The Many Faces of Mike McBride

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Saturday, August 10, 2002

Now it's your turn

Yeah I decided last night that I liked Blogrolling so much that I became a contributor. I think it's important that we support technology that makes our lives easier and blogrolling definitely does that! So who else out there loves what they do?

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Friday, August 09, 2002

Blogrolling

The coolest thing about using blogrolling, well beside the fact that it's ridiculously easy, is that I can see who's been blogrolling me, which is cool. Just taking at look at my site gave me these people who have added me and who I had never read before:

http://www.e-dennis.net
http://www.mylickleworld.co.uk/blog.php
http://nullified.kevinsblog.com
http://www.rmcrob.com
http://www.leepotts.com/blog.html
http://www.excessbloggage.com/bloggyblog/links.html
http://www.quality.nu/lisa

Adding those to the folks who I already knew were coming here shows me just what a variety of viewpoints and experiences are out there. Excellent! Please feel free to add your voice to what we've got going on around here! Thanks for the links, and go check these folks out, it'll be an interesting way to spend some of your weekend!

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Quick update

It seems at some point in the late afternoon yesterday, Roadrunner got our home internet connection working properly again. No notification of what was happening, it just suddenly was working without the time-outs again. They probably cut off some kid "sharing" the new Springsteen CD on Kazaa or something to free up the bandwidth. *L*

Later that same night, the Mac started dropping the wireless connection for no apparent reason. Signal strength was fine, it just wouldn't connect through out to the internet. I did the only things I could think of, I upgraded the firmware on the SMC Barricade, but it still didn't appear to be working. Then I turned on AppleTalk on the eMac, and with the next attempt to connect to the SMC, the internet connection started rocking just fine. One of those two things did the trick, but I'm not sure which. I don't know enough about AppleTalk to know whether I needed that to improve my connection to the wireless router or not, but it wasn't mentioned anywhere, (I know you need it to share files on the internal network) so I think the firmware upgrade was what did the trick. At this point though, I'm going with my standard IT theory; "It works. I don't know how or why, but I don't care either, as long as it works!"

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Thursday, August 08, 2002

Look who's back

Looks like Jevon is back among the bloggers again. Nice to see him back! He's got a post about Real-time blogging and outlining that's interesting. (permalinks, Jevon? I couldn't find one) In a nutshell, he wants to use an outliner on his blog because that's how he tackles technical learning, by writing out an idea, researching it, expounding on it, rewriting it, etc. He thinks he would make a better "real-time" blogger than a "journal" blogger. He might be right in that, but I can tell you he is right about one thing, outlining is not for everyone. There are a number of reasons that I wouldn't do it. First, I would have a hard time being productive and writing while I work on something. I'm a trial and error person when it comes to tech, I'll try something, not like it, switch it back, try something else, etc. Stopping to document what I was doing would kill my flow. I have a hard time even talking to someone when I'm messing with something, let alone trying to explain what I'm doing as I go along. No, I need to focus on writing when it's time to write, and working when it's time to work.

Secondly, I hate outlines. I have always hated outlines. In school, when you had to do outlines as part of your research papers, I would always write the paper first, then draw up an outline based on the paper. I write by flow, meaning I start writing and my thoughts take me along the path until the paper is finished. I was always a much better creative writer than I was at writing research and technical papers. That's why doing something as simple as a "readme.txt" for that project I've been working on for Geek has taken me forever. It's a simple text file, yet it takes me weeks to get it right, because I don't work well trying to document something,. It took me 4 hours to create the thing, 3 weeks to document what it is!

Lastly, I need to think about what I blog because, in this state of writing by "flow" I can, and sometimes do, write things that I shouldn't write. If I'm outlining, and writing as I go without paying complete attention to what I write, there's a good possibility I'm going to write something that offends the hell out of someone. I'm an opinionated person, I'm old enough and have seen enough BS in my life to be able to call it that, but I won't most of the time in as public a forum as this. Too many flames. When I write now, I decide whether or not to take on a particular subject, and how I'm going to take it on before I start writing, and that guides my writing. It keeps this blog from being a center of controversy instead of the sharing of knowledge and ideas I want it to be.

Those would be some of the same reasons I don't plan to blog events live as they happen. I need to edit myself. *L*

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Ghost in the machine

I should have known there would be problems when Angela called me yesterday afternoon to ask about how to reset the router beccause our internet connection was being flaky. Resetting the router worked for the moment, but by the time I got home the connection was pretty much kaput again. Figuring it was RoadRunner and not us, she went off to setup her new Emac, (affectionately named TubbeMac because it's an eMac and it's kind of tubby.) while I tried to grab an hour's nap or so before our dinner guest arrived. (We had been up late at the concert the night before, I hadn't had enough sleep)

My nap turned into about 15 minutes when the Mac wouldn't connect to the existing wireless network. I had setup the SMC wireless router to use 128-bit automatic encryption, meaning you only needed the passphrase to connect. The Mac wouldn't accept the passphrase. The only instructions for joining a 128-bit encrypted network were to use the 128-bit manual setup, requiring a 26 character hexidecimal passcode. So I switched the router to that, and got the Mac connected. (Anyone know how/if you can use the automatic setting with an Airport card? I'm not sure of my ability to remember the 26 digit code I entered. *L*) The next issue was internet connectivity. I power cycled the cable modem and seemed to temporarily get our connection back, then went to make sure the Mac had picked up an IP address, it had! All that was left was to put the DNS entries in and it was connected, just in time for dinner!

After a nice dinner with Angela's brother, she went to play with her new toy. Only thing was, it kept losing it's connection, then getting it back, losing it, getting it back. Somewhat stumped by this, I turned off the encryption, to eliminate that as a source of the problem. No change. Eventually I ran into the office and used my PC, which is wired to the Hawking Router, and not the SMC wireless router, and discovered the connection doing the same thing on that. Obviously not a problem with the wireless connection. After resetting the cable modem once again, it came back, for 2 minutes, and then was gone again. This was obviously either a bad modem or an issue with Road Runner's network, and since it was already after 11:00, we went to bed.

This morning, while I showered for work, Angela fired up her PC and the internet connection seemed to be back to normal. Hopefully it stays that way, and the wireless works so she can play with her new toy and give us all a full review of it! I can only tell you that it takes some getting used to, the system prefs were a little tricky for me to find and set. I needed a "Control Panel", but once I figured out where they were, it wasn't too bad.

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Wednesday, August 07, 2002

Angela's new toy

Yes the eMac has arrived, a day earlier than expected! FedEx delivered it to me here at work this morning. We had them ship it to work so they could deliver it without having to worry about someone being at home all day long. I told Angela I had her new computer earlier today, I think now she might regret having it shipped here. I wonder just how impatiently she's waiting at home for me right now...*L*

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When you're a rock star

As we discovered last night at the Dave Matthews concert, when you're a rock star you can walk up to the microhpone mumble something completely unintelligible, and people will cheer you for it! What a life! *L* Despite that, it was a good show, and Dave mumbles a little less when he sings. :)

My last post seems to have generated a little bit of buzz. Nothing that's going to get me into the Daypop top 40 but a couple of people have linked to it. I think the fears are legitimate, even if they sound way out there. I'm not normally one to go for conspiracy theories, but this is a business model fighting for control of a relatively new market. Businesses in that situation are capable of just about anything, even if they themselves don't even see the big picture they are creating. I don't think Big Media understands what the internet is now, so they don't realize the damage they are doing by trying to control it like this.

Speaking of generating a little buzz, the Blogging Ecosystem shows that I am around the 470th most linked to blog, and around the 260th in having links to other blogs. It's not A-list blogger status, and it certainly won't make me famous, but this little blog is carving out it's own niche, I think. I guess that's all I can really ask for. I enjoy the fact that there is a decent sized, and growing, audience and it's been good enough, so far, to keep those folks coming back. Hopefully that will continue and the audience will grow, and you all will continue to contribute to what we've got going on around here! You are my community. I have tried to simply write what I think, and what I know, as opposed to adapting to make sure I fit into any existing community. That probably keeps my readership down a little bit from where it could be, but it makes me feel better about my writing, and the people who contribute here. As I've said before, I have a number of thoughts about blogging "communities" that could take up an entire article, but I'm not sure I want to write it just yet. Too many people out here don't take criticism very well and I'd rather not start down that path.

Finally, ReadyHosting did resolve the outstanding issues that led to my front page being defaced, and, at my request, disabled all FrontPage extensions on my domain, so I can be sure to not have to worry about that particular vulnerability anymore. I'll give them some credit for working to get things secure after the fact, but it was still after the fact.

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Tuesday, August 06, 2002

Where are we headed?

Here's a few thoughts on the current legal and tech scene:

What is the best thing about the internet for us, and the worst for Big Media? There are very few barriers to entry when it comes to publishing online. You can do it for very little $$, it doesn't take special equipment, or licenses. Big Media has to compete with all of us on the internet, getting an ever-smaller piece of the pie as niche markets spring up all over the web, introduced by average people with strong passions. They have lost the lock-in that comes from broadcast mediums. In a broadcast medium like TV, Radio, or Newspapers, you consume, they produce. You do not get to produce without paying enormous costs, and passing those costs along to advertisers or subscribers. Online publishing costs very little, meaning you can produce just for the love of producing, and make your content available for free, or very little cost. The behemoth media conglomerates can't compete with that.

So, what do they do? In order for them to compete again, they have to raise the barriers to entry in the online publishing field. Think about how RoadRunner customers are not allowed to host websites on a home account because of the supposed extra bandwidth they would take up, yet there are no bandwidth restrictions when it comes to downloading all of the Time-Warner content they want you to consume. That's one way to setup an artificial barrier to entry, make people who wish to host a website pay more for their internet connection. But that hasn't worked entirely, because there are plenty of hosting companies out there that keep it competitively priced, or offer free hosting, so you can get around the restriction. The next step on this front will be upload restrictions. Your internet connection will only be allowed to upload a certain amount per month, limiting the amount of data you can upload to a website, and the amount of file-sharing you can do. But that still won't stop it.

No, the real barriers to entry will come from legislation. Here's how this is going to work. The Berman-Coble bill will give Big Media the ability to protect copyright by going after people and sites that they suspect are using copyrighted material. All it will take is a suspicion and the takedown orders and file deletions will be done. For file sharers this means constant ISP account killing, and reactivating, and losing files off your machine. For a website, it means you will always be subject to takedown orders and then your ability to fight them. Since it will be a takedown first, and then, after you prove you weren't violating copyright, they'll allow it back, website owners are going to have problems keeping their content up consistently. Big Media will then swoop in and offer you, for a price, pre-certified original content. So, let's say you have a home movie or digital pics you want to share online. You'll need to run those by the MPAA for approval before putting them up. A new song you wrote? Go talk to, and pay, the RIAA, an article, the Newspaper Association, or some publishing association. Wrote some neat new freeware? Better check it in with the BSA first, or it'll be subject to takedown. By the time you hire a lawyer and pay for the processing fees to get your content certified as original, the costs associated with running a website start to become pretty serious cash.

We haven't even started talking about the delay that would be factored into all of this, having a weblog that's current, and approved to not be violating copyright, is not going to be possible. Nor have we discussed the secondary costs, such as the lawyers the hosting company is going to need, and how they'll pass that cost on to website owners, etc. Easily one of the biggest costs involved in producing TV/Radio content is regulatory compliance. The internet doesn't have that, but soon will. (Watch what the CARP regulations and reporting requirements do to internet radio, for example.) How are you going to able to ensure compliance without spending a ton of money? You aren't. Big Media already has compliance departments, complying with new laws online will be fairly easy for them, especially since they'll be in charge of enforcing them.

Soon internet publishing starts to become big business, with the associated big business costs, and average people go back to consuming content, not producing content, which is exactly where Big Media wants the internet to end up.

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The agenda

Things have been so busy with work stuff, social events, and unplanned website issues that a number of half-finished projects are sitting around waiting for me to get to. I hate when that happens. I get stressed when I have projects that are unfinished. So, starting tomorrow (tonight's the Dave Matthews concert) I'm going to have to get busy with finishing the documentation for the top-secret project for Geek's top secret new site, loading and testing the Web Album Generator on the laptop, finalizing my after-Gnomedex travel plans, setting up Angela's new Mac (delivery expected on the 8th!) to work with the wireless access point, trying to study for A+, and trying to spend some time with my wife, all before leaving in just two weeks or so. I'll have to fit those personal projects around a few social events, but hopefully not too many!

On top of that, there are a number of work projects that need to be completed before the 22nd. I need to upgrade all of our anti-virus software, I need to have final proposals finished for purchasing an XP system to use as a test system, to check for future compatibility issues, for a possible database upgrade, and a possible ISP switch that would involve us hosting our own mail server. (I'm not holding my breath on that one, it'll cost some serious $$) I need to have a final recommendation on those darn T1 contracts that I'm still behind on. Then I have to have all of the August database work finished for the month on the 21st as well.

So, I'll be busy. Hopefully the unexpected emergencies are done for a little while, so I can get things caught up again. Keep your fingers crossed!

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Monday, August 05, 2002

Clean up on aisle 5!

I got home from my parents house last night, talked to Angela on the phone for a little while, read my email, wrote a few more, grabbed a new webcam pic, went to upload it to the site, and discovered something interesting. "Hmm, why do I have a default.htm, and an index.html in my main folder? Oh wait, I have a default.asp, index.asp and index.htm as well. Where did they come from?" Let's open up the main page and see what's going on here. Oh nice, the front page of my site has been defaced by a hacker!

After a little research I discovered they probably used a known exploit that hadn't been patched by ReadyHosting. Nice job! So I was up late, yet again, deleting all the stuff the defacers had loaded onto the site, and putting my correct front page back. I have a support ticket open with the hosting company so they can explain themselves. They better have a good one!

On the plus side, since most of you enter the site from here, instead of the front page, not that many people probably even noticed the site was hacked, and you all could still get this page, or the forums and go about your normal routine. It doesn't soothe my anger at Readyhosting, but it's nice to know that other people's enjoyment of the site wasn't affected.

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Sunday, August 04, 2002

And the winner is

I am impressed. Andy managed to find the answer on Google. I wasn't sure you'd be able to find the pronunciation and the history of the word Seanchai on there, but then I should know better than to ever doubt Google, eh? For the record the Seanchai were traditional Irish storytellers, and it's pronounced "shawn-a-key".

This is my blogtree. The cool thing about this little site is that it allows you to give props to the people who first influenced you to start blogging, and see who else was influenced by the same people. For me, Scoble's presentation at Gnomedex last year got the idea going in my head, and then reading Doc Searls got me thinking about the good ideas that could be spread around through blogging. Not that these two are the only bloggers who have my utmost respect, there are plenty, but these two were influential in getting me started and it's nice that there's a place they can go and see that.

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The word for the day is "HOT"

Spent the day at the Irish Festival today, and let me tell you it was hot. Not just the weather either, although obviously with the sun blazing down and the temp well in the 90's, the weather certainly was hot. But the music at the Celtic Rock stage was hot as well. I arrived just before 3PM. The band scheduled to go on at 3, Seanchai, features Chris Byrne, formerly of Black 47. I had heard about this new band, and I knew they were something different. I understood how different this was going to be before the whole band even hit the stage. Their DJ, a red-headed white girl from Brooklyn (yeah my hometown!!!), was cranking out a traditional Irish tune on the turntable, giving it a little hip-hop mix. That right there is something you don't see every day. The rest of their set consisted of further street hip-hop mixed with Irish music, and even featured the sax player playing two different sax's at the same time, also not something you see everyday. Granted it's probably not for everyone, but it's an experience and I really enjoyed it. Next up was Donegal X-press, a band out of Baltimore. I had also heard good things about them, and they did not disappoint. Seems like they brought their own fan club up from Baltimore too, as there was a small group of their loyal fans in attendance. I was impressed with them too, like any good Irish band, they brought a good mix of political, personal and story-telling lyrics, and a whole lot of fun.

At this point, I had determined to leave my nice shady spot and walk around the rest of the cultural exhibits, shops, games, etc. I was hoping to find a nice Celtic picture frame or something similar for Angela to take to her new job, but no luck on that front. Made it back over to the Celtic Rock stage to catch the last bit of Tempest, who also did a nice job with the bits I heard. No offense to them, but they were the one band I thought I could miss for a chance to explore the rest of the festival. I had to miss someone!

My nice shady spot was taken though, but that was ok, because Black 47 was up next, and that meant a required visit to the front of the stage for some serious dancing and musical enjoyment. (And sweating!!!) I first saw Black 47 3 years ago at the same festival and they've since become one of my favorite bands. They rocked tonight, as usual, and Fred Parcells became my personal hero for tossing me a cold one from the stage. The ice-cold beer can on the back of my neck after an hour of being up front was the best feeling I could have possibly had at that moment. The band tossed out a case of bottled water and a few beers to their adoring fans. A well-deserved thank you for grooving to their music in the heat.

After that sweat-fest, I abandoned the front stage area in search of cold water, and came back to enjoy The Saw Doctors set from the back of the crowd. Quite a large crowd had gathered in the area by now, but that was alright. I ran into a coworker and chatted for awhile, then settled in and really found myself liking the Saw Doctors quite a bit.

All in all, a great day of fun, music, and Irish culture. Also, for those of you in the RIAA, you might be interested to know that I picked up two more cd's from these bands today, bringing the total of cd's I've purchased after being exposed to bands through the years at this particular festival to 13, with a future Seanchai purchase coming. All those purchases from, basically, free exposure to bands in a niche market that I don't get to hear on broadcast radio. Imagine that...

Four of these 5 bands (Black 47 being the exception) will be playing tomorrow (Sunday) as well. If you're in the area, I highly recommend it! The music itself is worth the $7 admission to the festival. I have a family commitment, or I'd be back as well!

By the way, a free link to the first person who can correctly guess the pronunciation of Seanchai and tell me what it means. There's your Irish word, and your music review, for the day. :)

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