Need to move my blog.

Oh sad, sad day. Google (the people that bought blogger) have decided that they will no longer support FTP publishing. What this means is that they want you to host your Blog in there cloud which I am not so sure that I want to do. One of the reasons I have loved using the service for so long is it is super easy to publish your data but also to keep control of it on your own servers.

I am currently looking at WordPress and a couple of other fairly easy to use options and will take it from there.As a result my blog may be down for a while during the move.

So long and thanks for the fish.

Leelu's cripplecam under construction

I have setup a proof of concept webcam to keep an eye on the dog. This was a success and I will now start phase 2 of implementing the cripplecam to keep an eye on her.

Watch this space for news!

Facebook woes

Oh Facebook why do you fail so. Today I tried logging in to no avail. For some reason FaceBook seemed convinced that my password was no longer valid. Never to be one run asunder by such siliness I decided to play the game and reset my password.

This is of course where things started getting interesting. Firstly I can't reset my password due to some cute little "Internal error" and secondly if I try loging with any password I am advised my account is unavailable.

Oh well hopefully Facebook get their act togethor soon.

New Twitter profile

I figured it was time to update my Twitter profile. At some stage I might even update the web site.

Quick response from OpenDNS community manager

The good news is that my domain has been correctly clasified in the OpenDNS database and I will no longer be incorectly blocked for people that are using domain filtering.
The interesting thing for me is how quickly companies are responding to comments made on social networks like Twitter. Make no mistake I think this is great news for everyone as all parties benefit.

Benjamin Gay tagged as nudity and pornography by OpenDNS

This is so incredibly annoying. Once again OpenDNS.org has decided to tag my domain BenjaminGay.com as containing Nudity and pornography, something which I can assure you it does not!

Interestingly I thought that OpenDNS might be merely doing a keyword look-up on my surname and proactively tagging it. My other domain name (bengay.ws) which is merely a redirect to benjamingay.com/blog did not exist in the system though so I am interested in finding out what the route cause is here.

Now when I initially started using OpenDNS at home I naturaly looked up my domain name and found it to be tagged. After much mail back and forth and going through the rather slow and painful dispute process at openDNS I was assured that the matter was taken care off. Unfortunately there seems to be a regression here.

In short if you use OpenDNS or even have your own domain I would strongly recommend going to the openDNS site and seeing if your domain name has been incorrectly classified. Of course if it has I would strongly recommend that you voice your dissatisfaction as well.

Web site migration completed

As you might have seen the blog has been down for a while. This has been due to the unfortunate shutdown of Microsoft's internal WinISP team and the subsequent move to Adhost.

Fortunately the migration seems to have gone smoothly and hopefully there will be few problems going forward. If you hit any issues please either leave a comment or drop me an email.

Cheers

New web hosting

Today my site has been moved from Winisp. Hopefully this will be a smooth transition for all..

Site back up

My ISP had some issues with load balancing resulting in my site not being reachable for a few hours. However like the true rockstars that they are this appears to have been sorted out. If you hit any issues accessing the site or if content is not showing how you expect please send me an email so I can check into it!

Updated site navigation

The blog should load quicker and be easier to navigate now as I have added a script to only display the last few months of history (instead of showing you everything since the beginning of time). The order of the archived months has also now been reversed so that you will see the most recent months first.

My main reason for doing this is that I want to do away with the archive pages. I think it makes a lot more sense to look for content based on a descriptive tag rather than clicking through each month trying to find a specific item. Users that do not have any form of scripting enabled on their browser will still see the original content.

I will continue to keep an eye on page load times and will continue to tweak the site. If you see something that drives you completely mad drop me an email or leave a comment on the site.

Cheers

Disclaimer

All data and information provided on this site is for informational purposes only.

I make no representations as to accuracy, completeness, currentness, suitability, or validity of any information on this site and will not be liable for any errors, omissions, or delays in this information or any losses, injuries, or damages arising from its display or use.

All information is provided on an as-is basis. Or to put it more informally in case there was any doubt this is my personal blog.

The opinions and all content on here are my own and not those of my employee. My thoughts, opinions and general musings are in a continual state of flux and may change from time to time. This blog is intended to provide a “point in time” snapshot and manifestation of these numerous thoughts and opinions running around my brain, and as such any thoughts and opinions expressed within out-of-date posts may not be the same, nor even similar, to those I may hold today.

The content (text, video, pictures etc) on this site should not be copied without permission. I generally don't mind people copying my content but want to make sure I receive credit as well as wanting to know where they are being used.

I update this from time to time so if in doubt be sure to check this link to make sure you are getting the latest and greatest version.


This work by Benjamin Gay is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://benjamingay.com/blog/2008/12/disclaimer.htm.

Domain move completed

Well the domain name for the blog has now been moved from http://blog.imbengay.com to http://benjamingay.com. The reason for this is that I had been wanting to purchase the domain BenjaminGay.com for a while but could not get it until recently.

Anyway I have now completed the move. If you attempt to access the old page you should be directed to the new blog. Unfortunately RSS feeds from the old blog are broken and you will need to re-create them.

Family photographs requested.

As I am sure that most of you know my mom has not been doing very well and has been checked into a frail care facility. The private social worker (Santie Coetzee) who is working with my mother asked if we can send some photographs over so that she can give them to my mom.

 

Since I already post pictures of how things are going over here on my blog on a regular basis I thought it would make sense to put everyone pictures up here as well if they are OK with this. The advantage of this is that it is then very easy for Santie to print them out for my mom on a regular basis. I can also zip the images and burn them to a CD or print them out and mail them to her.

 

With that being said I understand that many people have storage issues and don’t want to fill up there email accounts unnecessarily. Let me know (by sending me a mail to bengay at imbengay . com) if you need a mail account and I will create one for you. This is a full blown Exchange account so you will get Outlook Web Access as well as full Outlook functionality if you already have a copy of Microsoft Outlook.

 

If you just want to look at pictures of the family that have already been uploaded you can see them at http://benjamingay.com/blog/labels/Family.htm. If you already have pictures uploaded to Facebook or another social site you can send me the link to your photo album and I can add them for you.

New email infrastructure

Well there might be a bit of weirdness on the mail front over the next few days.

This is primarily due to me moving the email structure from WinISP to ExchangeLabs.

Exchange labs provides the benefit of giving everyone their own Exchange account.

This is pretty cool as it allows you to use Push mail with your iPhone, full Exchange support in Outlook or access through the Outlook Web Access thin client.

Here are some important links to remember to access your account:

Outlook Web Access (https://exchangelabs.com/owa)
Administration site (https://exchangelabs.com/ecp)

Hopefully this doesn’t break to many things and please let me know if you hit any snags.

Recent blog visitors

WOW! Hard to believe the site is getting so many hits from all over the world.

Web site down for the weekend

Alas my blog will be down for the weekend due to my ISP performing some electrical maintenence.

Automatic blog mail

I have now setup the blog to mail certain people whenever it is published.

If you want to receive a mail each time it is updated send me a mail and I will add you to the list.

Arbitrary DNS issues resolved.

What does this mean?

Well you can now just type imbengay.com in your web-browser to come to this site.

Think about it for you people out there that are typographically challenged your pleas have been answered and you have been saved from the scourge of those five extra characters!

At some stage when I have more time I will setup some sort of website at that address, but until then it’s just a redirect to blog.imbengay.com.

Installing a label cloud

Well I think its about time to install a decent label cloud like the one over here on the site.

New home for my blog

I finally got around to registering a domain. I wanted BenjaminGay.com or BenGay.com but alas both where already taken. So after a bit of though I figured what the hell let me register ImBenGay.com after all I am Ben Gay!