Mar/08©Chris Farley
VFAF #3 – Democrats are Bumfuzzled
It’s been a while since a new View from a Farley has come out and I think it’s good to get people’s attention with something they probably weren’t expecting. After my brief period being unable to come up with good content, I’m back with View from a Farley 3.
I am officially announcing that I will not register with Democratic party when I turn 18. They’re just simply "bumfuzzled." I appreciate their principles and their philosophies, but their execution is disorganized and confused.
My improvement of View from a Farley this week is the addition of two jingles by Geoff Smith. You should definitely check his site out at thegeoffsmith.com and keep him in mind if you need a theme song of any sort.
Mar/08©Chris Farley
Ongoing, Debilitating Site Issues
The site’s been slow, sometimes it’s been down all together. For a while, things were so messed up that all the site displayed was a page of code! I wish I could tell you that this would improve in the near future, but DreamHost has been extremely vague about when this might be fixed. Below is an excerpt from their latest e-mail. Thanks for hanging in there while this gets fixed. I have switched over my e-mail to another service, so that should be working reliably.
Sorry about the downtime…Blingy is your cluster of machines for web, mysql, and email. The main file server for this cluster is having serious problems.
We have been working on this file server for a while and unfortunately our efforts have not produced a permanent solution. We currently are moving users and data from the file server onto a new one. This unfortunately takes time to complete but we are working towards giving the file server more breathing room. We are also in the process of adding a third file server to the cluster and we will be moving even more data there as well.
The moves are running and things are going okay for the most part. We are still dealing with occasional problems with the file server that we are addressing immediately so as the moves run you will still notice problems in service.
Mar/08©Chris Farley
Amusing Signs
I’ve travelled far and wide in my 14 years. As I go to various places, particularly foreign ones, there are often absolutely hillarious mistranslations or other items of interest, but I see them once, then they’re gone. In order to preserve the amusement, my family has taken to photographing the amusing things (usually signs). Some cause me to burst out laughing (like a series of signs warning of a steepening grade, followed by one that said "You have been warned"), some are important because of a personal connection (like a sign pointing to the town of Farley in England), some are understandable (like a garbled translation of a sign saying not to enter a restricted area in Hungary), but some cause me to just scratch my head, like the one above.
Has anyone else seen any amusing signs in their travels? You can always e-mail me with any items of interest or sound off in the comments.
Mar/08©Chris Farley
The Spitzer Ordeal
The whole Spitzer ordeal is really upsetting to me as a future voter, a New Yorker, and a person. Governor Spitzer had a difficult first year, often facing a lot of opposition inside the New York Legislature. (Though the New York Legislature doesn’t need any opposition to not be doing anything). But he was starting to turn around and get past the typical first year confusion (the first few months was trying to figure out how the phones worked). He honestly could have had an excellent career. It’s a loss and a failure on many levels.
Mar/08©Chris Farley
VFAF #2 – Teens in Tech
I was searching for a topic for this week’s episode and I changed my mind about ten times. I was going to talk about copyright, but just wasn’t getting excited about it today. Instead, I talk about Teens in Tech. On the internet, kids aren’t kids. Whether 9 or 90, if we don’t say that we’re kids, no one knows. That provides a unique opportunity for teens that are not recognized legally as adults to show a more mature side of themselves. I have one worry: that the creativity of childhood will be lost. To illustrate my point, I use podcasting as an example. I mention Max Murphy from Mac News Weekly, Daniel Brusilovsky from Apple Universe, and a little later on, Riley Kaminer from F12 Help Me.I mention the iPhone SDK because I think I would’ve been exiled from the world of Apple fans if I didn’t mention it. Not mentioning an Apple event is one of those things you just do not do.
Finally, Mark Temple will be joining me to help me get rid of the evil Dreamhost stuff that I spend too much time on. How can you let a simple error take down 500,000 domains!
I am treating View from a Farley as though it is still in beta. So here are the known bugs:
- Using the same music all the way through (I need to get enough money so Geoff Smith to compose a jingle for me)
- I describe teen podcasters as decent. They’re not decent, they’re GREAT!
- I say “dissertating” at one point. That is NOT a word. I think I’m going a little crazy.
- There are probably a whole bunch of other things too. E-mail me at chris@viewfromafarley.com if you have any.
I’d really like everyone to sound off in the comments about this episode. I tried a slightly different style and I want to know if everyone likes it. Also, please take a few minutes to take the View from a Farley survey. Just in case you had a frightening experience reading novels when you were growing up, it’s exactly seven questions long, so do not fear.
Mar/08©Chris Farley
VFAF Survey
Please help View from a Farley out by completing this survey. It will help me figure out exactly what an efficient allocation of resources is and where I should be taking View from a Farley. As always e-mail me at chris@viewfromafarley.com with any questions.
Mar/08©Chris Farley
Printers are Stupid
It’s true. I love my printer to death, it does everything it needs to do and has never failed me. But as with all technology, I occasionally come across design flaws that are so blatant that there must have been a really good reason or the designers are so extraordinarily dumb that they probably shouldn’t be designers. My Canon Pixma MP600 won’t print unless all of it’s ink cartridges are full. So even if I want to print an essay I need to make sure that my cyan cartridge still has ink left. Dumb!
Okay, that’s my venting for the day.
Mar/08©Chris Farley
VFAF #1
I make my debut in audio podcasting in this, the first audio edition of View from a Farley. First, I talk about View from a Farley itself, then I go on to discuss GeekBrief, Cali Lewis and Neal Campbell’s Big Trip and Paid by Pixels. I wrap up the show with his views on Microsoft vs. Apple.