Friday, June 01, 2007

Getting ready for SLA 2007

I'm currently printing out some articles for my Digital Libraries class, so that I might have productive things to read on the flight to Denver. Unfortunately, many of these documents were born digital, and it sucks up a lot of paper to print them (one of the assigned readings is actually a book, only 47 pages, but still). I'd plan to do other work on the plane, but my laptop is now completely battery-dead, and they don't typically provide wall sockets on a 777. I suppose I could bring a book and ::gasp:: relax a little...

Since my PDA was thoroughly destroyed last winter, and my phone's internet connection is both slow and expensive, I'm also going to make a printed packet of relevant information about my stay in Denver, including a map and calendar. Not nearly as high-tech as I'd like, but I'm pressed for time.

Oh, and I finally figured out why the Dynamic DNS services I'd tried for the SquareOne haven't worked; its my ISP. Cox blocks port 80 incoming, so you can't run any kind of web server. They do not block Telnet or FTP access, so I will be least be able to access my files remotely, but that's why the website hasn't migrated yet. Once we move, we will change ISP to one that doesn't explicitly block port 80. So long as I don't use my site for commercial purposes, I should be fine within this other ISP's service agreement.

Interesting note on ISPs: You aren't allowed to use any kind of Linux with their services. Not that there is any technical reason why you couldn't (the SquareOne runs Linux, and here I type), but they just don't want to train their people to deal with it. Not that the support people I've encountered when calling an ISP seem trained at all, but that's one of those rants I shall save for a different blog.

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