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Intactivism: Weeks in Review January 2013

by Tally on January 27, 2013

Protect ALL the genitals! Stop circumcision for allFor more than three years I have been posting a weekly review of blogs and articles relating to circumcision and intactivism. At least, I was doing this until the end of last year.

Unfortunately, the holiday season proved too much for me. Work piled up. Other obligations came up. I ran out of time. Until I free up more time, my Week in Review series will be sporadic.

The following are recent posts that deserve to be widely read.
 

Sunday, December 23, 2012

Beyond the Bris: Questioning Jewish Circumcision: Third Year Brings Change for Beyond the Bris
Rebecca Wald, the Jewish mother behind the blog Beyond the Bris, writes about starting her third year of the website. She is bringing on another writer to help.
 

Wednesday, January 2, 2013

ICGI - International Coalition of Genital Integrity: ICGI closes first Intactivist blog
After ten years of keeping intactivists informed, ICGI announces that it is closing its blog. Dan Bollinger points out that there are many more blogs and information is much more accessible than when he started ICGI. I will miss Dan's voice through ICGI. But I am sure we will continue hearing from him.
 

Thursday, January 3, 2013

Awesatious: Foreskin is NOT gross!
Some people say foreskin is gross. It is not. It may be unfamiliar to many in America. But that does not make it gross. This blogger attacks many myths about foreskin, including how it looks.
 

Sunday, January 6, 2013

Lawn Cares: Recalling Congresswoman Kyrsten Sinema’s courageous stance against circumcision in 2001
Lawn recalls attending a play about a Jewish mother who resists having her son be circumcised. At the end, she succumbs to the pressure and the boy is cut. Lawn contacted the actress and the playwright . Both agreed that male infant circumcision should stop. The actress is now a member of Congress. The playwright reworked the ending and is hoping to have it performed again.
  Read more . . .

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On being a webmaster: An update

by Tally on December 20, 2011

ARGH! Why can't I get this foreskin restoration website working?I went to bed last night (actually, early this morning) with high hopes that the DNS would finish propagating and RestoringForeskin.org would be accessible to all. Sadly, I woke to a continued mess.

After more looking and reading and examining and experimenting and checking and pulling my hair out, I discovered a typo in the nameserver DNS zone record. The IP address for ns2.tnameserver.info had one digit off.

Happy camper with a working foreskin restoration websiteI corrected the typo and within minutes I noticed a difference. Checking the name servers, I saw that they started reporting the correct address for the site. Traffic to the site grew to normal levels within an hour. This is how I remember DNS propagation working.

I am a happy camper, again. Read more . . .

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Argh! The agony of being a webmaster

by Tally on December 19, 2011

In addition to Restoring Tally.com, I also run the RestoringForeskin.org website. RestoringForeskin.org offers foreskin restoration information to everyone and it has a private on-line community for restorers. The private side has restoring blogs, foreskin restoration progress pictures uploaded by our members, a chat room, and a forum.

Restoring Foreskin.org is growing by several hundred members a month. We have over 1,000 visitors to the site every day. Drupal is the content management software that makes the site work. As popular as the site has become, we have outgrown the shared web server we had been using.

For the past several weeks I have been setting up a virtual private server (VPS), which is a virtual machine (VM) dedicated to being a web server. A VPS is like a bare-bones computer that has to setup. It is powerful, but requires knowledge and work to install and configure everything. In contrast, a shared web server is like oatmeal. All you have to do is add the website. It will work, maybe not well and maybe not fast, but it works.

Late Saturday night (early Sunday morning) I finished my testing of the VPS. I was satisfied everything worked well enough to move the site. It was after 2am and only a few were on the site. They were all in the chat room, so I announced that I was going to move the site. The chat room would still work because it is hosted on another server.

It took me less than an hour to move the site to the new VPS. As part of the move, I had to change the DNS information for the restoringforeskin.org domain name. The new web server has a private name server and I had to change the DNS to refer to the new name server.

When you go to a website on the Internet, the address or domain is sent. The ISP (Internet service provider) that provides internet service also has a DNS name server that looks up the IP address from the domain address. The IP address is needed to travel the Internet. If the ISP cannot find the address (because of change like we made), you are at the mercy of the ISP. The ISP can pass the request on to another name server, return an error page, or put up a spammy parking page in the hopes they can make some money if anyone is fool enough to click on one of the links. Read more . . .

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Am I getting old or what ?!?

by Tally on April 1, 2011

I remember a time, just a few years ago, when I did stuff. For example, my extended family used to celebrate Christmas in Florida. My wife and in-laws would fly there and I would drive. I would leave in the evening, drive all night, and pick them up at the airport. I enjoyed the drive, the solitude, and the peaceful feeling of putting miles on the highway. I don't do that any more.

I don't know why. I just don't do stuff like I used to.

This past month really proves that I am not the man I used to be. Two weeks ago Hayseed Dixie was appearing in a town 1-1/2 hours away. I like Hayseed Dixie's music and I really wanted to see them. They play a different type of music, often coveing heavy metal, bluegrass style. The video below is one of their songs. Read more . . .

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Information Overload Syndrome - IOS

by Tally on April 16, 2010

Information overload syndrome - IOS: a leading cause of burnoutWith the advent of the Internet and pocket sized computing devices, we are inundated with information. We can work 24/7. We can look up all kinds of useless information. We can follow the daily lives of celebrities and other people for no reason whatsoever. We can drive down the freeway with a cell phone held up to one ear and a laptop computer on the seat beside us, while we are looking at a notebook. Read more . . .

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News for us overachievers!

by Tally on January 14, 2010

Yesterday, Science Tanslational Medicine published the article Uncovering Residual Effects of Chronic Sleep Loss on Human Performance. Researchers determined that, after an extended period of sleep loss (working too much for too long), one night of catch-up sleep offers only marginal benefit. The researchers determined that for a few hours after waking from the catch-up sleep, a person performed well. But, after a few hours, the effects of the cumulative sleep loss contributed to lower performance. Read more . . .

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16 Month progress report for restoring foreskin

by Tally on December 10, 2009

16 month progress report of foreskin restoration of a routine infant circumcisionSixteen months sounds like a long time, but it is flying by for me. At least, now it is. I remember when I started tugging I thought, wow, this is going to take a long time! Well, not really. It also helps that my progress has been rapid. I went from a wrinkled shaft to full flaccid coverage in that time.

Full flaccid coverage is a good milestone. After reaching this point in my restoration, I have two more goals. I want to have enough inner foreskin to cover my glans. The other goal is that I want to have enough restored foreskin so that I don't have to wear a retainer to bed. I am working on the first goal almost exclusively now. I figure the second goal, not having to wear a foreskin retainer, will happen in time. Read more . . .

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