January 2014 archive

Jan 24

Want To Try Curling? 3 Free Open Houses Coming Up At Nearby Petersham Curling Club

Petersham Open HousesWant to get on the ice and actually try the sport of curling?  Are you excited about the upcoming Olympics and want to see curling in action?  Would you like to understand how the game of “chess on ice” really works?

The great folks down at the Petersham Curling Club (PCC), about 45 minutes south of Keene, are holding three FREE open houses over the next month to help people learn about the game.  As noted on their page about the curling open houses, the three dates are:

  • Sat, Feb 8, 6-10 pm – At this “Spectator Open House” you’ll have a chance to watch curling games and ask questions of club members who are there to help explain the sport.
  • Sun, Feb 16, 12-5 pm – At this Open House you’ll have a chance to actually try the sport of curling.  You’ll learn how to deliver a stone, the role of sweeping and more. This will be a great opportunity to get on the ice and experience the sport yourself!
  • Thurs, Feb 20, 6-9 pm – This will be a week-night version of the Feb 16th Open House where you will again get a chance to try out the sport of curling.

In the weeks following these open houses, the Petersham Curling Club will be holding several “Learn To Curl” events that will offer dedicated instruction for those who want to learn more. During the Open Houses there will also be special membership offers for those who would like to join the Petersham Curling Club.

It’s easy to get there – from Keene just head south on Route 32 (going down past the Keene airport) and stay on Route 32 all the way through Athol, MA, and on into Petersham.  The club is located right off of Route 32. More information can be found on the PCC directions page. In good weather it takes about 45 minutes to get from Keene down to the Petersham club.

The Petersham Curling Club is a great place to curl and is where several of us involved with starting up the Monadnock Curling Club all curl.  We strongly encourage you to head down to Petersham, MA, and check out the Open Houses.  And if the curling bug bites you as it has us, please do join the PCC and start playing the awesome sport of curling!

And then…  please let us know you are interested in seeing curling come to Keene!

Jan 23

TDYR #078 – How I Record These Podcast Episodes Using SoundCloud

NOTE: This episode is now WRONG because SoundCloud has removed the ability to record audio from within the SoundCloud mobile app. Please listen to TDYR #163 for more info: https://soundcloud.com/danyork/tdyr-163-soundcloud-removes How do I create these podcast episodes on SoundCloud? What tools do I use? How involved is the process? A couple of people have asked me these questions and so I decided to answer them.... :-)

Jan 23

New DNSSEC Deployment Maps Now Available

2014-01-23-2014-01-23Curious to see where DNSSEC is available around the world? We’ve just published the latest DNSSEC deployment maps showing which “country code top-level domains” (ccTLDs) have signed their domains with DNSSEC and the status of many others. We have a global map and also regional maps for Africa, Asia Pacific, Latin America, North America and  Europe.

All of these maps can be found on:

http://www.internetsociety.org/deploy360/dnssec/maps/

As we note on that page, these maps are a bit different from many other DNSSEC statistics sites in that they offer not just information based on observable data but also information based on news reports, industry presentations, interactions with DNS operators and other sources.   The maps are free for anyone to use subject to a Creative Commons license.

The main point of these maps is that the show the signed top-level domains (TLDs). Having a signed TLD is the first step in being able to sign your own domain and give it the additional layer of security possible through DNSSEC.  Once a TLD is signed, you then need to have a registrar that supports passing DNSSEC records and you need a DNS hosting operator (or need to host the zone yourself) who can sign your DNS records with DNSSEC.  But it all starts with having a signed TLD, which is why this is so critical.

Obviously on maps like these we can only show the “country code TLDs (ccTLDs)” as the other “generic TLDs” such as .COM, .ORG, don’t have any location we can easily put on a map.  This includes all the many “new generic TLDs” (newgTLDs) that are appearing each week.  We don’t quite know how to visualize those yet… so for the moment the maps are just for ccTLDs.

I’d like to note that the great team working with Steve Crocker at Shinkuro created the programs and operated the database for these maps until the project was recently transitioned to our team here at the Internet Society Deploy360 Programme as part of our work with Shinkuro and Parsons Technology (announced last July) to accelerate the deployment of DNSSEC.  We’re grateful for the assistance of the team at Shinkuro in helping with the transition and we’re looking forward to providing you these maps on a regular basis.

We’d love to hear your feedback on these maps.  Do you find them useful?  Are they helpful to you?  Did you see any errors?  Please do let us know, either by a comment here to this blog post, through our feedback form or email, or by posting to one of the social networks where this post appears.

Jan 22

TDYR #077 – Where Have All The Previous And Next Links Gone On Blog Sites?

TDYR #077 - Where Have All The Previous And Next Links Gone On Blog Sites? by Dan York

Jan 22

Here’s What Curling Looks Like – Great Video Of Vermont “Learn To Curl” Event

Want to see what a “Learn to Curl” event looks like? Here’s a great video of our friends up at the Green Mountain Curling Club in Vermont holding a “Learn To Curl” event – check it out and see how people get started:

Having been involved in the early days of the GMCC when I lived in Burlington, it’s great to see familiar faces and to see that they are doing well!  I curled many a Friday night at the rink shown in the video that’s located just 45 mins north of Burlington in Bedford, Quebec.

If YOU would like to try out curling, our friends down at the Petersham Curling Club about 45 mins south of Keene in Petersham, MA, are holding 3 curling open house events on February 8, February 16 and February 20.  They will be a GREAT opportunity to try out curling!

And if you’d like to see curling brought to the Keene region, please help us out and sign up to help us make that happen!

Jan 21

TDYR #076 – Why I Don’t Like The New Integration Between Google+ And YouTube Comments

On why I'm NOT thrilled about how posting a YouTube link on Google+ winds up creating a comment on YouTube. More info at: http://www.disruptiveconversations.com/2014/01/my-unexpected-comment-on-youtube-via-the-google-integration.html

Jan 20

TDYR #075 – Reflections On Dr. Martin Luther King Jr Day

Today is Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day here in the USA and in this episode I reflect on the day and the teachings of Dr. King, Jr. - and both how far we've come and how far we still have to go. I Have A Dream Speech: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smEqnnklfYs

Jan 20

Great News! Over 50% Of All Top-Level Domains Now Signed With DNSSEC!

The Internet hit a great DNSSEC deployment milestone today – over 50% of all TLDs are now signed! As Chris Thompson pointed out on the dnssec-deployment mailing list, if you go to a site such as ICANN’s TLD DNSSEC report that was run this morning, you’ll now see that 222 (53%) of 415 TLDs in the root zone of DNS are now signed with DNSSEC. Even better, 216 (52%) have a DS record in the root zone, which means that the DNSSEC “chain of trust” can be established for domains underneath all of those TLDs:

icann-tld-dnssec-20140120

 

Now, granted, as Chris noted in his message, this milestone has primarily happened because of the ongoing influx of all the DNSSEC-signed “new generic top-level domains (newgTLDs)“.  You can see this rather dramatically in a graph from Rick Lamb’s DNSSEC statistics site:

DNSSEC trend statistics

Regardless, it is great to see this milestone!

With over 50% of TLDs signed, have you signed your domain yet?  (Check out our tutorials on signing your domain with DNSSEC and also our DNSSEC Basics page.)

 

Jan 20

How to Keep Track of the New Generic Top-Level Domains (newgTLDs) Now Appearing Weekly (Featured Blog)

How do you keep track of what new generic top-level domains (newgTLDs) are now available? Particularly when there seem to be new ones being announced weekly? Because I've written about newgTLDs here previously, someone recently asked me those questions... Now, these are the newgTLDs that have been delegated by ICANN, meaning that they now appear in the "root zone" of DNS. This does NOT mean that you can go right now and register a domain underneath one of these new TLDs. More...

Jan 20

How To Keep Track Of The New Generic Top-Level Domains (newgTLDs) Now Appearing Weekly (Featured Blog)

More...