Alternate DNS Servers

Ashley Bischoff22 Comments

The other day, my Internet connection went down — well, I didn’t see it go down but, when I got back from work that day, I couldn't browse anywhere. And, what would often help in the past would be to reboot my cable modem; so, I tried that about three or four times (and, really, I should have caught on after the second time). Comcast hasn’t been incredibly reliable for me — they tend to go down every couple months — and I just chalked this up to their usual ineptness.

I then noticed a curiosity — my IM client was still online. And I could still read my mail. But I couldn't browse the web (whaa?). I wondered for a moment whether Firefox was acting up and so I tried loading an ftp client to test my connection. (You thought I might load IE for that? Not if I can help it ;).) Sure enough, FileZilla couldn't connect anywhere either. Then it hit me: my DNS had probably gone wonky. That would explain why I couldn't browse anywhere but my most common Internet apps still held up — those ip addresses were cached by my OS.

At that point, I ran “ipconfig /all” and then pinged the DNS servers to which I was assigned. To no surprise, they both timed out. Then, on a hunch, I tried loading Google and I was actually able to make it there (since I suppose its ip address was one of those in my cache). I then tried searching for “alternate DNS servers”. There were quite a few hits but, of course, I couldn’t see any of them since those sites weren’t in my existing DNS cache (d’oh!). It then dawned on me that I could view the Google Cache of those pages; and, while the pages probably wouldn't look pretty, that would hopefully allow me to get the info I needed.

Indeed, Google Cache worked nicely and I found some alternate DNS servers that I could use. I popped those in my settings and I was up and running again. However, I realize now that I could have made things easier on myself by keeping a few spare DNS servers on hand — before they actually went down. In any case, while there are dozens of DNS servers which are suitable, some that were mentioned consistently were the 4.2.2.x series (4.2.2.1 through 4.2.2.6).

I did an nslookup on those ip addresses and they came back as Genuity.net and GTEI.net servers. Perhaps ironically, I can’t load either of those domains right now, otherwise I’d include a sentence about who each of those companies are ;). But, with such low-numbered ip addresses, I presume they’re of some importance within the InterWeb. In any case, one of the comments on Digg.com [*] offers these instructions for adding DNS servers in case you haven’t done that kind of thing before:

Click on “My Computer”. Click on “My Network Places”. Click on “View Connections”. Right click on the connection that supports your Internet connection and go to “Properties”. Double click on the Internet Protocol TCP/IP option. Make sure “Use the following DNS server address” is selected, and input the above recommended DNS.

To check go to “Start > Run > “cmd” ”. Type in “ipconfig /all” and you should see the DNS you input where it says “DNS”.

[*] On a side note, what is Digg, anyway? Pages within digg.com have been coming up in my search results more frequently recently but I can't quite wrap my head around what the site is about. Something about folksonomies, I’m guessing.

Anyway, before adding those DNS servers, you may as well ping each of them to see which of them are fastest for you. If you go through all six of them, just pick (say) the two with the lowest ping times. Granted, it’s all a matter of milliseconds but every little bit helps ;).

Good One, Mailman!

Ashley Bischoff6 Comments

While I was in England earlier this month, we stopped in a Sainsbury’s to pick up some goodies. I think Adrian wanted some Hobnobs and I wanted to find some more Marmite since I was running low.

I don’t think Adrian found Hobnobs there but he did pick up several packs of Aeros. And, I got some goodies as well. I found the Marmite which I was looking for and I also picked up a couple chocolate bars, one Lindt 85% Chocolate bar and one Nestle Double Chocolate bar (which has “pieces of pure roasted cocoa encased in creamy milk chocolate”). So, I’d say it was a successful trip. However, the unsuccessful (read: bone-headed) part came next — I forgot to pack those when at the end of the trip.

I was flying out before either my brother or my parents and I was hoping that one of them might take my forgotten goodies with them and then mail them to me. As it turns out, I just happened to check my back patio today and I found a package waiting for me. (Sometimes the post office or UPS will drop off packages there, which is usually handy since the patio is enclosed with a fence and any packages there aren’t viewable from the parking lot.) However, I also normally keep the blinds which face the patio closed. So, either the driver would need to leave a delivery slip or I’d just have to check manually.

UPS is good enough to leave a slip on my front door when they leave a package at the back and so does the post office… most of the time. But, they left no slip this time and it was only by chance that I saw the package — I was opening the blinds to let some sun in and I noticed the package there. I opened it and discovered my goodies inside (whee!) but I then took a closer look at the package itself. The postage-sticker in the top-right corner had already become yellowed from sitting out in the sun. And, I then noticed the postmark — April 5th (last Tuesday).

I’m still not sure when the package arrived, but I'm guessing that it could have arrived on Friday (on the early side) or Monday (at the latest). So, the package was sitting outside for two days at least and I had no idea it was out there. Now, were this a package full of books or clothes, that would have been harmless. But, my mind soon turned to the chocolate inside. I gingerly opened the box and pulled out the first bar, the Lindt, which was mostly solid (whew). However, I was not so lucky with the Nestle Double Chocolate bar — as I lifted it from the package, it wilted in my hands.

“Well, it should still taste the same”, I thought to myself. So, I just put both bars in the fridge to reharden. In some ways, this is the same problem as having cookies right out of the oven — they look so tempting but they just need to cool for a little while before they’re ready for eating. And I knew that trying to eat the bars in their current state just wouldn’t help at all. But, I suppose it’s already been over a week since I got back from the trip and I should be able to wait one more day before diving in ;).

Meetup Introduces Fees

Ashley Bischoff1 Comment

Meetups can be great fun but I’ve often wondered how Meetup Inc planned to pay its bills. I mean, surely the cost of bandwidth alone would be significant for them. Well, now we have our answer: monthly group fees. Granted, the fees are only charged to organizers (and not participants) but they’re not exactly cheap — if you’re an existing organizer, you can get a special 2005 rate of “only” $9/month, while new organizers will be stuck with paying $19/month (as will existing organizers after 2005, presumably).

I understand that companies have a right to make a profit, but I’m not sure this is the right way to go about this. That $9/month might be enough to make an organizer think twice about continuing his/her group if his/her group is only puttering along. And, say you have a movie fan that's thinking about organizing a movie fan Meetup. He could either pay the $19/month to get the group started or he could put that money towards a Netflix account instead. One choice has uncertain success while the other offers a stack of DVDs in one’s mailbox every month :-/.

In some ways, this reminds me of the debacle when Six Apart changed the licensing terms for Movable Type last spring. The Six Apart guys probably sought an increase in revenue (which is fine) but they dove in head first which turned a lot of people off. (I still think that Six Apart's move to start charging for non-commercial use of Movable Type was one of the best things to ever happen to WordPress.)

But, getting back to Meetup, they offer a separate FAQ on their decision to add fees where they ask the question I had mind: “Why don’t you increase the advertising on the site?”, to which they reply “If we tried to get most of our revenue from advertising, we'd spend too much time serving advertisers, and not enough time serving you.”. The words sound benign enough but I can't help but wonder how adding fees is “serving” me more than adding some ads to the site. Concerns aside, I hope Meetup Inc pulls through. I’ve rather enjoyed the recent WordPress Meetups in particular and I wouldn’t want those to go away. Perhaps they’ll take a cue from Six Apart and revise their new licensing plans.

(Via: Asymptomatic)

Update 04-14: In a Slashdot story on this subject, several commenters pointed out some free alternatives to Meetup — EventWiki (which looks a bit sparse), My People Connection (which only has 17 cities) and MEETin.org (which looks promising).

Target Can’t Keep Their Shelves Stocked

Ashley Bischoff2 Comments

I stopped by Target this evening to pick up a few things and I figured it would be a routine trip. My shopping list wasn’t terribly out of the ordinary but I wasn’t very successful…

  • Full spectrum light bulbs, 75 watt — I prefer the lighting of full spectrum light bulbs and I was running low on 75 watt bulbs (though I had plenty of 60 watt bulbs). Well, what do you know — Target also had plenty of 60 watt bulbs (and even 100 watt bulbs) but no full spectrum 75 watt bulbs.

  • Natural peanut butter, creamy — I've become somewhat of a peanut butter fiend and I probably go through a jar a week. I often have to pick up one or two more jars when I make a trip to Target. So, I walked over to Aisle One in search of creamy natural peanut butter — no such luck. Sure, they had Natural Peanut Butter with Honey and, as tasty as that sounded, I didn’t really want the extra sugar. And, they even had regular Natural Peanut Butter but it was the crunchy kind.

  • Scrubbie brush for the sink at work — our new office at work now has a sink and I was thinking that I could use it to clean my glass at the end of the day. (I have a glass which I keep filled with water and I just clean it in the bathroom at the moment.) Target let me down here as well. They had a couple scrubbie brushes but they were all cyan and I couldn’t bring myself to buy a cyan scrubbie brush (would black have been too much to ask?).

  • Toothbrush — my old toothbrush was looking a little scraggly and I figured I should opt for a new one. And, as usually is the case, it was mostly a guessing game once I got to the toothbrush aisle — they have about a hundred varieties and all kinds of numbers (what the heck does “soft 40” mean anyway?) and I ended up picking one that kinda resembled my old one.

I had four things on my list and could only buy one of them. Come on Target, get your act together, eh? Among other things, I’ll now have to ration my peanut butter intake as I think I'm on my last jar (and about halfway through it, at that). I have half a mind to take my business elsewhere but it seems that the other major supermarkets have adopted those silly cards and, privacy concerns aside, I don’t want those cluttering my wallet.

Getting strtotime() Errors in WordPress When You Try to Write Pages?

Ashley Bischoff2 Comments

I was getting some odd errors when I tried to write a new Page in WordPress (even though it endedup working). “Pages”, if you aren’t familiar with them, Pages are static pages within your site such as a Contact Me page or an Accessibility Statement. Anyhow, I discovered that if you try to create a new page — and if you're running PHP5 — you get this error:

Warning: strtotime() [function.strtotime]: Called with an empty time parameter. in /home/username/public_html/wordpress/ wp-includes/template-functions-links.php on line 55

There’s a bug report on this issue and it’s already been fixed. Well, it's been fixed in the codebase and it’ll presumably make it into the next release of WordPress (1.51). But if you want the fix now, you can modify edit-page-form.php on your own; it’s just a two-line change and you can copy-n-paste the new lines from the changeset attached to that bug.