June 2001

Came across a Web comic today. When I Am King is one of the funniest comics I’ve seen–anywhere, not just on the Web. It also uses the Web medium very cleverly, so if you want to see excellent Web design and innovative use of scrolling and frames, head on over. No Flash, Java, or other geegaws in sight.

It’s not for the prudish, though, so be warned. Not that I really know very many prudish people anymore, but I’m sure there’s one or three lurking about.

This is oddly amusing.

I just got back from seeing Richard Thompson. Amazing performance, just as I’d hoped. He played, solo, just him and his acoustic guitar, for nearly two hours, including three encores. Song selections spanned most of his career, which I guess isn’t surprising, since he’s touring to support a best-of collection. He performed, among others, For Shame of Doing Wrong, Shoot Out the Lights, Did She Jump or Was She Pushed, Dimming of the Day, Wall of Death, Beeswing, Dry My Tears and Move On, King of Bohemia, 1952 Vincent Black Lightning, Bathsheba Smiles, Persuasion (which he co-wrote with Tim Finn), and Valerie.

He kept up a great patter with the crowd between songs and even, after mentioning Bloomington-son Hoagy Carmichael, sang a few bars of Stardust. After explaining a controversy in which Kenny G digitally inserted his own solos into an old Louis Armstrong recording, he performed a brutally hilarious tirade against ol’ Kenny. During one encore, as he was performing Wall of Death, he exclaimed “Bob Dylan is 60!” and launched into an interesting tour of Dylan’s career, singing snippets and lines from a variety of Dylan’s songs.

Thompson was witty and even charming and he kept the crowd engaged throughout the show. Many of his songs were note-perfect, which has to be hard to do, even when they’re performed so often. He’s either an excellent showman or very much in love with what he does, because his enthusiasm and joy were evident throughout the show.

I continue to be amazed by people who’ve never even heard of him, let alone listened to his music. You’d think in a college town, people would know his music better. Now, granted, in looking at his U.S. tour schedule for this year, it truly is amazing that he’d play a small market like Bloomington, even with its college population. Most of his shows are in much larger cities. But still, I ask my friends if they know of him and over and again, I hear “no.” I’m about to ready to smack the next person who says so. But in the end, it really is their loss. They’re missing out on one of the finest performers and songwriters alive today.

Molecular Expressions: Science, Optics and You - Powers Of 10: Interactive Java Tutorial
This nifty little applet starts at the edge of the galaxy and zooms closer and closer, until reaching the subatomic particles that make up a leaf.

Wheee! IU’s name server finally points to my Web page when you type in michaeldietsch.com, so in a couple days, it should be ready for the whole world to see. Holy cow.

Okay, so what am I talking about with propagation and name servers and DNS entries? In a nutshell, here’s how the Web works. You type a domain name, like–oh–www.michaeldietsch.com, into your browser. The browser sends off a request to your Internet service provider’s name server, which is a machine that changes domain names into numeric IP addresses. The name server translates www.michaeldietsch.com into the IP address 168.144.201.250. (Try it. Type 168.144.201.250 into your browser–or copy and paste it–and you should arrive straightaway at my Web site.) Your request for a Web page actually goes to a number, not to a name.

So, why do computers bother with the number and not with the names themselves? Look at my example again. The address 168.144.201.250 “belongs” to SoftCom, the company that’s hosting my pages. They’re only loaning it to me for the time I have my pages on their servers. If I move to another Web host, that company will assign my site a new IP number, but my name, www.michaeldietsch.com, will stay the same. SoftCom can then reuse 168.144.201.250 for another customer.

Here’s an analogy that might make more sense: Say you want to call a friend on the telephone but you don’t know his number. You pick up the phone, call information, and say, “I’d like the number for David Lichty in Indianapolis, please.” The operator offers to connect your call and you’re done. If David moves to a new number, all you have to do is call information again and they’ll connect you to his new number. The phone company can then reuse David’s old number for another customer.

In my case, I registered www.michaeldietsch.com with a company called Dotster back in November. All this time, it has resided on a server at Dotster. But it had no content. Dotster was simply holding it for me until I was ready to use it. In fact, type www.michaeldietsch.net into your browser. You should see a page that says “Future Home of a Dotster Registered Domain” with ad content for Dotster. I own both domain names and simply haven’t decided yet what to do with michaeldietsch.net.

But imagine this. I register at Dotster and park my domain there for seven months. Anywhere in the world, if anyone were so inclined to type www.michaeldietsch.com into a browser, they’d see that Dotster page. Now, I’ve shifted the domain name over to SoftCom’s servers. This was like David Lichty moving to a new address and needing a new telephone number. In the case of Web addresses, however, they have to be registered with name servers all over the world whenever they move house. This takes time–anywhere up to 72 hours.

Well, I finally got most of the bugs worked out of the blog, and I was able to fit it pretty snugly within my own design, which wasn’t easy. Still a couple things not working quite right, but I won’t bitch too much about that.

I’m checking to make sure that the DNS entry has propagated for my URL and it’s getting there. @Home’s DNS server recognizes my pages, but IU’s still points to the Dotster site. They did tell me it might take 72 hours. Sigh, I’m too impatient.

Arts and Letters Daily had an interesting link this morning to a review of two new books about bad science–anything from cold fusion to N-rays to astrology and homeopathy. The review gave both books favorable marks, which intrigues me all the more. Both books are available in the U.S., so I might have to check out one or both when I finish the backlog of books I’m currently working through.

I’ve been playing around with the template on this thing. I think I can eventually get something that comes close to matching the design of my other pages, but I’m not sure yet. It should be interesting to see.

First log entry. Interesting couple of days. I finally finished my site design, which I’m pretty happy with. I contacted a Web hosting company (SoftCom, which Mike Tomasulo from the Warren Ellis Forum recommended to me.) I’ve tested my new pages in a variety of browsers, in both Mac and Windows, and at several screen resolutions, so I think everything’s covered.

My pages are uploaded to the server and so now I just need to wait for my new DNS entry connecting my URL to SoftCom’s servers to propagate so people can actually reach my pages when they type my URL. This is pretty exciting. I can’t wait to announce this to the world.

Once everything looks copacetic, I’ll change my “blogspace” to my own site.