Livejournal is a second class citizen

By now you've heard of the SF power-outage that killed 365 main's data-center - despite endless press from them about how they've never lost power.

I'm sure there will be endless recriminations of how 365 main failed to test the power backup.

But the more interesting thing to me is how Sixapart is handling the crisis. First off, sixapart owns Livejournal and Typepad. Both services are completely down because they are single homed in the same datacenter.

Sixapart's recovery strategy seems to be: Recover Typepad, then (eventually) recover Livejournal. This is evidenced by their status page:



Given that Livejournal is a second class citizen to Sixapart compared to Typepad, how can people justify giving Sixapart money? Furthermore, clearly Sixapart doesn't have the tech staff to bring both services up at once.

Of course, maybe they just didn't update their status page, in which case, this outlines the danger of not updating your status page - someone you don't know on the internet will assume the worst.

Canadian Copyright

Some of you may be aware of the suggestions that my home land of Canada is a haven for copyright criminals. None of the headlines recently are true, they are merely rhetoric designed to turn Canada in to the copyright disaster that the US is. Has the DMCA improved American lives? The goal of governmental policy is to improve citizen's lives via both public methods and encouragement of private approaches (ie: industry).

In the mean time, my favourite Canadian hero Michael Geist has posted a new video:

Target changing rooms.

Target changing rooms., originally uploaded by ryanobjc.

Target does not allow men into the women's changing rooms. While sitting here waiting a guy was called by his girlfriend for a consult. The clerk said guys are not allowed in. Nevermind that its just a hall and you can't see anything.

This happened to me once at Lucy's. I now refuse to go anymore. Stores need to respect the companions of women shoppers, some of which are men.

I really don't like "men are creepy" driven policies. Its insulting.

Epic line up for transformers

Epic line up for transformers, originally uploaded by ryanobjc.

Seattle times front page Saturday june 30

Seattle times front page Saturday june 30, originally uploaded by ryanobjc.

Photo Blog Approach

Now that I have the iPhone it's time to work on photo blogging on the road. The problems with this are:

- The iPhone can't do file form upload
- The iPhone can't copy and paste

The only thing I can do is email photos and enter text in text-areas. Well it's enough - what I can do is email my photo to Flickr. Now the photo is online. Then, using the Flickr post-to-blog feature I can type text in, and Flickr will auto-copy the text and picture link to my blog. Presto, blog post, without copy and pasting the large snippets of text.

I have a Zooomr account, but I can't do this with it. I'd need to form upload and copy and paste the snippet - things I can't do.

UPDATE: Turns out I can get Flickr to post a photo and blog entry. So bonus, even faster photo posting on the go. I tested the EDGE photo upload speed (they are big - 500k) and it takes about 25 seconds to upload. Not too bad! Especially if it's at 75 mph!

Work bathroom - just like home

Work bathroom - just like home, originally uploaded by ryanobjc.

A test shot with my iPhone. This is the bathroom at work - looks like home.