Update: While this is a laudable cause, things are more complicated than they at first appear, not least of which is the current state of Uganda is six years out of date and Joseph Kony is no longer actually in Uganda.
So, you want to #stopkony? First thing you can do is let your government know you think it’s important. Tell your MP.
Update 2011-03-12: Added “Don’t buy samplers” rule.
Update 2011-04-24: No longer against iTunes deluxe albums.
A few of my rules for buying music. Some apply to iTunes, some to all music media.
Update 2011-01-06: I’ve surprised myself by putting this album on quite a bit recently. The simple, sincere lyrics mixed with a refreshing style really hit a certain sweet spot. Give this one a listen!
Found this two-sister duo, Tal & Acacia, on iTunes recently and was pleasantly surprised to hear a unique mix of styles alongside no-apologies, openly Christian lyrics. I was afraid, at first, that this was yet another teenie-bopper girl group but I have to admit they are good and, from what I gather of their lyrics, they also have depth. Listen to their tunes or check out a live performance that impressed me.
Update 2: Looks like it was a publicity stunt, after all. I’m glad GOG is still with us!
Update: Looks like it’s not all bad news. According to sources, the Tom Ohle, GOG PR guy: “As the message on the site says, this doesn’t mean GOG is gone :). We’ll have more to share in the coming days.” Am I glad to hear that! GOG.com is a great service, it would be bad for the industry if they couldn’t make it.
I am saddened to have to report that GOG.com‘s front page has been changed to reflect a note that they are shutting down. From their front page,
Dear GOG users,
We have recently had to give serious thought to whether we could really keep GOG.com the way it is. We’ve debated on it for quite some time and, unfortunately, we’ve decided that GOG.com simply cannot remain in its current form.
We’re very grateful for all support we’ve received from all of you in the past two years. Working on GOG.com was a great adventure for all of us and an unforgettable journey to the past, through the long and wonderful history of PC gaming.
This doesn’t mean the idea behind GOG.com is gone forever. We’re closing down the service and putting this era behind us as new challenges await.
On a technical note, this week we’ll put in place a solution to allow everyone to re-download their games. Stay tuned to this page and follow us on Twitter and Facebook for updates.
All the best,
GOG.com Team
As frequent visitors will know, I’ve plugged GOG.com a lot! They even have a permanent Worthy link here.
GOG.com was great and one of a kind. I’m really stunned by this news. I hope they come back in some form. What they were doing thus far was absolutely needed in our industry and there’s a big chasm that needs to be filled now they’re gone.
Update 2011-04-03: Reformatted .htaccess config lines now that I know how to do better formatting.
Word to the wise: If you’re getting comment spam try WordPress‘ IP blacklist feature but, when that doesn’t work, try the guaranteed way: .htaccess.
I get a lot of spam on this blog, mainly to one post that got a lot of links. Akismet is great at detecting this spam and not publishing the comment. But it gets tiring removing comments from the same IPs all the time. So, I tried WordPress’ IP blacklist feature but it didn’t work. For some reason I totally forgot about .htaccess. It’s the fail safe mechanism for protecting your site against IPs that abuse your blog.
Just put a file named .htaccess in your blog directory if you’re running apache. If you’re running some other httpd server, sorry you’ll have to find another way. But, if you can do .htaccess you can do this:
order allow,deny deny from 188.92.75.82 deny from 91.214.44.182 deny from ... allow from all
You can put as many “deny from 123.123.123.123″ lines as you like.
The hockey world is aflame with passionate discourse on the Burrows afair. In case you’ve been living under a rock, Burrows made allegations about NHL referee Auger after a game the night of Jan 11 10 between Vancouver and Nashville. Burrows claims the penalties Auger gave him that game were revenge for making Auger look bad in a previous game.
The actions of Auger don’t suprise me at all. I’m pretty confident something is rotten there. But it’s not about that particular call and it’s not about referees taking revenge: It’s about the NHL business having games officiated in such a way as to ensure a certain end. That end, at its most well intentioned, is a more exciting game, something that appeals to traditionally unfavourable markets.
The New NHL is all about more goals. They’ve tailored everything to produce more goals. The rules have changed to produce more goals. The rules have changed to protect skill players over other types of players. Oddly enough, the rules have changed to remove protections for goalies (I’ve seen countless goals scored simply by pushing the goalie with the puck across the goal line). The rules have changed around the crease (remember the foot/crease rule?). And the officiating has changed to produce more goals. I firmly believe this is a mandate from the NHL business. Business wants more goals, so referees manufacture situations to get more goals scored. I’ve seen it time and again. Questionable calls to get the first goal of the game within the first period. Questionable calls to give the losing team a chance to get back in it. Questionable calls to give one last chance to a team to tie it up in the last few minutes of a game.
I’ve written about it before and I’ll say it again: when you see a pile-up in the net and the goalie pushed into the net with five guys on top of him (this actually happened in the ’09 playoffs) and lo and behold they’re reviewing instant replay to see if the puck crossed the goal line! Talk about putting the cart before the horse! There’s ten things wrong before you even look at the puck going across the line!
All of that is not referees acting out on their own. That’s the NHL business “managing” hockey games through officiating to produce a more exciting sport for markets that don’t like seeing low scoring games, even though a 1-0 game is usually cited as the most exciting games to watch.
So, yes, in this case Auger might have been caught red handed. But all the other questionable calls you’ve been noticing these past few years? You’re not going crazy. That’s referees obeying the NHL to keep their jobs.
NHL referees, aside from the rare personal revenge, are massaging games at the behest of the NHL business. That’s the real story. Burrows is just the tip of the ice berg. And that’s why you’re going to see the NHL go into overdrive to ensure the idea of the NHL business massaging games doesn’t gain any credibility on a wide scale. Which is why you’re going to see an overreaction to the Burrows allegations one way or another. Mark my words.
Update: The immediate response from the NHL has been to fine Burrows and do nothing to Auger. We’ll have to see how this plays out in the long run but it looks like this is overreaction by underreaction. By doing nothing, it appears as if the NHL wants the matter to quietly go away. Let’s hope it doesn’t. The NHL business needs something to stir it up and set it right.
Some might know but many do not know that I’ve been the guy behind RedRival Internet Services. RedRival is closing its doors after twelve years of existence. We were on the market in the twentieth century. How many can say that? There has only ever been myself operating RedRival but I do owe many thanks to people who have helped me over the years.
One of those people is Hugh Buchanan who managed the hardware in RedRival’s early life. I owe Hugh much for the trouble I caused him and I can’t thank him enough. He started me out on shared hosting and then moved to a dedicated server when RedRival exploded. It was on a Celeron 366mhz that we transferred our first terabyte of data in a single month. That was the first and only time we ever did that.
RedRival has gone through a few designs over the years. You can check them out at Archive.org (alternate index). As far as the interesting ones:
That was a walk down memory lane for me. The portal homepage was the funniest of them all. Talk about your bandwagons.
RedRival was big at one time. Alexa tracks website’s traffic and is a decent place to find out how you compare to others. Their data no longer goes back very far for RedRival but at one time we were in the top 10,000 websites online by reach. RedRival was definitely big. We had 30,000 members around 2000/01. Unfortunately I accidentally lost our entire user database at one point. RedRival never really hit that peak ever again. I think by the end of 2009 we were somewhere around 15,000 members.
Of course, fads come and go. In the beginning, RedRival was a response to Geocities‘s shoddy free hosting. Nobody liked it. Crosswinds.net was the only other ad-free, free hosting service at that time. They had their issues too with scaling. So RedRival entered the market to take on Crosswinds. To her credit, RedRival remained as the last major free web host before making the switch to an ad-supported model. Not only that, but we also were the last major free web host to implement popups. We held out as long as possible.
We definitely held out as long as possible. I didn`t like forcing ads on anybody`s pages. I tried so many different methods. There were text ads, banner ads, footer ads, side-bar ads, framed pages, popups, popunders, etc.
In the end, what really killed RedRival was the inability to get any serious money making advertising. It was all CPC mostly and didn`t pay nearly what would constitute a decent revenue stream. RedRival never really paid her bills. RivalPro, her sister providing pay hosting services, covered the bills of both for a long time. When I say covered, I mean paid the hosting bills and nothing more. I never made much money at all.
Speaking of advertising, in the wild west days of the internet, advertising networks were willy nilly and anyone could start one. I forget the name now but I got onto one and earned quite a bit of money. When it came time to pay they canceled the account and claimed fraud. Over a period of months I harassed them on forums and warned anybody away from them. One of their guys frequented the same forums I did. Eventually they showed me proof of fraud…a list of 50 IP addresses with no other information. It was lame. So, they eventually agreed to paying most of it back.
RedRival was a labour of love. The last few years of her life saw a largely ad-free existence for anyone actually still using the service (which wasn`t many, but I still had a lot of visitors). I paid out of my own pocket. I liked having a hobby to work with technologies so I paid the bills out of pocket for a long time. Eventually, though, having more work to do after your full time job gets old. I play on the computer far too much anyway.
I`m really glad to be able to shutdown RedRival and not have to manage it or support its users. My users and clients were some of the best, most gracious people I`ve met. RedRival closing its doors is not a reflection of my end-users. It`s just simply the circle of life.
I`m also really glad to be able to free up some time for hobby projects online. I always have all these crazy ideas and it frustrates me to no end that I can think of a million things that could be a success but I don`t have the drive to get them done. Maybe I’ll be able to relax a little more anyway.
It has really been a tremendous experience and journey for me to have done RedRival for this long. It got me into RivalPro, iDotter and NewsX, and has given me the skills to excel in college and given me a leg up on the competition when looking for jobs. All of that work continues to be of value to me and my employers as I go forward. It was trial by fire but it was a great learning experience.
So, I’ve spoken a lot and there’s really only one thing left to say.
So long and farewell, RedRival!
Update: I would like to thank many more people. My family, my father, my mother, for putting up with me for so long on this project. My sister and brother for encouraging me with it. My extended family who made use of my services and that helped me to keep going. Andrew Elford who setup inconceivable.tj in 1997 or so on a beast of an old machine on a dead slow cable modem. That didn’t last but he helped launched the dream that became RedRival!
William X. Walsh (wish I had a url) who helped me in many things (too bad we don’t see you around anymore!). Ryan Brown, of TBNS.net, whose friendly and fiery competition always kept me interested in improving my service to compete with him! All of the people from dalnet and hypanet irc channels #vr-oasis, etc. That group of people has remained for 12 years migrating to a new network and moving from channel to channel.
My users and clients, some of the best, most gracious, most passionate people I’ve been blessed to work with. The MyRival.com team, which consisted entirely of RedRival members. Apologies to the rest but I can only recall Phzzz right now. Thank you to all who worked on it. MyRival.com was something special.
God, for blesssing me to even be here and to have the opportunity to try all this out, and who blessed me with it for all this time, through the highs and the lows. Thank you.
Canada shut out Latvia 16 to nothing.
Tell me, does that make you feel good, Team Canada? Are you proud of yourself?
I’m a die-hard Canuck. Hearing about a 16-0 game just makes me feel embarrassed to be citizens of the same country as Team Canada.
It doesn’t help our team: the game was a gift. It doesn’t help their team, they’re so discouraged nothing they could have learned will stick.
And it certainly isn’t good for our kids on the Canadian team to have a coach and organization that wouldn’t take control and tell the team to “just have fun” as it becomes clear it’s going to become a blowout. A good coach will realize this early and won’t let a game get far past 10 goals. I’ve done this as a player on one of my teams in the past, just encouraging my guys to go easy and have some fun.
Somebody give Canada an unsportman-like penalty.
Update: Yes, I’m aware goals will determine spots in the event of a tie. I don’t buy that excuse when it’s sportsmanship we’re talking about.
Update 2010-12-14: When I wrote this piece, it was my understanding that rainbows did not form in a pre-flood world. It appears I’m wrong on that (See “There was no rain before the Flood.”). This is a belief placed on scripture and not told by scripture. While still possible, one can not absolutely hold this view. As a thought experiment, however, looking at the possibility and considering why it might have been like that could possibly lead to better understanding the pre and post flood environments which appear to be significantly different from each other.
Rainbows are beautiful artistry. There’s nothing quite like the majestic arch across the wide rain washed sky.
They’re also an intriguing interaction of light and water. And, yes, I’m bringing this back to creation.
Some may say I’m tainting a natural wonder and it should be left well enough alone, but I find greater pleasure in understanding the rainbow because it’s so much more than just a beautiful thing. The rainbow is woven into the very fabric of our faith. It means something beyond just a creative, awe-inspiring physical artifact crafted by the hand of God. It is so much more and, in this particular case, it’s a hint about the pre-flood world.
12 And God said, “This is the sign of the covenant I am making between me and you and every living creature with you, a covenant for all generations to come:
13 I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth.
14 Whenever I bring clouds over the earth and the rainbow appears in the clouds,
15 I will remember my covenant between me and you and all living creatures of every kind. Never again will the waters become a flood to destroy all life.
16 Whenever the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and all living creatures of every kind on the earth.
Genesis 9:12-16
God revealed His rainbow to Noah and his family after they got off the ark after the world-wide flood. This might have been an utterly new creation but, more than likely, it was a release, a revealing of the physical makeup of the atmosphere of that day. Let me explain.
In the atmosphere of the pre-flood world, apparently rainbows did not form in the sky Now, rainbows are “an optical and meteorological phenomenon that causes a spectrum of light to appear in the sky when the Sun shines onto droplets of moisture in the Earth’s atmosphere.” (Wikipedia) What does that say about the pre-flood existence if rainbows could not form? That there was no light? That there was no air? That that was no water in the air?
No to each of these. But, as we understand the scientific principles behind rainbows quite well, we can see in our present world when they can form and when they can not. If they did not occur in the pre-flood world, then we can make some predictions about that world’s makeup and we can predict what we might see in our present day to lend credence to those predictions.
If rainbows could not form in a pre-flood world, then, more than likely, one of a few things might have been different then. I say more than likely because it is “possible” that world lived in a realm of physics that is alien to our existence and God changed up everything with the flood. It could have been. But it’s not likely. Occam’s Razor here applies.
So, those “one of a few things” could have been anything that would be differentiations in the light, or the air or the water. Another option is that it had not rained up to that point (see Genesis 2:5), but this option is less likely as it appears a huge amount of time exists between the creation and the time of the flood. I say huge, but it was about a thousand years between them. Adam died 126 years before Noah’s birth (genealogy). So, Noah’s father would have known the first man alive. Selah. At any rate, this is a significant amount of time for their to be no rain and, really, there’s no reason to think it hadn’t rained.
So, what was it about the pre-flood world that did not have rainbows in the sky? It may help us support creation and explain things we see today.
Update 2011-06-04: As it turns out, I never ran this module for long. It does appear to operate as advertised but I found I no longer really had a need to run privilege-separated httpd processes. Still, I hope someone finds this information useful.
If you’ve longed for the days of Apache 1.3 when you could run virtualhosts as different users/groups, well mod_itk is for you and me. It’s based on prefork and the author claims its running on production boxes, so hopefully this will bring back the good ol’ days.
This page was very helpful in combination with the homepage for me.
I’ve patched my server and am running this domain and newsx.org using their own users. All the other virtualhosts are running with default privs.
I really hope this works out because I’ve been wanting it for a long time.