We here at Prairie Haven live on Little Waumandee Creek in Buffalo County, Wisconsin. We’ve always wondered about where the word “Waumandee” comes from and what it means.
Listen to these blackbirds and see if you hear them saying “waumandee!” the way I do. Maybe that’s where the word comes from?
This is a scratchpad post about the battery power-storage system. Another in the “Prairie Haven Operator’s Manual” series of posts.
Right now there are just a series of documentation diagrams that I made — I’ll add explanations as time permits.
Just for fun — here’s a picture of the Submarine Control Room Command Console that shows off the three inverters at the heart of the system. Continue reading
This is a scratchpad post to remind myself how to decontaminate our well the next time it tests positive for bacteria. I bet we have to do this every time we get flood runoff, but I’m willing to be proven wrong. Related post: Winterize the RV
I decided to compare some digital recorders for the purposes of recording soundscapes here at Prairie Haven. I’ve got two of them, bought at different times for different purposes and I was curious to see how much different they were and whether it was worth carrying one of them instead just using my phone. The nice thing about the phone is that it’s with me all the time, but I’d start carrying one of the others if they were better. Continue reading
Exactly five years ago today, I published this little rant about the growth rates projected for the new “generic top level domains” that were being introduced by ICANN at the time. You know, domain names that end in things like .run or .lol or .bot (yep, those are all real alternatives to .com or .org if you’d like to strike out into new territory).
I decided to update it with the way things have turned out. Continue reading
We’ve been noticing that the Ranger has been pretty tough on our trails here at Prairie Haven. Our pet theory is that the EV (plug in electric) version of the Ranger is quite a bit heavier than a normal one and that the standard (narrow, aggressive-tread) tires add to the problem.
The Mission: wider tires for the Ranger EV
We’ve just mounted four Carlysle 25x11x12 Multi-Trac (574369) turf tires . These are a little wider than the standard tires and have a much less aggressive tread pattern. Here’s Marcie on her test drive — early returns are positive.
A scratchpad post to remind myself how to configure a Kontakt instrument so that light guides and knobs will show up correctly in Komplete Kontrol. There’s a video walkthrough at the end of this post.
Here’s a picture of the destination – the light guides appear on the keyboard and Komplete Kontrol knobs are mapped to the patch in two banks.
This one’s going to get the least hits ever, I bet.
I transferred the authoritative nameserver of a domain from Godaddy to Cloudflare and things got stuck. The NS propagated pretty well, but it never got picked up by Google or Verisign’s public DNS (check with https://www.whatsmydns.net). Since my ISP uses Google’s 8.8.8.8 server for customer DNS, I couldn’t reach my sites and mail got goofy.
The problem turned out to be outdated DS records that lingered at Godaddy after I tried their DNSSEC product, had all sorts of problems and turned it off. DS records aren’t deleted automatically in that process — they need to be deleted manually on the Domain Details/Settings tab. Who knew? Why should I have to know?? Continue reading
This is a scratchpad post to remind myself how to put together a machine-learning system on a Mac. This won’t work on a PC as some of the software is Mac-only. In this configuration a WiiMote (input device) is connected to Wekinator (real time interactive machine-learning software) through OSCulator (OSC bridging and routing software). Wekinator outputs are mapped to MIDI to drive Ableton Live through another instance of OSCulator.
Here is a block diagram (clicking on it makes it bigger)
This is a scratchpad post for links to Drone articles that have caught my eye
Click here – to get back to the “Aerial Favorites” page on PrairieHaven.com Continue reading
Samantha Dickinson Tweeted this photo from the ICANN meeting today and tagged it #VolunteerFatigue. I’m living proof.
Let’s say that each of those 7 working groups needs 4 volunteers — that’s almost 30 people. Just from the ccNSO. Just for upcoming working groups. Never mind the GSNO, ALAC, SSAC and GAC. A rough extrapolation puts the total required at over 100 volunteer community members just to handle the IANA/Accountability/Transition work.
ICANN is dangerously thin at the bottom of the bottom-up process. Are there that many people with the experience/time/expertise/will available? What happens to all the other Working Group work in the meantime?
There’s a difference between being a customer and being a client. People on both ends of a relationship always get into trouble when they don’t understand this.
A customer – is always right
A client – expects to hear the truth, especially when it’s unpleasant
This is true in professional relationships. Doctors, lawyers, accountants are expected to provide good advice in their professional relationship — but their customers are always right. Reports should be: on time, of high quality, and delivered at a fair price. Continue reading
This post is a heads up to all uber-geeks about a terrific research initiative to try to figure out causes and mitigation of name-collision risk. There’s a $50,000 prize for the first-place paper, a $25,000 prize for the second place paper and up to five $10,000 prizes for third-place papers. That kind of money could buy a lot of toys, my peepul. And the presentation of those papers will be in London — my favorite town for curry this side of India. Interested? Read on. Here’s a link to the research program — you can skip the rest of this post and get right to the Real Deal by clicking here:
I love toiling at the bottom of the bottom-up ICANN process. And it’s also quite entertaining to watch senior ICANN “managers” running wild and free on the international stage. The disconnect between those two things reminds me of the gulf that usually exists between the faculty and administration in higher education institutions. Both sides think they run the joint. That same gulf exists in ICANN and, while I was hopeful for a while that the new guy (Fadi Chehadi) was going to grok the fullness, it’s starting to slide into the same old pattern. Continue reading
So once upon a time I worked at a terrific ISP in St. Paul, MN. Back then, before the “grand bargain” that led to the shared hallucination known as ICANN, there were several pretty-credible providers of DNS that later (somewhat disparagingly) became known as “alternate” root providers.
In those days, we offered our customers a choice. You could use our “regular” DNS that pointed at what later became the ICANN-managed root, or you could use our “extended” DNS servers that added the alternates. No big deal, you choose, your mileage may vary, if you run into trouble we’d suggest that you switch back to “regular” and see if things go better, let us know how you like it, etc.
Well. Fast forward almost 20 years… Continue reading
