portion of the station was sold, the programming was retained. A dream would be for WOXY.com to make a return to the world of radio somewhere. It’s some of the best, new music that you won’t hear anywhere else, not to mention nearly all of it being independent artists.

I’m hoping for a last minute hero to help them out, but until then, I’ll miss WOXY.com a lot.

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Speeding up Firefox

When I used to do I.T. for WSUI, I pushed for people to use Firefox as their default browser on their PC. Fellow tech support monkeys can understand that for obvious reasons.

I just recalled this tip that I caught wind of about a year or so ago. This is a really great way to speed up Firefox, and it doesn’t require you to download anything to do it. This mostly applies to those folks on broadband, so if you’re on dial-up, this isn’t for you.

  1. Type “about:config” into the address bar and hit return. Scroll down and look for the following entries:
    • network.http.pipelining
    • network.http.proxy.pipelining
    • network.http.pipelining.maxrequests
  2. Normally the browser will make one request to a web page at a time. When you enable pipelining it will make several at once, which really speeds up page loading.
  3. Alter the entries as follows:
    • Set “network.http.pipelining” to “true“
    • Set “network.http.proxy.pipelining” to “true“
    • Set “network.http.pipelining.maxrequests” to some number like 30. This means it will make 30 requests at once.
  4. Lastly, right-click anywhere and select “New” -> “Integer“.
  5. Name it “nglayout.initialpaint.delay” and set its value to “0“. This value is the amount of time the browser waits before it acts on information it receives.
  6. Restart Firefox.  You can follow steps 1 through 5 to be sure that your changes saved correctly.
    • Note: You might have to make these settings changes everytime Firefox is updated.

This works for the Mac version, too. Logging into WordPress is a snap, and browsing just got a whole lot faster. Once again, another reason I’m a happy switcher to Firefox.

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So long, Mr. Irwin

Weebls Stuff - Steve Irwin Memorial SoundboardEven if you liked him or you didn’t, there is something about the small number of people in the world who risk everything they have to bring television cameras closer to some of the most dangerous and deadly animals. Steve Irwin[wiki] was that type of guy.

Weebls Stuff has posted a soundboard in his memory. So many sayings of a brave man…

Update: According to a post on BlogCritics.org, Animal Planet will have an all day, Steve Irwin marathon on Sunday, September 10.  Check your local listings for times.

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Firefox 2 beta 2 released today

Going along with my recent post about converting over to Firefox as my default browser[post], I thought I would also point out that the second beta of Firefox 2 was released today. The features noted in this Wired.com post makes me anxious for the final version. I’m not too keen on the idea of downloading and running this right now, plus not all extensions are fully compatible with this beta version.

There’s too much to detail about what you can expect from 2.0 when it is launched in its final form, so check out the release notes for more details there.

One thing I will say that I am excited about is inline spell checking! This was the one feature about Safari that I loved the most. Finally, we’ll see it on a Mozilla product.