Today, for the first time in years - probably 20 or so - I drove to London. I didn’t really want to drive to London, and it is daft that it was even a credible option. I’d much prefer to take public transport and, when I go to London for work, I do. Thankfully, there is a reasonable if not brilliant train service from Newbury to Paddington. Time-wise, there was not a massive difference between…
Two and a half years ago, I found a piece of paper in our parcel box, asking if anyone would consider becoming a governor of a local primary school. I ummed and aahed about it, and decided to express an interest. Within a few minutes I had arranged a visit to the school, and within a few days, I was a governor. I did a lot of training, and spent the first 12 or so months trying to work out what on…
Sandra and I have had this week off, and one of the things I wanted to do was to catch up on my reading. All bar one so far has been from Standard eBooks . Soldier Spy From Kobo , I enjoyed this account of someone who claims to have worked for MI5 (I’ve no reason to doubt this, but, well, who knows) carrying out operational (i.e. on street / in car) human surveillance. How much is true, how much…
I found myself wondering the other day whether I was still interested in, let alone excited by, technology. I think that this is partly down to “AI”, and the breathless hyperbole about how it is Going To Change Everything. In my spare time, I’m a lawyer, and there’s a non-stop feed of slop about how all lawyers need to “adopt AI or be left behind”, and I’m finding this kind of nonsense draining.…
I’ll be honest, I was a bit surprised that I knew anyone who would buy a pair of Meta AI glasses. Sure, they are readily available, and presumably heavily advertised, but most of the people with whom I spend time - online or offline - are not the kind of people who would buy them. I’ve got friends who use Facebook. I’ve got friends who use WhatsApp. But the glasses just - to me, anyway - feel…
For some reason, the Address Book tab/pane on Thunderbird’s menu bar had gone missing, and I struggled to find out how to get it back. So, for future me, what resolved it was: Ctrl + Shift + b
Some of the UK government’s policy announcements around the Internet - and, in particular, social media and VPNs - are downright concerning me at the moment. In the name of “online safety”, the fundamental rights of both freedom of expression and privacy appear to be under imminent threat. I have concerns which go beyond our shores - mostly stemming from Google, frankly - but the UK legislative /…
A while ago, I heard that a friend of a friend was running a close quarters battle training course, at an Airsoft site not far from me (Ironsight, in Andover). So I schedule a rare mid-week day off, and signed up. That day was today :) Honestly, I was a bit nervous going into the day. Would I know anyone? Would everyone be fitter than I am? Or just better at it? It turned out that I knew, or at…
Three months ago, I moved from hugo to BSSG for this blog (and my work blog). You can get BSSG here . I’ve been really happy with BSSG, and a couple of recent changes by Stefano have made it even better. Less content, less to generate I have a minimalist blog. A list of posts on the front page, and generally text-only posts. I like it to load fast even though it is running on a Raspberry Pi 4,…
A friend was looking for a new tablet, and they asked me for a recommendation. And… I just don’t have one. The only good tablet, because Android can be replaced with GrapheneOS , was the Google Pixel Tablet, and that is no longer available. Secondhand prices are sky high. That was my go-to recommendation for a while. But it looks like Google has abandoned this project too. Amazon’s range of FireOS…
tl;dr: I removed the “nginx proxy manager” add-on, and replaced it with the Let’s Encrypt add-on and (second) the nginx add-on. A couple of months ago, I moved my HomeAssistant installation to HAos . I think that it is fair to say that I was not overly pleased with this. Honestly, I preferred the “Core” python-venv approach, but I also wanted a “supported” installation, and so I switched to HAos.…
I have used RSS (“Really Simple Syndication”) as my default web browser (for some stuff) for ages now. Ages as in “20+ years”. It seems to be enjoying a bit of a resurgence, and I am delighted. What is RSS RSS is a way of publishing web content in a machine-readable format. When you publish a blogpost, as well as the new blogpost showing on your site, it is also added to a file, often call…
Computing can be so noisy these days No, I don’t want to sign up to your newsletter. No, I don’t want to create an account to read your site. (Well, I will for paid subscriptions, I guess.) No, I’m not going to create an account on your system to use my computer, or configure a router. I have a local account on the machine, and that’s just fine. No, I don’t want your app. You have a website. And…
I asked for reading recommendations, for a partner of someone who is going through the perimenopause / menopause. I got a lot of responses; thank you. I have included below those which seemed most relevant, for me to follow up on them. Apologies if I didn’t include your particular suggestions. I received quite a lot of advice too; thank you. Reading suggestions Books “Burning Up, Frozen Out” by…
I have been using hardware security keys (including YubiKeys and Titan keys) for FIDO2 and TOTP for a while, but not for ssh. At the moment, I harden the ssh config on my servers, lock down access by IP address, and use password-protected certificates for authentication, blocking password-based authentication. So I think that I do at least reasonably well as it is. But I was interested to see if I…