ReidNews > 2005 > September

Internet downtime

Posted by rae in Reid, family, web site
at 9:22 am on Thursday, 29 September 2005

We have been without internet for a couple of days now. Apparently, according to our DSL provider, anyone who has a static IP address and is a former customer of iStop is having a problem. Actually, according to a lady on the phone this morning, it seems that some static IPs are okay while others are offline.

Luisa called them and the idea of changing our static IP came up — I think it was Luisa’s idea. This makes sense to me.

My guess as to what is going on is this:

iStop has been handling the routing for all the static IPs until now (3 months after everyone was transferred to igs).
It came time for igs to take over the routine
igs’ routing tables were not up to the task

It’s just a guess, mind you, but .. Occam’s razor and all that.

Meanwhile, the kids are certainly feeling the effects of our lack of internet. Michael’s opinion of our internet connection has been quite low for the last few months. It’s strange, sometimes he has problems while everyone else is fine. because of that, I wonder if his problems are the result of a virus or something on his machine.

Regardless, our DSL connection has been spotty since the move from iStop. Before this multi-day outage, we had frequent spells of short (5 minute) downtime, and occasional longer periods (1/2 hour or so). I guess I should look around again at other internet providers, trying to find ones that will give me a static IP at a good price. *sigh.

Update:
igs has given us a temporary alternate static IP address to use. It works, but I’ve had to change the “A” record for tnir.org, gmone.org and uclbs.org; who knows how long that will take to propgate out to the ‘Net at large.

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Rome DVD in the mail

Posted by rae in entertainment, the Net
at 9:39 am on Monday, 26 September 2005

We received this in the mail last week or so. It promised to be the first episode of the new TV series “Rome”. I thought it was a very innovative marketing move, actually giving away the first episode to suck people into watching the show. It also seemed to show foresight in that it would forestall the downloading of Rome via BitTorrent, since people already had it. It was co-sponsored by Rogers, since Rome is only available on pay TV.

So when we actually watched the DVD we were quite a bit disappointed. At first there was a simple disclaimer about copying..

This is pretty normal, if annoying and silly (its effectiveness is pretty much nil). But then something showed up. It’s not easy to see in outdoor shots..

But when the scene gets darker, the distinctive watermark makes itself obvious.

Egads.

It’s terrible. Makes the DVD pretty much unwatchable. It certainly lowered my opinion of the marketing people behind it.

Thank goodness for Demonoid.

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Battlestar Galactica Season 1 DVD

Posted by rae in entertainment
at 9:45 pm on Tuesday, 20 September 2005

So apparently season 1 of Battlestar Galactica is out on on DVD. It’s up on Future Shop’s site already, and you can’t beat the price:

$50

I think that is an outstanding price for a whole season, plus the miniseries, plus all the extras.

Unfortunately, it is missing one crucial thing: it’s not in HD.

Ya, okay, so nothing is in HD in stores yet, but this is one title that SCREAMS to be in HD. When both BD and HD-DVD hit at the end of this year, I would hope that this is one of the many titles that will rapidly be brought out. Indeed, anything with lots of special effects would be a good candidate. As long as it was either shot in HD or on film. I suspect we will never see an HD release of Star Trek TNG for that reason. We may see an HD version of the original series with kirk et al though, because back then all TV shows were shot on film and converted to video.

Kinda funky, eh?

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CBC Unplugged

Posted by rae in entertainment, the Net
at 1:23 am on Tuesday, 20 September 2005

Tod Maffin, the host (until recently) of CBC’s “/Nerd” is running an account of the CBC lockout from his perspective.

I’ve noticed that all of the CBC’s podcasts are dead, returning 404 errors (not found). One would hope that after the strike is over, they will be restored.

Todd has recorded his thoughts on the future CBC vision as an mp3 file. I think I’ll download it and give a listen.

Oops, I wonder if including that link to the mp3 will make it part of the “podcast” for ReidNews? Ah well.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

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tnir Linux Problems

Posted by rae in Reid, software, web site
at 10:13 am on Friday, 16 September 2005

Well, tnir crashed in the middle of doing a apt-get dist-upgrade. This is pretty much the same as “Software Update” on a Mac. I’m going to spew reams of info, so only click to read more if you’re really interested..

(more…)

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“Superman Returns” next summer

Posted by rae in entertainment
at 9:23 pm on Thursday, 15 September 2005

He’s back.. but what’s with the whimpy “S”?

So according to NewsWeek, a new Superman movie is filming right now in Australia. Noe of the old proposed plots are being used; rather, an entirely new story about Superman returning to Earth after spending 5 years in space is what’s on.

If you consider that a spoiler (I don’t), don’t read the article linked to above, because quite a bit more is revealed.

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Wednesday Night Floor Hockey

Posted by rae in Reid, entertainment, friends
at 11:56 pm on Wednesday, 14 September 2005

Hrire (on the right) organizes floor hockey

Pretty much every Wednesday night at 10pm, Michael and I drive over to a local arena (which is actually across the street from Rainbow Village, where we used to live) to play floor hockey. The whole thing is organized by Hrire, who keeps track of the finances, and sends out email to everyone to remind them and find out how many people are coming. Often we don’t really have enough people. Tonight, for instance, we only had enough people to play 4-on-3. Back when I first played a few years ago, we had full teams, with two or three people off on shifts (taking turns).

We turn the goals down when there are no goalies

When there are so few people, we do other things to even things up. First of all, since there are no goalies, we turn the goals down. Tonight, in addition, we turned the goal of the 3-person team around so that it was facing the wall. In order for anyone from the 4-person team to score, they ***have*** to ricochet the shot off of the back wall. Michael scored an early goal that was disallowed becaused it didn’t follow this basic precept.

It was a really fun game tonight. At first we were being slaughtered, up to around 9-to-2. Then we cam back and the score reached 14-to-11 (still for them). The final score ended up at 18-to-17 (still for them), which was really a very close game. Lots of fun was had on both sides I think.

Now, we really could use more people. I’m not sure if Hrire wants to open it up to complete strangers, but if you know me, even vaguely or from a long, long time ago, send me email asking about it. It would be cool if we could get back up to our old numbers. There is a cost, as we have to rent the gym, but it’s not too onerous. In the range of $20 or so for a month I think.

Now I just have to pay special attention to my back, as I tend to strain it every time I play. Not too bad tonight, but still it does have a bit of a twinge. Luisa always gives me Hell about damaging myself at hockey. Oh well.

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Craig’s Filmfest Reviews

Posted by rae in entertainment, friends, web site
at 8:56 am on Monday, 12 September 2005

For those that don’t know, my friend Craig is in the middle of his annual pilgrimige to the Toronto Film Festival. And, for the fifth year in a row, I’m putting his reviews on the web at filmfest.tnir.org.

I moved all the previous years’ work to WordPress, but there are still a few glitches when you look at old stuff (e.g. 2004).

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Goodbye dot Mac

Posted by rae in Reid, software
at 9:32 am on Tuesday, 6 September 2005

I’ve decided to let my dot Mac account lapse. The only thing I’ve really gotten out of it is bookmark syncing, and that just isn’t worth it. I’ve also gotten quite a few erroneous pieces of email to ‘rae@mac.com’ for people named “Rae”, so it’s been a bit of a pain as well.

I wonder who will get the much-coveted short dot Mac email address after me?

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Gas Prices

Posted by rae in hardware
at 6:34 pm on Monday, 5 September 2005

Recent gas prices, according to TorontoGasPrices.com

Wow, gas prices are taking quite a jump. Jeff K is very happy about his hybrid vehicle purchase, and with good reason. Hybrids are now paying themselves off in a lot less time.

Fortunately, I am still driving with 96 cents/l gasoline, since I haven’t filled up since before Luisa left for Italy two weeks ago. I guess that means I missed the brunt of the sudden rise. It looks like it dropped a bit, but who knows where it will go over the next few months?

Update: I built a zero-based graph to keep things a bit more in perspective – see (and click on) the thumbnail to the right there.

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Internet downtime

Rome DVD in the mail

Battlestar Galactica Season 1 DVD

CBC Unplugged

tnir Linux Problems

“Superman Returns” next summer

Wednesday Night Floor Hockey

Craig’s Filmfest Reviews

Goodbye dot Mac

Gas Prices