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Kids and the Internets

Kids use the internets, that’s no secret, but how do you keep them from “harmful matter” out there? I’m not worried about web sites, but I’d like to eventually let the kids use those email addresses they’ve had for years. Do I need to create a whitelist, so that any friend of theirs has to be pre-approved by me before they can receive mail from them? that seems like a good idea, any problems with that? Spoofing? Spammers? Hmmm…

I’ve also thought about IM. I rarely get anything nasty or SPIM-like, and I figured setting up Jabber accounts would be the safest bet. Of course that really only sets them up to IM with me, which is fine for now. I’m sure at some point some of their friends will want them to come to the dark side (AIM, or worse MSN Messenger! I gotta draw the line somewhere!)

Anyway, I’m going to look into ways of protecting the kids without installing goofy “nanny” software, or having to put proxies in place. Good luck to me!

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Podcasting Must Hears

I’ve been busy lately, real busy… But I thought I should at least take a few minutes to list off some of the stuff I’ve been listening to…

  • Daily Source Code [RSS] – Come on, it’s Adam Curry, ’nuff said right?
  • Evil Genius Chronicles [RSS] – Been listening to Dave since we started this stuff and he, Adam and I all had our own versions of ‘iPodder’ clients… Dave’s an interesting fellow, and always has something interesting to say.
  • The Dawn and Drew Show [RSS] – Yes, I’m probably to blame for getting Drew started on the podcasting thing. What can I say, I so proud… (!?!?)
  • Reel Reviews [RSS] – Brilliant! Film reviews that hit the target, dead on… I’m surprised there isn’t a link to Amazon to buy the DVD‘s, seems like a perfect match.
  • The Rock and Roll Geek Show [RSS] – I can’t say I love all the stuff Mr. Butler plays, but I’ve enjoyed the shows, and it’s pretty darn easy to skip the songs you don’t like (try that with radio!) Again, I’m surprised there isn’t an Amazon affiliate thing going on to sell CD‘s.
  • Coverville [RSS] – I’ve figured out the secret of Coverville, and it’s simple. It’s things that are familiar, but newly discovered all at once. Songs you probably know, done by artists you might now, but it’s all mixed up… or something like that. again, simple to skip the songs you don’t like, kicks the butt of radio.
  • Treo Podcast [RSS] – How can you not like a podcast where the host says “This is a special podcast, if by "special" you mean "drunk."”? Entertaining indeed!
  • Brainwagon Radio [RSS] – I really like the geeky topics of the show. Mark always seems to have some new gadget or experiment to talk about.

Wow, the list is a lot longer than last time we looked at my playlist. This isn’t even it, I just wanted to highlight a few… We still got Trade Secrets, all the stuff at IT Conversations, Eric Rice, Esc From the World!, Jimmy Jett… and the list goes on and on…

A while back Drew and I were discussing the fact that neither of us have really heard Lazer 103 since August… Hmmm, about the time podcasting started to take off… And what’s happening in Denver? Denver radio stations launch battle to win back listeners… Wake up RadioLand! It’s a Brave New World…

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Mixed Blood

I donated blood today, which is something I’d really like to do more often, but it’d hard to find the time in the 50+ hour work week to do so… Well, it’s the Holiday Season, so this is my donation to a worthy cause I guess.

Here’s my vitals for today:

  • Blood Pressure: 118/78
  • Temperature: 98.4
  • Pulse: 78

If you want to do something nice this year, go donate some blood.

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The Linux Guy’s Perl Packet

You must read The Blue Packet. Ok you don’t have to read it, I’ve pulled out the one nugget in the whole thing I found most amusing/relevant/true:

Some Linux guy in either Engineering or IT sets up a server that generates perfect blue packets with 3 lines of Perl code, but nobody notices him.

Ok, there is one more bit at the end…

The Linux guy eventually leaves the company to start his own Internet venture and ends up buying Google five years later.

(Still waiting for the second part…)

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Beep! Beep! Beep! Backing Up!

People, really… A public service announcement.

Make some backups!

My own backup strategy consists largely of something like this: 

ditto -V -rsrcFork /Users/pete /Volumes/Backup/Users/pete

Which, besides making a whole bunch of text appear on the screen, backs up your home directory, saving the resource fork, just in case!

That /Volumes/Backup is actually a drive on another machine, so now we’ve got a copy. Well, a few hours later we have a copy…

(See Also: man ditto)

(Non-Mac OS X users, you’re on your own here!)