This is my first ever album to be released ANYWHERE, and I recorded the entire thing right here in my bedroom with limited equipment.

What did I use?  I used a borrowed powered mixer, a borrowed Audio Technica Condensor Microphone, a $400 HP PC with Vista 32-bit Home Premium, FL Studio, Audacity, and a couple guitars!  That’s IT!  It took almost a year of work, recording, and writing, but it is FINALLY complete.

If you’re interested in purchasing my new 6-song EP, just click on the picture below:

You can check me out on MySpace anytime at http://www.myspace.com/davidcrandall

ALSO, I am in a contest to be signed by MySpace Records.  If you want to vote for me, you must spread my widget around on blogs, MySpace Profiles, FaceBook Satus’s, and anywhere else!  Just click the “GRAB THIS” button below to copy the code, then paste it where ever you can.  THEN, tell your friends to do the same!  Your help will be greatly appreciated!

Here is the widget:

Take it easy,

David Crandall

Right now I am in 4th place of over 1,200 Bands!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Please help me get to the top and remain at the top until July 1st (This is when no more submissions are taken and 5 finalists are chosen)

All you need to do is visit http://adsupport.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=rockthespace.fan&sproutid=0QB9j3a9BdYlfUHH

From there, it’s pretty self explanitory; just copy the code and/or URL given to any Blog, Myspace Page/Bulletin/Comment, Facebook Page, Tweet (the URL anyway), and any other web page or social media website you can paste a piece of code!

Then tell ALL of your friends to do the same! It’s VERY simple.

Again, currently I am in 4th place of over 1,200 bands/artists. Please help me to make it to 1st place and remain there until at least July 1st!

Then, check back with myspace.com/toyotamusic to see who the 5 finalists are. If we all do our part, we will prevail!

So please help out a fellow geek by spreading the word and getting this widget out there:

PS: You can also get your own code from this widget by clicking “Grab This”

http://www.funkytower.com/2008/08/06/dangerous-dns-problem/

DNS is what has revolutionized and, in many ways, helped create the spectacular online environment we have today, know as the World Wide Web.  We use DNS for virtually everything, from e-mail, to myspace, to online banking, to having internet access itself.  DNS is what converts an ip address (a bunch of numbers that identify a system) to a name like www.funkytower.com, or pop.domain.com, etc.  The flaw which has been found is very scary, as it can potentially change the course of our entire life.  This flaw could allow malicious persons  to duplicate any domain name.

“How could this change the course of my entire life?” you ask?  Simply this: say you went to www.wamu.com to work on your bank account, you enter in your information, log in, and everything seems fine – but what you wouldn’t know is you were logging in to a fake website that looks exactly like www.wamu.com, and you just gave all of your bank information to a complete stranger.  Next thing you know, all your money is gone and there is no possible way to have it recovered.

What an awful fear to have to live with.  There currently is no solution for this problem either.  Many engineers and developers have come up with patches for this problem – but it doesn’t solve it.  All it does, is make the problem alot harder to access.  This is not good enough to me.

I’m on a bit of a vacation here in Oregon and I keep having this slight fear in the back of my mind “I hope no one has managed to hack into my bank account and all my money is gone” and “I hope no one gained my password to my Paypal account!”

What causes people to do such things that we even have to worry about something like this?  Sadly, the world we live in today is hardly safe.  We are already worried about identity theft without hearing much about this problem.

I cannot wait until the day when this problem finally comes to an end.

Take it easy,
David

I must admit, the first time I tried to run WordPress, I was confused.  The directions, to me, were confusing at the time so I just gave up on it.  Having come back to it recently to give it’s latest version a shot, the process flew with the breeze.  It was so easy to set up, configure, and mess with – I felt like I was five years old walking around Toys R Us, just playing with all the goodies.

Recently, they had an update from WordPress 2.6 to 2.6.1.  Being the relatively young web designer that I am, I have to stay up to date with my programs – so I upgraded.

I have to admit, upgrading things like this is scary.  I backed up all my posts, data, and my entire server to a local folder on my PC- JUST IN CASE something happens.  I use other open source programs like PHPBB; the first time I upgraded PHPBB, I went through hell trying to get things to function properly.  This, of course, was an error on my part – but one must learn from his mistakes and move on, which I indeed did.

Before I upgraded WordPress, I read the instructions on doing so.  Then, I backed up every file on my server, including all posts, pages, pictures, and data.  I even backed up things that I wasn’t using with WordPress, just to be safe (I’m quite the worry wart – which, in my opinoion, in this case, isn’t a bad thing.)

Crossing my fingers, I replaced every necessary file, which was some 500+ files.  I was extremely nervous.  It only took about a minute and a half to upload all the files, but to me, it was like watching a needle poke into my skin (sorry for the image.)  I was so nervous that something would go wrong and everything would be lost.

Thankfully, having gone the extra mile to back EVERYTHING up, and following the directions on the WordPress website, I deservingly had a successful upgrade.

Once finished, I decided to go and read up on the details of the upgrade.  As it turns out – the upgrade was very minor.  No real new features at all, in fact – they said if I’m happy with 2.6 to not bother running 2.6.1….boy do I feel stupid. 

Take it easy,
David Crandall