Author: Jason Dunn

Why You Can’t Trust Your DNS Records To The Planet

Decoder ring: I’m “Customer” and the technicians are from The Planet, the company that hosts my Web sites.

Please wait while we find an agent to assist you…
You have been connected to David G.
David G: Thank you for contacting The Planet Customer ServiceTeam! How may I assist you today? Would you be interested in seeing the weekly promotions that we are having?
Customer: Hi there…
Customer: My site, www.zunethoughts.com, isn’t loading – it seems like a DNS issue
Customer: The other sites on my server are loading fine
David G: Can you verify your username and last 4 of your password please?
Customer: I was wondering if you might have any ideas?
Customer: sure….
Customer: username: **************
Customer: password: ****
David G: Let me transfer you to our Support Team. They will be able to point you in the right direction for a solution. One moment please Thank you for choosing The Planet!
David G has left the session.
Please wait while we find an agent from the Technical Support department to assist you.
You have been connected to Michael W.
Michael W: Hello, how may I assist you?
Customer: Are you able to see what I said earlier in this chat?
Michael W: Yes, one moment please.
Michael W: There was a problem with many of the DNS zones in our name servers. This caused some domain records not to resolve. I ahve republished your zone which should be ready some time after 6AM CST. I do apologize for any issues this may have caused. Continue reading Why You Can’t Trust Your DNS Records To The Planet

Not Enough Hours in the Day

There just aren’t enough hours in the day! I want so badly to get the rest of my Japan photos edited, but I just haven’t had the time. Or more accurately, I’ve technically had the time but have filled it with other things – like preparing to leave for Seattle tomorrow, working on my review of the Orb Audio speakers (here’s a hint: THEY KICK COMPLETE AND TOTAL ASS), and certainly wasting some time here and there (my brain can only take so much!). I’m off to the MVP Summit, which lasts Monday through Thursday – it seems like it’s getting longer every year. I’m hanging out in Seattle until Friday night to get in some meetings with Microsoft and HTC on Friday…although as per usual, I’m leaving it a bit late to fill my calendar. 😉

Looks Like I Picked The Right DSLR

Since picking up the Nikon D300 a few months back, I’ve been constantly amazed at how well it functions, and how superb the images look – specifically ISO performance. I’m generally not the type of person that needs my choices validated by another person, but when it comes to DSLRs I still have much to learn. I was also initially on the fence about whether or not the D300 would be worth it because the D200 was an extremely impressive camera. In fact, more than one person told me that I should keep shooting with my D200…so I was pleased to see Phil Askey from dpreview.com come to this conclusion about the D300:

“My biggest problem writing this conclusion has been picking out the D300’s weak points. The usefulness of Live View would certainly be improved with an articulating LCD monitor (although I’m sure Nikon would argue that this could compromise the integrity of the body), auto white-balance is poor in artificial light (although this isn’t anything unique to the D300) and there’s still no true mirror lock-up feature. But really, these few niggles are really the only things we could pick out as criticism. There is price, but sometimes the best products demand a premium and the D300 is no exception. Nikon’s biggest problem now will be bettering the D300; it raises the bar to a new high, and represents the state of the art despite strong competition from the likes of Canon, Sony and Olympus. There’s simply no better semi-professional digital SLR on the market.”

I’m post this here on my personal blog rather than Digital Home Thoughts because I don’t want to upset those Canon people. 😉

Green-Screen Scanning Makes For Easier Object Extraction

[The following is re-published from Digital Home Thoughts – if you’re going to link to this, please link there instead – thank you!]

I’m working on my first book project – one where I’m creating a vacation scrapbook on 13″ x 11″ pages inside FotoFusion and will export the JPEGs then get them printed up as full-bleed pages in a Blurb hardcover book. This is my first attempt at this type of a project, but I have high hopes it will turn out really nicely.

One challenge I had was trying to scan the little pieces of paper we brought back that weren’t perfectly rectangular, or things I wanted to layer over each other – plane tickets, train tickets, etc. When I scanned them, it was typically off-white on off-white (the background of my scanner). Even using Photoshop Elements’ Magic Extractor, I was unable to properly extract the objects – I tried tweaking the settings, tried masking it myself with the magic wand, etc. Nothing worked because the background colour of my scanner lid was just too close to the colour of my objects. I was beginning to think I wasn’t going to be able to accomplish the visual design I wanted. Continue reading Green-Screen Scanning Makes For Easier Object Extraction

How To Change the Spell Check Language in Windows Live Mail

On one hand, Microsoft’s Windows Live Mail client is a surprisingly good email client. On the other hand it’s completely baffling how/why they put Windows Mail in Windows Vista to replace Outlook Express, then stopped developing it (there haven’t been any improvements in over a year) and put out Windows Live Mail instead. Regardless, if you’re using Windows Mail, you should probably switch to Windows Live Mail – it’s a much better email program. I use it for my personal email – I have Outlook configured on my main dual-monitor workstation for my day to day work email, but on the weekends or evenings I like to check my personal email without having to fire up Outlook.

Windows Live Mail is great for that – except that it has an irritating limitation regarding spell checking. In short, it only spell-checks in US English – even if you have Word installed and Canadian English is selected as the default language. Silly! I asked if there was a way to change this in the Windows Live Mail newsgroup, and a helpful fellow named Ronald Sommer responded with the solution:

“Just for the record, it’s not an ‘errant file number’ – 1033 is Microsoft’s code for US English. 2057 is the equivalent for British English. If you’d prefer Canadian to British, change 1033 to 4105.

2. Close down WLMail.
3. Use Windows Explorer (or My Computer) to find a folder called Windows
Live\Mail\Proof\prf0009\2 in your Program files folder.
4. In there should be a file called spell.ini.
In XP, right-click on it and select Open with. Find Notepad in the list of
options, click on it and then on OK. The file will open; change 1033 to
2057, then File > Exit. When you are asked whether you want to save the
changes, click Yes.
In Vista, click start and type notepad. When the list opens, right-click
notepad and select “Run As Administrator”. Then select File > Open, find the
spell.ini file as above and amend it.
5. Restart WLMail and see if your spell check is working.”

No, I don’t know why he started at the #2 – but his solution works so I don’t care. 😉

No, We Never Experienced This in Japan

My buddy Adam sent me this – I don’t know if that’s Japan, Korea, China, or someplace else, but we never saw anything like this in Japan. That’s a good thing too, because if someone started pushing me like that, I’d start throwing some elbows! 😉

Winner For Most-Creepy Online Ad Ever

On the left is what you see when the ad loads, on the right is what you see when the ad loads. Dermitage, you’ve officially made the most creepy ad I’ve ever seen. What kind of marketing executive would approve something so…bizarre?

(and yeah, it bothers me that the ad on the right is one pixel shorter than the one on the left)

We’re Back! We’re Live!

It’s time to kick ass and chew bubble gum – and I’m fresh out of bubble gum. All Thoughts Media sites are back online, and here’s the explanation of what happened.

I Needed a Laugh…and Found It

Since my past 48 hours have been pretty hellish (and the smell of burning flesh continues), I needed a laugh and found it in this incredibly campy video that’s being featured on the YouTube home page.

If you can stomach it, pay attention at the 1:16 mark where the woman wearing green practically vanishes. Hilarious! Didn’t the people making this know that if you’re doing a green screen video, your actors shouldn’t wear green? 😉 In other parts her legs look like they’re stuck in a transporter from the original Star Trek series. I can’t tell if this is a parody of some of the political videos we’ve seen (such as from Obama Girl) from or a truly earnest but off-key group of ladies who really do support McCain. Politically, I lean more toward the right, but with friends like these, McCain doesn’t need enemies. 😉 Earnest and quite musically good? Found here. I was always quite impressed by Huckabee.

American politics are so much more interesting than Canadian politics!

What a $@!*&ing Crappy First Day Back at Work

It’s so nice to be home – we got back on Friday night, went to bed early, and at 7am on Saturday morning I was up and feeling great. Then by the afternoon I was barely able to stay awake – it’s been hard adjusting to the 15 hour timezone difference. What’s even harder is having easily the worst first day back at work that I’ve had after a vacation – ever. What happened you might ask? Server hack – again! This time someone decided to be really nasty and not just add some spam links to our site – they took down our forums and put a graphic taking credit for the hack. Jorj, Janak, Darius, and Fabrizio have spent hours today trying to get things up and running again – it’s pretty incredible how much damage one person can do. It’s been an ugly day, and I’m stressed out and angry about what happened. I love what I do for work, but sometimes I wonder if the headache is really worth it…<sigh>

All Thoughts Media sites are currently down and I have no ETA on when they’ll be back up.