Thoughts on teaching, technology, learning and life in an era of change.

Archive for June, 2007

Trip to Taipei
June 24th, 2007


I am in the process of uploading four galleries of photographs taken in Taipei back in 2002. Shao Ping and I attended her sister’s wedding in Taipei and Kyoto.

Kyoto Photo Galleries
June 17th, 2007


I have finally published a selection of the photographs I took in Kyoto back in 2002. Shao Ping and I attended her sister’s wedding. Shao Chi married Roy and they now live in Los Angeles. It was Autumn in Japan at the time and the colours are quite amazing.

Storms across the Illawarra
June 16th, 2007


A severe low pressure weather system during the days from the 8th June through to the 12th June brought heavy winds, flooding rains and big seas to NSW. On the 9th and 10th June Shao Ping and I drove to Wollongong Harbour and took a number of photographs of the heavy seas battering the coast. We walked across to the breakwater and took a number of images showing the waves crashing across the rock wall and soaking the spectators.

Referrer Spam Part 2
June 16th, 2007

Not long back the stats file for my domain was attacked by referrer spam and the end result of that was my page rank in Google was lowered and my email filtered out by some organisations. I protected the stats files and created a .htacess file to begin bouncing the referrer spam back.

Anyway, I did a whois lookup for all of the domains responsible for the referrer spam and they all have a single Registrar that is
Go Daddy Software Inc and the registrant is Domains By Proxy, Inc.

The individual that owns the Go Daddy Inc company is Bob Parsons. I cannot help but think of Bob from Bob’s Country Bunker in the Blues Brothers movie. He has a blog at www.bobparsons.com. His blog’s banner features a picture of him (the lights are on but no one is at home?), a big motorbike, girls in tank tops, a 4WD and, you guessed it, the star spangled banner. Get the idea?

Domains By Proxy Inc protects the identity of the real owners of the domains. When you visit their web site there are two links on the home page as follows: “If You Are Law Enforcement ~ Click Here” and the other is “For our subpoena policies click here”. It makes you wonder where one should draw the line when it comes to privacy and the rights of the individual. Are they really protecting the privacy of individuals and families or are they actually providing a cover for the owners of web sites that represent the ugly side of the Internet?

Technology tips for teachers and just about anyone…
June 3rd, 2007

I have wanted to do this for some time and at last my little project has a beginning. I have created technology tip sheets in the past and with this project I plan to bring them altogether in a single place. Anyway, the first few tips deal with finding files, searching the Internet and creating slideshows. Explore the tips here.