Archive for 2007-03

When Missy arrived at work yesterday, she had a pleasant surprise. The cast and crew of National Treasure 2 were filming scenes at St. John’s church on 16th Street NW. Dave Clark and I headed over in the afternoon to scope it out. It was quite a unique experience to watch everything unfold. The particular sequence they were shooting was more conversational in nature, so there wasn’t much action happening, but the set was still quite alive with activity, especially around the director behind the camera.

I captured some stills with my new Nikon D40 (more on the cam later.) We were even able to meet Justin Bartha (Riley). He’s a nice guy.

Cool day in DC!

On Flickr: Pictures of the set of National Treasure 2 at St. John’s Church in Washington

Missy’s much more detailed perspective

Technorati Tags: national treasure, nt2, set, movie, paramount, washington, dc, nicholas cage, diane kruger, jon voight, justin bartha

Smashing Magazine recently posted an excellent article citing the best 42 design and technology magazines to keep an eye on. This pool certainly contains many A-list sites that are very common reads in the design community. Several on the list, like A List Apart and SitePoint, are veterans of the trade. Other magazines, like Vitamin, may be younger but have similar clout.

Interestingly, there are a couple of dormant sites in the list. One such site, Treehouse Magazine, hasn’t produced any real content in about a year. However, the authors are producing content fairly regularly at Particletree and have developed a really nice product, Wufoo. I guess Treehouse made the list because of the quality of content still available on the site, even though there isn’t any new content.

I had heard of nearly all the sites listed and I quickly checked out the sites that were new to me. Without a doubt, Smashing Magazine has collected quite a list. In fact, if you aren’t already reading Smashing Magazine, go ahead and add them to your feed reader. It’s nearly always great stuff. Of the sites listed in the article, I’d say you should hit them all to get a feel for them. Here’s a quick personal top three:

• A List Apart
• Vitamin
• Digital Web Magazine

And I’d like to add another site: Godbit.com. It’s an excellent resource for anyone into web standards and design and it’s a great community of believers.

If you plan on keeping up with all the trends in this industry, stop planning on it. You’ll never be able to take it all in. But you can stay in the upper tier of produced content by sticking to quality sites like those in Smashing’s list.

The List of 42 Design and Technology Magazines to Read
Smashing Magazine

Technorati Tags: smashing magazine, web, design, tech, technology, sites, resource, develop, UI, UX, a list apart, vitamin, particletree, digital web magazine, godbit

Missy and I went to the doctor for the week 13 checkup and first sonogram today. It was amazing to see the baby! For the first thirty seconds the baby was quite still and we listened to the 168 bpm heartbeat. Then the baby “woke up” and started kicking and sliding around and for the next five minutes we watched that kid wiggle and squirm and dance. There is no shortage of energy there!

What fun!

The baby blog should be running very soon.

Technorati Tags: baby, sonogram, pregnancy

Recently, I grabbed a sweet new NZXT Lexa case from NewEgg, using a gift cert from my parents. (Thanks Mom and Dad!) After all the rebates, the total cost is $110 on it including shipping. The first machine I ever owned was purchased in 1999 for college. The old case was the only remaining original part on my machine. Over the years, I’ve upgraded every other component, some multiple times, but I always decided on moving up the chain technologically, never aesthetically.

Not that my machine is at the top tier of tech specs today, but I finally decided to get rid of the 7-year-old case in favor of something more pleasing to the eye. What I found is that cases have changed a lot over the years! My new case, the NZXT Lexa, is beautiful! The case is definitely edgy, but it has subtle elegance. It’s also more quiet, has larger capacity and makes hardware upgrades simple through screwless PCI mounts and drive rails.

I decided to snag a few before-and-after images of the hardware exchange. I’ve had a few other parts from previous upgrades stored away and I found that with my old case, I now have enough parts to build a second box using all the old gear. That machine will now be running Ubuntu Server and used as a project box for me to toy with various systems and applications, like Asterisk, Smoothwall and a plethora of fun web applications.

View all the images in the Flickr set.

Before:

After:

NZXT Lexa
NewEgg

Technorati Tags: case, upgrade, nzxt, lexa, newegg

Virb is now live!

Virb is rad!

This social network is not like the social network you’re used to. Virb is the social network that changes what we know and liberates us from what we’ve known.

I have thoroughly enjoyed my experience in the beta phase and, now that Virb is wide open to all, I am proud to recommend this lovely app to my friends and readers.

It’s time to sign up for Virb. Hit me up when you get there. We’ll be friends.

Virb
My Virb Profile

Technorati Tags: virb, social, network

According to Netcraft, a popular domain registrar, RegisterFly, recently went offline “amid allegations that the former president and CEO misused company funds.”

This is unsettling to me. It makes me wonder: if an ICANN accredited registrar can go down like this with no real regard to their customers, could it happen to me? Apparently, ICANN is on the frontlines of this one, fighting to get the customer records and ensure that each registered domain is protected from being snatched away from rightful owners. But it’s still tough for all those caught in the middle.

I’m with one of the most reputable registrars / web hosts in the world. And I’m not sure what RegisterFly’s reputation was prior to this breakdown. Given the scope of the matter, it would seem that no company is immune to this type of problem. Rigid standards for accountability in finance and business practice would go a long way to help the matter, but there are loopholes to every system and some executives would simply find the flaw and exploit it.

I hope I never experience an outage like this with my registrar. And I hope ICANN makes an example of RegisterFly.

Technorati Tags: registerfly, netcraft, ICANN, registrar, domain, company

This podcast is the first in a series of podcasts on security. In this episode, I’m joined by co-host Zack Rippy and we discuss the topic of cryptography with particular regard to the encryption of communications and data storage. This podcast was developed for Binary Church and the branding follows suit.

Download | Listen Now

Show Notes

0:00
Intro

2:40
Zack Profile

3:33
Overview of Security (David)

5:00
Reasons for Encryption (Zack)

12:16
Methods of Encrypting Data Stores (Zack)

19:30
Methods of Encrypting Electronic Communication (David)

27:20
Public Key Cryptography (Zack)

37:06
Final Remarks

40:24
Addendum

Links

Microsoft Windows EFS
TrueCrypt
Encryption
Cryptography
+ Public Key Cryptography
+ PGP
+ OpenPGP
+ GnuPG
+ Enigmail for Mozilla Thunderbird
+ GPG4WIN / GPGOL for Microsoft Outlook

David’s Public Key
Zack’s Public Key

Runtime: 44:57
Size: 21MB
Bitrate: 64kbps
Codec: MP3

Technorati Tags: security, encryption, cryptography, ciphers, truecrypt, EFS, PGP, GPG, email, communication