💥 Founded in 2005, Cobb's Blog has been through many changes over the years. The old look and feel was not fit for phone viewing and needed an update. The new layout is easier to navigate on all screens 😃 On laptops the design accommodates more items in the side menu, while presenting them in a handy burger menu on phones. A new addition is the Prostate Cancer page . Warning: graphic content 😳…
[Note to readers: I am not posting prostate cancer (PCa) diary entries every day. To be honest, I can't keep up. The hormone therapy (ADT) that I started three and a half months ago has slowed me down, as has the radiotherapy (RT) which I started on the first of July. I've been warned that the effects of RT build toward the end of the sessions and even beyond, before tapering off. Thankfully my…
Yesterday's trip to Sainsbury's did not yield a suitable physical diary in which to record my "prostate cancer journey." But I did enjoy a couple of eggs on toast and a decaf flat white. I did not make a decision about which prostate cancer treatment path to pursue. Sunday 29 March, 2026 Prostate identified in digital rectal exam (DRE) I always take a little time on Sunday mornings to reflect.…
UK Prostate Cancer statistics from NHS via Prostate Cancer UK Prostate cancer, often referred to by doctors as PCa, appears to be on the rise in the UK and the US. Ten years ago my brother found out he had it. That prompted me to get tested and in 2021 doctors detected "a tiny amount of cancer" in my prostate. Unfortunately, by 2025 that amount had increased to the point where treatment was…
Using drones to make movies and take pictures can be a lot of fun. It offers new ways in which to see our world, ways previously limited to birds and flying insects. I took up drone photography as a hobby last December (2025). I recorded this footage in January and added a bit of sound and text. This clip gives a 360-degree view from about 30 meters above where we live, on the west side of the…
Here's a quick reminder that some parking rules are made for very valid reasons. Can you see the harm caused by this driver? Scroll down for a closer look. The driver of this vehicle not only parked on the grass verge adjacent to a double-yellow line, they parked over the telecomm access points for our building. This prevented a long awaited fibre optic install for a 40-employee charity that could…
I am writing this in the waiting room of the nuclear medicine facility at UHCW (University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire). I am about to have a bone scan to see if the cancer in my prostate has spread beyond said organ. This procedure requires me to be out of the house for about six hours. Not normally a problem, but… …two weeks ago, Chey’s slow cognitive decline accelerated and it has not…
This short video was a fun part of my AI-cybersecurity work in 2025 As one year ends and another begins I find it helpful to look back at what I managed to accomplish over the last 12 months, even as I plan for the next 12. Back when the study of cybersecurity was my full time job, this process was an annual ritual, often embodied in weighty reports that sought to capture the implications of one…
Just over a decade ago I encountered a cool band out of Echo Park, Los Angeles, that went by the name of NO. I thought they had a very distinctive sound and their songs had lyrics that stuck with me. Give this track a listen and see if you agree: Leave the door wide open The way I met NO was also cool: the band's lead singer, Bradley Hanan Carter, is the cousin of Andi Lee, who was my CEO at the…
The source of much of what is wrong in the world today is male supremacy, awareness of which needs raising. Could one simple question do the trick? I believe there are many men out there who, like me, are sick to death of guys who perpetuate, knowingly or unintentionally, the evil that is male supremacy and all the pain and suffering that it is causing in the world today. The burden of that pain…
Haemochromatosis: the most common genetic killer of folk from the British Isles and their descendants Back in 2008, while I was living in America, a big word became a big part of my life: hemochromatosis, pronounced he-moe-kroe-muh-TOE-sis ( spelt with an extra 'a' in the UK and Australia). According to the Mayo Clinic , hemochromatosis is a "condition that causes the body to absorb too much iron…
The T-shirt I bought at my first DefCon, which was DefCon III in 1995 DefCon, the very popular annual hacking conference held annually in Las Vegas opens today, August 7th and runs through the 10th. This is DefCon 33 and I'm a bit sad I can't be there. This would have been an anniversary event of sorts, the 30th anniversary of my first Defcon talk. And I will miss seeing all the folks I know that…
Back in 2017, I found out that I have something called congenital amusia, an inherited condition that can make it impossible to carry a tune or learn to play a musical instrument. In other words, amusia is tone deafness, or to use a derogatory expression, tin ears. Amusia is defined as: "a musical disorder that appears mainly as a defect in processing pitch but also encompasses musical memory and…
Welcome to a new and potentially extraordinary year. I am looking forward to making some long overdue changes here on the blog for 2025. As you can see Lola is looking forward too. In many ways 2024 was a tough year for me and my family. I hope to find time in the coming months to share some of the lessons I've learned from dealing with those challenges, even as some of them continue to take a…
One of the things that has helped me get through 2024 is the ability to look back, with very little effort at the many pictures I have taken in years gone by. Sometimes it is the subject of the photo that gives me a lift. Other times it's the fact that I was able to get the shot. This photo of a hummingbird that we named Beastie Boy is one of those other times. Beastie is the hummingbird that hung…
This post used to be pinned to the top of the blog but I decided to let it move down the stack. It's purpose was, and still is, to explain that I am Stephen Cobb and this is my personal blog. The blog was set up in 2005 but I didn't start regular blogging on it until 2006. That's because I had another blog, also started in 2005, where I covered my main interest back then: information security .…
Women in their 40s or older need to be aware of a condition called giant cell arteritis or GCA. This article explains why. I'm not exaggerating when I say that knowing about GCA could save someone's sight, or even their life. GCA is also known as temporal arteritis because, when you have it, "the arteries, particularly those at the side of the head (the temples), become inflamed." As NHS England…
If you or someone you love is taking tablets for high blood pressure, now would be a good time to learn more about primary aldosteronism , a condition that has recently been declared: "the most common specifically treatable and potentially curable form of hypertension" ( BMJ, 2021 ). Indeed, if you were to ask your doctor about primary aldosteronism tomorrow, you might be told that it's rare, but…
"A tiny amount of non-aggressive cancer" is probably the best biopsy result you can get, short of "no sign of any cancer at all." And that is why I was so happy to hear those words last week when a urologist gave me the results of the prostate biopsy that I described in some detail here . He delivered this wonderful news as I sat in his office, along with a specialist nurse and an audio recording…
If you happen to be wondering what a prostate biopsy is like, this article should prove helpful. [Note: I reviewed this article ahead of my second biopsy, in December of 2025. The information here remains accurate.] In August of 2021, at age 69, I underwent something called a transperineal prostate biopsy and I thought sharing my experience might be helpful to other people who are facing this…
This is just a quick blog post to share some fun I've been having lately by combining old maps of England with current satellite photography. To be clear, I'm not the one doing the combining; that work is being done by the National Library on an amazing website that yields views like this: What you are looking at is a map that shows the River Sherbourne in Coventry in the late 1800s, drawn over…
On July 17, 2021, something very wonderful and special arrived at our address in England: cannabis-based medicine prescribed by an English doctor. I published an article about what this delivery meant to us, over on Medium: Prescription cannabis and quality of life: a case study from the UK . Based on Medium's statistics, this could be the most widely-read article that I have written since I…
Like their creators, websites age over time, and sometimes they forget things, like where a particular image or document is located. This page is an attempt to provided some of the things that have gone missing on the various Cobb websites, starting with a link to my master's dissertation:. *Getting to know CISOs : Challenging assumptions about closing the cybersecurity skills gap, a Security and…
I'm into classic glass photography. That's using lenses from old 35mm film cameras to take pictures with modern digital cameras (for example, the Minolta lens on my Olympus camera shown here). I will write more about my hobby here on this blog. Here are some articles on classic glass: Vintage glass Classic Glass - Outdoor Photographer 10 vintage lenses to add to your kit: an in-depth investigation…
Abstract: A simple and efficient system for managing information found on the internet a piece of Javascript called "Blog This" hidden in a bookmark (but no coding experience required). I will provide the script and you will just need to paste it into a browser bookmark. This technique, often referred to as "blog this" or BT, enables you to record and annotate a search result with two clicks,…