The Traveling Technoid


A safe(?) haven for those technically inclined souls who believe that Common Sense, Free Will, a decent multimeter, and a Weller soldering station still have a firm place in this world. To put it more simply, I've dedicated this part of my site to those who are firm believers in the 'Freedom to Tinker!'

"...What happened to home-brewed and breadboarded circuitry? Where's the joy of mechanics and electricity, the creation of real things? Who are the tinkerers with a lust for electronics? We've become a nation of appliance operators, who take pride in what we own rather than what we build..." (Cliff Stoll, from his book 'Silicon Snake Oil,' page 75).


Don't Throw Out Your Old Electronic Equipment, Computer Hardware, or Systems!

I maintain contact with a large group of people who make a hobby out of collecting and using older stuff. Many will haul away what you may be getting rid of at no charge whatsoever, or there may be some $$ in it for you.

If you, your company, or your employer is getting ready to dispose of old hardware, and before you decide to send ANY such equipment to the landfill, please drop me an E-mail and let me know what you have and where you are! This holds especially true for military surplus radio and electronic equipment or test gear.

Due to practical considerations (distance from your location, cost of shipping, etc), I cannot guarantee that there will be a home for your old stuff. However, please at least check with me. I may be able to help save your company some trouble and help to keep our landfills that much more empty.

IF YOU'RE CURIOUS about the problem of spam and spammers, click here to visit my anti-spamming page.


Blue Feather FTP Server Port Change

Due to an extreme amount of 'script abuse,' the primary port on Blue Feather's FTP server has been changed from the default 21 to 50021. The anonymous login process has NOT changed.

If you want to access the archive, you will need to make the following changes to your FTP client.

If you use a command-line system...

OLD: ftp.bluefeathertech.com

NEW: ftp.bluefeathertech.com 50021

If you use a web browser (not recommended due to overhead)...

OLD (in the URL bar): ftp://ftp.bluefeathertech.com

NEW: ftp://ftp.bluefeathertech.com:50021

Users of all other FTP clients should consult the documentation for their specific package to determine how to make it address an explicit port on a given host system.

 


Contents

About your host...

About this page...

The Technoid's Code...

The Technoid Tabloid...

TechLinks...

The Wonderful World of Scrounging

If you're curious about the problems of spam and spammers, you can click here for our anti-spamming page.

Real Dalek Sighting in California (where else?)!

Clench your teeth and grit your fists, gang! An actual Dalek sighting has been confirmed in California, specifically in the Bay Area. One of the Traveling Technoid's spys was fortunate enough to catch a photo of the beastie, shown here in all its tin glory (and reproduced by the kind permission of J.D. 'Illiad' Fraser at User Friendly).

Looking for a great ISP in the Puget Sound area?

You need look no further than Blue Feather's upstream provider, Drizzle Northwest. I can assure you they're not paying me for advertising. They don't have to, because I'm so impressed with their service and their support that I've chosen to plug for them all on my own.

They offer dialup and DSL. If you want to self-host, no problem! They'll even let you do your own DNS boxes if you want. In the years that Blue Feather has been connected through them, I've seen maybe 6 hours of down time, total. Their tech and setup support is prompt and helpful, something that is indeed rare in these times.

You need not take my word for it, though. Read the testimonials for yourself.

Think you can trust Verisign? Think again.

Not that long ago, Verisign deliberately broke some important Internet standards in an attempt to profit from typos people make while entering URLs. In doing so, they violated the public trust, and made it much harder to track down spammers. What's worse is that they're proud of what they've done and, despite firm requests from ICANN to reverse the damage, they (initially) refused to back down.

They did eventually back down and disable their SiteFinder "service," under severe public pressure. However, the last word I had was that they were going to start it up again after doing their own laughable "study" which showed (unsurprisingly) that SiteFinder created no problems at all.

Click the 'Verislime' image above for the initial story. Eric Longman has updates at his site. Thanks are due to Pete Seebach and his artist confederate for creating the image above, for making it public domain, and for gathering the initial info on VeriSign's abuses.

They're at it again! 'SiteFinder' to relaunch...

It looks like VeriSlime didn't learn a bloody thing the last time they tried this stunt. According to this article, they're going to try relaunching their SiteFinder "service" in April. (sigh) Marketers...


Last Updated 16-Oct-04, by Bruce Lane