You know when you’re a geek when, as I did, you see a lady in church wearing a pale jacket with blue, green and grey rings, and you think “Oooh, OpenSolaris!”
Category Archives: Computing
servepics.com
A while back, my younger brother Edmund wanted a photo blog, just like his big brother’s 🙂 I set him up with a free subdomain from No-IP. The address used to be edmund.servepics.com. I couldn’t fault the service from No-IP, but unfortunately free domains don’t only attract impoverished teenage photographers. They attract spammers and phishers,Continue reading “servepics.com”
Getting information about your video files
The other day, I wanted to find out which of the videos in my movie collection were encoded with multitrack (e.g. 5.1) sound. I found a tool for Linux called themonospot. Happily, it’s packaged with Fedora and can be installed simply by doing yum install themonospot-console Once installed it’ll quickly give you information about yourContinue reading “Getting information about your video files”
An unlikely correlation
I just spotted that my Nagios/RRD graphs of my home server are showing a strange correlation. From these graphs, it seems that the higher the outdoor temperature, the more free memory the system has available. I’m sure this is just a coincidence, though…
Baby, it’s cold outside
I posted a few months ago to say that my server wasn’t a massive fan of the high temperature in my loft. Well, now it’s too cold. The UK has had a bit of a cold snap lately. Outdoor temperatures in Bristol last night got as low as -3 °C, and in turn the temperatureContinue reading “Baby, it’s cold outside”
Security policy
A friend of mine spotted that his bank claims to use “the highest security available” when actually they use ARC4 and 1024 bit RSA. He sent them this: Dear HBOS security I have recently received the below message in regard to your paper-free service. While the message was genuinely sent by yourselves, I do takeContinue reading “Security policy”
Web 2.0
Today I signed up for Twitter – not for personal reasons but because I needed it for work. Of course I’ve heard about it in the past as the leading micro-blogging service, but it hadn’t interested me in the slightest. I have used Facebook since its early days (when you could only get in ifContinue reading “Web 2.0”
Cities I’ve Visited
As much as I hate Facebook for its annoying apps, there are one or two good ones. Cities I’ve Visited is one such app that I like. You can add new cities either by scrolling, zooming & clicking, or by typing in a name. I like maps so I find it pretty interesting to seeContinue reading “Cities I’ve Visited”
Ubuntu 9.10 Netbook Remix
For some time now I’ve been running Ubuntu 9.04 Netbook Remix on my EeePC 901. I’ve been very impressed with it. Today I was prompted to upgrade to the new version, 9.10. On my connection at work (via Janet) the upgrade didn’t take long at all… After 9 minutes of frenzied downloading, the upgrade itselfContinue reading “Ubuntu 9.10 Netbook Remix”
On the security and longevity of data
I was musing today about the lifetime of my data, and what might happen to it after I die. I’m a jolly character, aren’t I? But there are two questions here. First there’s the question of my private data – e.g. online banking stuff and other personal documents that I want to keep to myselfContinue reading “On the security and longevity of data”
Jonathan Gazeley 