August 2010

There were 36 posts published in August 2010 (this is page 2 of 4).

Raleigh’s media sites can’t search, either

Before our area media start feeling high and mighty, I was amused to find it nearly impossible to track down today’s story on Russ’s comments about the city’s website on the News and Observer website. After searching in vain using the N&O’s own search engine, it took me some thoughtful Google searches to turn it up.

With each iteration of its website, the paper’s search engine has become less useful. What’s even worse, with each redesign all the web links to online stories have changed completely, breaking not only any links any outside sites made to stories but also any links indexed by search engines. Thus if you couldn’t find what you’re looking for after the N&O redesign, God help you because Google certainly won’t. I’m no web professional, but even I know to create forwards from old links to new ones whenever humble MT.Net makes changes. That’s Webmastering 101.
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Raleigh’s website woes

The City of Raleigh’s new website was in the news again today. City Councilor Russ Stephenson picked it apart in an email to City Manager Russell Allen. Russ’s experience is the same as most folks’: he tried using the search engine to find something and failed utterly. When I critiqued it myself, I faulted it for simply relying on the search engine as heavily as it does. That wasn’t even considering that the search engine seems so completely broken.

My buddy Scott has built many a website in his many years of geekdom. He’s a professional. He tells me that he had seen many $500,000 websites, and what Raleigh got is not one of them.
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High-altitude balloon launch

A group of friends is launching a helium balloon to the upper reaches of the atmosphere. Josh Shaffer of the News and Observer wrote a story on it in this morning’s paper.

I am not involved in the project (I’m at the beach now), which kills me because I’ve wanted to do this for a long time. The best I can do is what everyone else can do, which is track the balloon online. Those in Raleigh can see the launch at Horseshoe Farm Park at 8 AM Sunday.

Update 23 August: Success! See the results!

Rancho Relaxo

We started our vacation this morning, taking the family to Emerald Isle, NC for three days of beach. We hadn’t planned ahead for a longer trip, nor did I have the vacation time saved up to take a longer vacation. It’s a shame, really, because though I rarely take it I really like knowing it’s there. But I digress.

We arrived at my friend Shane’s beachhouse, Rancho Relaxo, around noon, under overcast skies and with a gentle breeze blowing. After stopping off at the Lowe’s Foods to pick up some groceries (and stopping at Quizno’s to get some lunch) we showed up at the beautiful Rancho.
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Good luck, Ruth

I’ve taken a few swipes at News and Observer columnist Ruth Sheehan over the years, but now that she’s leaving I’m truly sorry to see her go. I will miss her point of view, regardless of whether I always agreed with it. For all the columns where we didn’t see eye to eye there were many more that helped folks who desperately needed it.

I admit, this is one corner of the blathering blogosphere that will miss her column. Best of luck to you in your new career, Ruth.

Summer winding down

There’s barely a week left in the kids’ summer vacation. The mornings and evenings are considerably darker than they were just a month ago. Though it is still quite hot, I can feel the summer slipping away and fall approaching.

I look towards this fall with a bit more curiosity than those before. Not sure why, really. There’s no specific event that attracts me, I guess it’s just the concept of a season where it’s actually pleasant to be outside. It’s true that I’m starting a new job soon, and while that certainly is exciting there’s more to the season I guess.

Maybe we will get a hurricane or tropical storm or two. And I’m looking forward to how the kids adapt to their new classes. Regardless of what takes place, I’m looking to close out our year on the best note possible. I don’t exactly know what that entails but I look forward to finding out.

Default dns names

Once upon a time I knew how to configure BIND to send a canned reply for lookups to undefined IP addresses. Thus, a lookup of 192.168.1.16, if not assigned to a hostname, would return as “dhcp-16.example.com.”

Now I can’t remember what BIND option actually did this. Any other sysadmin geeks out there know how to do this?

Update: Found it! It’s the $GENERATE feature. Cool!

Smiling in passport photos

Don't dare smile

I just had two sets of passport photos taken, one at work and one at the local Costco. Both photographers told me not to smile in my photographs: that they could get rejected by the State Department’s passport processing if I were smiling. I thought that was ridiculous but to hear it from two photographers made me wonder.

Checking the Internets, I see there are differing opinions on whether this is a legitimate requirement. A few web forums say smiling is (and is not) allowed. The U.S. Consular Services in Canada office (where one would expect to find the official word) says you may smile if you wish.this is because smiling breaks the facial recognition software. Now, I would think any facial recognition software that can be defeated by the bad guy smiling isn’t worth much. I chalk it up to more security theater.

Interestingly, the Costo guy asked if my photograph was for a U.S. passport or a Canadian one. Apparently you can still smile in your Canadian passport photographs. No wonder Canadian travelers get better welcomes than Americans.

Sound Choice in the news again

I was delighted to read the story in today’s Charlotte Observer about Kurt Slep and Sound Choice, fighting back against illegal copying of their karaoke music. The company took a beating when unscrupulous karaoke jockeys (“KJ’s”) downloaded their music rather than paying for it.

While I was sad to hear how devastating music piracy has been to Sound Choice, I was glad to read about the history of the company, including the time in 1985 when I was one of its first employees.

Kurt, give me a call if you need a vocalist!