Category: computing

  • Updates, this that and those other things…

    Nothing like staying awake several hours in the night worried about the fact that two of your main websites are dysfunctional after a suggested system update.

    In this case, a software update was made to my main coffee website and my main telecom/radio website.

    The radio website has a huge technical library on board with a modest subscription service…
    meaning I get some coins when someone wants to browse the growing library.
    And that makes sense – In many years, my tech library gets upwards of 60,000 document downloads.
    That is bandwidth that I have to pay for.

    Since instituting a fee subscription service (and a request for donations to keep the service running), the response has been very favorable.
    Meaning if you need something, all you need do is ask.

    Because everyone is generous… for the most part.

    And what of the guitar? I am currently testing out an amazing “black box” for a company that I cannot currently name – it is actually a vocal processor that does natural sounding harmonizing, pitch correction, commercial grade effects rack, phantom power for commercial microphones and lots more. At some point, if I get permission I will review it – and you will get to hear me sing… in many different ways.

    Yea. Look forward to that!

  • Shaming the forum/comment referral spammers – chapter 1

    Forum spam and website defacement in the form of comment/blog/forum unsolicited shills and ads cost webmasters and editors millions of dollars a year.

    I got so fed up with it on one of my websites that I instituted a new registration policy that requires an authentic e-mail address for the user to post anything on my site – As a result I have been regularly harvesting the most notorious of these vandals – with fresh e-mails ready to post to sites like: http://www.stopforumspam.com/ their mission to out these shameful crumbs and the large corporations that they work for.

    Here are some examples of actual authenticated e-mail addresses that were used to register on one of my websites that would likely vandalize, deface and spam my forums with referral ads:

    reoton@onlinepharmacy-levitra.com – via@viagranowdirect.com – xcvss@lvbagsjapan.com – weeraitale@gmail.com (username – buy zithromax ) – lfqaq@louisvuittonhandbagsprices.info – kevin@onlinepharmacy-order.com –

    Forum and comment spammers cost us web folks millions of dollars in clean up every year – they are the lowest form of life on the World wide web and need to be shamed and stopped. They benefit by riding on the success of popular websites and are, sadly, a common method for large corporations to cheaply get their message out.

    I have e-mailed hundreds of companies over the years asking why they roam the internet defacing websites to improve their bottom line: Quite often they respond with “We did not know this was going on…” or “We will definitely get to the bottom of this!” I have even been threatened with a law suit after outing a series of forum spammers on the very website they were spamming!

    Like I said, they are the lowest form of internet life.

    How can you help? Visit support sites like StopForumSpam and out these hucksters and their billionaire partners.

  • Growing it for a cause – Movember

    Here is a photo of my UVic – Systems Movember team – feel free to help the cause against cancer – we are growing it, not mowing it – to raise awareness and fight a nasty disease.

    Left to right: Paul S. (CIO UVic Systems), Matt S, Donny L, Yours truly, Ryan P, Ryan E, Corey S.

    Click here to toss us a couple bucks.
    Thanks!

  • Summer Food Fun and Drink 15 Life in the now lane

    I do not work for YOU, I work for the U.S.One of the neat things about being over 40 – and being fairly hip to what is hot and happening in the early part of the 21st Century…

    Is the fact that I am old enough to remember going into a record store to buy LP’s – when cassettes were actually available…

    Photo at right: New copyright protection laws and digital locks – technology and new media – Stephen Harper wants to know: What’s on your iPod!?

    (And)Seeing the arrival of CD’s in the early eighties was way cool as well.
    I can recall shopping out my first CD Player (a Sony) with my one CD I owned… and then previewing the performance of new systems with Dire Straits “Brother in Arms” release (which by the way was the first million selling CD in 1985) – yes, I waited until at least 1985 to get my first CD player.

    My Amp was (and is with my Mom now) a Class-A JVC high end amp with a pair of Boston Acoustic speakers (that I think need a re-coning by now…)

    There was a time in the late 70’s when home video tape arrived in the form of the VHS and Beta tape – ushering in an era of home video rentals – something that is quickly going the route of DVD rentals. When DVD rentals arrived I think a lot of us figured that “this was it…” – this is the medium for home entertainment that was here to stay.

    Then Blue-ray. And in some senses, that technology has hardly dug in its heels and the rental market is entirely drying up as viable internet downloading of individual shows as well as broadband on demand is becoming more available to the average person.

    My point? I have seen it all – from the late sixties and album oriented masterpieces on vinyl from the likes of Led Zeppelin – and I heard ever album as they were released!

    Nowadays one does not even need to leave their living room to acquire every bit of “entertainment” that is available. No need for video or DVD rental. No need for record stores. Game rentals? History my friend.

    And I think that we are all poorer without the whole community experience. One wonders what kind of people we will become when we only need to go out for work or food. I wonder.

    As of today, I have still managed to not download one song off of the internet – and I have never downloaded a TV show or movie. Call me square if you want – but I work with this technology all day. Which might explain something.

    Currently, what is left of the music industry (and movie empire) is quickly trying to come up with some tough new standards on protecting intellectual property. I am all for supporting the artist – but everything so far has not worked.

    Anyway. Stay tuned. Let’s see what is next.

  • Summer Food Fun and Drink 14 Six years later and a re-launch

    Who is writing a book on global microfinance for Bloomsbury, puzzle maker for the New York Times op-ed section, travel writer, Forbes Traveler, author of Who Hates Whom, a pocket guide to global conflict outlining more than 30 of the world’s active wars and hot spots?
    He is a former writer for CSI: Crime Scene Investigation – season 3 in which yours truly had a minute writing role – and a freelance writer for the show “Bones”…

    Deep breath…

    Bob Harris new online experience in 2010

    And a consulting producer for El Pantera, Mexico’s top original action series, former AP award-winning nationally syndicated radio commentator, former on-camera presenter for the TLC series Mostly True Stories, and a winner of over $350,000 in cash and prizes on Jeopardy! and other quiz shows…

    He is Bob Harris of Los Angeles California and I have been his web specialist since 2004!

    In the last couple of weeks we have been doing a soft launch of the new BobHarris.com online phenomenon. Bob, in the upcoming days, weeks and months will add to the nearly 1600 articles on the classic BobHarris.com website.

    And integrate the other social media elements of Bob’s life into one great big shiny experience; Twitter, Facebook meets Web 2.0

    Enjoy Bob’s website – and let me know if something is not working quite right.

  • Website issues are temporary – stay tuned.

    I am currently bouncing web requests for dxer.ca and coffeecrew.com over here because of technical issues at my ISP – things should fix themselves by morning…
    hopefully… and they are.

    Thanks for your patience.

  • Rites of Spring #28 Technology of our undoing – broadband over power lines

    Broadband over internet noise - what a stupid idea this isMy day job is in multi-media design, modernization, implementation and blah, blah, blah…

    …in the educational environment. In my case UVic.
    (so)Give me a classroom or lab with a black board and a piece of chalk and I will give you video data projection, infinitely variable lighting controls, high speed internet, web-casting and sound so crisp you would swear it’s live.

    because in the year 2010, it’s easily to learn when you have all the tools.
    And this applies to the home as well.

    I have a PC workstation for audio production and a MacBook Pro for doing the stuff I am doing right now… a very high speed internet connection… and Wireless-N that I do not even use. I like my cat-5 wiring if at all possible. It is secure… and it’s reliable as gravity my friends.

    I also like keeping my bits and bytes contained within copper cable if possible. Not adverse to wireless… as long as it’s wireless-N or better. Which is secure as heck after all – low power. It’s safe. And nobody gets hurt, right?
    Well, there is something that has come down the pipe (more popular in Europe than here) that is scaring the crap out of me – not for what it does to people or creatures – but what it potentially takes away from us… our ability to communicate.

    It’s called broadband over the power lines or BPL and it uses house wiring for distributed ethernet. God knows who designed this stuff. It has the capability, ironically, of seriously interfering with existing digital radio and TV and old style AM and FM radio – impeding our ability to communicate with each other and enjoy our high tech lives. Now that is genuinely ironic wouldn’t you say?

    The boxes (shown above and sold at COST-CO) are made in China and they are shit. Some colleagues and I are investigating an interference report from the area around Beacon Hill Park in Victoria – some 4 city blocks wide! And it is likely one of these little peckers (shown above). From some of the intelligence that we have gathered, people are buying these units at COST-CO and then returning them shortly thereafter – not because they don’t work… because they do – but because they are difficult to set up.

    Wireless-N is tried, tested and true – sets up easily and does not interfere with any domestic or terrestrial radio or data services.

    Now imagine that you neighbor down the street buys one of these boxes and your audiophile set-up is screwed… or your HD TV is now replete with interference lines or inexplicable odd behavior – and don’t think for a second that because it’s digital it is immune to interference – cause it ain’t.

    So think about this: One device (shown above) and 4 city blocks wiped out.
    How wiped out? I listen to CFAX 1070 AM in Victoria and the offending box (or something like it – we are not exactly sure it is this particular unit) actually interferes with a 10,000 watt radio station.

    This should concern us.

  • Google Rant #1 – don’t steal my books Mister Google

    My first thought is…

    If I created a series of Google rants…
    Would google index them?
    Well. Let’s see.

    Anyway.
    Imagine a World where you could lose everything at the whim of a giant corporation… in a future World where there were no borders… only corporations that took what they wanted, when they wanted.

    Your money. Your ideas. Your family and friends.
    Sounds crazy.

    Would it make it ok is the corporation tossed you a bone for your most cherished possessions? Like 64 dollars? For your life’s work…

    Oddly, this is the present World. Google appears to want to steal all the books on the Planet and pay the authors 64 bucks for their trouble.
    Sound odd? Sound outrageous? Sound like a scary future World.
    Sure as f*ck does.
    Read more about it here
    Shit like this staggers me. And we all need to be on guard.

  • Summer Food Fun and Drink Chapter 11 The downside of twitter

    Here’s the thing. If I could sprout an extra lobe in my brain and actually incur the ability to distill my more cogent thoughts down to 140 characters…

    I probably still would not twitter.

    Because I just typed 140 characters and I haven’t said a golly dash thing!
    And you know it.

    A lovely young lady (and that fact is irrelevant) that I passed on Friday (on campus) mused that she twitters – but is pretty sure that…

    a.) She has no followers
    and
    b.) No one would really care about what she wrote anyway.

    And yet I know for a fact that she is usually surrounded by a gaggle of young men…
    and she talks a lot to them.
    And they listen with rapt interest.
    Because she is interesting.
    Intelligent.
    And pretty. Not that this indelible fact matters.

    There are a couple of other nagging problems with twitter (and, oh yea… Facebook).
    They are over run by corporations. We know that Facebook is merely a data mining site used by the man to get more marketing info on us consume-droids.
    And now large corporations are signing into twitter because they think it’s hip and it’s marketing ore rich for refining.

    It is about as hip as my grand-dad rapping with Dr. Dre.

    Bottom line – there is nothing useful anyone can say in 140 characters or less. And when millions and millions are doing it – it just makes it less relevant than space dust.
    My opinion.

  • Spring into birdsong – why we do not twitter

    I embrace technology. Heck, I have been doing this for too many years. When I first started monkeying around on the internet, there were no web servers. They were called gopher servers – and they served up text.

    My first attempts at webbing were launched from a Windows 3.11 for Work groups box (an IBM PC) around 1995 or so. That was a century ago in internet time.

    So now we have streaming audio and video and dynamic web pages that change with every glance. I am good with that, dog. Really I am.

    I believe that I owe it to my dedicated reader that I keep it fresh and real.

    I do not believe, however, that there are more than a very small handful of people out there that would hang onto every word – if I offered truly up to date snippets of my every thought.

    Twitter.

    I do not do it. I will not do it.

    No one needs to know what I am thinking when I am standing on the corner of 1st and Main Street. No one needs to know when I am sipping on a truly great coffee in a remarkable setting. I can tell them later.

    Twitter is an alarming indication that we are getting a tad too self indulgent.
    I went through the eighties – I was in my 20’s. And let me tell you folks… the only difference between then and now (for me) was more hair and more hair gel… and a lot more self indulgent behavior from just about everyone around me.

    I have a theory. We never actually left the eighties. The mentality is still very much alive in all of us. There are many of us that actually feel that there is an audience for our every utterance, our every stomach gurgle, our every thought – however useless and every trivial thought that jumps from our synapses.

    Enough already. How about some quiet.
    Take some… on me.

    Colin Newell is a Victoria resident and long time user of the World Wide Web. His handiwork has graced the cyber-World for going on 2 decades… if anyone is counting that is.