By geoff on Thu, 14 Feb, 2013 – 8:37pm.
No point having a soap box if you don't use if occasionally. And no fun always talking about the same thing, so let's take a diversion: winter biking.
Some of you may know that I cycle to work. Some of you know that I do that all year round – regardless of the weather. I love hearing you say “that's quite impressive of you” while your face is saying “really? no. really? You can't be serious. Are you off your rocker?”. Some of you hide it better than others.
Your knee-jerk reaction to the idea is both correct and wrong.
By geoff on Tue, 22 Jan, 2013 – 2:05pm.
We help a lot of charities set up online donation systems. A common question is “should we use CanadaHelps.org or set up our own donation system?”. It's a good question. Let's take a basic look at some of the options.
By geoff on Tue, 16 Oct, 2012 – 2:33pm.
A couple of weeks ago, we got a call at 4pm. Our potential client had heard via e-mail at 3:15pm that their site was getting shut down by Monday and they should make alternative arrangements. It's a proprietary CMS (Content Management System) - no alternatives. Luckily, they had control of their own domain so we could get DNS moved to us. This was Friday.
Saturday morning we went to see what we could move. We hoped to grab a fixed copy of their site at the very least. Their site was already gone. It appears their Provider had gone under.
By geoff on Tue, 12 Jun, 2012 – 9:38am.
For most people, this topic is a lot like cleaning leaves out of the gutter, wiping down the inside of kitchen cupboards, and checking your windshield wiper fluid and tire pressures.
Though the car references are pretty good analogies for today's topic (and reminds me to check my car).
My temptation today is to get on my soapbox, pull out a bible, and have a good ol'fashioned maintenance revival meeting. Although I don't think there has ever been one. There should be.
By geoff on Thu, 3 May, 2012 – 9:58am.
OK folks. Let's admit that the biggest security hole in the typical computer system is you. That's because most people have easy to guess passwords, and use the same one across multiple accounts. Combine this with the fact that it is fairly easy to track where people go, and hackers that get into one of your accounts can often figure out where the others are, and get into those too. Some of the most common passwords around are 'password', 'abc123' and whatever the default for the account was. (In fact, 1.1% of all passwords are either '12345' or '123456'.)
