Podcast Post-Production :: Aussie Geek Podcast #003

I’ve taken a crack at producing some small bits of audio content in the past, my segments for the GGP, and more recently some promo material for the Aussie Geek Podcast. But never have I undertaken producing an entire episode without the proverbial net.

This week due to some issues beyond his control, Dave is without is usual podcasting rig, including the computer and all of his audio editing tools. So in an effort to make sure that the AGP #003 gets out as close to on-time as possible, I’ll be doing the editing and post-production for this week’s episode.

I’ve been learning some new skills, mostly thanks to Dave and with some input from the Interwebs. So if you haven’t subscribed to the Aussie Geek Podcast yet, I suggest you do so right now and listen to last week’s show and this, and see if I did an OK job.

Cloudless Computing :: Things To Do When You’re Without Your Interwebs

So here I am without access to the Internet. So what have I done? I’ve found a way to do my computing without the cloud! Here are some projects that you can do the next time you find yourself without access to the cloud.

Organize your Photos This is a relatively time consuming task that I rarely take the time to do. A “net-outage” is a great time to pour through the photos in your computer and group or rename the files. If you use a photo organizing program like iPhoto or Aperture on the Mac, or Google’s very popular Picasa on Windows you can use these programs to do much of the tedious file management for you.

Blog Something I find that one of my biggest impediments to getting a bunch of blogging done is my rather short attention span. When I’m online researching a story for an article I tend to get lost surfing the Internet looking for new and exciting things. Being offline for a few hours, or even a couple of days, can provide you extra time to focus on getting that article written, or in some cases provide inspiration for a whole new article (or two). I managed to a get a couple of good articles out of my unexpected “grey mode” period.

Write a Letter We’ve all said it at one time or another, often when frustrated or annoyed, “I’m going to write a letter!” Well, here’s your chance. Bring up your favourite word processor, or text editor and bang out some phrases that are sure to convince your audience that you’re right (and that you should get a free case of coke the next time you shop there). Letters to politicians or other elected officials are also great candidates.

Play a Game Assuming you have games on your computer which aren’t of the MMO variety playing them can be a great way to kill some time. A couple of games that I’ve purchased over the last couple of years are Escape Velocity: Nova (EV:Nova) and WingNuts 2. Both of these games are sci-fi shooters, with EV:Nova extending the genre with trading and other somewhat less violent activities. EV:Nova also supports a wide ranging plugin architecture that will allow you to download (prior to the network outage, of course) plugins from other players to extend the game or cheat the system.

So there you have it. A few ways to get your geek on without access to the cloud. So the next time you find yourself in a coffee shop and don’t feel like paying exorbitant fees to check your email. Try out a cloud-free activity. Hey you might even find yourself more productive!

Do You Protect Your Twitter?

A few months back I was beeing bombarded by what seemed an ever-increasing number of twitter spammers. This means they’re following me. To end the insanity I finally decided to make my profile private which eliminated almost all of the spam but seriously crippled the number of friend requests I was getting.

I carried this on for about two months, twitter became less active for me, not much in the way of new friend requests and ultimately a complete drop-off of activity.

Yesterday I decided to unlock my profile again, and resort to the manual removal/blocking of Twitter spam. Within a few hours I had a bunch of new requests and Twitter activity seems to be increasing more ever since.

So the question boils down to this: To protect, or not? Do you protect your Twitter?

Waxing Poetic on the DNS Incident

For those of you who haven’t been following recent security news, there’s been a major defect found in the DNS protocol which has led to a series of patches for all forms of DNS servers. Though the issue doesn’t affect most peoples’ home computers, it does affect pretty much every ISP on the planet as it makes older versions of DNS vulnerable to a DNS Cache Poisoning attack.

With a vulnerability so wide-reaching, security researchers decided it would be wise to keep the exact nature of the vulnerability something of a secret until the patches were ready. They did however announce that a vulnerability had been found.

This announcement was all it took for security-savvy netizens (the ones who know just enough to be dangerous) to start speculating and researching the nature of the DNS defect. The good thing? They figured it out. The bad thing? They publicized it.

As a keen observer of the whole mess, security expert and blogger Chris Hoff decided to dedicate a poem to the DNS Debacle. I’ve included a short excerpt:

A bunch of big egos called Dan on a bluff said his vuln was a copy of 10 year old stuff So Dan swore them on handshakes and details were provided and those same cocky claims soon all but subsided

Go and check the poem out. It’s extremely creative, and as far as I can tell factually accurate to the events that took place. My hat’s off to Chris Hoff for providing the prose, now we’ll all cross our fingers and see how it goes…

The Gmail Effect

The Gmail Effect Well it’s not quite as staggering as the Digg Effect that can take down web servers in a single afternoon, but I experienced my own little spike in traffic this week. When Gmail went through their little bout of difficulty last week I let you know about the post-mortem entry on the Official Gmail blog.

I saw a rather significant spike in traffic as millions of Gmail users checked out the blog, and a few hundred of them clicked through on the trackback which showed up as a result of the post. Go figure.

Aussie Geek Podcast #002

Well the second installment of the AGP is out and this time without the token Canadian! Dave and Cait had to steer the ship alone this week, but as usual they did an absolutely bang-up job.

Knightwise dropped in with an absolutely spot-on rant about the REAL problem behind email forwards, and Dave managed to cover a Mac app in my absence. Go give a listen to the Aussie Geek Podcast #002.

Subscribe to the show either using <a href=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/AussieGeekPodcast” target=”_blank”>Good ol’ RSS</a> or directly through <a href=”http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=287183644″ target=”_blank”>iTunes</a>.

I’m a Webaholic

This weekend I find myself, quite unintentionally, without any access to the Internet. Despite the fact that my wife and I have left the big city for the weekend to head off for a nice quiet weekend away, we had intended to take along a laptop with a CDMA Air-Card which would provide some Internet access via the cell-phone network. We did remember the laptop, and the Air-Card unfortunately I completely neglected to pack a power-supply for the laptop.

Crud. Now what? I have my MacBook with me which is where this post is originating, but I don’t have a PCMCIA slot in the MacBook to accommodate the AirCard. I will probably be able to pick up a wi-fi hotspot from one of the neighbours, but that’s going to involve getting in the car and parking, rather suspiciously, on the street outside someone’s house to get access to the internets. Am I that desperate? Can I truly not live for three days without my Internets??

I’m sad to report that the answer is yes. My name is Keith, and I’m a Webaholic. And it’s not just me, both my wife and I felt a mild sense of panic when we realized that our access to the Internet was going to be seriously curtailed this weekend, if not eliminated altogether.

I was going to work on some Flickr reorganization.
She was going to watch the olympics via CBC.ca’s on-line Olympic coverage.
I was going to use my VPN to connect up to work and get a few things straightened out for a couple of projects I’m working on.
She was going to connect to the iTunes store and download the new iPod Touch software and play around with some applications.
I was going to work on a revised version of the blog template (yes, the same revision I blogged about months ago).
I was going to get the next post in my Hardy for the Home series written (and use SSH into the server back home to do it).

Suffice to say the plans have been revised somewhat. We were both quite happy to do other things, we brought books to read, we walked on the beach, we spent some tourist time in a nearby village shopping in the local mom & pop shops. It was just a shift from what we had originally planned. Despite the fact that we traveled out of the Lower Mainland for nearly 6 hours to get where we are, we had still intended a rather Internet-focused long weekend. I managed to find a HotSpot (read: parked on the side of an unlit road stealing unsecured wi-fi) to check email, but the connection was a bit too unreliable to try using WordPress.

Well there’s my story of net addiction. What’s yours?

Photo Credit: Nataliej on Flickr

Two Douche Bags Don’t a Good iPhone App Make

One douche bag writes an app that does nothing. Another douche bag actually buys it and then complains (despite the fact that the description includes the line: “It’s a work of art with no hidden function at all.”

I know we covered this on this week’s Aussie Geek Podcast, but I felt it bore repeating. I don’t know who at Apple thought a picture of a gem for $1000 would be a good idea, but someone apparently approved it.

I like this version of the story from Sillicon Alley Insider, alternately check out Wired or Technologizer.

We’re Back! Aussie Geek Podcast Episode 001 Is Out!

We are back!!

It’s been a long month but after a couple of early glitches and a fight between WordPress 2.6 and PodPress the first official episode of the AGP is out.

We all missed doing regular shows during the forced hiatus and it showed in the show. There’s a lengthy out-take at the end of the show. If you haven’t subscribed to the new feed yet, do it now! Either by RSS or through iTunes.

Google Apologizes for Monday’s FUBAR

Gmail’s product manager pushed an article to the official Gmail blog late on Monday to acknowledge the problems that many GMail users faced trying to access their email on Monday afternoon (PT).

We’ve identified the source of this issue and fixed it. In addition, as with all issues that affect Gmail and our other services, we’re conducting a full review of what went wrong and moving quickly to update our internal systems and procedures accordingly.

The post does not provide any real detail as to the source of the problem, only an acknowledgment and an apology for the inconvenience.

The outage provided people with extra free time on their hands to try out their artistic abilities in describing the problem. This was my favourite of the GMail Fail Whales:

Image Credit: Todd Garland of HubSpot, this copy from YoavShapira’s photostream.

So yea, apparently email is critical to most people’s regular day. Whoda thunk it?

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Monthly Archives: August 2008