Skimper

Why is this Blathering called "skimper"? Skimper really isn't a word, as far as I know, though I suppose some people think of "skimper" as an action that is halfway between a jump and a skip. My niece came up with the term on her own as well. Googling for the term turns up 21,400 results even though the word isn't in the dictionary. More on why I'm talking about skimper later in this Blathering.

Had fun with Jodi last night. We both enjoyed Wallace & Gromit: Curse of the Were-Rabbit. If you're a fan of the other W&G films, you won't be disappointed by this one.

So I did some Googling for mention of Magic Tails today out of curiosity and happily found mentions on the Penguin Group (USA) page and The Best Reviews as well as other sites. I was somewhat surprised to find my own Blathering entry on the topic in the first page of results since I only wrote about the short story recently.

I've been told by several people that my Blatherings have a lot "Google juice," that pages from my online journal tend to come up early in search results. I've always been intrigued by search engine rankings.

As an experiment, I Googled for some terms or words that I've written about in the past few months. When listing the ranking number, I only include primary results, not the sub-results (indented). Here are the results as of Friday, Nov. 4th, when you enter the following terms in quotes:

"wo ist der bahnhof": I get the #1 ranking out of 942

"filk FAQ": #3 ranking out of 15,000 (comes out as #1 if you enter the term without quotes)

"filking": #1 ranking out of 41,700

"Vulcan, AB": #4 ranking out of 12,800

"Filkcontinental": #3 ranking (my Flickr photoset) out of 11,800, #4 (Blathering report)

"useful foreign phrases": #2 ranking out of 517

"Killarney canoe trip": #1 ranking out of 528

"german CDs": #3 ranking out of 16,100

What's interesting is that I didn't really put any special effort into getting the above pages ranked highly on search engines. And I can't really see enough people linking to my Blathering on "useful foreign phrases" to affect Google rankings. So what gives?

And this brings me back to the word "skimper." I'm going to see if I can make this page the #1 result for the term in Google, out of 21,400 results. I've called this entry "Skimper" as well as using the term in the page text, given "skimper" as alt text for the image at the top.

Now let's see what happens.

By the way, I'm replacing the Blatherings search engine in the sidebar to the Google site search box below. Feel free to try it out!

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Apple store Yorkdale opening

Reid, Ray, Jeff, Iain, Bob.

The photo above is of Jeff and some of our technonerdboy pals in Yorkdale Mall, there to check out the opening of the new Apple store (the first in Canada!). The line-up was HUGE; apparently some people had been waiting since the night before. We had heard rumours that a previous Apple store opening had been giving up pretty nice freebies (like iPod shuffles!), but this one seemed to only be giving out t-shirts.

We opted to just ogle a bit but then had brunch at Milestones, dropped by EfstonScience, then went to see Revenge of the Sith. I'm such a nerdgirl. :-)

More Apple store opening pics below.

FOUR MORE DAYS UNTIL WE GET OUR HOUSE.

Part of the line, which extended as far in the distance as you can see in this photo. It continued inside for at least the same length.



Our friend Craig.

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209.60.102.107

Happy birthday, Joey!
Also, congrats to our friend Helen, who's getting married today!

I recently asked if anyone knew how to find out information about an IP address of an anonymous poster. My curiosity about this topic originated with a rather odd remark posted in my LJ comments section a while back, made odder by the fact they chose to remain anonymous. I've since turned off anonymous posting in my LJ, but it got me thinking to how one would find out more info about a particular IP address. Many thanks to all who replied with advice! In case anyone else out there is interested, here's a summary of the feedback I received:



From Katy:

"I use uwhois.com for such cases, however I would assume those sites might likely all use the same database ...?"

From Rob:

[zen] /home/doc $ dig -x 209.60.102.107

; <<>> DiG 9.2.4 <<>> -x 209.60.102.107
;; global options: printcmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 35589
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 5, ADDITIONAL: 2

;; QUESTION SECTION:
;107.102.60.209.in-addr.arpa. IN PTR

;; ANSWER SECTION:
107.102.60.209.in-addr.arpa. 86400 IN PTR tnt03-615.phlpa.fast.net.

;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
102.60.209.in-addr.arpa. 3600 IN NS dns4.uslec.net.
102.60.209.in-addr.arpa. 3600 IN NS dns5.uslec.net.
102.60.209.in-addr.arpa. 3600 IN NS dns1.uslec.net.
102.60.209.in-addr.arpa. 3600 IN NS dns2.uslec.net.
102.60.209.in-addr.arpa. 3600 IN NS dns3.uslec.net.

Looks like a dialup user from Philadelpha, PA, and is a fast.net customer. The reverse DNS name is the giveaway. tnt03-615 means he dialed up to an Ascend TNT (a big box of modems, essentially), on port 615. phlpa suggests it was Philadelphia, and fast.net is the domain name of the provider.

Of course, you really can't get any further with this. If the person is doing something abusive, you can probably file a complaint with abuse@fast.net (be sure to include date-stamped logs). If you're just curious, you'll have to narrow it down to people in the Philly area. :)"

From Gary M.:

"Yet another useful tool: abuse.net. You can enter a hostname there and it will tell you the address, if any, which that host offers for reporting nastiness by their users."

Also:

"Besides whois, traceroute is an important tool. It's particularly helpful because it tells you what host a private computer is connected to. On a Unix system, just type

traceroute xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx

Found my favourite cheese at the market yesterday!

Traceroute isn't built into the Windoze command line shell, but there are freeware you can use. There are also websites, such as samspade.org, from which you can do a traceroute. They also offer a set of downloadable tools which I haven't had occasion to use, but which includes traceroute, whois, and other good stuff."

From Tony F.:

"Hey, Debbie, for future reference, my favorite place for this kind of thing is:

http://www.dnsstuff.com

There is a huge array of tools there that let you do pings, traceroute, DNS lookups, reverse name lookups, etc.

Even if you've got those tools at your disposal on your own system already, it's sometimes helpful to have a remote site run those same tools for you. For example, if your own local DNS servers are having a problem, you can get a second opinion from their DNS servers.

Very useful!"

From cdenise:

"Search results for: ! NET-209-60-0-0-1

OrgName: USLEC Corp.
OrgID: USLC
Address: 6801 Morrison Blvd
City: Charlotte
StateProv: NC
PostalCode: 28211
Country: US

NetRange: 209.60.0.0 - 209.60.255.255
CIDR: 209.60.0.0/16
NetName: TXFER-FAST-USLEC-BLK-16
NetHandle: NET-209-60-0-0-1
Parent: NET-209-0-0-0-0
NetType: Direct Allocation
NameServer: NS1.FAST.NET
NameServer: NS2.FAST.NET
Comment:
RegDate:
Updated: 2004-07-08

Current favourite tea. (click for bigger image)

OrgAbuseHandle: ABUSE34-ARIN
OrgAbuseName: Abuse
OrgAbusePhone: +1-704-319-1248
OrgAbuseEmail: abuse@uslec.com

OrgNOCHandle: NOC136-ARIN
OrgNOCName: Network Operations Center
OrgNOCPhone: +1-800-978-7532
OrgNOCEmail: noc@uslec.com

OrgTechHandle: RUSSE-ARIN
OrgTechName: Russell, Fred
OrgTechPhone: +1-704-319-1333
OrgTechEmail: frussell@uslec.com

# ARIN WHOIS database, last updated 2005-05-06 19:10
# Enter ? for additional hints on searching ARIN's WHOIS database."

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Backpack

I've been experimenting with various organizational systems for a while, especially ones I can use from any computer. Jeff recently told me about BackPack.

LOVE Backpack so far. It's fairly simple so I don't get bogged down with a zillion different hierarchical notebooks and folders, but is so much more than just a to-do list. The simplest Backpack account is free, but you can also pay extra for perks like more pages (the free account is limited to five), more space, ability to include images and files. You can keep your page private, or share it with other people.



Here are some examples of how you can use Backpack, including a wedding planner and organizer, organizing a craft project, keeping track of your favourite wines and wines to try, organizing and preparing for a meeting, conference session itinerary, new feature ideas & brainstorms with screenshots. Yes, you can organize all of these without the use of a computer, but Backpack lets you collect links to useful resources (including images), e-mails, files, information all in one place. Could save a lot of printouts and filing space.

I've already set up an Urban Tapestry Projects page for Jodi, Allison and me with a to-do list (and who is responsible for each item) and notes about our upcoming Filkcontinental Guest of Honour gig in Germany, Urban Tapestry site maintenance, etc. I've also posted one of the cartoons I've sent to Filkcontinental for use in their PR material or Web site. I'm starting to use it for some of my writing projects as well.

I like the fact that I can e-mail a copy of any page to myself with one click; helpful when I'm going offline for a while, or just for a backup. I like the fact that I can e-mail items TO my page, and that the e-mail address can be changed at anytime with one click. I like the clean look of the user interface. I like being able to use Textile formatting language.

I like the fact I can use this from almost ANY computer with online access, not just mine. I say almost because the layout is somewhat screwed up when I use Internet Explorer 5.2 for the Mac. Works fine in Safari, though.

There a bunch of things that need improving (but are being worked on), like the automated Reminders system and some flexibility in ordering the various sections of the page (as far as I can tell, the To-Do list HAS to appear at the top of the page, for example). It would be useful to have some kind of multi-level hierarchical filing system for list items...but I have to admit that there's a certain appeal to a simple list format; I can save the more complex, in-depth outlines for other systems. I'm also still somewhat wary of relying completely on a virtual organization system; their servers had major problems coping with the sudden popularity caused by their press releases a few days ago, for example, and I was unable to access my info. Since then, I've been e-mailing myself with backup info quite frequently just in case it happens again.

Anyway, I've already upgraded to the Basic membership, which enables me to have more pages and to be able to use images and files.

Anything that means less paper to clutter up office sounds good to me. Love the Backpack user interface, love the idea, love the potential, and I'm looking forward to seeing how the product continues to improve. For more info about Backpack, see the Web site.

If anyone else out there has an online organizational system they like, I'd love to hear about it.

Other telecommuting resources I've found extremely useful in my work:

• MaxEmail: e-mail fax service. I've used this frequently for sending and receiving faxes; I don't need an actual fax machine anymore.
  
• GMail: my public e-mail account (I have lots of accounts to give away, so if you want one, please let me know).
  
• Goldline: long-distance service I can use from any phone, including a payphone (though there's a small extra charge for the latter).
  

Things are getting busier re: houseprep. I spent some time this past week researching bathtubs and utility payment plans, and this afternoon we're going shopping for tiles.

21 days until we get our house.

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Flickr coolness

Had a good practice at Allison's last night, plus we got to see some of the new Urban Tapestry DVD that John has been putting together for the Interfilk auction at FKO (a few other copies will be made available for other Interfilk auctions). Wow, he's done a great job! Can't wait to get hold of a copy myself. :-)

I recently mentioned that I wasn't happy about Yahoo's recently announced acquisition of Flickr. Well, Flickr was smart and posted a a FAQ about the acquisition that addresses most of my concerns, so I'm not quite as panicky. I do have some personal experience with what happens with the acquisition of a small company by a much bigger company, however, so am going to take the FAQ with a grain of salt and Wait And See What Happens.

That said, however, I've been pretty happy with Flickr, which has been a much more interesting and vibrant community than Orkut, mainly because it has a very practical use for me. As long as Yahoo's acquisition doesn't have negative repercussions, I'll probably renew my Pro account in December.

In Flickr, some people add tags to their photos to make it easier for everyone to locate them. I need to start being more consistent about this; I haven't been adding tags to every photo.

To search the Flickr photo database, you can either use the Flickr interface to search for photos with certain tags, or try this very cool postcard browser that Jeff told me about. If you want to see an example of how this works, try typing in "dmo" (my message board id from university days, still used by some of my friends). You'll get a display of pictures, theoretically with me as one of the subjects. Click on any photo for a close-up and description, and then click "View Flickr Photo Page" to go directly to that page.

Very cool. And so now I'm even more inspired to start uploading and tagging some of my favourite people and other pics from years back, to make it easier for ME to access as well.

Selection of recent feedback to my Blatherings:

From Annie W., in response to Babybabble:

"On behalf of all parents, I would like to thank you and Jeff (and all those other amazing people) for being wonderful aunties and uncles. Personal decisions on family aside, all children benefit from having non-parental adults around. Filk-kids are *so* lucky to have the people that they do :-) You are a fabulous auntie :-)"

From Ally C. re: gardens:

"Debbie, you are so lucky you know what's in your garden-to-be and even have a garden map! We bought out house in December, and the owner had already moved out. We never met him, and have very little idea what's in this extensive garden that he and his wife obviously worked very hard on. I *think* I recognize peonies (yeah! I've always wanted them!) and a rose bush, and found what I think are daffodils trying to emerge. Everything else is just unknown! It's kinda exciting, yet frustrating at the same time. This morning, Ted and I were out in the defrosting garden and he looked around and said "I just hope none of these are lilacs!" since he's allergic."

From Andy B., re: Russian Dwarf hamsters:

"I always thought Basil the Siberian Hamster was a joke!"

And quite a few people said they actually LIKE my overly excited housebabbling, so go figure. :-)

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