Recent Posts

Call blockers

Thanks to the magic of VoIP (worth a string of blog posts in its own right), I haven't had a real landline phone in years. But many traditionalists, notably ...

ZipCar

As I don't drive to work, or particularly regularly for anything else, I recently decided to scrap my ageing Peugeot 106 and try not owning a car once again....

New batteries for the Desire S

I'm still running my HTC Desire S - with the original two year contract now long since paid off, I'm hoping to wring a few more years out of it on pay as you...

Google and IPv6 e-mail

Update: The change described below does not seem to have reliably stopped Google from bouncing my e-mails. Time to ask them what they're doing... I obviously...

TV licensing are misleading and threatening

I got a letter this morning: This made me angry for a number of reasons. I have not received any previous letters, so either they're lying to me or such let...

Sysadmin by point and click

I promised an update on Google Apps some time ago. This week, we finally flipped the e-mail for Saint Columba's over to Google Apps hosted mail. Combined wit...

APT and HTTP redirects

Recently, I was issued with a rather nice Thinkpad X230 for my new work laptop. Not being a huge fan of Windows 8, I decided to go for Debian as my operating...

Twin Nvidia graphics cards and Ubuntu

My home desktop PC, running Ubuntu, has had two monitors for quite some time, but when an obliging friend on IRC offered me a third, I couldn't pass it up. T...

Words to live by

"Read the error message" - Me "It's always simpler than you think" - Me "If a job's worth doing, it's worth doing properly" - my grandfather. Why am I going ...

SQL? Dude, you’re doing it wrong

I've increasingly formed the opinion over the past few years that (almost) anyone writing software, certainly in the SME or 90% of open-source space, simply ...