Posts tagged as "internet" - Chris Hardie

It wasn't too long ago that I took an inventory of the quality of public dialogue in Richmond, and in doing so, sprinkled in some cynicism about the role played and limitations imposed by the Palladium-Item in that measuring. A bit later I brought the cynicism up a notch (or, down a rung?) in predicting that their online forum wouldn't bear much fruit. Today I ought to take a moment to congratulate them on their recent efforts and successes in improving the quality of (or at least the opportunities...

I was interviewed yesterday morning (at 7:10, jeesh) by Chris Nolte on AM 1490 WKBV about the "dangers of unsecured wireless networks at home." I already posted some follow-up technical information on the Summersault Weblog, but I thought I'd see if anyone reading here heard the interview? I've not to date thought of that station or time slot as the place to go for the latest technology news and discussion, but perhaps there's a trend I've been missing out on.

This is an unabashed plug for Parallax and their high speed wireless Internet access service. I complain enough on this blog about poor customer service experiences, so it's important to me that I document the rare but special times when I have a really positive experience. I'd been using Insight's cable broadband service, which costs $45/month and included somewhere around 3 MBps download and 400Kbps upload (your mileage may vary widely - learn about different connection technologies). It also...

Today is the first day of the course I'm co-teaching at Earlham this semester, CS345: Software Engineering. I'm excited to be back in a classroom again and thinking in new ways and on different levels about a topic that's very much a part of what I do every day for Summersault (and why Summersault exists at all). Like the last course I taught at Earlham, this is sure to be a challenge and a joy. Wish me luck! I'll hopefully have some time to post general thoughts about teaching software engineering...

(You can listen to the MP3 audio of this entry, too.) Back in May I blogged about how blogs are different from the conventional process of putting up content on a website. I have a similar sentiment about the up-and-coming phenomenon of podcasting: people have been putting sound clips on the web for a long time, but a certain set of environmental factors have emerged that are really making this particular incarnation take off. 1) The increasing use of content syndication technologies by website...

If you read through my weblog, you might get the impression that I find joy in whining and complaining about the poor customer service practices of companies I deal with. Really, I tend to be a pretty positive person, and don't go out looking to pick people/places/things apart just for fun. But sometimes I just gotta share. So there's a local cable internet provider, which I won't identify here by name, that I wish had better Insight into its own local network operations. Based on my experience,...

Jason Godesky has an interesting post up about why blogs are in a category all their own when it comes to publishing content online. It's a question I've thought about on occasion, given that I've had a personal website in some form or another since, um, 1994, and that I get indignant once in a while when people jump and scream that the blogging phenomenon is the shiny new thing that levels the playing field. It was the whole frickin Internet thing that was supposed to do that in the first place,...

Saturday Night Live last night was fairly boring, and so I don't think you can blame me for falling asleep on the couch. But when the three-wick candle I was burning on the table started to trickle hot wax onto the table and then down onto the rug, you'd think my cat would have had the initiative to wake me up or at least try to put a towel or something around the candle. But, no, miss "no opposable thumbs" just went right on sleeping too. And so this morning when I came downstairs wondering if the exciting...

There's a whole lot o' switchin' going on. I spent some time last night helping one of my recently-moved-in housemates, Damon, set up his new PowerMac G4, which is his first real experience with Mac and OS X, coming from the world of Windows. I was able to re-live my own excitement of that first switching boot-up a few years ago, and as I took him on a tour and showed him New Ways of doing things (including the Firefox browser) our session was filled with Damon exclaiming things like, "you mean,...

A convergence of funny things going on on-line has hit me this week, so I should share some of those. First you have the "e-mail virus wars" that have broken out between the Bagel worm and the NetSky worm. The two apparently wage war on each other on your vulnerable desktop, including cursing, malicious uninstallation, sounds on your speaker, and more...follow the drama here. Then you have the Dishonest Dubya lying action figure, which, regardless of your political views, is just a fun toy to play...