December 2014 archive
Dec 08
Internet Society Seeks Nominations for Board of Trustees (Featured Blog)
Are you passionate about preserving the global, open Internet? Do you have experience in Internet standards, development or public policy? If so, please consider applying for one of the open seats on the Internet Society Board of Trustees. The Internet Society serves a pivotal role in the world as a leader on Internet policy, technical, economic, and social matters, and as the organizational home of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). More...
Dec 07
In Every Action We Take, We Create The World We Want To Live In
In our every action... each moment of the day... we make the choice to build people up or to tear people down. The choice we make determines the type of person we are - and the type of world we want to live in.
Dec 06
No Adults! An Awesome Aspect of Youth Curling Games
Today I was reminded of one of the truly awesome and wonderful aspects of youth curling bonspiels (tournaments) - when the kids go through the door out onto the ice, the game is ENTIRELY up to *them*.
No adults are allowed out on the ice. No coaches. No parents. No one.
Just the youth.
Unlike other youth team sports there are no coaches helping call the shots or determine the flow of play. There is no one to consult with. (Although we are nearby if there is a rules question that needs addressing or if there are safety issues.) From the initial start with a shaking of hands and a coin toss all the way to the end... it is entirely up to the kids.
The strategy. The scoring. The flow of the game. The making of the shots. The interpretation of the rules.
All of it... by them.
Of course we as coaches work with them to teach them all the different aspects of the sport and to prepare them for the games.
But when they go through that door... it is entirely up to them!
We are left to just watch from behind the glass... to celebrate... and sometimes to cringe... but there is absolutely nothing we can do but watch!
Pretty awesome for the kids!
Dec 06
TDYR 191 – No Adults! An Awesome Aspect of Youth Curling Games
An aspect of youth curling bonspiels (tournaments) is that...
Dec 05
How To Add An Emoji Character To Your Name In The Wire App
Because I keep getting asked.... here is how you can add an emoji / emoticon to your name inside the new Wire app on Mac OS X / iOS / Android. (The Wire app that I wrote about yesterday and the day before.)
Many people have been asking why some names have a symbol after them inside of Wire, such as Olle's:
Or these:
The answer about how to do this is simple...
YOU JUST ADD AN EMOJI CHARACTER TO YOUR NAME!
Yep... that's it!
Adding an Emoji On Mac OS X
In the Mac OS X client, you click on your name, and then the pencil next to your name:
When you are then in the edit box, you can type the magic Mac OS X keystroke to bring up the emoji panel:
Control + Command + Space
Ta da! All the emoji you could ever want...
Adding an Emoji on iOS
Similarly, you just go into the Wire app on iOS and click on your name at the top of your list of contacts. You should now be in edit mode:
Then you just add an emoji. Now, there may be easier ways to do this, but I had previously added "Emoji" as a new keyboard on my iPhone using:
Settings -> General -> Keyboard -> Keyboards
This then lets me press the "switch keyboard" button on the bottom of the iOS keyboard and switch to the Emoji keyboard and enter characters:
Ta da! All the emoji you could ever want...
Yes, it's that easy.
Adding an Emoji on Android
I have no idea how to do this... because I don't have an Android device right now... but I have to imagine it is basically the same thing. Edit your name. Enter an emoji.
Why Not More Than 1 Emoji?
If you can enter one emoji, why not two or three?
Sure.
Go nuts!
Have fun!
Add however many you want... it's your name as seen by the rest of the world on Wire. :-)
And now with this "problem" solved, we now return you to more serious topics...
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Dec 05
Congratulations To .NL For Passing 2 Million DNSSEC-Signed Domains
Congratulations to the team at SIDN and all the .NL registrars and DNS hosting providers for the fact that there are now 2 million .NL domain names secured by DNSSEC! Yesterday as the SIDN team apparently became aware that a large registrar/DNS hosting provider was going to be signing .NL domain names, Kees Monshouwer set up a website that showed an ongoing countdown to when they projected passing the 2 million DNSSEC-signed domain mark. If you go there now, of course, you see that they’ve passed 2 million domains:
But yesterday the countdown was underway:
It was fun to watch yesterday from time to time… and a definite congratulations to the teams at all the various organizations.
As the news announcement from SIDN (in Dutch) explains, this represents over 36% of the 5.5 million .NL domains now secured with DNSSEC! The announcement also explains a bit about how this was accomplished. SIDN, the operator of the .NL registry, offered a financial incentive where .NL domain names are less expensive if they are signed with DNSSEC. Given that incentive, a number of large registrars who also do DNS hosting set up their DNS systems to do bulk signing of the .NL domain names. The end result is that their customers are now getting the added security of DNSSEC without the customers needing to do anything more.
This model may or may not work for other top-level domain (TLD) registries, but it certainly has worked well for .NL. The tweets were fun to see today – among them:
Weer een mooie #SIDN mijlpaal: we hebben ruim 2 miljoen #dnssec gesignde .nl-domeinnamen pic.twitter.com/3NNTgu9NFY
— SIDN (@SIDN) December 5, 2014
and
Look which country now has 2005031 #dnssec signed domains! -> https://t.co/bsqVZgG3rx h/t @SIDN & @KeesMonshouwer !
— Bert Hubert/PowerDNS (@PowerDNS_Bert) December 5, 2014
Congrats again… and if YOU want to get started with signing your domain (from whatever TLD), please take a look at our Start Here page to find resources available to you!
Dec 04
TDYR 190 – The Community Breakfasts For The Homeless Begin In Keen
This week was the start of breakfasts for the homeless that will be offered at a church in Keene, NH, each week day... I talk about that in this episode...
Dec 04
More Observations About The "Wire" App
After yesterday's launch of Wire, I continued to use it a bit today and am writing these notes, mostly for my own memory.
Group Chats ARE Persistent
In my post yesterday I said that it seemed like Wire group chats were "persistent" (something I'd previously written about with regard to Skype). Today I can confirm that they ARE persistent. When I fired up the Wire app this morning I received all the messages that had been posted into the group chat overnight while I'd been offline.
Further, when I went to add someone to the group chat, I received this message:
The Wire team also deserves credit for how smoothly they make the scrolling back through the chat history. Works very well!
No IPv6... yet
Friends tested Wire in an IPv6-only network and confirmed that it unfortunately does not yet work. In reaching out to someone at Wire the word was that they are definitely investigating this to see what can be done. The issue is that the Wire app connects to Amazon EC2 servers - so it's really an issue of Amazon's capabilities.
I will say again that Wire at the very least deserves credit for coming out with a website, www.wire.com, what works over IPv6! That immediately puts them far ahead of most other communications startups.
The Mac OS X Client Rocks!
Wow! What a great desktop client! It works extremely well. I loved the ability to drag and drop images directly into a chat window. Calls worked great from the client. So far a great experience!
The Heavy Use Of Profile Pictures Takes Getting Used To
The profile photo you use winds up being the background for the entire screen on the mobile device - or for the sidebar in the Mac and iPad clients. And that photo changes to be of the last person with whom you communicated. Sometimes that can lead to a bit of strange user view depending upon the profile photo used. Here's one that worked fine for me:
... but others were a bit strange. The ubuiquitous presence of the photos does take a bit to get used to.
The Use Of Colors Is Fun
Wire lets you choose a color in the settings. This is then used for the highlighting and cursor color that you see. It also shows up in other places such as this listing of people:
... where it shows the colors people are using. I can see people having fun with this.
Pings Are Useful
At first I was skeptical of what a "ping" could really be useful for (remember Facebook's "Poke"?). But then a friend sent a ping while I was off in some other app - on my Mac I got this nice big box:
I could then just hit "REPLY" and flip over to the Wire app. Of course, he sent another ping and I then had the option to silence the pings:
It was a useful way to know there was something to pay attention to over in Wire. Obviously this could be abused... I've not yet checked into what settings there are to control this.
More To Explore...
I continue to be quite impressed with both the iOS and Mac versions of Wire. More thoughts as I get a chance to experiment further...
P.S. If you are using Wire, feel free to find me as "Dan York" or "dyork@lodestar2.com" ...
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Dec 04
Attending ICANN 52 In Singapore? Why Not Speak About DNSSEC or DANE?
Time is running out! We have already received several excellent proposals for the ICANN 52 DNSSEC Workshop to be held on Wednesday, February 11, 2015 at ICANN 52 in Singapore and only have room for a few more presentations! If you work with DNSSEC or DANE and will be at ICANN 52, we would encourage you to submit a proposal for consideration for the 6+ hour DNSSEC Workshop to be held on the Wednesday of the ICANN week.
All you need to do right now is send a short (1-2 sentences) proposal to dnssec-singapore@isoc.org expressing your interest and saying what you would like to talk about.
We published the full Call for Participation here that gives many suggestions for the type of topics we’d like to include. Looking at the agenda for the recent ICANN 51 DNSSEC Workshop in L.A. may also help give you ideas.
Please let us know soon if you are interested in being considered for the program!
Thank you!
