My co-workers are probably tired of listening to my bleating about a recent intermittent denial of service from Google related websites on my iMac. Sites affected include Google, Blogger and YouTube, possibly others. Service from these sites had become patchy and losing Google in particular was tough. Ask.com? Yahoo? Bah! It was like losing a ‘hyper limb’, a dead end in the information super highway, I was lost. Rebooting did nothing to help neither did renewing DHCP or manually setting an IP address.

After several fruitless forays into the annals of the internet, I finally came across the answer in a MetaFilter post this morning. Without being able to pinpoint the trigger ( I think it may have been a recent software update) the issue seemed to link back to the DNS server(s) set in my Network Preferences. I changed them to the two suggested in the article and Bingo! I was back in business.

So here’s the link to the article again lest this heinous affliction ever affect you, or anyone else. LINK

Also a quote from the post in case it gets lost in the mists of time:

“I see this problem all the time with people’s Macs at home. It’s most definitely a DNS issue. It is always solved by setting your DNS server to a known good DNS server, like 4.2.2.2. To do that, go to Apple menu>System Preferences>Network. Then select your Airport connection, click Configure, then look at the TCP/IP tab. Enter 4.2.2.2, hit enter, then enter 4.2.2.3 on the second line. Then click Apply Now. You may have to restart your web browser for the change to be evident.

I think this is less of a problem with a specific DNS provider and more of a problem with certain wireless routers’ ability to properly share correct DNS information with Macs…..“

Although I’m not using a wireless router it seems to have done the job. Choose your ethernet connection settings instead if you are on a wired network.

A

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It’s back! Boy am I happy webby devvy!

This is the tippest toppest app for obfuscating your email addresses available for the Mac. After a lengthy absence Dan Benjamin has decided to update this little beauty. I was using the Obfuscatr widget for a while, especially when the Enkoder online form went AWOL but Obfucatr won’t allow custom code or additions like subject lines to your mailto’s.

Also available as an online form check it out here

Email harvester bots are shaking in their boots…….

Just thought I’d add that if you are adding email addresses directly through a CMS admin panel you might still have better luck with Obfuscatr. The Javascript generated by Enkoder is a little too much to handle, especially for WordPress. I should also add that it’s necessary to paste in the generated script in code view not WYSIWYG view…….

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For your viewing pleasure, last night’s 207 video game review of Rock Band 2 where we jam out with Pat “The Strat” Callahan.

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Sometimes the best vacation days are the unplanned ones that you take on a whim (something I do a little too often!) This week on Tuesday I decided to take Wednesday off and managed to wrangle a couple friends into going up to Windjammer days in Boothbay Harbor. It was one of those ideal days where we laughed ourselves silly all day long, had ice cream for lunch (It was about 80 degrees, sunny with a nice breeze off the water).

We overheard some people talking that there were far fewer people for the festival this year….perhaps a reaction to the high gas prices? Somewhat ironic to have high gas prices keep people away from something that celebrated the old days of moving people and cargo by the the power of wind…..

We had great fun touring the ship Friendship of Salem which was docked at the Boothbay Harbor Shipyard. Originally built in 1797, it was a merchant ship, and I think my favorite pic of the day is the one looking up from the cargo hold through the deck to the mast - the glass in the door just caught the reflection of the flag flying high above in the wind.

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Ever vigilant in the battle against those pesky Harvester Bots I have for many moons been using Hiveware’s Enkoder to obfuscate and generally mung my email addresses whenever I have to plop one into a web page. Unfortunately the web based form for Enkoder has been offline for a while and I’ve been searching for a replacement, temporary or otherwise. So if you’re looking to do a spot of mailto munging, give Obfuscatr a test drive. It even comes with a handy little dashboard widget. Joy!

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StumbledUpon Interaction Design Pattern Library just now. Interesting collection of navigation types, search options and more for usability. Perhaps a little too much classification there, but some good stuff.

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Having trouble coming up with that perfect Web2.0 sounding company name? Well worry not, for the Web2.0 Company Name Generator has arrived!! Some of my favorite results (so far)

Ainoodle
Twidel
Wikimba
Gexo
Jabbercube
Quible

Once you’ve got your name picked out, just toss it in the Web2.0 Logo Generator (with optional “BETA” crest).

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Please don’t use tables even though they work fine,
When it comes to indexin’ they give search engines a hard time,
Make it easy for spider to crawl what you provide,
Remove font type, font color and font size…

If I heard it right. From m0serious.

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If you’ve ever spent time stitching together different parts of a long Web page into one image using Photoshop or some other image editing tool, Pearl Crescent Page Saver might be just the right tool for you.

Page Saver is a Firefox plugin. There’s a free version (yay!) and a $15 version with a few more bells and whistles, but for my needs the free version worked perfectly well.

I downloaded the plugin and installed it. It then restarts Firefox and puts a little camera icon in the far right of the tool bar. From there you can navigate to any page you want to save and choose to save the image as a .png or .jpg file. I’ve found that .jpg leaves your text looking crappy, but YMMV.

Since I had to deliver this to the client as a PDF I just opened the file in Preview and saved it as a PDF. Looked sweet and the client was happy.

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