Category Archives: Computers

What SF has done to modernize access to restaurant inspection ratings

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Here’s a great idea highlighted by an article on CityLab.com, formerly known as The Atlantic Cities (“3 Cities Using Open Data in Creative Ways to Solve Problems“).

In San Francisco, they’ve managed to partner with Yelp. The cooperative arrangement has allowed them to make government restaurant inspection reports and ratings available online as part of Yelp’s restaurant reviews.

So when you Yelp a restaurant, you get its inspection rating along with the usual business information and customer reviews.

Hawaii now has restaurant inspections and public ratings, but we’re still in the “printed notice taped on the window” version of low-tech. Those ratings aren’t even available online yet.

The San Francisco project was reportedly part of Bloomberg Philanthropies’ What Works Cities, which aims to help cities make better and more productive use of open data.

CityLab.com is worth bookmarking. And pay special attention to the “City Fixer” section, featuring “Solutions for an Urbanizing World.”

CityLab is dedicated to the people who are creating the cities of the future—and those who want to live there. Through sharp analysis, original reporting, and visual storytelling, our coverage focuses on the biggest ideas and most pressing issues facing the world’s metro areas and neighborhoods.

Walking off the edge of the digital world

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We had dinner last night with an old high school friend. We graduated together from University High School, now known as the University Laboratory School, a charter school. We stayed in touch through college, and then his whole family moved to Canada, and we’ve had only intermittent contacts since then. He retired after 35 years as a public school teacher. We last saw each other ten years ago.

Here’s the thing that amazed me. Is that the right word? I’m not totally sure. In any case, he surprised me by announcing that he has chosen not to participate in the digital world, at least not as part of his everyday life. He does not use email because he doesn’t have a computer. If I need to email something, it goes to his brother, who then prints it and shows it to my friend. He doesn’t have a iPad, any other tablet, or a smartphone. Actually, I don’t think uses a cell phone, either. He does have a land line phone at home. That’s it.

He did admit to resorting to email to keep in touch with his family while traveling in Europe. But that’s about it. Send something to his email address, and it’s likely to be a long time before he sees it.

“Want to reach me?” he asked. “Pick up the phone and dial.”

He commented on the way so many people are tied to their technology, staring at the small screens on their phones instead of interacting with the world around them. Fair criticism, I guess. And it leaves him lots of time to read. Not on a screen, though. He reads books. Remember them? And he was quite excited by the three history books purchased yesterday at the Punahou carnival, each well under $1.

I suppose that I’m almost a polar opposite. I’ve got the iPhone, iPad, and MacBook Pro. I check regularly to moderate comments left on this blog. I do check email. And, yes, I check what’s happening with friends, and the broader world, via Twitter and Facebook.

His mode is definitely more relaxed and contemplative. He goes for long walks. Without a cell phone. He does regularly read newspapers, so manages to keep up with local and world events. But that’s different from our routine immersion in the digital world.

I’m afraid that walking away from all the means of communication except for a land line phone would leave me with symptoms of withdrawal. It doesn’t sound like a pretty sight.

In some ways, I feel like I should be aspiring to periods of digital detachment, at least to acknowledge that there’s another world out there and another way of relating to it. But then again, that’s a daunting idea.

Thoughts?

Here’s what’s behind the server interruptions

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Well, there’s good news and bad news regarding the intermittent server problems that I’ve been experiencing on with this site and that may have been experienced by a few others.

Now I think the problem has been identified. That’s part of the good news. The bad news is that “identified” does not mean “solved.”

More of the good news. Most of the problems I’ve experienced are probably unique and are different than what regular visitors to iLind.net experience.

It turns out that my problems stem from the implementation of security measures by my hosting service, Hostrocket.com. I guess added security is also generally a good thing, especially since this blog has been previously attacked, and the security is designed to defend against increasingly sophisticated and potential damaging distributed denial of service (“DDoS”) attacks.

Here’s how Webopedia.com explains it.

DDOS is a type of DOS attack where multiple compromised systems — which are usually infected with a Trojan — are used to target a single system causing a Denial of Service (DoS) attack. Victims of a DDoS attack consist of both the end targeted system and all systems maliciously used and controlled by the hacker in the distributed attack.

According to this report on eSecurityPlanet, in a DDoS attack, the incoming traffic flooding the victim originates from many different sources – potentially hundreds of thousands or more. This effectively makes it impossible to stop the attack simply by blocking a single IP address; plus, it is very difficult to distinguish legitimate user traffic from attack traffic when spread across so many points of origin.

And then there’s a relatively recent variant which, I’m told, attacks via an internal WordPress function, XMLRPC. It allows an attacker to try out many potential passwords in a short period of time, unless it is blocked.

So my problem has now been identified. Here’s the most recent response back from tech support staff.

Looks like your ip address was blocked due to your connections exhibiting symptoms of a web attack. The rule that was triggered was the xmlrpc.php rule, which only allows 2 connection attempts from the same ip address, within 10 minutes of each other. I’ve removed the block at this point, but the rule will be triggered again if the connections are made within that time period, as these are often correlated with web attacks.

Of course, it’s extremely hard to administer a blog like this one if logging on to do almost anything is this limited. Since I’m mobile and blog from lots of other places besides home, the static IP address won’t be practical.

So now I’m having to see if HostRocket can come up with a “magic” solution. Certainly I’m not the only blogger getting snagged in their new layers of security.

The bottom line for readers is that you shouldn’t run into this problem, only the routine but occasional periods when the site goes down temporarily.

If any of you tech-savvy folks has an idea that might help, please don’t hesitate to post a comment or contact me directly via email.

Please help troubleshoot a problem

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If you are a relatively regular visitor to this site, your feedback will help me troubleshoot an issue.

Just a few questions.

1. Have you experienced any intermittent problems recently accessing this site? For example, nothing happens and the page never appears, or perhaps you get a “Server not responding” error message.

2. If you answered “yes,” has it happened more than once? Would you say it has happened often? A few times? Rarely?

3. Again, if you answered “yes” to Question 1, who is your internet provider? And what kind of computer do you use?

Thanks for your help.

Here’s the background. I’ve been having trouble accessing my own site to upload new posts and do other maintenance. I’ve been going round and round with the hosting service’s tech support staff. Your answers can hopefully help identify just what is going on.