May 16, 2012 archive

May 16

Experimenting With SoundCloud For Audio Podcasting

SoundcloudAs I've mentioned on my last several reports into the For Immediate Release podcast, I've been experimenting over the past few weeks with SoundCloud as a platform for posting and sharing audio recordings.  If you are a SoundCloud user, you are welcome to follow along with my experiments at:

soundcloud.com/danyork

So far I have been mostly posting my weekly FIR reports and a few other samples... but over the next bit I'm intending to post some more audio recordings as I try out a number of different applications.

I was toying with using SoundCloud for a bit... and then was inspired by what C.C. Chapman did with the platform for his audio reports from his recent trip to Ghana.

I've been looking for a bit for a place to just post random audio commentary that didn't fit into FIR or other sites. We'll see what precisely I do with it over the weeks and months ahead.

If you'd like to try it yourself, signing up for an account is free - there is just a limit on how much audio you can post with the free account.

And as to how SoundCloud is different from Audioboo or the many other similar services, I would direct you to my latest report into FIR #651 where I covered this precise question!

If you found this post interesting or useful, please consider either:

May 16

2 Days Left To Comment to FCC About Ham Radio Usage In Emergency Communications

FCC logoTo all my friends and readers who use amateur (ham) radio, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is seeking comment on the use of Amateur Radio in emergency communications such as disaster response.

THE DEADLINE FOR COMMENT IS TOMORROW - May 17, 2012.

As the FCC public notice states:

the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC or Commission) Wireless Telecommunications Bureau and Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau seek comment on the uses and capabilities of Amateur Radio Service communications in emergencies and disaster relief. As set forth below, comment is sought on issues relating to the importance of emergency Amateur Radio Service communications and on impediments to enhanced Amateur Radio Service communications. Stakeholder entities and organizations, including the Amateur Radio, emergency response, and disaster communications communities, are particularly encouraged to submit comments.

The public notice goes on to pose a series of questions around the importance of amateur radio in emergency communications - and a series of questions around the impediments to enhanced amateur radio communications.

Later in the document it explains the filing process, including the manner in which comments can be filed electronically over the Internet.

I'm not a ham radio user myself, although I've always had an interest but just never made the cycles to go through the process. I have, though, seen the incredible use that has been made of ham radio in emergency situations.

If any of you have opinions on the questions raised by the FCC, they'd like to hear from you!

If you found this post interesting or useful, please consider either:

May 16

DNSSEC Used In 2012 National Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition

Our friends over at the DNSSEC Deployment Initiative published the great news that DNSSEC was involved in the National Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition (NCCDC) held in April 2012.  This annual event, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Science and Technology division, involved this year 126 schools and over 1,500 competitors.  The important part to us was this quote:

According to organizer Dwayne Williams, roughly 80% of the competitors had heard of DNSSEC before, but less than 10% had ever actually used or implemented it prior to NCCDC. While two of the teams noted that they would like to see simpler, step-by-step instructions for implementing DNSSEC, all of the teams ultimately thought DNSSEC was a technology they planned to look at more in the future.

That’s 1,500 more people who can be out there able to deploy DNSSEC!  And since these competitors are students who will be going on into industry this is excellent news for the future of DNSSEC.

We also understandably liked this part of the quote:

While two of the teams noted that they would like to see simpler, step-by-step instructions for implementing DNSSEC…

That is precisely the type of content we’re aiming to build here for DNSSEC, and our new DNSSEC content roadmap identifies further tutorials we’d like to add.  By the time the 2013 NCCDC event rolls around, these students will be able to find many more simpler tutorials out there!

Kudos to all the 2012 NCCDC teams for working with DNSSEC – and we look forward to learning what DNSSEC challenges will be part of the next NCCDC event.

May 16

One Year Ago Today, The Big C Changed Everything…

BigcToday is a somber anniversary in our household. One year ago today, we sat down with a doctor here in Keene to go over the results of some tests on my wife. He came into the room and went immediately to the point... hardly even saying hello. I don't remember his exact words, but they were basically:
"I have some bad news. You have cancer."

He may have said it differently... but that was the core message. Simple. Direct. To the point.

And everything changed for us.

The rest of that appointment and indeed the year has become a blur of learning more about cancer, medicine and the medical system than I ever expected to learn at this age.

My wife, who at the time was in the best physical shape she'd ever been in, proceeded down a path where she lost her breasts, lost her mane of hair, lost parts of her memory, lost her stamina, lost her ability to quickly process things in her mind, lost her physical health... and basically lost a year of her life.

The good news, of course, is that she didn't lose her life, and that as a result of the treatments she's undergoing and the fact that they caught the cancer early, she's got a very strong chance of being around for many more years. Her cancer was "only" Stage 1 Invasive Breast Cancer, and could have been so much worse had it not been detected.

Intellectually, that's easy to say. Emotionally, it's a lot harder. It's been a hell of a year.

And the journey is not over. She's still got another 7 months of Herceptin treatments... and another 4 years after that of daily Tamoxifen pills (that she is also taking now), both of which have their own troubling side effects. And as we've learned, you're never really "cured" of cancer. You win battles, but the war inside your body continues.

A year ago, the big C invaded our life and became a thoroughly unwelcome houseguest. Now we just have to continue learning to live with it...

Some of the articles I've written about our journey with cancer, in chronological order: