The Turing Group

Goodbye Blogger, Hello WordPress!

2018-05-24T21:56:00.001-05:00

Boy, it's been a long time since I posted to Blogger.

Lately, I've been tinkering with WordPress and have discovered it's now easy to create an entire website without a TON of work. So I've done so!

Don't worry, this website isn't going away...after all, it is hosted for free.

However, if you'd like more recent updates on my life I suggest you take a look over here:

https://www.adamdace.info/wordpress/

Hopefully I'll be done with construction soon.

XBox Live

2012-02-03T23:13:00.002-06:00

Well, I guess this is something to talk about. Recently I've been spending a lot of time(and money) wiring my home up the wing-wang. Anyways, if you're someone I know(or have known) hit me up and we can play some Halo: Reach.

So far I've got to say, it's pretty awesome. Though it signs me out a lot. ):

Pictures can be found here: Flickr Tag

Centegra HealthBridge Fitness Center

2011-05-08T14:52:00.002-05:00

This needs to be filled in.

Looking On The Bright Side

2011-04-08T19:37:00.002-05:00

I thought I'd write about the good things available in and around Huntley, versus the things I just plain don't like about the area. Over the next few months I'm going to write entries that focus on some of the things I really dig about living out here, and hopefully I can get some pictures going as well. We'll see.

It may seem rather boring, but besides the usual bars and shopping around the city, there's also a few places that I really enjoy. A quick list includes bowling, groceries, and a health club.

So I'm Living In Huntley, IL USA

2011-03-02T23:20:00.002-06:00

and I'm pondering what exactly this blog should look like for the future. I'd like to keep it somewhat interesting for others to read and yet start to chronicle my personal life as well as more technical tips as I come across them.

So. I've decided I'll update this blog on an ongoing monthly basis, and what will be in those entries will vary. Besides a look into my life, I'll try to include other topics as they cross my mind. Fair warning, they may seem pretty boring on the outset.

But still, for anyone with some spare time, they'll get an interesting look into what life is in suburban America. At least it'll be a little bit different than most people's Facebook entries. I apologize I can't promise much in terms of multimedia, but I will be trying to borrow my parent's digital camera and will see what I can put together with that.

Update: Some days, I can't believe technology. I now have a camera that does video and stills.

Pictures can be found here: Flickr Tag

Saying Goodbye To Turing.com

2011-02-06T19:00:00.004-06:00

It may take a while(unfortunately, GoDaddy reserves the right to hang on to an expired domain up to 1 year), but I'm happy to say I'm finally done with having a major Internet domain to take care of.

My apologies to those who may be reading this trying to get ahold of the name, but at this point the next owner of turing.com is quite literally out of my hands.

It hasn't been so bad. With a combination of GoDaddy and Google, somehow I'm still getting my e-mail and I've finally said my goodbyes to Google Apps. A decent product, to be sure, but a lot of work just to maintain. Now I'm just a consumer, once again.

BTW, if anyone happens to hear what happened to this domain, I'd definitely like to know. Please let me know either here or drop me a note via e-mail.

HOWTO: Simply Disable Snap Shots From Snap.com

2009-07-04T21:31:00.005-05:00

Well, I got to thinking the other day...and this one isn't just for me. It's really for anyone, old friends / acquaintances from Facebook, random wanders from the Internet sky, whomever.

Thanks to the joy and wonder of OpenDNS, I finally disabled Snap.com. Frankly, I hate the thing.

Some may like it, some may not, but for me trying to disable it via their interface simply didn't function. Needless to say, I think they're spammers now. Such a sad thing to say for what looked at first like a promising Internet startup. C'est la vie. So...they get banned from my world, at the DNS level.

Step 1 - Go to OpenDNS and chose "Create account" in the upper-right corner of the page.

Step 2 - Do the usual register-for-a-website dance.

Step 3 - Follow their instructions for using OpenDNS. This is quite technical, see their website for details.

Step 4 - Go back to OpenDNS and click on "Settings". Scroll down to "Manage individual domains". Leave the "Always block" setting as-is, and enter the following two domains: shots.snap.com and spa.snap.com, one at a time. Confirm that you wish these to be blocked under any and all circumstances.

Step 5 - Go back to whatever website you really want to see(for me it was a Second Life Gaming blog) and reload it. Voila! No more Snap.com! *cheers*

Hope this helps someone out there...feel free to leave a comment if this didn't make sense or you'd just like to say thanks.

Internet Optimization 101

2009-07-01T04:46:00.010-05:00

This is mostly for myself, but I wanted to document somewhere the various things I've learned from setting up my laptop in the hopes of making the Internet as fast as possible while supporting Internet radio, podcasting, Second Life, etc.

Required Items:

Fast DNS Infrastructure(i.e. OpenDNS) - This company has an entire soon-to-be world-wide infrastructure dedicated to serving DNS as quickly as possible. This is the part of the Internet that turns www.facebook.com into a number for your PC to contact. Huge speed bost.

Another option worth mentioning is the publicly available services from a hosting company named Hurricane Electric. I encountered some problems with OpenDNS and eventually ended up using HE for my DNS.

Fast Local Search - So I discovered the hard way, that if I leave Spotlight enabled(I'm on a Mac, I bet Windows is similar) that it tries in vain to index every cache on my machine...essentially turning into slag. Once Firefox started freaking I decided to fix it. Voila, SO much better. Just a tip. :-)

Optional Items:

Fast Caching Infrastructure(i.e. squid) - It's total overkill, but I love it. I currently devote 512MB of RAM and 4GB of HD to what is essentially a massive personal web cache, via a piece of software called squid. It did need some tweaking...following are my customized settings:

-----
./configure --with-aufs-threads=32
http_port 127.0.0.1:3128
http_port localhost:3128
cache_mem 512 MB
maximum_object_size_in_memory 256 MB
cache_dir aufs /usr/local/squid/var/cache 4096 16 256
maximum_object_size 256 MB
ftp_user colonelforbin74@gmail.com
shutdown_lifetime 1 seconds
cache_mgr colonelforbin74@gmail.com
cache_effective_user nobody
cache_effective_group staff
ipcache_size 4096
fqdncache_size 4096
----

That's pretty much it. The rest is "standard" squid setup, but dang do these settings make my web surfing just toast. Love it...and hope this helps others.

Blogging 101

2009-06-28T16:13:00.005-05:00

This is mostly for myself, but I wanted to document somewhere the various things I've learned from starting a couple of blogs in terms of how to integrate them into various parts of the Internet.

For the moment, this article will be rather sparse, but I'll fill it in later.

Required Items:

Alexa Toolbar - This toolbar will tell you quite a bit about what the rest of the world thinks of your site. Use it long enough, and in exchange for Alexa monitoring your web habits you'll receive some really interesting stats on how popular your website is in relative terms with the rest of the Internet.

Blogging Tool (i.e. Blogger) - One has to write their blog with something, after all.

Syndication Tool (i.e. Feedburner) - I've no idea why, but simply setting up Feedburner seems to have increased my traffic a bit. It also just makes your blog friendly, for those who wish to subscribe.

Optional Items:

Monitization Tool (i.e. OpenX Adserver) - Hey, I might make money at this someday. Why not. :)

PageRank Tool (i.e. Google Toolbar) - For those of us having a hard time getting indexed by Google, or just curious as to what your PageRank is...I don't think there's really any other way to find out.

Search Engine 101

2009-06-25T15:11:00.001-05:00

This is mostly for myself, but I wanted to document somewhere the various things I've learned from Google's FAQs and general knowledge about how to handle search engines.

And so, in the spirit of Dave Letterman, here is my Top 10:

1) Make sure all domains are listed, with each and every search engine(i.e. Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo).
2) Make sure all "www" hostnames are listed, with each and every search engine.
3) Make sure all sitemaps are actually conforming to the sitemaps specification. For instance, on Blogger this means having an additional parameter "orderby". See the server's robots.txt file if you have any doubts. I think this parameter has cost me dearly...damn.
4) Watch search engines go nuts with activity.
5) Keep up with tech support, if necessary(still waiting for crawl stats graphs from Google).

Here's my current list of websites on Google's Webmaster Tools site:

- slplacesdir.blogspot.com
- theturinggroup.blogspot.com
- www.slplacesdir.blogspot.com
- www.theturinggroup.blogspot.com
- https://sites.google.com:443/a/turing.com/the-turing-group/
- turing.com
- www.turing.com

That's it. I hope this is useful to someone besides myself. Either way, at least I have a list for next time... :-)

Last, but not least, unlisted icon definitions for Google's new Webmaste Tools page:

- Clock icon: Request queued, but pending. We will get to it, please wait.
- Exclaimation icon: Request processed, with warnings. Please investigate, something -is- wrong.
- Red X icon: Request failed. Please investigate, this request was completely denied.

Privacy Policy

2009-06-18T16:03:00.002-05:00

theturinggroup.blogspot.com ("Site")

Privacy Statement

We are committed to safeguarding your privacy online. This privacy policy applies to your information that we collect and receive; it does not apply to practices of businesses that we do not own or control or people we do not employ. At no time will we sell your information or release your personally-identifiable data without your permission. You can visit this Site without revealing who you are or providing any personal information about yourself.

By using this Site, you agree to the terms of this privacy policy. Please read the following policy to understand how your personal information will be treated as you use our services. The following discloses our information gathering and dissemination practices.

This Site contains links to other sites. These include links to resources in related topics and third-party sites that offer other related products. If you visit another website through a link on our site, please consult the privacy policy of the website you are visiting. We are not responsible for the privacy practices or the content of other websites that you may visit.

Third Party Advertising

We use third-party advertising companies to serve ads when you visit our website. These companies use non-personally identifiable information regarding your visit to this website and other sites, such as the user IP address, pages viewed, date and time of your visit, and number of times you have viewed an ad (but not your name, address, or other personal information), to serve ads to you on this site and other sites that may be of interest to you. In the course of serving advertisements to this site, our third-party advertiser may place or recognize a unique cookie on your browser.

Specifically, Google, as a third party vendor, uses cookies to serve ads on this website. Google´s use of the DART cookie enables it to serve ads to you based on your visit to this website and other websites on the Internet. You may opt out of the use of the DART cookies by visiting the Google ad and content network privacy policy.

To learn more about these practices and your choices about not having this information used by these companies please click here.

Contacting the Web Site

Please be aware that we may change our Privacy Policy from time to time. If we do, we will update this Privacy Policy at our website, so be sure to check back here frequently.

If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, the practices of this site, or your dealings with this Web site, you can contact: colonelforbin74@gmail.com.

theturinggroup.blogspot.com

June 18, 2009

Second Life

2009-06-03T14:23:00.008-05:00

So I've started tinkering around with Second Life again.

It's quite a bit of fun, if not confusing as hell. Learning how to smoke, ride hoverboards, find places, and wondering what I might do to help improve upon this world.

Still have no idea where thousands and thousands of people actually hang out, so I'm wandering around trying to figure that one out too. All I know is people are spending a lot of money in this wonderful VR world...and, well, I could use money.

It's either that or I have to work a "normal" job. *screams in horror*

P.S. I've started a Second Life Places Directory that if you're at all into the game you may wish to check out. Not much there yet, but there will be. I just need somewhere to put all these dang bookmarks.

Alan Turing Links

2009-04-05T20:46:00.014-05:00

It's no mistake this website bears the last name of one of the most famous computer science figures in the last 100 years or so. Often, people stumble upon this site while looking for something else. You may find what you're looking for below:

The Alan Turing Home Page

This site is the definitive source of knowledge regarding the life and times of Alan Turing.

Alan Turing Wikipedia Page

This site also has plenty of information regarding the life and times of Alan Turing.

Alan Turing Institute Wikipedia Page
Alan Turing Institute Information Page

These sites have interesting information regarding a building at the University of Manchester named after Alan Turing.

Holt Software Associates, Inc.

This site contains vendor information regarding the "Turing language", one often taught at various universities for teaching purposes. If you "need a copy of Turing", this is the place to go.

Bummer to hear the company is no longer creating new versions, but the old ones are there.

Welcome

2009-04-05T20:46:00.013-05:00

Thank you for visiting my website. This site has been designed with simplicity in mind, with the hope being you can find the information you want as quickly as possible.

If you've reached this site looking for information on Alan Turing, or the Turing programming language, see the "Alan Turing Links" post.

If not, simply click on the available links for the information you desire.

P.S. If you have any comments or questions, please click on the "comments" link below...thanks!

Personal Info

2009-04-05T20:45:00.006-05:00

This post is devoted to the personal life of the site's owner, Adam Dace.
It'll evolve over time, based on how dang lazy I am in updating it. ;-)

About Me:

Name: Adam W. Dace
Age: 35
Hometown: Arlington Heights, IL
Places Lived: Illinois - Arlington Heights, Chicago, Des Plaines, Huntley, Palatine, Rockford
California - San Jose, San Francisco

Interests: They vary over time, but include Music, Movies, Internet Technologies, Gaming, and Partying.

What's New: After completing a stressful career in IT, I bounced back and forth between Chicago and Huntley for quite some time. Along the way, I decided to "start over" and am currently looking for a place in Rockford, IL. It's a great town, with down-to-earth people.

Future Goals: Getting a place to live, chilling out, hanging with the ladies, partying, and getting back to World of Warcraft. :-)

Personal Background

2009-04-05T20:44:00.002-05:00

Adam W. Dace, Former Internet Professional

Adam Dace's career in Information Technology began at the age of 13 in his parent's spare room. He received a Commodore 64 computer and tape drive(that's right, audio cassette tape!) for Christmas and, with a small amount of school training, was on his way to becoming an expert in various parts of IT.

By age 14, he had a telephone-based BBS up and running with a whopping 2.5MB online(a lot, at the time).

Once he got out on his own in the world, something quite interesting happened. While away at college, he'd heard of this wonderful new Operating System known as Linux. The only way to get a copy, at the time, was to download floppies and floppies worth of data, create your own install media, etc.

This led him to get onto this curious thing at the time known as the Internet. So, he found the one ISP in town at the time, signed up for an account and away he went. While checking out other customer's setups he ran into a guy named Adam Harris. It just so happened he was in the middle of starting up a business with Stelios Valavanis that would be called onShore(http://www.onshore.com/).

From that day forward, he had a career. From PC troubleshooting / repair, to Systems Administration, and eventually Development, Adam had a lot of fun working with onShore. However, the folks at onShore eventually decided to get out of the Development and Systems businesses to focus more on troubleshooting and support.