Another DirecWay annoyance

January 14, 2006

Sitting down last evening to do some work on websites revealed yet another annoyance with DirecWAY. The valuable site for working on domain name services DNSstuff is unavailable to users of DirecWAY. There is another way, bypassing the proxy by using a different port, but other web services may not be so kind as to run their servers on multiple ports in order to serve those of us stuck with DirecWAY.

Hey Apple: Where's the Vidcast?

January 10, 2006

As expected Steve Jobs' Keynote Address to the Macworld conference brought new Intel based iMacs and Powerbooks. And of course you can go watch the video as a streaming show. However there doesn't seem to be an easy way to get it downloaded to the great new iPod Video.

Treo 700w unveiled

January 8, 2006

CNet News calls the new 700w a Frankensteinian mishmash. At CES yesterday I stopped by the Palm booth and took a minute to try one out. The first impression is great. It seems like an improved Treo 650 that has taken the best of physical characteristics from the Blackberry and the Treo 650. Testing it proved somewhat more difficult. Less than a minute into trying to figure out how the new interface works it died. Dead. Maybe the battery needed charging. So plugging in the power cord it shows it's charging, and still nada. Nothing. So I'll have to depend on reviews like those such as CNet and so far they're less than impressive.

New gizmo

December 28, 2005

One of the many generous gifts I received this year is a new iPod -- one of the video types. That means it's time to clean up the iTunes music library and get things in order. The iPod is an indispensable tool for me. On the way to work I tend to listen to audiobooks and podcasts. While the good folks over at Audible have more than a few good books, there are others that I'm not able to get from them. The biggest problem with the songs that don't come from Audible is that they don't have bookmarks and when I rip them from CD into the iPod there are many many files. This is where a great applescript comes in handy. With this script it is easy to join together the AAC files and make them protected or "bookmarkable" files.

Who knows with all the music files cleaned up I might just have to move on to all the data on my hard drive... Or make a resolution to do it next year.

The never-ending Register Fly problem

December 27, 2005

Having waited a few months longer than the required 90-days for keeping a domain with a new registrar it is time to be done with RegisterFly. If you've read this site for a while you may recall problems I've had with Register Fly. On the other hand Go Daddy has been a pretty good service. They lack a couple of features, like DNS wildcards, but are pretty good otherwise and I can live with the limitations.

Of course no Register Fly transaction would be complete without hang-ups. They don't want to provide the authorization code necessary for moving .org and .info domains. At no point have they said "no" but they don't respond at all. The picture in this post shows the lack of response from the supposed 24/7 live chat support. To top everything off of course there is one domain where the authorization email won't go through. And of course it is a domain I use and have owned for more than a decade. I'll be quite happy to be rid of the terrible eNom reseller. All of this does make one wonder that an ICANN accredited registrar is willing to continue to allow a reseller to besmirch their name. Read more about The never-ending Register Fly problem

Arrrg!

December 15, 2005

I've had fewer posts of late thanks to the assistance of DirecWay.

It seems each time I get on a roll, get working and ready to do some uploads their web proxy server heads south and won't resolve any names. Perhaps, one might wonder, it is a problem with my setup. Alas, no, it is the DNS on the proxy server that seems to head south with alarming frequency. All-and-all I'm about to make the leap to dial-up, a bit slower but far more reliable service.

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