January 2020 archive

2020 Update – Need New Leaders for Monadnock Curling Club – interested?

Would YOU be interested in taking on the leadership of bringing curling to the Monadnock region of New Hampshire? If so, please email me at monadnockcurling@gmail.com

You may have noticed the lack of updates on this site. There’s a reason. A lot changed since Matt and I began this project back in 2013 – and our lives have taken us away from the Monadnock region. Matt and his wife moved out of New Hampshire. And in the summer of 2018, my family moved to the Burlington, Vermont, area. Prior to that, I had been caught up in the world of competitive junior curling with my oldest daughter for the past several years, and all my volunteer time had been consumed by that effort.

I still think it would be great if someone could bring curling to the Monadnock region. If anyone is interested in picking up this work, I would be glad to transfer this website (it’s based on WordPress), the domain name, social media channels, email account, etc. There is also a very small list of people who expressed interest in getting involved.

Please email me at monadnockcurling@gmail.com if you are interested.

Meanwhile, if you are looking for curling in the Monadnock region, either to learn the sport, to participate in leagues, or to rent ice for an organization / corporate event, I strongly suggest you check out the Petersham Curling Club (PCC), about 45 minutes south of Keene, NH, in Petersham, MA. They are a great group of people that are very welcoming to all who are interested!

If you are looking for curling in the state of New Hampshire, I am only aware of these clubs:

There are a couple of other clubs in Massachusetts and Vermont that may work for some people in New Hampshire. Please see our list of other clubs.

2020 Update – Need New Leaders for Monadnock Curling Club – interested?

Would YOU be interested in taking on the leadership of bringing curling to the Monadnock region of New Hampshire? If so, please email me at monadnockcurling@gmail.com

You may have noticed the lack of updates on this site. There’s a reason. A lot changed since Matt and I began this project back in 2013 – and our lives have taken us away from the Monadnock region. Matt and his wife moved out of New Hampshire. And in the summer of 2018, my family moved to the Burlington, Vermont, area. Prior to that, I had been caught up in the world of competitive junior curling with my oldest daughter for the past several years, and all my volunteer time had been consumed by that effort.

I still think it would be great if someone could bring curling to the Monadnock region. If anyone is interested in picking up this work, I would be glad to transfer this website (it’s based on WordPress), the domain name, social media channels, email account, etc. There is also a very small list of people who expressed interest in getting involved.

Please email me at monadnockcurling@gmail.com if you are interested.

Meanwhile, if you are looking for curling in the Monadnock region, either to learn the sport, to participate in leagues, or to rent ice for an organization / corporate event, I strongly suggest you check out the Petersham Curling Club (PCC), about 45 minutes south of Keene, NH, in Petersham, MA. They are a great group of people that are very welcoming to all who are interested!

If you are looking for curling in the state of New Hampshire, I am only aware of these clubs:

There are a couple of other clubs in Massachusetts and Vermont that may work for some people in New Hampshire. Please see our list of other clubs.

Introducing our Open Standards Everywhere project – securing web servers in 2020!

neon open sign on dark background

How do you make your web server as secure as possible – while using the latest open security standards? How do you ensure your web site is available to everyone  across all the global network of networks that is the Internet? 

For the Internet to remain open, globally-connected, trustworthy, and secure, we believe the networks and servers that make up the Internet need to be based on the latest and most secure standards coming out of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). 

Many web server administrators may want to support the latest standards and protocols, but they don’t know how, and don’t necessarily have the time to figure it out. It may be item #393 in a long list of to-dos. Web site administrators may not be aware of the latest open standards, or may not know why they should support these standards. 

As part of our Action Plan 2020, we are launching the Open Standards Everywhere project, with a focus in 2020 on the security and availability of web servers.

The project has four main components: 

  1. Build four reference servers – Using apache and nginx, with and without a CDN, and using Let’s Encrypt for TLS certificates, we will show how a server can be configured that uses the latest open standards and protocols.
  2. Create step-by-step documentation – We will document exactly what has to be done, and make that available to everyone. Anyone can easily understand what they need to do for many sites. The documentation will be available as text and video tutorials – and could take other forms.  We’ll also share information that helps explain why supporting these standards is important, including information to help you make the business case to others within your organization. As we do for other content, we’ll be publishing this documentation in English, French, and Spanish.
  3. Promote these resources and servers – Once the materials are online, we’ll promote the resources and work with people across the Internet to help increase the security of web servers. We’ll write articles, hold webinars, speak at events, and much more.
  4. Lead by example – While we are developing these resources, we’ll also be working to bring all of our corporate web servers into full support for these standards. We plan to reach out to our Chapters and Special Interest Groups to see how we can help them with their websites, too.

By the end of 2020, our goal is to see an increase in security and availability of web servers across the Internet through the usage of TLS, DNSSEC, IPv6, and HTTP/2. 

In 2021 and future years, we intend to expand the project to support other critical servers such as email servers, network time servers, DNS servers, and communications/messaging servers. Largely we will be watching the work of the IETF and seeing what new protocols come out that we can help promote to build a bigger, stronger Internet. 

We will also continue to monitor and evolve the project documentation around web servers. For example, as HTTP3/QUIC moves out into deployment, we will look to build that into this project. We may also explore creating some Docker images and other ways we may be able to help with deployment. 

I will be leading this Open Standards Everywhere project. Our team has already built the reference servers and we’ll soon be working on that documentation. But won’t be creating it all ourselves. We’ll also be referencing many of the excellent tutorials that are already out there, including some of our own we created as part of our previous Deploy360 Programme. We’re looking forward to collaborating with our community and others to make this documentation as strong and useful as possible. We’ve also already started working on our corporate websites. 

How You Can Get Involved! 

For open standards to truly be deployed everywhere, our small team can’t do it alone! WE NEED YOUR HELP! There are several ways you can be involved. 

1. Sign Up In the Internet Society Member Portal To Be Involved 

If you are an Internet Society Member (and if not, membership is free), you can log in to our member portal and follow the instructions on the bottom of this 2020 projects page to tell us HOW you would like to be involved with the project: 

  • Click on the button “Edit My Profile” on the home page (in the blue banner across the top).
  • Go to the “Preferences” tab.
  • Select the “Edit” button in the “Projects of Interest” section
  • Find the project (still under the internal name “Functioning Open Standards Server Ecosystem”) and indicate the ways in which you would like to help.
  • Click the “Save” button. The information will be saved to your Profile and presented on the “Preferences” screen.

Note that if you are a Chapter Leader or Organization Member, there are additional steps you can take listed on the bottom of the 2020 projects page to indicate the interest of your Chapter or Organization Member.

We plan to send out some initial information soon and provide a way for members to engage in more direct conversation with the project team. So please do sign up soon! 

2. Test your own website(s) for support 

Before we even get the project underway, you can test your web site(s) and see how well it does. If it needs work, and as we get more documentation out there, you can improve your server. Two of the test sites we are using are: 

  • Internet.nl – The website test covers IPv6, DNSSEC, TLS 1.3, and various TLS options.
  • https.pro – A test for HTTP/2 support.

 Once you have this baseline measurement, you’ll be able to see how your site(s) evolve over 2020. 

3. Star / watch our documentation repository on GitHub 

We’re going to try something a little different with this project. Rather than simply publishing our documents on our website, we are instead going to develop them in a GitHub repository, ose-documentation, and then link them into our website (more on that in a later post). We’re trying this out with the idea that:

  • other web administrators / operators may be able to easily find the documentation through GitHub
  • people can use the GitHub issue tracker to raise issues about the documentation
  • people can potentially contribute text (or other translations) as the project moves along

If you use GitHub, you are welcome to star or watch our ose-documentation repository so that you can stay up on what we are doing as the project moves forward. I’ll provide updates on this in future posts.

Deploying open standards everywhere…  

That’s our plan!  Over the next five years our goal is to use this Open Standards Everywhere project as a way to help people operating different kinds of servers to both see the value in new open Internet standards and also understand how to deploy those standards on their website(s).  In the end, we’ll all have a bigger, stronger, and more secure Internet. 

Please join us in this work!


Image credit : janicetea on Unsplash

The post Introducing our Open Standards Everywhere project – securing web servers in 2020! appeared first on Internet Society.

TDYR 386 – Celebrating 10 Years of the iPad – what do I think about it?

It was 10 years ago, on January 27, 2010, that Steve Jobs stood on stage and announced the iPad. In this episode I reflect on all the ways that I personally have found the iPad to be useful (including curling!). What do YOU think about the iPad? Have you found it useful? If so, how? If not, what didn’t work for you? Links I referred to in the article: - https://twitter.com/stevesi/status/1221853721363013632?s=21 - https://daringfireball.net/2020/01/the_ipad_awkwardly_turns_10 [Note: this episode was planned entirely on an iPad (using MindNode to create a mind map), recorded on an iPhone, and then uploaded to SoundCloud using an iPad.]

Call for Participation – ICANN DNSSEC and Security Workshop at ICANN67, Cancun, Mexico (Featured Blog)

The ICANN Security and Stability Advisory Committee (SSAC) and the Internet Society Deploy360 Programme are planning a DNSSEC and Security Workshop during the ICANN67 meeting held from 07-12 March 2020 in Cancun, Mexico. The original DNSSEC Workshop has been a part of ICANN meetings for many years and has provided a forum for both experienced and new people to meet, present, and discuss current and future DNSSEC deployments. More...

Call for Participation – ICANN DNSSEC and Security Workshop at ICANN67, Cancun, Mexico (Featured Blog)

The ICANN Security and Stability Advisory Committee (SSAC) and the Internet Society Deploy360 Programme are planning a DNSSEC and Security Workshop during the ICANN67 meeting held from 07-12 March 2020 in Cancun, Mexico. The original DNSSEC Workshop has been a part of ICANN meetings for many years and has provided a forum for both experienced and new people to meet, present, and discuss current and future DNSSEC deployments. More...

Call for Participation — ICANN DNSSEC and Security Workshop at ICANN67, Cancun, Mexico (Featured Blog)

More...

TDYR 385 – My 4 Words for 2020

Since 2010, I've started the new year with a blog post about my 3 or 4 themes or aspirations for the new year. This year I've published that at https://www.danyork.com/2020/01/my-4-words-for-2020.html - and this episode talks more about what I'm hoping to do in 2020.

TDYR 384 Failing at NaPodPoMo A Second Time

Recorded back on December 1, 2019, this episode recaps how and why I failed at "National Podcast Post Month" (NaPodPoMo) a second time. I was SO prepared... I had outlines... I had a whole month of episodes planned out... I just hadn't counted on one thing...

My 4 Words for 2020

2020-3-wordsAs I have for every year since 2010 (see list), I decided to start out 2020 with four words that are aspirations for the "themes" of my activities in this next year.

In truth... this 2020 post is really just a re-do of the 2019 post - read that one first. Basically, it's the same with one addition.

HEALTH

Still working on this. Doing some more exercise and trying to reduce the amount of carbs and sugar. Let's see what happens.

VOICE

Still want to work on this. I had a period in November 2019 where I tried with NaPodPoMo to get more content out there, at least in audio form.

FRIENDSHIPS

Still struggling to figure out the best path to connecting with people locally... trying a few different paths... but it's proving to be a bit challenging in the midst of our modern lives.

FRENCH

One more concrete goal for 2020 is to build on that "P.S." I had in 2019 and actually learn a bit more Français! In 2020 I've signed up for some face-to-face French classes with a local (Vermont) organization, and I'm also planning to put some time into some software and apps. We'll see!

What about you? What are you thinking about for 2020?

 

An audio version is available: