DNS is like the Internet’s white pages.  Routers, servers, and the like know about IP addresses, for example, 208.67.222.222.  You could think of these as phone numbers.  Humans, on the other hand, know about domain names, like facebook.com, youtube.com.  DNS is the lookup service that gives the IP address for a domain name.  This is a vital service to the world wide web, and happens without the user knowing about it, hundreds of times a day.

The idea that Google would make its own DNS server and claim speed improvements was fascinating.  So I decided to test Google’s DNS service for myself.  I usually use my ISP’s DNS server or OpenDNS, whichever is faster.  I got a program to test DNS performance with 50 random domains.  My ISP (Comcast):  most lookups were in the 80-90 ms range, with spikes to make the average 100 ms.  Open DNS: most were in the 100-110 ms range, with spikes to make the average 140 ms.  Google DNS: most were in the 40-50 ms range, with spikes to make the average 80 ms.  Note that these are the actual DNS entry lookup speeds, not pings.

So Google has managed to beat both my ISP and Open DNS from my current location.  I’m very impressed.  And Google once again has followed their “Don’t be evil” approach by not selling ads on the DNS lookup failure pages.  Most ISPs give you so-called “search results” when you mistakenly type a domain name incorrectly.  These search results are only a source of revenue for the ISP, and rarely relevant.  Google is playing nice, and is simply responding with a standard error, which your browser will relate to you in its own way.

For the tin-foil hat crowd, I decided to read their privacy statement and it seems very reasonable.  They only keep as many logs as they need to troubleshoot errors and respond to attacks, and they never match anything to your personal Google account.  That means that DNS lookups won’t show in your personal search history or web history if you are using those features.

That was enough to convince me.  I’ve switched.  8.8.8.8 for life!

This is by far the most detailed, most interesting picture of the job losses that have occurred in the past couple of years.

I’m very impressed by this, and I can appreciate the amount of work it required to put this together.

I’ve been very happy with my progress so far.  I started the diet two and a half weeks ago, and have lost fourteen lbs so far.  Their diet includes so many rules.  My head was spinning, the first week, trying to remember it all.  I’m slowly getting the hang of packing my lunch for work every morning.  I’m slowly getting used to eating in the morning.  Part of the diet is their expensive protein bars and powders you make into drinks, three a day.  Those are easy to forget.

As far as the actual food goes, they break all foods into four categories (protein, starch, vegetables, fruit), and only allow plain yogurt or skim milk for dairy.  Each category has a list of foods to choose from and a serving size for each food.  So far, I’ve been happy with the vegetable selection: I’ve been eating a lot of onion, peppers, zucchini, lettuce, broccoli, and asparagus.  I’ve never been a big fruit eater, but grapes aren’t so bad.  So for my weight and progress into the plan, I’m allowed 2.5 servings of protein, 3 servings of starch, 4 vegetables, and 3 fruits.  A serving of meat is 3.5 oz of steak, or 7.5 oz of fish, or 6.5 oz of chicken breast, for example.  A serving of vegetables is a cup of asparagus, broccoli, zucchini, 2 cups of lettuce, 1/2 an onion, or 1/2 a green or red pepper.  The servings of starch are really what hurt.  The most tasty starches, like potato, pasta, and rice are extremely limited: 1/4 cup of pasta or rice and 1/2 of a small potato, and only once per day.  Other starches on the list I’m a fan of include rice cakes and diet bread (35-40 calories per slice).

Absolutely no processed foods are allowed.  No table sugar, no salt.  I’m allowed to flavor food with herbs, pepper, garlic powder and onion powder, but that’s about it.  Condiments are limited to one serving per day of mustard, werchestershire,  ketchup, and diet margarine (like I Can’t Believe it’s Not Butter).  There are othes, but I can’t remember them.  I don’t do much of that, except for the margarine.

Really, I’ve never felt so healthy.  It’s so great to never have that “overly full” feeling after eating too much. I’m enjoying cooking each night, perfecting my use of spices in place of salt.  With the protein bars and drinks I don’t get hungry between meals.  I’ve started to eat fish regularly for the first time in my life, and so far, it’s been great.  With only a few exceptions, I only cook what I’m allowed to eat that day, so I resist temptation.  But pasta and rice are measured after they are cooked, so I just cook a whole bunch and serve a little at a time.

So, now for the confession.  I was at a friend’s house last night, helping them with computer trouble.  They offered food and drink when I arrived, but I declined. The fix turned out to be much more lengthy than I expected, and I became hungry.  As the night grew on, I became more and more hungry, and finally gave in to the chicken salad in their fridge.  It was so heavy, and while tasty, I knew it was filled with all kinds of things I wasn’t allowed to eat.  To top it off, I had whole milk and some potato chips with it which were just so greasy, and the most salt I’d had in a long time.  My stomach hurt bad the whole night… not because I ate too much, but I guess because of all the stuff I wasn’t used to any more.  I guess it could have been much worse, but I think I’ll do my best to avoid cheating again.

According to the scale this morning, I hadn’t gained any weight back, but I didn’t make any progress yesterday either: same exactly weight as Tuesday.

Hopefully today is better.  Going back to the friend’s house tonight again to finish what I started on their computer.

I suppose I’ll get better at this, but these two minutes of video represent about 10 hours of work.  More than that, if you include the time I took learning to use Final Cut Pro.  I watched a few tutorial videos on youtube randomly, trying to pick up things I thought might be related to the project I was working on.

I think I’ll wait on my next attempt until after I move at the end of this month.  Right now I don’t have access to a good microphone or any other audio equipment.  I used my MacBook’s built-in camera and microphone to capture this.  Next time I’ll step up the quality.

Lasse took it to the next level, however, when he made the video, “Amateur”.

Keep in mind he can’t play either instrument in real life.

Now, enter Jack Conte (youtube id: jackcontemusic), from the states.  His skills as a musician really shine when he edits together recordings of himself, playing the various parts of songs he writes.  Everything comes together in one brilliant package.  Like Lassegg, he doesn’t play drums, so he edits himself playing drums much like Lasse did.

And now the latest of the mashup masters.  This next guy, kutiman, from Israel, has taken the DJ art of sampling to the nth degree.  Using elements from lassegg and jackcontemusic, he has created 7 masterpieces, piecing together recordings from complete strangers demonstrating their talents on youtube.  What comes together is pure magic.  I’ve included my favorite two.

The legalities of such an approach are questionable, but in my opinion this really is its own work of art.  I believe these men have created a new genre.  I would think, being a musician, and having some experience in video editing, I could join in on the fun.  Perhaps.   Stayed tuned, followers.

As it turns out, their suspicions were correct.  I called Comcast about an unrelated issue recently, and my television lineup became a topic of conversation.  Most government-sponsored ads on TV about the digital switch say that if you have cable, you will not need to make any changes.  But the representitative from Comcast said, “Oh no, everything is changing.”  When asked about the details, he said, “All those TVs you have that aren’t connected to a digital box will lose channels 30 and up.”  They’re moving over half of their analog channels to a digital tier, which requires a Comcast-owned cable box to decompress.  Renting these extra cable boxes will require all customers to pay more money per month, unless they don’t watch any channels above 30.

Comcast freely admitted it was guilty to me.  Probably because I’m just a customer who will be pissed if what he says turns out to be true on February 17.

The FCC investigation has proven difficult.  The cable companies are complaining that the amount of information requested by the FCC simply could not be gathered and presented by the deadline.  I read that as either their entire IT department is incompetent or they don’t want to get caught.  I’m guessing the latter.  Big cable is simply ignoring the FCC.

Most recently, the FCC has fined all of the cable companies under investigation a five figure sum for not complying.  Laughable!  Comcast,  the largest cable provider in the US, is a 30 billion dollar annual revenue generator.  Proportionately, a similar fine would require me to cut a penny into about 30 equal pieces and give one of those to the FCC.

From an Ars Technica article, which summarizes a letter by Kevin Martin, who was the chair of the FCC under the Bush adminstration:

The price for every other service that the FCC regulates has gone down, Martin charges. Wireless down 85 percent, long distance calling by 50 percent, and international calling by almost 90 percent. But not cable, whose prices the FCC’s now ex-chair says have doubled since 1992.

If cable prices continue to grow at a similar rate, I can imagine a very vivid future without cable televsion.  Internet video is growing in quality and popularity every day.

I haven’t been blogging much lately.  My apologies.  I’ve found a great new hobby, which has occupied most of my time.  I’ve been solving problems on Project Euler.  Here is a link to my profile there.  Tonight, I just solved my 106th problem, of 222.

“Project Euler exists to encourage, challenge, and develop the skills and enjoyment of anyone with an interest in the fascinating world of mathematics.”

These problems are very interesting and seem tailor-made to someone of my interests.  My major in college was computer science, with a concentration in mathematics.  Actually for Project Euler, a major in math and some comp sci work would probably serve a would-be solver somewhat better.

Most of the problems require some type of computer program.  You’re usually searching for a number with a peculiar property, or adding a bunch of numbers with a similar property.  Many involve prime numbers, which can really stretch a programmer’s technique.  Some are quite unique.  One asks you to evaluate a bunch of poker hands played by two players, asking how many times the first player wins.  Another asks you to programmatically solve a bunch of sudoku puzzles.  One even asks which squares on the monopoly board game are the most popular, statistically.

A new problem has been posted every week since I joined.  I hope they keep this up.  I could be solving these problems for quite a while.  My progress was very quick (several solutions per day) at the beginning.  A couple of weeks ago I had slowed to one solution per day.  Now I have to think about a problem for a day or two before a good solution occurs to me.  I have quite a few I’m thinking about now.

What makes the site so great is that the problems build upon each other.  Knowing how to solve an earlier problem will help solve a later problem.  Efficiency is king, so if your solution takes a few seconds, perhaps the forum for the problem will have a faster algorithm.  This is where the real learning takes place. Some times I’ll wait a few seconds, or even a few minutes for my program to run, only to find that a technique I hadn’t considered gets the answer in a few milliseconds.

Last week I was proud to have solved my 100th problem, which is somewhat of an achievement.  Of all the users that have signed up at project euler, I’m within the top 3%.  My preferred language is python.  Which is good, because while it is one of the most popular languages on Project Euler, it is also one of the most successful.  Soon I’ll write a blog entry about how much I love python.  I just started learning it a few weeks before I started Project Euler.

Users are allowed to submit problem suggestions.  I just sent my first one.  I hope it will be approved, but I understand the approval process is quite long.

With all the companies committed to bringing Android to the market, you’d think Sprint would want to jump on the bandwagon, for fear of being left behind.  This is almost as bad as Ford deciding it is going to be one of the few motor manufacturers not looking into alternative fuels/technologies.  I smell bad things in both companies futures.

In fairness, Sprint has said it’s committed to bringing an Android product to their lineup eventually.  But the clock is ticking.  They’ll certainly lose me as a customer if they don’t get one out by next fall.  My next phone will most definitely be an Android phone… the only decision to be made is which.

Update: I sent Sprint an email letting them know my stance: Android or die by next year.  They called me back, letting me know why they thought Android wasn’t good enough.  They listed two reasons 1) it doesn’t support WiMax, and 2) it doesn’t support 3G.  This is kind of a ridiculous set of reasons, honestly.  My current phone doesn’t support wireless anything, much less WiMax.  And neither my phone nor the current city I live in have 3G.  So to me, even supporting an older wireless standard such as 802.11b, g or n would be a step up.  So my current phone, the Treo, is just as “bad” as Android, in that it support neither feature, and yet it’s still offered?  I smell BS.