Archive for May, 2008
Saturday, May 31st, 2008
A discussion chaired by Paul Thompson AILA, part of AILA Victoria’s ‘Cultivate’ series of talks. (This AILA forum Thursday 15 May 2008 at RMIT)
Registrants were invited to contribute beforehand by sending emails with questions, ideas, concerns and statements.
The evening began with an introduction from Paul Thompson.
This was followed by discussions using the emails to stimulate discussion between the 102 participants composed of landscape architects, students and allied professionals. The evening finished with broad spirited contributions from the floor.
It is suggested that you view the notes on the talk which have been uploaded to the AILA web site.
Please visit the site first (click here) and then return to view the emailed notes in the comments below.
The art of Landscape Architecture has influenced the culture significantly in the past 40 years. It is now time to work closer with science to create site responsive landscapes for people and nature.
This is the beginning of a continuing conversation.
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Also reference: Paul’s online article published in LAonline Autumn 2008.
The Australian Garden. Selecting plants for a botanic garden.
Click here for the link to the full magazine issue or here to download the pdf article.
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Please add to this on-going conversation - upload a comment
Posted by Administrator in AILA, climate change, education, environment | 6 Comments »
Thursday, May 29th, 2008
Dear members
Review Netspeed as an ISP and web host, the many serious problems and the disappointing service
The AILA National Office can report that we have successfully transferred the web site away from Netspeed. Many complaints about Netspeed.
We had many many problems with Netspeed over many months - this led to requests and complaints to Netspeed, to any Netspeed staff we could find - but little response from Netspeed , most of time nil response or too little too late - so we gave up on complaining to Netspeed - held a review of Netspeed in comparison to other providers - and moved away from Netspeed!
We have moved the web hosting due to the disappointing and frustrating service being provided by Netspeed over an extended period of time.
yes we were very very disappointed, and even very very amazed, with the Netspeed service.
We tried everything and were very patient over an extended time - months!
But in the end we gave up on Netspeed! both as a web host and as the Internet Service Provider.
The final Review
there were four major issues in the end.
FYI: A REVIEW of Netspeed
The first was that we paid extra to be business customers - but the responses to problems was slow and often did not happen at all - this was the Netspeed priority service!
Second was that over the last few months the site would regularly disappear overnight. this then a special call for Netspeed to make it active again. in the end this magic Netspeed fault was happening almost every night. you can see how the lack of confidence in Netspeed developed!
third was the placement on the Netspeed server of a piece of software - Google-Urchin. this little gem tracked the visitor usage. Without our permission or knowledge, it appeared in all of the AILA main pages on the Netspeed server and was being detected as a virus. We did not ask Netspeed for the software. We definitely did not appreciate the code being placed within all our pages. Netspeed never explained what it was doing there, despite requests. It took a whole weekend for us to remove the code from all the thousands of pages on the AILA web site.
and Fourth (yes there’s more), Netspeed moved the AILA site to a new server, but Netspeed failed to update the server side code that ran such things as the AILA pay page. This at a time when it was in high demand with members making payments and booking for events. One week later Netspeed replied to our many urgent requests - but they had failed to get the pages working!
We gave up on Netspeed!
and finally Netspeed then responded to our many requests to shut things down in the same Netspeed manner. That is there was no Netspeed response from urgent requests sent to Netspeed staff! (still have not received a response from our ten communications).
It was such a fun four weeks extracting our services from the Netspeed services!
AILA National Office
Posted by Administrator in AILA, General | No Comments »
Monday, May 12th, 2008
Seeking the industry views on the CAD programs available (I have also posted a similar query under the post “Vector Works”).
I teach the technology units for landscape architecture at University of Canberra and we are seeing a number of students self teaching a number of programs over the standard suite used at the University.
Does proficiency in one cad program (eg AutoCad) give a good graduate enough skills to self learn another programs such as vector works? All advice from practices appreciated, hear from you soon.
AM
Posted by Administrator in education, software | 1 Comment »
Sunday, May 11th, 2008
Dear members,
we are well on the way (we hope) to final solutions for the troubled AILA web site.
Moves are underway and hopefully by the end of this week, we will have made the necessary changes to the operations.
Fingers crossed that you will not notice the change except for the increase in stability and maybe even a working Pay Page again.
It will also mean that for a day or two (or three?) there will be no uploads (such as job postings, newsletters etc) or changes to the site .
Sadly these things do take time and resources from other matters. Thank you for your understanding and the notes of support. AILA National Office
Posted by Administrator in AILA, General | No Comments »
Monday, May 5th, 2008
5 May 2008
What is happening to the AILA web site?
In the last couple of weeks, we (the AILA National Office) have become aware that the web site was disappearing on many occasions, often overnight.
On each occasion we have had to ring the internet service provider (ISP) and ask them to fix the problem. In their usual relaxed fashion they would attend to the problem - eventually.
then to complicate things we started to receive calls that there was a virus on the web site. Given that this means that any such virus would be on the server - not here in this office - then again we started ringing the ISP and asking them to investigate.
Again in their relaxed fashion, the juniors who answer the phone would say that the senior technicians were working on it.
But all of the above just continued! ie the page kept disappearing and more phone calls arrived about a possible virus on the web site.
Eventually after much time on the phone last week, and with some outside assistance form a very good tech person, Joel Roberts of Tekhaus (Newcastle NSW), we worked out that there were two separate problems.
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Was there a virus on the web site? NO
BUT we worked out that someone within the ISP had placed a piece an evil piece of software (URCHIN by Google) on the same server we were on - and that it had been let loose onto our web site - without our permission.
This meant that all the main pages on our web site - and there are hundreds - had had a piece of code or two inserted into the page code. Once we realised what it was, we naturally contacted the ISP and asked for it to be removed.
BUT, it was too late. The tracking code was in all those pages on the server.
After about 12 hours work, we may have found them all and removed them!!!
While the application, and subsequent code, would do no one any harm, we definitely resented the insertion of the tracking code without our permission.
It is always likely that it was done by a junior who allowed it to travel into all the web sites on the server.
But still!!!!!! (please image a rude word or two at this point!)
If your workplace does detect the code - the tracking code - it will most likely show as a virus on the web site.
PLEASE - send us an email or ring to let us know, but more importantly identify if you can which page you were visiting when it was identified.
Fingers crossed we have found it all.
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and why then was the web site disappearing??
again it turns out that the problem was the ISP.
The particular server was not coping. So we have now been moved to another server which they (the ISP) say is more stable.
But in the process we lost some of our log-ons such as the PAY page and other stuff.
We are chasing all this up!!
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Thanks for your patience.
All will be resumed soon. - we hope!
thanks again to the advice from Joel Roberts of Tekhaus (Newcastle NSW)
Posted by Administrator in AILA, General | No Comments »