Keeping Computers and Children Safe

One of the struggles we have as parents is allowing our child to surf the internet while keeping her safe. The internet is absolutely wonderful, it has a wealth of information that we only dreamed of when we were children. It has actually replaced the TV in our house. However, just like TV, not everything on the internet is suitable for all ages. With TV it was a lot easier to monitor as it was situated in the living room. Today, some children have computers in their bedrooms or in rooms where parents cannot view it. Furthermore, a child can turn off the sound on the computer and the parent will not be able to know what the child is doing unless they are watching them.

While watching the child surf is highly recommended for parents of young children, it does not work so well for older children. Having just setup a computer to allow our daughter to surf safely, and to protect the computer from viruses, trojans, and accidental deletion of files, I can advise that it is quite a bit of work, but a small price to pay for the ultimate peace of mind.

While there are numerous options available, I decided to use two free programs from Microsoft:

1. Family Safety

2. SteadyState

Family Safety allows you to set content filters, state the sites that either can or can't be looked at and monitor the internet activity. Overall, I think it is a very useful program.

Unfortunately, Family Safety is only part of the solution. A user can accidentally delete files or install programs that should not be installed. This is were the Steady State program comes into play. It allows you to lock down the computer so that any changes made are automatically erased upon restart. It is essentially the same system used in schools and libraries. I found that the computer is a bit slower with the software installed, but it provides great comfort knowing that I will not have to spend hours reinstalling programs or removing trojans.

I have provided a very high level review. If you have any questions, please feel free to ask below.

Pirates Week - 2008

Yesterday was the 31st annual Pirates Week here on Grand Cayman. Due to hurricane Paloma, it was postponed and condensed into Pirates Day, but it was still referred to as Pirates Week. Brigitte and I thoroughly enjoyed the festival. It started with the 2nd annual boat races sponsored by Caybrew.



Contestants were allowed to only make the boats from cardboard, duct tape and paint. A lot of work went into the boats and costumes.



This was my first cardboard boat race, and I was amazed how many of them completed the course. There was even a team from Japan with a film crew making a movie. Unfortunately, their boat did not do so well, but their tenacity certainly made up for it and they can hold their heads high as they pushed, pulled and dragged their boat around the course.



(Did you notice the bailing of water on the left side?)

The day was packed full of activities including dancing, pageants, a parade, pirate costume competition, songfest, and one of the best display of fireworks that I have seen. If you are looking for a fun filled festival, I highly recommend visiting Grand Cayman during next year's Pirates Week.




For additional pictures of Pirates week, please visit photos.richardhamiltonphotography.com

Until next time,
Richard

Lessons learned with custom domains on Blogger.com

I'm back! My blog has been off line for the past few days as a result of the switch from rdhamilton.blogspot.com to blog.itslife.ca. It drove me crazy trying to figure out what the issue was. Every time one typed in blog.itslife.ca you were redirected to the Google search page.

This all started when I requested my hosting company, Bluehost, to setup a CNAME to Blogger.com. They setup (as I requested):

blog.itslife.ca --> rdhamilton.blogspot.com

As I researched the issue further, I found that the actual code should have been:

blog.itslife.ca. 900 IN CNAME ghs.google.com.
www.blog.itslife.ca. 900 IN CNAME ghs.google.com.

Once it was changed accordingly, I republished my blog from the Blogger
Dashboard by publishing it to blogspot and then back to custom domain
(under Settings -> Publishing). Please note that my custom website
returned a 404 error until I republished it.

For anyone that is looking for more information, I found the following
website very helpful:

http://blogging.nitecruzr.net/2008/11/schizophrenia-and-custom-domain-urls.html

I learned a few valuable lessons that I thought I would pass on:

1. Help in the Google Blogger Help Group is hit and miss. I never received a response to my request for help.

2. There appears to be no way to contact Blogger directly for help. (You receive what you pay for comes to mind).

3. Bluehost is absolutely wonderful and usually responds to my requests for help within an hour of receiving a support request. If you are looking for a web hosting company, I highly recommend them.

Until next time.
Richard

Testing the smoke detector

I swear that time here in the Caribbean moves faster than in Canada. As with most days, today just flew by. As a matter of fact, it is hard to believe that my family and I moved down here over three months ago. We have been so busy with work, school and volunteering.

Today Brigitte (my wife) and I took a drive to the ocean. When we asked our daughter (my step-daughter) to join us, her exact words were "are you planning on getting out of the vehicle? If so, I cannot go because I cannot be seen with my parents." Ah, the teenage years where parents become two headed monsters that know nothing and embarrass their children if they are seen in public with them. Alas, she did not accompany us.

There is actually very little damage on this side of Grand Cayman. We saw a couple of downed trees, but that was the extent of it. The waves were not nearly as high as I was hoping. But we did get to watch the unloading and loading a Seaboard cargo ship.





Upon arriving at home Brigitte decided to test the monitored smoke detector. Who actually tests a smoke detector you ask?...One who does it by burning dinner ;-). Just for the record, there are easier ways of testing. Even Max (our two year old German Shepherd Dog) had his nose plastered to the window screen taking in as much fresh air as he could.

Today I installed a slide show feed from my photos.richardhamiltonphotography.com website hosted on Zenfolio.com. I have to thank Kalani at http://blog.wanderlusttraveler.net/2008/05/zenfolio-and-unified-photostream-using.html who provided a method of pulling pictures from Zenfolio. It is actually quite hard to find information on how to include pictures from Zenfolio as most of it revolves around Flickr. I made two modifications tp Kalani's suggestions: 1. I found that I did not have to publish my Yahoo Pipe; and 2. I was able to obtain a RSS feed directly from the Yahoo Pipes once I ran it. This saved me the step of using feedburner.

Well that's it for another day. Until next time.

Richard

My First Post

Welcome to my first post. As I was writing this I was wondering if anyone will ever read this. I therefore thank you for stopping by. I hope you enjoy reading my blog. If you have any comments or questions, please feel free to leave me a comment.

I think it is only fitting to tell you a little about myself. I am a Canadian (born and raised) who moved to the Cayman Islands this past summer to experience Island life and work. In regards to Island life, we just just experienced Hurricane Paloma as it passed by as a Category 3. Although Grand Cayman (where we are located) fared quite well, we lost another tree (we are batting 1000 as we lost a tree in the last Hurricane). Here are a couple pictures of the Olive tree that we lost last night:






I am originally from Canada where most root systems from the trees dig deep into the ground. Here on the Island, the root system fans out as the Island is more or less one big rock. Here is a picture of the tree after its "haircut":



Enough about trees and hurricane damage. Enquiringly minds want to know...why should you come back? What can you expect from the Blog? In future blogs I will:

• talk about my life as an expat living and working in the Cayman Islands;
  
• tell you more about me;
• discuss photography and post new pictures; and
  
• the odd rant (not that the rant will be odd, OK maybe some will think so, but I was thinking more along the lines of infrequent :-).
  

It has been a pleasure.

Richard