Odds & Sods

Liveblogging from North Battleford, SK

Well, for those of you not aware, we arrived in North Battleford, SK, early this afternoon after a two-day, sixteen-hour family road trip after a stop in Calgary, AB, to pick-up my sister. We’re here to attend a wedding of a long-time family friend who is the daughter of the lifelong friend of my mom’s.

The trip was mostly uneventful except for a massive thunderstorm and rainshower unlike any I’ve ever seen, somewhere between Cut Knife, SK, and the Battlefords, SK.

We arrived at the Gold Eagle Lodge, got settled in and then joined my grandparents on my mom’s side in their room for good company and drinks. My grandparents treated us to a nice dinner at Boston Pizza. We returned to their room and decided to try our luck at the next door Gold Eagle Casino as the hotel provides each patron with a $10 cash voucher. Plus, upon registration as a card-carrying member of the Saskatchewan Indian Gaming Authority-operated Gold Eagle Casino, you are entitled to an additional complimentary $10 cash voucher. My dad and grandpa scurried away to the slot machines or, more accurately, the video lottery terminal-type (VLT-type) machines where their complimentary vouchers were quickly lost. My mom, sister and I headed over to one of the Blackjack tables where there was a minimum bet of $10 (the one table where the minimum bet was $5 per hand was, fortunately or unfortunately, occupied). We played what seemed like a couple dozen hands over the course of an hour and I ended up walking away with $115, my sister $80 and my mom $60. The way I figure it, Blackjack’s the only decent casino game with any chance of winning anything. It was actually quite fun, albeit a bit nerve-wracking knowing you’re on constantly being “watched” and I learned a cardinal rule:  never touch the cards.

Well, we get more vouchers each night. We’ll play those but not dip into previous night’s winnings or spend any extra and see how we do!

I’ll keep you all updated on our trip as we move forward!

I’m “buzzing” around

I wanted to apologize for the lack of activity around here lately, although I should point out that my lengthy comparative analysis of various free, public authoritative and recursive DNS resolving services has been updated to include yet another new competitor to the mix, DNS Resolvers by Toronto, ON-based easyDNS Technologies. I would encourage everyone to read it - or re-read it, as the case may be.

Nonetheless, I should point out that I’ve been “buzzing” around elsewhere lately, sharing items my Google profile through Google Buzz, their newly launched social-networking micro-blogging application that’s better than Blogger, and the best-kept secret of Google Reader - Google Reader Shared Items. With the help of a browser bookmarklet, it creates a sort of “link blog” of Web clips and snippets along with notes the author chooses to pen. I don’t use a feed reader but this part of Google Reader is magnificent. So, be sure and see what all the “buzz” is about as that is where I am these days!

I’ll still post here infrequently when I decide to write longer-form, essay style blog entries.

Public DNS space getting crowded

An Internet colleague of mine recently wrote about Internet conglomerate Google’s entry into the public DNS space with the launch of Google Public DNS as a standards-compliant alternative to OpenDNS and the DNS services provided by your ISP. While it’s true that Google Public DNS returns standard DNS results and doesn’t use NXDOMAIN substitution, it wasn’t the first public DNS server by any means. Another colleague instant messaged me that he uses free DNS servers provided by Internet backbone provider Level 3 Communications because of their even easier to remember IP addresses. Both the free public DNS services provided by Google Public DNS and Level 3 Communications do return traditional DNS results and do provide a reasonably fast service, they don’t take advantage of recent enhancements in the DNS space, pioneered by OpenDNS and VeriSign Registry’s ill-fated SiteFinder attempt at wildcarding the “.com” and “.net” space at the root-zone level in 2003.

Now, I was an ardent opponent of SiteFinder in 2003, as various Google Web searches will attest, but that’s because it was done at the root-zone level and forced upon Internet users with no net benefit other than to provide an added revenue stream for VeriSign by filling an error page with lots of advertisements when someone hit a non-existent domain. However, what SiteFinder did do was introduce NXDOMAIN substitution to the world.

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Odds & Sods is now on Tumblr

I am somewhat of a blogging pioneer, having personally blogged on a variety of topics ranging from the personal to current events, business and technology news off and on on a variety of platforms since 2000. That last one never really got off the ground although I admire Posterous for its dead simple user interface, custom domains and nice, plain templates. Tumblr just seems to be taking off a little more quickly than Posterous and has much of the same features, including a slick interface and custom domains. So, I’ve decided to go with Tumblr.

My only hope is that I’ll actually have time to start blogging again and make the former Doug’s Blog great once again. I’m hoping to write mainly about business, media, political and technology stories interspersed with a few personal ones as well as some interesting URLs I’ve found on the Web.

So, I hope you’ll “follow” me on this new Web journey. “Tumble” along with me, won’t you!? It should be fun.