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Changing numbers

admin — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 14:37:47 +0000

If you have been alive long enough you will know that periodically the national telephone companies will announce that they are adding an extra digit to phone numbers because they are running out. There is always a bit of an outcry that we will have to remember ever longer numbers and that businesses have to spend a fortune reprinting all their stationery etc, but in the end we all get used to it. I remember when my London phone number started 01, then it became 081, then 0181, and then 020. No doubt there will be more.

So what has all this to do with photography? Well, not a lot. But it does have to do with this site and my main site. At the moment the internet uses something called the IPv4 protocol. Designed in the 1970s, it was built to accommodate about 4 billion devices connecting to the network. That seemed like a lot at the time, but the explosive growth of the internet means we’re closing in on that number. In order to allow the internet to continue to grow, a new protocol has been created: IPv6.

Unfortunately, the IPv4 and IPv6 networks are incompatible. Unless you have a gateway of some kind if you’re on one you can’t visit websites on the other. And, even more unfortunately, the gateway solutions typically are hardware-based and cost tens of thousands of dollars per website to deploy. This means that most of the world’s websites are unavailable for the 1% of the internet that is already using IPv6, and the percentage of users on IPv6-only networks is only going to grow.

Without putting too fine a point on it, I will be buggered if I intend to sit idly by while my web presence becomes less and less visible, but equally I do not have the tens of thousands of dollars to invest in beating the problem. As a result I have recently begun using CloudFlare, a free online based resource that improves user experience of my website, and as of today allows me to make my sites IPv6 ready. If you have a website, it might be worth your looking into this too.

With thanks to CloudFlare for the info and the solution.

Happy New Year

admin — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 10:03:23 +0000

I have several rather long winded posts on the go – and promise not to publish them all at the same time – but thought I would wish all a Happy New Year. And what better way to do it than draw your attention to a positive treasure trove of photography articles on Telephoto, The Telegraph’s blog on art photography.

To be fair, Telephoto is a collaboration between The Telegraph, Foto 8, Dispatches and The Drawbridge, pooling their content to create in their words a “single window on the best and the curious in today’s art and documentary photography”. Their RSS feed has an interesting piece as lead on a Leibovitz Vanity Fair cover of Tiger Woods. The picture was taken three years ago but is so much more significant now!

Enjoy.

The first post

admin — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 13:17:23 +0000

Welcome to BlueFilter, the blog of Michael Cockerham Photography. I haven’t a clue what I am doing yet, but in due course BlueFilter will become a repository of comment and analysis on all things from the world of photography. To be frank, given my penchant for spouting on about all manner of things, don’t be surprised to find that I occasionally step onto a soapbox to discuss other things too.

Here’s to the future – wherever it takes us.

In the meantime, feel free to visit my main site at www.michaelcockerham.com