Posts tagged “geek”
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My next Linux install will be Debian
But, god the delight of hunkering down in the Debian commune again. I love how relentless and unsullied they are, even by Ubuntu. via oblomovka.com Danny O'Brien on moving from Mac to Debian. I'll als…
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Google, you're starting to give me the shits
I've been a fan of the Google keiretsu for a long time. Adwords is a brilliant piece of technology, and a brilliant piece of business: it works so well because everyone wins. More recently, they've st…
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Should I run Cat 6?
Wow, three times in the last few days I've been asked by people whether it's a good idea to run Cat 6 ethernet in their homes. The answer is, emphatically, yes! Us lucky people in Australia are going…
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Linux, implemented in JavaScript
JavaScript is just a buggy toy language right? Wrong! (Though having the same operator for addition and concatenation is still idiotic.) It's amazing how far JavaScript, and particularly the implement…
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Reading Crikey on the Kindle @hmoffatt
A commenter, Hamish Moffatt, on my post about my first impressions with the Kindle has asked if I've solved the reading Crikey problem. The problem is how to read the daily Crikey newsletter on the Ki…
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Shed progress, and networking disaster
Insulation Over the weekend I started insulating the shed. It's tough work because every joist width on the shed is different, seemingly for no good reason. That means every batt has to be cut. I boug…
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I know where you've been
Reading the site behind the evil evil evil evercookie hack (evil, almost indestructible cookies), I stumbled upon the author's CSS History Knocker code. This is something I'd toyed with in the past bu…
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Kindle: first impressions
My Kindle arrived on Monday and I've been using it to read stuff ever since so I thought I'd record my first impressions of the device. Hardware design The industrial design is incredibly slick. This…
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Logstalgia: web log file analysis as pong
via thealphablenders.com This is very cool. Web log file analysis visualized as a game of pong. (Pointed out by Des. Thanks!)
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Funniest bug ticket comment ever!
Comment #56 on issue 1180 by bryce.boley: Email app does not display inline images http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=1180 So my ex-girlfriend sent me some really hot photos of herself.…
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Considering the Kindle
via amazon.com I've been keeping an eye on Kindles since launch. The idea of a very small, very light reading device is very appealing. Two things where I would use it every day are The Guardian and C…
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Why thank you Windows
So I'm copying files onto an SD card to go into a digital photo frame and suddenly get this message: Odd. I check whether there's space on the card. Loads. I check that the file names aren't too long…
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Beyonwiz DP-Lite PVR review
I bought the Beyonwiz DP-Lite PVR a few weeks ago so I thought I'd write up my impressions of it. It's important to understand that I bought this after having used MythTV mostly happily for about 4 ye…
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Goodbye MythTV, hello Beyonwiz
Over the last few months I've had a number of hardware problems with my MythTV server. The machine itself locked up fairly regularly, and there's been big problems with the driver for the dual-tuner c…
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One thing about the NBN that annoys me
One of the things that's annoying me about all the NBN talk is the insistence on metro-equivalent services in regional and remote areas, as though this is a reasonable thing to require. I live in the…
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Disable the Same Origin Policy in Firefox
Browser impose the Same origin policy on JavaScript running inside a web page. It means that your code cannot access a resource through XMLHttpRequest that belongs on another server, even when it's in…
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De-obfuscate Omniture's JavaScript part 2
After my last post an anonymous email arrived with an even better mechanism to de-obfuscate Omniture's code, including the line-noise base s_code. I currently have a real need to be able to understand…
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Sneaky trick to de-obfuscate Omniture JavaScript plugins
My current job involves working extensively with Omniture products. The company has an annoying habit of secrecy, with documentation only available on request for many aspects of their products. They…
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UI fail from Exetel
Work is providing me a mobile, so I went to cancel my phone with Exetel. Unfortunately this is the UI you see. So first of all, you can helpfully cancel it in the past. But then the button is labelled…
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Android, six months on
So I've been using the Google Android phone for about six months now, and it's about time I reflected on how it's gone. Here's a bit of a rambling review. The hardware The G1 hardware is pretty limite…
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How not to compete with free
So I'm a bit late, but I wanted to grab the latest Decoder Ring album. Logically, I started at their site, which certainly talks about the album. With no link to somewhere it can be purchased. Next st…
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Guide to the government's insulation rebate
I've built a site that's a guide to the government's home insulation rebate programme. My aim is to provide a fairly quick and simple guide, given that the government site is all full of legalese like…
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Start your own social network
Many employers view social networks as time-wasting nonsense. Can building your own workplace social network deliver all of the productivity and none of the problems? Simon Rumble finds out. My articl…
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Sydney FC fixture calendar
I've entered all the upcoming fixtures for this season into the public Sydney FC calendar I maintain. It means I know when games are coming up as I live by my calendar and refer to it constantly. Time…
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Announcing: Swedish Chef wave robot
I managed to score myself a Google Wave account by promising to write a Swedish Chef robot. So this afternoon I wrote one, in a language I've never used before (Python) and to a target platform I've n…
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Acer Aspire One D150 and Ubuntu netbook remix
Earlier this week I bought an Acer Aspire One D150 to use as my new portable and, possibly, desktop. Most of these new netbooks are pretty much the same inside, so a few things won me over to this one…
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Why display advertising sucks
I've been working on a fair bit of marketing-related stuff over the last few years, and we've been spending pretty big on online campaigns. Much of this money has gone on display advertising, the kind…
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Moving into the cloud
For the last five years I've run a virtual server from the excellent Linode which has hosted a number of services including this web site, a Jabber server, some other web sites, and my email. Initiall…
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Silence at last!
Having shamelessly stolen Danny's excellent research I've finally finished building my new quiet server for MythTV, Squeezecenter and other serverly duties. It's brilliant! The Antec Mini P180 case an…
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Tories are kinda right on the NBN
There's a bit of a furore over the costings of the Notional Broadband Network, with the Conservatives claiming $150 a month or more. I thought I'd do someback-of-the-envelope calculations. Assumptions…
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Notional Broadband Network smells of fail
So we've finally got the non-announcement of the winner of the National Broadband Network tender, and the winner is... everybody loses! Thanks for playing kids. So instead of awarding the tender to th…
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The search for quiet
I've had some big hardware failures of late in my computer infrastructure. My previously rather good and quiet IBM Intellistation (dual Xeon) MythTV server's power supply died. The PSU, being IBM, is…
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Baaaaa
Well it had to happen, I suppose. Julie was talking about using Twitter to find out the buzz around what your company is doing. And so I searched a little and intrigued me enough to sign up. So you ca…
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Godwin invoked in censorship debate
Uh-oh, someone just invoked Godwin's law in the internet censorship debate. Or view it on YouTube directly.
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Wikileaks hosts ACMA blacklist
Whoopsie, the inevitable has happened and the ACMA blacklist genie is out of the bottle. Gee we didn't see that coming! We can now all see what Conroy's great firewall of Australia will block, should…
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Small business web analytics
I'm writing a tutorial for a magazine about web analytics and its use by small businesses. I'd love to include a case study of how people use such tools. I use web analytics every day in my real job,…
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JQuery and Drupal book suggestions?
I'm launching a new site for work in a bit over a week that's built in Drupal and with JQuery used extensively. So far I'm pretty impressed with JQuery, especially how you can string things together.…
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Shittyrail claims ownership of timetable data
Apparently Sydney's Shittyrail government transport monopoly is threatening an iPhone developer who had the temerity of making their timetables more usable. This from an organisation whose web site pr…
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IE6 must die
When the revolution comes, the developers of IE6 will be the first up against the wall. Joining them there will be the people at my work who haven't updated the desktop COE to a browser that isn't qui…
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MythTV and the Playstation 3: current state
So I've had a week or so playing with the PS3 and MythTV. I just posted this to the Myth user list, but I suspect some of the readers here would be interested in how it's going. I'm attempting to use…
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MythTV and PS3: problems with formats
Michael Fox has commented on the reasonable UPnP client in the PS3 and its interactions with MythTV, and I think he's helped me work out why I've been having some problems. It seems Myth is recording…
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MythTV and PS3
After my recent hardware woes, I've had a little more success getting MythTV back up and running. I bought another cheap Dell workstation to act as my new Myth server. After a little fiddling, it's up…
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IBM PSU not standard
Following advice from Graeme and Grant, I bought and tried out an ordinary ATX PSU to solve my PSU problem but unfortunately it hasn't worked out. It fits in reasonably well, with three of the screws…
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Having a bad time with hardware
Got home this afternoon and tried to turn my desktop machine on, and got nothing. Looking up the diagnostic lights the Dell manual says "System board failure has occurred." Not good!
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Is this some standard PSU?
So the power supply on my MythTV server died last weekend with a bang. I'm hoping it didn't take all the other hardware with it, but first I need to get a replacement PSU in there. One nice thing abou…
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Why Windows will never be secure
While common software applications require that you disable the privilege escalation functions, Windows will never solve its security issues. The concept of running as a low-privilege user, while usin…
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Fixing a laptop cooler
Our laptop had some problems with heat in the recent spate of Summer temperatures. I pulled it apart and gave it a vacuum. Sure enough, lots of dust and a fair few dead cockroaches. To prevent a recur…
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Google Reader recommends WTF?
Google Reader has a pretty good idea of what I read, so WTF is it doing suggesting a V8 Supercars feed to me? Hopefully it'll learn the error of its ways when I click "No thanks".
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Legal music downloads also compete with easy
The major record labels seem to have finally worked out that downloads are the future, that DRM will never work and that people will pay for high-quality music downloads. I've recently been buying a f…
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Mobile broadband over Bluetooth with Ubuntu 8.10
I've been intrigued since upgrading to the latest Ubuntu release where NetworkManager has a shiny new "Mobile Broadband" tab. This is something I've wanted to get working for a long time. I don't want…
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If programming languages were religions
Perl is indeed like slitting the throat of a live chicken and smearing its blood and entrails on an effigy of your enemy. If programming languages were religions... thanks to Raz
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Copyright violations
It seems there's a lot of people who think that images in Wikipedia can be used however they like. In fact, unless they've been released into the public domain, they have licenses that require some fa…
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Gastro!
Wow Lindsay, that was bloody quick! Yesterday I asked about doing a geo mashup of the NSW government's name and shame list of dodgy food joints, and today Lindsay has done one. Impressive! Now I wanna…
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Geo mashups
A site screaming out for a geo-mashup is the NSW Food Authority's Penalty Notices list, which shows the companies that have received penalty notices for poor hygiene and the like. Problem is, the data…
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Fuji Xerox DocuPrint 203A on Ubuntu Linux
Just bought this super cheap (AUD$88) black and white laser and spent a while going around in circles. FInally worked out that it works just fine with the Xerox P8e driver. So to install, System > Adm…
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One thing, done well
I bought a digital photo frame yesterday. On the face of it, this should be a pretty straightforward product. You stick a memory card in it that has photos on it, and it randomly cycles through them.…
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Should the bush have metro-equivalent broadband?
Yesterday's Crikey had a letter from Rachel Dixon that rather eloquently said what I've said before about the National Broadband Network projects aim of connecting 98% of the population to "metro-equi…
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Dear Mr Albanese: thanks for your form letter
Last week I wrote a letter to my local member, Anthony Albanese, detailing my concerns about the proposed internet censorship regime. I received a response last night. I won't bother wasting electrons…
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Voting machines: a solution searching for a problem?
It's US presidential election time again, and the big story as always in America is long queues at polling places. I don't get it. They have the simplest voting system going, where all you get to do i…
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That iPhone sure is intuitive
Quote of the moment from the boss of the boss, holding his shiny new iPhone: "I don't know how to make a call!"
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JavaScript gah!
JavaScript bit me again, with its concatenation operator being the same as its addition operator. So instead of the total amount of an order, I ended up with a string of all the prices in the order. G…
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Dear Anthony Albanese on Internet Censorship
Lots of people are writing to their MPs to explain why the proposed Internet censorship regime, as currently being pushed by Senator Conroy, won't work and is a draconian imposition on the rights of c…
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IE and multiple identical IDs
It seems Internet Explorer is quite strict about having multiple IDs in a document with the same selector. This, combined with the way I read the Prototype documentation, had me walking around in circ…
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Contractor payroll services
I'm about to cut the agency out of the equation with my long-term contract (2 years so far) and reduce the amount they're taking from my wages. I don't want to avoid tax, don't particularly want (or r…
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Note about Same origin policy
JavaScript's same origin policy security model means that a script can't (directly... there are sneaky ways aroun dit) request data from another site. It's quite strict. foo.site.com is different to s…
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ZigBee sensors
I've been watching the space of low-power wireless networking for some time, as it has some cool possibilities for sensor networks. ZigBee is one such standard that seems to be gaining support. It's a…
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ZigBee
Already had a few responses about wireless sensors. Des suggests looking at SquidBee which is an open implementation. Quite interesting. Rich recommends a book, Making Things Talk: Practical Methods f…
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Cats and MythTV
Geek resourcefulness at its best. This just got posted to the MythTV users list: Subject: Cats and MythTV... Recently my cat has decided that the top of my MyhTV box is a great place to have a nap...…
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Super cheap USB keys
I can't remember who it was, but someone on the Planet Linux Australia was talking about using cheap USB flash drives to teach RAID. I thought it was Russell Coker but can't find it now. Anyway, just…
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Coolest Chrome feature: search within page
So far this is my favourite little UI hack that I've found within Google Chrome. Kind of appropriate that a search engine company would get this right, I suppose. If you're familiar with Firefox's sea…
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Google Chrome: first looks
I've been playing around with Google Chrome this morning on my work (Windows) machine. This is Google's browser software, and I have to say I'm impressed. I had expected something a fair bit less poli…
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Google discovers solvent abuse
We all thought the folks at Google were on crack. Turns out they've been on something quite a bit cheaper. Sometime "tomorrow" (though mentioned as "Tuesday", but probably Mountain View-centric time),…
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Key signing in Sydney on 12th September, 2008
Geo: -33.85967,151.207025 Udo van den Heuvel is visiting and would like to do a key signing to improve the web of trust. I've suggested The Australian in The Rocks where I tend to take overseas touris…
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Channel 7 misses the digital point
Channel 7 holds the rights to broadcast the Olympics, but clearly doesn't get the possibilities that digital television brings. Last night was the first football match, with Australia's mens team play…
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GroceryWatch
So the ACCC has launched the new "GroceryWatch" site, GroceryChoice, which gives comparisons of a basket of goods between supermarkets. I wonder how hard it would be to game this system, if you could…
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Firefox search in the URL bar
It seemed people appreciated my last Firefox tip about deleting autocomplete entries. Here's another one. If, like me, Wikipedia is your first point of call for just about any enquiry, here's a quick…
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XRay for CSS
Very very cool little bookmarklet that shows loads of cool info about the styles of an element you click on a page. Wow!
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All CMSes suck
I have a slide I use when presenting about content management systems to manglement types. Content management systems suck. They're designed that way. The main idea behind them, in a corporate context…
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iReasonablePlan
I've been thinking over the weekend about my post about the iPhone and the crap plans being offered. The problem is the lack of data covered by these plans. I reckon the stories in about a week's time…
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iCrapPlan
Mark Pesce and Stilgherrian are talking about starting their own telco. More power to 'em, I say, but I suspect they're in for a rude shock. Running a telco isn't as easy as it looks. The big telcos m…
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Whinging?
Michael Davies reckons I was whinging when I gave a method for people to filter out Twitter and other annoying crap from their feed from Planet Linux Australia. WTF? I gave a method for people to not…
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Feed minus Twitter crap
There's been some complaints on Planet Linux Australia about various Microblogging annoyance. I've been toying with Yahoo Pipes recently, and one of its features is regex filtering of feeds. That's ve…
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Wow, there's still web agencies who think Flash is cool
Wow, I can't believe there's still web agencies who do everything in Flash. This technique is so effective, the above is what Google can see of their site. That's right, the title. Supposedly Adobe is…
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Sniff browser history
Niall Kennedy has a really clever JavaScript hack to sniff a user's browser history. It's a pretty cool hack, but also a little scary since any web page you load can find out what pages you've been to…
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Big brother IS watching
I've been toying with an amazing new web analytics tool called ClickTale. It tracks everything a user does as they interact with your site, so as well as the usual heat maps and the like, you can actu…
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Google Developer Day
I went to Google Developer Day today and learnt a lot. There's some very clever people doing some very clever stuff. The sessions I went to in the morning were iGoogle gadgets, which is some very inte…
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Firebug site down?
The other day I moaned about Firebug crashing my browser. Seems that the reason, though this is weird but probably due to boneheaded network configuration, is that the firebug domain servers are down.…
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Weird Firefox crash
This is just bizarre. I've received a new laptop at work and so I'm installing all my stuff. Firebug and YSlow have become absolutely critical to my day-to-day work, so that was on the list of extensi…
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Filterset.G out of favour
In my recent post about online advertising, I mentioned that I use Adblock Plus and Filterset.G. Ares writes in to say that Filterset.G is is deprecated and probably unmaintained, with the last update…
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Come on BBC, that's just lame!
I got this message in my feed reader this morning. It seems the BBC have moved the RSS feed for the "Documentary Archive" podcasts. The lame thing is, with a single line in their web server config, th…
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Wow, doesn't online advertising suck?
I haven't seen online ads since about 1995, when HotWired first pioneered annoying, animated banners that detracted from the content. Initially I was using hacks like hosts files and the like, then I…
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Disable Same Origin Policy: JavaScript
The Same origin policy ensures that your browser won't load files from sources other than the original source of the loading file. It's vital to help prevent cross-site scripting attacks, but a bit an…
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Goodbye eBay
I've used eBay for a very long time. Since it was first launched in Australia, I think. They had got the balance between buyers and sellers right. Recent changes of policy have forced me to think abou…
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Tools to stich photos
A very helpful man from the Critical Mass list took a bunch of photos of a map I've been hunting for. The map is Map of the County of Cumberland showing Interim Plan No.2, 1947 from the NSW State Reco…
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Dead pixel
My LCD monitor has a dead pixel. I've tried running some stuck pixel tools for a few hours at a time in an effort to fix it, without success. Next step is to try the more drastic methods. Unfortunatel…
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IceTV judgement's impact on other data?
In case you hadn't heard, IceTV lost their case in the Federal Court. IceTV provide(d) an electronic programme guide (EPG) service commonly used by people with personal video recorders (PVR) that work…
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Okay, now I miss London
Dave Cross just posted a link to the Programme for Opentech 2008 in July in London. While I've long missed all the awesome bands I've been missing in London, this is one of those events I really would…
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Firefox 3 looking good
I thought I'd try out Firefox 3 for a bit. Part of my job is to stay up to date with the latest and greatest, and I was hoping the much-touted memory management enhancements would be a nice plus. So f…
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Inbox zero: the radical approach
There's been a bit of discussion recently about Inbox Zero, getting your email inbox empty. Well I just discovered a rather radical approach to getting there. I accidentally deleted everything in the…
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How much should we prop up the remote regions?
Australia has a long history of propping up the economies of the remote regions. You get tax breaks for living in remote areas, telecommunications providers are forced to provide phone services and we…
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When abstractions attack!
Had an interesting little bug report today. Apparently someone has created an email address with an ampersand in the local-part. While this is perfectly, valid, it means we enter a world of pain when…
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Virgin Blue confirmation doesn't print
Maybe I'm expecting too much, but if I were the web developer at Virgin Blue, I'd test that the itinerary lookup page printed alright. It's the kinda page your customers might think would be worth pri…
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What are Planets for?
Russell is discussing the purpose of Planets, the feed aggregators many of us enjoy. I don't think it's ever really been enumerated, and it probably should. But I bet it's different things to differen…
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Note to self: use prototype
Gah. I spent far too much time today trying to work around a weird JavaScript bug in Firefox. I had a form that needed to have different hidden parameters depending on the search type in a select list…
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Music taxonomy
Back when I used to listen to music on pieces of etched plastic, I had a simple classification system. Music was slotted into one of "Chilled", "Techno", "Hip hop", "Rock/Pop", "Classical", "Jazz", "O…
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Postcodes in electoral divisions
This is just to notify geeks out there that this data exists. I'm sure this will be of real interest to someone out there, perhaps someone building a mySociety for Australia. The federal parliament's…
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ABC peering
I seem to have been misunderstood here. My post was rather rambling, for which I apologise, though that's the nature of blogs really. The ABC does, indeed, peer with ISPs through PIPE, and no doubt pe…
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ABC Playback and quotas
"Sam" comments on Stigherrian's blog about some of his ABC Playback feedback. In particular, he points out that the video is highly compressed because they're mindful of "download caps that the public…
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Recognition at last!
Finally, someone has noticed that I can never find hats or bike helmets to fit. The reason is obvious. I'm massively-brained, according to Stigherrian. Next step: forming the "massively-brained" suppo…
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ABC Playback shouldn't be hard to hack
Despite ABC Playback being touted as Windows/Mac support only, it should be pretty easy to hack up. Looking at it on Windows this morning with the trusty Live HTTP Headers Firefox extension switched o…
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Google Transit includes Perth
Google have launched Google Transit support for Perth's public transport system. Hopefully, and it would seem likely given they're based in Sydney, they'll start work on the appalling Sydney transport…
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Online ordering systems
Quick as a flash after my last post about online ordering systems, Hadley Rich suggested shopify, which while a hosted system, seems to be written by people with a clue. Railsy kinda clues, which mean…
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Online ordering should be easy
Mary, I'm totally with you about online ordering. So many companies just don't get it. Worse yet, utility companies in Australia are just appalling. Origin Energy, I'm looking at you, dickheads! Their…
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Roland Juno 106 Lego Mindstorms: on eBay
I've just put a bunch of stuff on eBay, and I'm sure some of you might be interested. A Roland Juno 106, one of the first ever MIDI analogue synthesizers. This sucker has a wonderful sound, but since…
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Not a charity
I've just had a very bizarre exchange with Rodney Gedda from IDG, a big magazine and book publisher. I used to write for some IDG publications and was, briefly, editor of a micro-magazine they had, On…
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Web developers are from Mars
I imagine most of you reading this blog already read Joel on Software, but today's post is destined to be a classic. Joel worked at Microsoft on the Excel team from 1991 to 1995, where he clearly lear…
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Google Calendar sync with Outlook
I, like many others amongst you, have to run the bloated abomination that is Microsoft Outlook at work. It's been quite annoying, as I've really got used to my personal Google Calendar being synced to…
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IE8 will break the web, and about bloody time
So the latest Internet Explorer is out and, like any good web developer, I've downloaded it and thrown the sites I manage at it. The results aren't good, and I'm very pleased by that. IE8 was original…
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St George bringing in two factor authentication
I've banked with St George for many many years, and they've long been pretty ahead of the pack with technology in Australia. I got a letter the other day indicating that they were bringing in some new…
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Firefox tip: delete an autocomplete entry
This is one of those things that's obvious once you know it, but solves a real problem beforehand. You're using firefox with autocomplete switched on. You make a mistake filling out a form once, and f…
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Spectacularly bad UI
Wow Ricoh really take the cake here. My work has some Ricoh photocopiers with an excellent feature, you can use them as scanners. Great feature. Lousy user interface. Once you're scanned your page, yo…
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1 terabyte is now under 300 bucks!
An important threshold has been passed. 1 terabyte of external storage is under $300 at a mainstream vendor. Wow! I could get all old fogie and reminisce about the old days, our first 10 megabyte hard…
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Great cabling
My uncle is putting built-in cupboards in our bedroom. There's a phone jack in the bedroom, right in the way of where he's building cupboards. He asked me if I wanted the phone jack, and I said no, so…
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Web mockups
The marketing gurus at my work want to redesign our online ordering system. What we ended up with is certainly problematic, but at the time was about as much as we could get into the scope of this hug…
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HD MythTV via PS3
Jeremy, shamelessly pimping for his work has suggested using a PS3 as my MythTV front-end as an alternative to building my own front-end. Advantages being it could be slightly cheaper (depends on hard…
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HD MythTV responses
I've had quite a bit of response to yesterday's post about HD MythTV. Thanks for the input folks, you've pretty much answered all my doubts! Cafuego told me he's having no trouble recording two HD str…
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HD MythTV
Our ancient CRT telly has recently started getting a green tint in the lower corner, and Holly just got a substantial pay rise by moving jobs, so we're going to treat ourselves to a new telly. Judging…
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When the revolution comes...
The product manager for Internet Explorer and his entire team will be the first up against the wall.
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WebTrends are at least responsive!
In response to yesterday's rant about WebTrends, I got an email this morning from Scott Driscoll, Product Manager at WebTrends. He says they're working on improving usability and want a chat about wha…
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WebTrends, oh how you shit me
My work uses WebTrends to track people using our sites. It's not cheap, and the user interface is mind bogglingly stupid. It's, of course, one of these JavaScript-heavy, wait-for-everything-to-load-be…
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Enjoy the conference
Similar to last year, I can't make linux.conf.au 2008 again. Yet again, it sounds like a great programme and I'm sure the organisers will, as usual, deliver a conference so good that people rave about…
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Multivariate testing
Much of my job involves supporting a marketing department in web stuff. A lot of the time this means finding and explaining new ways to help them market. I've recently been looking at multivariate tes…
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Don't waste money on internet filters
Stilgherrian has an excellent synopsis of why geeks get angry when politicans suggest filtering the Internet. The bit about the shiny suited salesman is brilliant.
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Bow before me, I am solder guru
Before I left London, I bought an iAudio X5 audio player. The main selling point was that it plays mp3, ogg and flac, along with the fact it just shows up as a USB mass storage device, unlike other pl…
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Pace Active 3875 ADSL Receiver
There's one of these boxes sitting in a pile of junk outside a house around the corner from home. Anyone have any idea WTF it is? I'm intrigued because it has ethernet, SCART, printer, serial and comp…
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JavaScript email address validation part 3
Continuing on my my odyssey to find a decent JavaScript regular expression for email address validation, I've come up with something I'm happy with. I started with Rob Eberhardt's crack at it here, bu…
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JavaScript email address validation part 2
A few people have responded to yesterday's post about validating email addresses in JavaScript pointing out that it's very very wrong. For starters, Skud points out that.info addresses won't work. How…
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Birmo on censorship
John Birmingham, one of my favourite writers, writes about the proposed Internet censorship laws. Chips, why don't you go back to your big new office, stop messing around with my inalienable right to…
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JavaScript regex for email address validation
I found this helpful page with a nice recipe for email address validation in JavaScript. Unfortunately the regular expression doesn't allow for email addresses with a plus sign in the front part, for…
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Be Alarmed, Not Alert
Finally, Internet filtering that works, able to block anything that could possibly offend Fundies First. But block it for everyone, not just Fundies.
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A DVD player that doesn't suck?
DVD players seem to be disposable devices these days. You really only get a year out of one before it starts randomly skipping on brand new discs. So I'm in the market for a new one. This time around,…
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Bricked my router
Last night while upgrading the Firmware in my (otherwise excellent) Billion 7404VGP-M ADSL modem/router/wireless thingy, I managed to brick it. It lost connectivity at 20% through the upgrade (though…
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Blogroll is not a recommendation
Russell makes the assumption that linking to someone's blog is some kind of unconditional recommendation. Far from it! If you look at the standard version of my blog you'll see I've just added the tex…
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Good HTML beginners book?
I need to impart the holy word of HTML/CSS onto someone at work. Any suggestions for a good book?
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Australian Hi-Tech Crime Centre not so bright
James McCormack of the Australian Hi-Tech Crime Centre is quoted as saying: " go for WEP; it's an older form of encryption but still quite secure ". Mr McCormack was recommending that, if people can't…
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Howie's Firefox extension suggestion
Howie suggested FireBug as a must-have extension. While I agree it is amazing for debugging web pages, the reason I've had it uninstalled is what I'd call a bug. When you have it switched off for all…
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FireBug tab opening delay redux
Ben, having read my last post about FireBug, notes that you only get the delay opening a new tab if you have FireBug disabled. if it's disabled it checks a whitelist to see if it should be enabled in…
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Testing Google Analytics
Google Analytics is a great tool for tracking users on your site, and it's incredibly easy to set up the basic features. You just bung a bit of JavaScript on every page in your site which, if your sit…
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Homebake 1996
Hey Homebake web designers, it's not 1996 any more! Jesus, Flash splash screens (complete with "skip intro") and frames. While you're at it, where's the Java applet navigation, blink tag and animated…
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Firefox extensions
So last week I promised Stig, a Norwegian living in London, that I'd get off the political blogging this week. Haven't achieved that yet, so here's a start. I use the Firefox browser constantly and on…
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EPG at last
Seems that the TV networks in Australia are finally telling us what they'll be playing, something they've refused to do in the past. They've even sued one EPG provider for providing independently-crea…
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Make blog is gone
I've been reading the Make magazine blog since it launched, but recently I've found myself hitting "mark as read" for it. The problem is one of volume and repetition. I just don't have the time to rea…
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All your blogs are belong to us
Those of you still living in the dark ages and reading my blog on the web page will now be able to see the full list of blogs I read. Yes, it's a lot, but most are pretty low volume. This is using a n…
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I'm such a type nerd
I just downloaded a documentary about a font. And I'm looking forward to watching it.
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WTF is this Plaxo crap?
I just received a message from some social networking crap called "Plaxo". Subject: John added you as a connection on Pulse I'd like to connect to you on Pulse. Pulse is the easiest way to stay up-to-…
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Planet Feed Reader bug
I've been trying to post to Planet's development mailing list because I've found a bug. It moderates posts from non-subscribers, and I can't see any other way to report a bug. So I'll report it here,…
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Wikipedia fundraiser annoyance
This morning Wikipedia started displaying an annoying animated request for donations. I block out ads because their animation annoys me when I'm trying to read content. Non-profits don't get an exempt…
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Crazy Egg rocks
Part of my job involves maintaining some of the reporting bits of various web sites. We use a combination of Google Analytics and WebTrends. I've just now discovered an amazing, but very narrowly targ…
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iPhone is very impressive
One of the gadget freaks with too much spare money at work bought an cracked an iPhone to work in Australia. I just had a little play with it and have to say it's mighty impressive. Simple things like…
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Lunch at the Googleplex
/> Ben invited me over to have lunch with him at the Google Sydney offices today. Nice place to work it would seem: stunning water views, make-your-own pizzas, free food and drink, a day a week to wor…
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What's with the RAR compression on torrents?
Why is it that some torrents of video files come as mutiple RAR archives? I just don't get why they force us through the extra step. For example, I just got the latest episode of The IT Crowd (the sec…
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How not to respond to negative claims online
Some obscure accounting software company called 2Clix is suing Whirlpool for comments made in its forums. I suspect their problem is that a search for 2Clix gets lots of threads Statement of Claim, I'…
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How not to respond to negative claims online
Some obscure accounting software company called 2Clix is suing Whirlpool for comments made in its forums. I suspect their problem is that a search for 2Clix gets lots of threads Statement of Claim, I'…
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Ad blocking is a moral issue now?
There's recently been a bit of talk about Firefox and Adblock Plus, with wild claims about it being immoral to block ads. For those of you who haven't worked it out, the web doesn't have to be a place…
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1-bit browsing
Hunting through Google Analytics, one of the stats reported is screen colours. It seems there's been a number of hits using 1-bit browsers. That must be a pretty poor experience. The two hits with a 5…
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Prices for bespoke products
Holly and I were talking about various things we'd like to buy for our new house and the usual grumbles about Australian web sites came up. Searching for things like fitted wardrobes or kitchens bring…
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Lunar eclipse
Holly and I went up to Sydney Park to watch the total lunar eclipse. Pretty amazing sight, even in the middle of a very light polluted city! Loads more photos.
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Great online customer service, in Australia?
Since returning from the UK, I've been massively underwhelmed with the way Australian business has embraced the Internet. While most companies now have web sites, they're invariable brochureware of th…
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How?
Earle just posted the search terms starting with "how" used to reach The Open Guide to London and I thought I'd check it out in my Google Analytics account for my own site. Quite enlightening. The fir…
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Photo scene completion
While we were travelling through Europe, the sign that a building was truly old was that it was covered in scaffolding. Sure, these buildings really need their maintenance, but it's kinda annoying. I…
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emusic.com are spam friendly
A long while ago I signed up to try out emusic.com as it seemed like someone doing the right thing with non-DRMed music files. Their business model didn't really suit me, what with it being subscripti…
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Stop the jihad on badly-behaved RSS
Following up my earlier jihad, after discussing it a bit with Martin of the khymos food nrrd blog, then doing some investigation when it happened again on Rozie's blog it appears that it's Bloglines t…
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Jihad on badly-behaved RSS feeds
I've had it with RSS feeds that spontaneously reload the entire backlog. It's surprising how common this is, and I'm unsure why it happens as it's never happened on my blog. One that just did this see…
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Seek you numpties!
Seek is one of the job sites in Australia. Like most big Australian sites, it seems to have been built by people still living in the bad old days of 2000 web design. Someone, probably in a suit and wi…
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Seek responds
Carey Eaton, Product Director at Seek responds to my post from this morning: Thanks for alerting us to this issue - its obviously not supposed to work like that and this is the first complaint we've h…
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I bought a PS2: I'm so up-to-date
After playing Guitar Hero at my brother-in-law's place last weekend, I went out and bought myself a PS2 for cheap on eBay. I've done this before, buy a console when they're nice and cheap at the end o…
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Am I missing something?
Job ad here touting the company as " One of the Insurance industrys most patented solutions provider ". WTF?
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Tufte goodness
Being the end of the tax year, I ordered a full set of the books by Edward R Tufte last week. I've owned The Visual Display of Quantitative Information before, but it went walkabout somewhere. Now I h…
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Nice printer
I picked up an old HP laser printer a while back and got it running. Problem was, it just kept jamming and driving me nuts. I'm sure if I wanted to spend a few hours with some cotton buds and metho I…
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Regional broadband plan
Peter Lieverdink blogs on the government's regional broadband plans. I actually think they've done a pretty good job of balancing service provision with cost. It's never going to be easy to provision…
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Useless fields
Do you see the problem with this form? Now I don't know about you, but when I'm looking for jobs I've never thought Hmmmm, I'd love to take that job but it's paying too much. How about you?
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How not to land a design job
I'm looking aroung my Linked in network vaguely looking for a graphic designer to work on a project I'm pitching for. Anyway one of my network knows someone who calls himself a designer. I go to his s…
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ABC redesign looks good
The ABC launched their redesigned news site today. Poor timing as there was downtime around 13:00 on the day of a really big story but first impressions look good. You can add a bunch of "tags" to a "…
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J2ME Jabber client that doesn't suck?
Now that I can do GPRS at only mildly extortionate rates ($0.0058 per kb from Exetel, thanks to Graeme's tip) I've been playing with Jabber clients on my mobile. It can be kinda handy, and it's kinda…
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Safari for Windows: that didn't last long
I just downloaded Safari, Apple's web browser, and installed it on the Windows machine here at work. It didn't stay on my hard drive long. First problem is it doesn't support proxy servers. Presumably…
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A lesson on why you should use free software
Much of my work uses Skype for instant messaging and since the development is in completely the wrong timezone, I have to run it. This meant I installed it on my laptop at home. Recently though it's b…
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Did I miss the memo?
When did web site become a single word?
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Telstra could use existing infrastructure
Things are hotting up with the FTTN (fibre to the node, a technology that puts a fibre to the end of your street and uses high-speed copper for the rest) debate in Australia. It's quite worrying becau…
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This does not inspire confidence
Just tried to transfer some money from one of my bank accounts to the other using St George and got this message: Your transaction may have been unsuccessful. Please logout of Internet Banking and log…
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Agile: NOT!
Today's DailyWTF is The Great Pyramid of Agile which is really an attack on crappy analogies rather than agile methodologies. I don't have a lot of experience with agile development. I have a lot of e…
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A better explanation of the HILF statements
Huw Lynes has a much better justification for MILF, sorry Hilf's comments: In my more charitable moment I imagine Bill dragged around south-east asia by a brutal MSFT minder, forced to say things he d…
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Hilf is right about one thing
The community if abuzz about Hilf's provocative comments. Let's be realistic, comments like "The Free Software movement is dead" are solely designed to get headlines. Nothing more, nothing less, and a…
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Telstra's astroturf campaign backfires
Telstra's Astroturf campaign has had a bit of a hiccup. When they ran a poll asking "Who do you think is blocking high-speed broadband for Australia?" the result came back an emphatic "Telstra" with 9…
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The Tourist Engineer is back
My OpenGuide site, The Tourist Engineer is finally working again. Thanks to Kake for prodding and fixing the database format. That made all the difference! The site is a tourist guide for geeks, looki…
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When prototypes attack
Here's a tip for newbies. When someone asks you to knock up a "quick prototype", be very very afraid. Your "quick prototype" could well end up as a production system. And guess who's gonna be supporti…
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Geek-only on Planet Linux Australia
Hmmm, looks like whoever runs Planet Linux Australia decided to only grab my geek category after my What's appropriate on the Planets? post. That kinda misses the point, but it's their decision really…
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Organizing geek stuff
Someone recommended those shoe rack hanging things for keeping geek bits and bobs. I bought one last week and just spent some time putting all my shit in it. I can now see my desk! Brilliant idea. Eve…
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What's appropriate on the Planets?
My blog is syndicated on quite a few Planets: GLLUG SLUG Linux Australia Linode During my recent exchange with Erik de Castro Lopo about Fred Nile and racism, I got a few emails from people asking us…
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Smug is...
When some warns you about the latest Windows virus and opening a particular type of email and you don't run that buggy heap of crap. Apparently there's some new virus out for Windows/Outlook. If you r…
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New tuner and anyone got a crappy AGP video card?
I slotted a new tuner card into my MythTV backend last night. This time it was a KWorld "Dual Hybrid" from Dick Smith Powerhouse. Once again it's an SAA7134-based card, so it Just Works. Nice to have…
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Loving MythTV
We've been using MythTV over the weekend using my shiny new silent front-end. Turns out, surprisingly to me, that the front-end has enough grunt to play Xvid encoded videos just fine, so we've been wo…
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MythTV front-end in the lounge room
We've finally got MythTV up and running properly. I have a fanless Via EPIA system sitting on top of the telly as the front-end running MiniMyth. It's very very nice! I had trouble getting my existing…
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Looking at Google's badware notifications
Today's Crikey asks if perhaps Google knows something about Quadrant magazine. It seems Google is flagging the site as a crapware site. I also noticed this when searching for the Good Vibrations Festi…
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Myth finally running
I finally got MythTV running under Xen last night. It was quite a bit more work to get it running under Debian than Ubuntu which works out-of-the box, but Ubuntu has problems installing using debootst…
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Why I hate Macs
Charlie Brooker has a highly entertaining sneer at Macs and, more entertainingly, Mac users. The Mac users then descend on the comments to prove him right, point-by-point.
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Xen and Myth coming along
I'm making slow but steady progress getting Myth and Xen going. Cabled up the spare bedroom yesterday so it's now got a TV aerial port. Plan is to put the computer behind the door fo the spare room, w…
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Smugmug rocks!
I always wonder why everyone raves about Flikr. It's slow, the interface is clunky and unless you pay big bucks, they don't store your photos in the original resolution. I've been very happy using Smu…
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Comet McNaught
We went to Sydney Park to look at the comet last night after Jeremy and Emily's wedding reception. It was incredibly bright and I took some great photos.
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Actually I can get digital?!?!?
Now this is kinda weird. When I was up the ladder moving around the aerial for digital television, I was trying to tune in the UHF frequencies of the Kings Cross transmitter. This is sensible because…
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A reason for software development sucking?
Last night while talking to Raz I recommended he work for my former employer in London. The reason I'd recommend working for them is that they seem to have got the critical balance between rigid proce…
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LCA open day
I went along to the linux.conf.au open day last night and had a great time. Lots of really cool projects, particularly the OLPC (heavier than I expected), RepRap (homemade fab) and the very cool open…
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Aerial problems
Last night I got up a ladder to install my shiny new TV aerial that was expected to get us all the digital channels. Problem is, we only ended up getting the ABC and SBS digital channels. This is odd…
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Real broadband at last
Internode just upgraded me to ADSL2+ with Annex M. It's very nice! On the best line profile, I get 10463800 kbps down and 2039400 kbps up. This is using the "MAX24-HS-M" line profile. Internode allows…
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Have a great conference folks
Today is the first day of linux.conf.au, the biggest free software conference in Australia and generally regarded as one of the better conferences of its type in the world. There's a bunch of people I…
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New server is very nice
Plugged in the new server last night and it's a vast improvement on the old one. Fan noise is almost non-existent when it's idling, and no matter how much CPU I used, it didn't seem to power up the fa…
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New server arrived
My new server, to replace the jet-engine sounding one, just arrived. It's another dual-Xeon system, but this time it's a workstation model so should be quieter and should be a little more accepting of…
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Digital antenna installation
I'm planning to put up an antenna for digital TV reception this weekend. Being in St Peters, I should be right in the Kings Cross transmitter's footprint. I sure as hell hope so because I'm going to b…
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Decibels
In response to yesterday's post about acoustic noise measurements, Matt Palmer, Rog and Michael Greb have pointed out that a "bel" is the base unit of "decibel", with a decibel being a tenth of a bel.…
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Acoustic noise levels
The reason I sold off the server I'd bought on eBay is because of the noise it generated. I already live right under the flight path to Sydney airport, so I don't need my own jet engine noise inside a…
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Server gone
Okay the server I I advertised yesterday has sold to a mate of my brother-in-law. Looks like it'll be doing service as a (very capable) file server. Now looking for similar-spec hardware that doesn't…
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For sale: NEC Express dual-Xeon server with 288GB RAID
Hi folks. I bought this server on eBay a couple of months ago and have decided it doesn't fit my purpose. It's an amazing piece of hardware, but it's as noisy as a jet engine and is a bit finnicky abo…
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ADSL on at last
Just got this message from my ISP: Provisioned: DSL Service is fully provisioned! Very nice, but due to Telstra fuckwittedness I can't get the lovely ADSL2+ speeds I wanted. Also still waiting on the…
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Server hassles
So over the weekend I started to work on getting my server running. This is an NEC system I bought off eBay, dual-Xeon, 2 gigs RAM and a big fat RAID array. It doesn't seem to cope with me plugging in…
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Bugger, can't do linux.conf.au
Just looking through the programme for linux.conf.au and unfortunately I'm not going to make it. As a contractor it's quite expensive for me to take days off, so I was thinking a single day. Friday's…
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Those Ikea bits
The post yesterday asking about Ikea components has got me a couple of responses. Steve Walsh says: IIRC, they are; threaded pin rod and rotating lock screw Alex Hudson says: Your Ikea part isn't; it'…
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What is this Ikea component called?
I'm trying to work out what component 110630 and 112996 are called from Ikea furniture. I'm quite impressed with the utility of these devices: they allow you to align items at right-angles in a precis…
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Damn my amazing PageRank
As I've mentioned before, Google just loves my web site. My PageRank is five but it seems to really really love anything I post up. For example, I'm currently hit number five for " Rimming Sugar ". Er…
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Server arrived
The server I bought on eBay for $360 arrived last night. Dual 1.4G Xeon, 2 gigs RAM and 290 gigs RAID disks. Very nice! It's kinda reminiscent of a jet engine, though. I think I'll have to work out so…
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MythTV rocks!
I hadn't actually installed MythTV and played with it before. I just installed it on my laptop. Wow, this has to be one of the slickest free software projects I've seen yet! Installing from the Ubuntu…
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Microsoft strikes a blow against DRM
Microsoft have come out as unlikely allies in the fight against DRM. It seems they're helping to educate consumers on why DRM sucks. Their new player won't work with product bought under their "Plays…
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Monster MythTV box
I just bought a monster server machine to run as my MythTV machine. It's a dual 1.4 GHz Xeon with two gigs of RAM and 288 gigs of RAID storage. Nice! Servers on eBay seem to be inordinately cheap. I g…
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Linux going mainstream at last?
Spotted on the ubuntu-au list: Does the ubuntu default installation come with a anti-virus and spyware. I seems can not find it. I scare apyware and vitus:P Hold onto your hats folks (alright Jeff you…
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The end of worrying about spam?
I've just signed up for Marc Perkel's spam filtering service because I'm sick of managing the spam arms race. It's a near full-time job and my Linode just doesn't have the RAM to do it. I mean, the la…
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These spammers try everything
Wow these spammers are tenacious. I woke up this morning with a bunch of spam sent through my contact form, which was built specifically to avoid spammers getting my email address. Interesting that th…
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Mobical
I've been using a mobile phone calendaring service for the last six months or so. It's really rather good because it integrates into the Nokia calendar I use on my Nokia 6630, and you can synchronize…
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Clueless web designers are everywhere
Martin Brooks is audbly seething about clueless web designers who can't even write browser detection Javascript that works across all the (narrow range) of Windows browsers they support. These people…
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Problem with dates on the new feed?
Steve pointed out that all the dates on my new RSS 2.0 said 1970 something or other. The template said $rss20::utc_date so I've replaced it with $da $mo $yr $ti. We'll see. Please report any problems.…
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Now with valid RSS
I've finally got aroud to fixing the problematic RSS on my Blosxom blog. Thanks to Andrew Cowie's RSS 2.0 plugin and flavour files, it now outputs valid RSS 2.0. Get the new feed here. Planet peoples,…
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Internet cafe crapware
We're in the midst of travelling around Spain and I'm amazed how crappy the computers in Internet cafes are. They're infested with all kinds of crapware, popup ads all over the place, Internet explore…
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Finally, in-ear headphones that don't suck!
I just bought a pair of these Sennheiser in-ear headphones. They're one of these deep ear canal designs, with various sizes of soft rubber insert. Instead of sitting in the outer ear, they go right in…
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Can we have store-and-forward SMS please?
So I'm on the tube this morning and realise I need to tell Holly something. I send her atext message on my phone. Now this is pretty damn advanced phone, you'd think it could handle that. There is, of…
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Whatever happened to the self-cooling can?
As a kid growing up in rural Australia, I used to religiously watch a programme called Towards 2000 (inexplicably renamed Beyond 2000 in 1981) which showed cool technology we could look forward to see…
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It's a boom, not a bubble!
Wired are doing their cheerleading again. This time, we're assured, it's a boom and not a bubble. Of course, last time Wired told us we were in for 25 years of prosperity, freedom and a better environ…
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Timing?
I was about to recommend Konica Minolta for anyone buying a digitial camera, but now I guess I won't bother. Reason for the recommendation was their repair division. The lens got stuck so I posted it…
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Calendar synchronisation
I finally found a decent online calendar site that synchronizes using SyncML. That means my new phone can synchronize with it over-the-air. Fantastic stuff!
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Geo hacking
Got back from NYE in Paris last night. Photos soon. Meanwhile, I've been toying with my new phone (Nokia 6630) and Bluetooth GPS. Took this track while wandering around Paris on Saturday. You can see…
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DLT drive working
Thanks to Christian's provision of a SCSI cable, I've been able to get a DLT drive going for Peaceworkers. The drive itself came free from Freecycle. I'll be a lot happier knowing Peaceworkers are get…
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Locked BIOS on laptop
A while ago I bought a broken Toshiba 3110CT laptop for parts for the functioning one. I needed one bit and buying a laptop with a broken screen was a lot cheaper than the part from Toshiba. Anyway, t…
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New toy!
Just bought a new toy, the Freecom DVB-t USB Stick. It's a tiny, USB digital TV receiver. Worked brilliantly at work yesterday (sixth floor, Windows 2000) so now to try and get it going at home (groun…
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A picture tells a thousand words
I've been gradually putting photos up on Wikipedia and I now have quite a huge number of photos. It's amazing how many places I've been in the last few years that have supplied photos suitable for Wik…
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New toy: mp3 player
Just got my latest toy, a little solid-state mp3 player. It comes with no memory, but has an SD slot so it's infinitely expandable. SD is insanely cheap and getting cheaper all the time, so that's gre…
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Toshiba Portege 3110CT Service Manual
These things are hard to find online without paying some dodgy bugger who stores them online. So here it is, for free: Toshiba Portege 3110CT Service Manual in PDF.
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What did we do before eBay?
Just bought a broken laptop of the same model as mine. It's apparently working but has broken screen and no keyboard. I bought it solely for parts as the little cable between the motherboard and scree…
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Selling on eBay is strangely fun
I'm selling our old telly on eBay. I find myself checking it every hour or so, just to see what the bids are up to. Scarily addictive, I think.
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Weekend of Ubuntu
I spent the weekend tweaking the Ubuntu install on my new laptop and installing Ubuntu on my main desktop. It's very very slick, and unlike Knoppix the power save modes on the monitor actually work. T…
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Ubuntu is fantastic
I scored a nice laptop this week, though it has a problem with the screen and the cable connecting to it. Hopefully I can repair that. It's a PII 300, so quite a nice machine and very compact and ligh…
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Bloody Oracle bollocks
I've just spent most of the morning helping our DBAs install the Oracle client software on a freshly installed Debian box. Why, oh why, do you need to run some dodgy Java GUI installer to install a fs…
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Yay for Microsoft!
Say what you will about their (lousy) software, Microsoft make great hardware. On Wednesday my eight-year old Microsoft Natural Keyboard finally died, the Enter key stopped working. So I ordered anoth…
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Free at last!
Finally I'm free of Network Solutions and their incompetence. Now registered until November 2010 at GoDaddy.
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How long did something take in Perl?
Some things in Perl seem very obvious to the gurus but aren't terribly obvious to us mere mortals. I'm writing scripts for work to automagically publish our docs, so I'm trying to work out how long ea…
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Google SMS
Google now has an SMS service. You text a query to it, and it texts you back results. "Pubs" then your postcode finds the nearest pubs. "From" location "to" location gives you (driving) directions. Th…
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Trackball suggestions?
I've had one of these Logitech Trackman Marble FX trackballs for about eight years. Best pointing device I've ever owned ergonomically. The beauty of the design is that you don't twist your wrist. It'…
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Ipaq music streaming
A couple of years ago I bought an Ipaq 3100 with a dud battery for £15 on eBay. My plan was to get it to do wireless music streaming so I could play music in another room without running cables from m…
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Wonderful UI
Okay so Microsoft aren't exactly a difficult target when it comes to user interface design, but this one is just so bad I have to point it out. This is Outlook 2003. Now can you tell whether the items…
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Holly now has a blog
Holly wanted a blog, so now she has one. I couldn't find any decent blogware that was free and didn't require a database, but allowed Holly to post without HTML. So with a bit of Perl magic and HTML::…
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Blog software without a database?
The other half has decided she wants her own blog. So I've been looking around for some blogging software she can use. Blosxom is all well and good for geeks like me, but she needs something that does…
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London Perl Workshop
I went to the London Perl Workshop on Saturday. It was very good and I learnt a lot. The "Gimmes" session taught me a few things that were useful. The session on sort was very useful, as I've never re…
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MPD is great!
I finally got sick of xmms being so flaky and installed mpd which was discussed on gllug recently. It's brilliant! In the Unix tradition, it is a collection of small tools that do one thing well, and…
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Weird foreign-language forums
I seem to be getting a huge number of hits to my photo of a jar of snake wine from our trip to Vietnam. Sure enough, if you look on a Google image search, it shows up on the first page of results. Not…
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Tourist Engineer goes global
My hacker tourist site now supports latitude and longitude for any location on the planet. Thanks to the geniuses at Openguides, the software handles it instead of the former British National Grid, wh…
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New public key
I have a new public key for anyone wanting to contact me. Impetus for getting this was Rob Kaper coming to the wilds of NW London to exchange signatures with Steve and I.
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Now part of Openguides
My geek tourist site now has an Openguides address: engineer.openguides.org.
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Geek travel guide
My latest project is a geek travel guide. It's currently kinda limited to the UK because the Openguides software doesn't quite handle coordinates outside the UK, well not in an ideal way. The idea is…
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Bookmark manager solution?
Steve points out an interesting use of Firefox's new "Live Bookmark" feature. Point it at the RSS of your del.icio.us account and you've got instant synchronised bookmarks. This is a problem I've talk…
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Server is back
Craig has left his job at an ISP and so his server, where this site has resided for about eight years, went off the air. Back on now, on my own server in the US.
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Thin client
I recently bought an IBM thin client machine on eBay. Very nice piece of kit. The plan is to stick the jet engine-sounding machine in a cupboard and use the thin client as the actual desktop. Depends…
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Caught in Blogistan's spotlight
Seeing my logs scroll past, it looks like my Circle Line Party photos have been a hit in Blogistan. Loads of hits there, when all I did was stick 'em up, stick 'em on my blog and post them to the Circ…
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Converting to Maildir
Well I've finally decided to take the plunge. I'm going to convert to Maildir for my mailboxes tonight. The impetus has been Squirrelmail, which Holly uses for her email. It needs an IMAP server and I…
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Untitled
Playing with Friendster I know it's perhaps a little old news now, but I finally got around to playing with Friendster. It's an interesting concept, and the implications are pretty huge. In case you d…
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Annoying ads are avoidable
It always amazes me what the average Internet user puts up with when browsing the web. Adverts flashing beside content, the throbbing making the content unreadable. Pop-ups in the hundreds, closing th…
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Is there some way to sync bookmarks?
I have a simple idea, but I haven't been able to find any software to do it. I have a browser at home and a browser at work. Both are Mozilla Firebird. I want the bookmarks to be the same in both. The…
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Why do web browsers still suck?
Back in 1994 when web browsers were new, we expected a little instability. Hell the operating systems on which they ran were pretty damn flaky too. When Netscape came out, we all justified the flakine…
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Email is down
Annoyingly, my ADSL router died yesterday. However, my ISP are absolutely brilliant. I phoned them up, described the problem and they've agreed to send out a replacement which should arrive tomorrow.…
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Engiporn
I'm always fascinated with what's underneath modern cities. It's incredible when you look into it how much of the infrastructure is under our fee The third dimension hides sewers, power and water main…
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Guess this needs a rewrite
This site has been mostly the same since 1998, at least structurally. It's been tweaked here and there, a few kludges hacked upon, a ghastly colour scheme updated to something more sedate, but never r…
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Yahoo IM want and deserve to die
Yahoo's instant messaging system recently blocked third-party clients from connecting to their network. Microsoft are about to try the same thing soon. The hackers have just sorted it out. All of thes…
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Music matching
One of the best features of the late, lamented Audiogalaxy music sharing system was the suggestions it made of music you might enjoy. If you looked at the page for a particular artist, it would also o…
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Video conferencing
I've got my camera working a bit better now, so if you want to talk to me, you can go here using Netmeeting or Gnomemeeting or whatever H.320 compliant thingy and chat. Woo! Should save some money on…
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Drool material
Sharp are reportedly releasing a Zaurus handheld running Linux. Worthy drool material! I have a friend coming over from Japan next month. Hmmm... Anyone wanna buy a used Ipaq 3630? More seriously, the…
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Webcam is up
All very passe, I know, but if you're feeling bored, check out my webcam now beaming out images from my street around the clock. Yes I bought an insanely cheap digital camera to use for videoconferenc…
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Linux aint there yet
Every now and then I get a bit overly excited and proclaim that Linux is 6 months off dominating the desktop. In some ways this could happen, particularly in corporate environments where it's importan…
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Linux users are commies?
An article in OSOpinion discusses a common theme from commentators who know next to nothing about history or politics. Linux nerds, he posits, are communists following Marxist ideology of collective o…
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Getting sound happening
Oh boy Linux has a ways to go yet when it comes to usability. Try dropping a new piece of hardware into your box and see how easy it is to get it going. Sure it'll be rock solid once you get it workin…
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Love my mouse
I just started having trouble moving my excellent trackball. Pretty funny because when I pulled the ball out there was so much gumpf around the bearings it rolls on that the ball was having trouble mo…
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Time For a New Blog
Well after a break of nearly two years, it's time for me to start a blog again. I've been putting it off for so damn long so finally I've got around to doing it. I'm using Blosxom (pronounced "blossom…
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Mmmm. Bandwidth
I love my cable modem. I spend much of the day listening to Dublab on an 80k stream which is interesting. Those of you who've heard me rant will know that I think Internet radio is a stupid idea. The…
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Short term memory loss
I've been thinking about the nature of Microsoft and why they write such crap code. There's been a lot said about their "unique" software processes, but I think there are other factors. It seems incre…
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Audio Sync and DXR3 Cards FAQ
Version 1.1 4th November, 2002 Getting audio in sync with the dxr3 card can difficult. The problem is that the video decoding can take a different amount of time than outputting the audio. To start wi…
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Hmmm... Blogger eh?
Well all this time I was going to get around to rewriting my random thoughts thingy in PHP3 myself as an exercise in learning. Course life gets too busy for non-work oriented learning. I need to learn…