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

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

They probably could have edited out the first 20 seconds or so of this video, but I did find myself snickering despite my best intentions.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

You wouldn’t believe me if I told you how many times my kids watched this over the weekend. Apologies if you’ve seen it before, it’s spawning a few re-makes and some of them are almost as funny as the original. It has to be a you tube classic.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Following the untraditional release of their latest record IN RAINBOWS, Radiohead released a live studio film of the entire album under the title ‘Scotch Mist’ onto YouTube. If you haven’t had a chance, check it out. It makes a great background music, and is arguably just as good as the album itself.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

…I could never really get the hang of those things anyway. Media behemoths NBC Universal and News Corp have teamed up to create the potential YouTube killer hulu - a pleasantly simple, and frighteningly generous little site. I can picture a day when hulu has courted enough major providers to make people really question why they’re spending $20-100/month on a television package. YouTube could easily find themselves as a new public access or PBS-like source for the content you won’t find on the major stations (like the Dramatic Prairie Dog).

I’ll leave the full description of the service to the professional copywriters of the aforementioned corporations.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

I came across this little number the other day as I looked for footage of Dubya’s singing at a recent invitation-only meeting of journalists. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find any footage of the event, but this older mashup was satisfaction enough. Notice all the unity and fresh faces, before the strain of 5 years (and counting) of war.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

It’s quite possible you’ve already seen this as the clip is over a decade old, but Hurra Torpedo’s interpretation of this Bonnie Tyler classic is a classic unto itself.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

It’s 2008! 2008!!! For some reason my sense of time seems to revolve around the year 1996; a formative year for an awkward 16 year old recent import from Canada. 1996 found me using the internet for the first time (and not just gawking over the shoulder of my friend a couple of years before, scouring the “Information Superhighway” for Kings Quest tips). It was about the time AOL started sending out “550 Hours Free” discs, and when the general public began dipping a collective toe into the digital abyss. I remember being fascinated by the still-operational Chathouse site where I could find hundreds and hundreds of conversations taking place across the globe. I recall finding so many of my favorite tunes recreated in MIDI format FOR FREE!! The age was ripe with a sense of endless possibility. Patience was abundant with the infant internet, as evidenced by a users willingness to sit through 45-120 seconds of the most annoying sound in the world while their 28k modems connected them to a dreadfully slow page where butterflies would chase their mouse around the screen.

12 years of technological leaps and bounds later, it’s difficult to get really excited about anything “new”. A handful of hens teeth that stand out: Google Earth, YouTube, SecondLife, and of course the “OMG! LOL!” that came with connecting with the long lost through social networking platforms like facebook and MySpace, but to be totally honest, I’m not as impressed with “the future” as I thought I would be. I do not own a Lightsaber, I have never rode a Hoverboard (although I did ride the next best thing last summer in Chicago), and my calander has no spaceflights scheduled.

This whole “future” thing would seem like a bit of a farce had it not been for a little device “Designed by Apple in California” that found itself in my palm this past December 22nd. The Apple iPhone is the single most impressive piece of technology I have ever owned. Not a day goes by when I don’t think or say aloud “damn it feels good to be an iPhone owner”. It’s been over a month and the device hasn’t shown a sign of what I call “The Trampoline Effect” - where you beg your parents for like half your childhood to buy a trampoline (like the one your cousins have) and when they finally break down and cough up the the $250 to buy one you bounce on the thing like an ape for two solid weeks until you are so thoroughly unimpressed by the possibilies of the big aluminum and vinyl mess in the backyard that you stop using it.

The iPhone has me so giddy after 33 days that I can’t imagine I’ll even buy a Lightsaber when they finally come out.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

I know StarTrek and Cats is supposed to be Gloria’s speciality but it’s a subject that I feel I can also contribute to. Firstly This Spoof by Ben Stiller just sums up the whole Kirk vs Alien scenario so well, If you haven’t seen it already it’s a treat. 

  The ‘cats’ part is coming later. Andy    

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

I can’t believe it. We’ve only be talking about launching a flyte crew blog for about 2 years, and now it’s here. Of course, chances are you’re not reading this shortly after I post it, because we still have to design the damn thing.Still, it feels good to have a free-for-all blog where we can put important links, such as Chuck Norris Facts or the video of the Belt Buckle Knife.

 I can only imagine how this will improve our–and your–productivity.Rich

Bookmark It

Hide Sites