Adventure Week 2009 in Idaho

On November 21, 2008November 20, 2008 By Rick McIn blogs, cycling, health & fitness, kayaking, travel2 Comments

Dave Adlard, master organizer of big events, is boldly planning June 5-14th in North Idaho one of the biggest Adventure Racing events anywhere.

Our Adventure Racing Team — the Fast Farts — are part of his support team.

I’m editor of the official website:

North Idaho will play host to “adventure week 2009,” a series of “outdoor” races and events at Farragut State Park near Coeur d’Alene. (Of the famed Ironman competition.)

introducing-adventure-week1

Click through if you know anyone who might be interested in coming down for the Adventure Week 2009.

I’m recommending to Dave that he include a surprise high speed kayak challenge, like this one …

do you hate Captchas?

On September 2, 2008August 31, 2008 By Rick McIn blogs, internetLeave a comment

Hackers have broken the Captchas log-in security precaution using a combination of methods.

I’ve never used them anyway.

I use WordPress software. A company which found a far better solution:

… answer is to focus on the content rather than the user. His Akismet system for preventing spam comments relies on a combination of secret algorithms and community reports, and has proved remarkably effective.

“Ultimately Captchas are useless for spam because they’re designed to tell you if someone is ‘human’ or not, but not whether something is spam or not. Just because something came from a real human being doesn’t mean it isn’t spam, which is why content-based solutions like Akismet are the only long-term solution to the spam problem.”

How Captcha was foiled – Guardian

NEW LOOK RickMcCharles.com

On August 9, 2008August 10, 2008 By Rick McIn blogs1 Comment

Evil doers have twice hacked this blog. The “easy” solution is to move it to WordPress.com where good folks will host it for FREE. And do all the security updates.

The main downside is that I have only about 100 free “themes” to choose from. This new one is called Saphire. I customized it with a desert header.

This switch to WordPress is an experiment. Leave a comment if you have any problem. (I notice some of the old photos and videos are missing, for example.)

One last peek at the old look. The vista at Lake O’Hara:

this site was hacked

On July 15, 2008 By Rick McIn blogsLeave a comment

My last post somehow had hidden text added to it.

I was alerted to the attack by a new feature built in to Firefox. Thanks!

Looks like I need to finally host RickMcCharles.com on WordPress.com where security updates are made automatically.

blog rants and raves

On April 18, 2008 By Rick McIn Apple, blogs, Google, internet, product complaints, product endorsementsLeave a comment

Blogging is ALL about ranting and raving. Taking an extreme or contrary point of view. Still … all those unique voices tend to march in lock step on certain topics.

Bloggers HATE:

Patents, Patent trolls, and the Patent office
Vista
ValleyWag
The MPAA and the RIAA
Comcast
Cellular carriers
Mainstream media
Facebook
Guy Kawasaki
CNET

Bloggers LOVE:

Apple
Google
Linux
TechCrunch
Engadget
Firefox

After reading The 10 things you may complain about (and five you may not) by the astute Rafe Needleman, I felt a bit sheepish.

original – flickr – Lordcolus

what do YOU think of America?

On March 15, 2008 By Rick McIn blogs, travel, travel Mexico, videocasts1 Comment

Here is the result of an Economist magazine survey in 2005.

Amar C. Bakshi has spent the past year travelling the world, video blogging on the topic: “How the world see’s America.”

Of course the world loves American culture. American movies. A few still want to move to the USA more than anywhere else in the world. (I’m not one of those.)

video source – The View From the Border

Most around the world dislike U.S. foreign policy.

Seems simple to me. America, change your foreign policy.

stuff white people like

On March 13, 2008 By Rick McIn blogs, humourLeave a comment

Ah, white people. They are such an easy target.

New blog, uber-popular right now:

A few samples:

#87 Outdoor Performance Clothes
#86 Shorts
#80 The Idea of Soccer
#78 Multilingual Children
#75 Threatening to Move to Canada

It’s almost more, stuff YUPPIES like. Still funny.

stuff white people like

what is twitter?

On March 11, 2008 By Rick McIn blogsLeave a comment

Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows users to send “updates” (or “tweets”; text-based posts, up to 140 characters long) to the Twitter website, via short message service, instant messaging, or a third-party application such as Twitterrific. …

Wikipedia

I have not tried it as yet. But Hillary and Obama use it.

twitter – official website

Be Ready for Garth Rowan

On January 14, 2008 By Rick McIn blogsLeave a comment

Garth and I put together beready.ca 2.0, an update of his business card site.

Here’s a screenshot of the OLD site:

… Very red.

Check out the new version: beready.ca

Be Ready for ANYTHING. Garth Rowan, Allaire Rowan Communications — media, crisis and risk communications, witness preparation and investor relations presentation training.

It now has an RSS feed and “pings” Google automatically when updated.