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
Are projections of registration growth in generic top-level domains realistic?
Intro
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
Etude: November 2017 – Challenge: Two Minute Romantic Comedy Trailer – Hans Zimmer Masterclass
November 2017 – “Romantic Comedy Challenge”
We were provided instructions and a voice track (narration and character-dialog) by an imaginary director who is looking for a score for romcom trailer. The “director” set a one-week deadline! I sweated this one a bit, given that this is also Fall Projects season here at Prairie Haven.
Pretty darn cool challenge. This was by far the most complex mix I’ve done in quite a while, 26 tracks across 13 scenes (in 2 minutes!).
Some fun! Here’s the link to the 2 minute trailer.
Installing Flow-Rite battery watering on a Polaris Ranger EV
Definitely a narrow-audience scratchpad post. We love our electric Polaris Ranger EV utility vehicle here at Prairie Haven. But putting water in the batteries is not a lot of fun. Messy, tedious, slow, etc. So today’s project was to put a battery watering system in.
UPDATE UPDATE: ONE YEAR LATER
Everything is fine and we still heartily endorse this gizmo. Battery watering now happens once a month. Continue reading
Wide tires on a Polaris Ranger EV
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.
Push custom light guides and knobs from Kontakt to Komplete Kontrol
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.
Scratchpad post: clearing up a failed nameserver transfer between Godaddy and Cloudflare
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
Talk: Restoring a Prairie Haven with renewable power
NEWS
July 1, 2016
For Immediate Release
Wings Over Alma welcomes Mike O’Connor to present:
Restoring a Prairie Haven with Renewable Power
WiiMote -> OSCulator -> Wekinator -> OSCulator -> Ableton Live
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)
Electrical repair of Power Trac PT-1850
A scratchpad post as I diagnose and repair an electrical fault in our Power Trac PT-1850. Pretty sparse right now, just starting. Continue reading
MySQL repair or replacement on OSX Server (Yosemite)
Another scratchpad post. This one is a reminder of what I did to repair MySQL on OSX Server after the upgrade from Mavericks to Yosemite kinda broke things.
I was working to solve two problems: intermittent “unable to connect to database” errors on all our WordPress sites, and the dreaded “unable to update PID” errors when starting and stopping MySQL. Continue reading
Drone links
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
Life after ICANN
Several of my ICANN pals have asked “how are you doing??” recently and I decided to write a little blog post to make it easier to describe the current sorry state of affairs.
Basically, dropping the ICANN stuff has freed up a lot of time. What follows is a sampling of how I’m filling it. Continue reading
Adding SSL to my OSX server
I decided it was time to make a little statement and add “always on” encryption to this completely innocuous site. The online equivalent of moving a lemonade stand inside a bank vault. Now when you read about refurbishing my car, or fixing a seed drill, you’ll be doing it over an encrypted connection.
This is another scratchpad post for folks who run an OXS Server and want to use a multi-domain UC (unified communications) SSL certificate. The rest of you can stop here — this is probably the most boring post of all time. Continue reading
More bottom!
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?