A simple matter of…

A large part of system administration is planning at one level or another: * strategic planning * tactical planning * contingency planning Strategic planning is a fancier way of saying “long-term planning”. This is important as you need to know where you are going so that you can take steps along that route and not [...]

I’d just like to look at this recent airline bombing attempt to see how effective the security measures have been and will be: * no liquids > 100ml ** well it was solid and hidden * do not fly list ** with over [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Fly_List one million] names on it, the terrorist was not on it [...]

My parents Freeview box no longer receives BBC One or BBC Two. They live up in Cheshire and a while ago the Freeview channels were updated with a [http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=903723 split-NIT], when they retuned the TV following the recent Freeview channel changes (and also for them the analogue switch off), no longer can they receive all [...]

In a follow up from yesterdays entry, I opened up my graphics card (Nvidia 8800GTS) and got rid of the dust. As you can see – there was quite a coating! Shame Nvidia made it so hard to clean (there’s normally a cover over this lot so you can’t see it, or clean it), I [...]

I wonder if anyone makes a “warning: no lights” sensor for car parks, petrol stations etc. Pretty simple really – a sensor to detect daylight (or lack of), a sensor that detects headlights (either a camera or a simple light sensor – for example mounted on a car park wall) and a sign that illuminates [...]

I’ve upgraded my Eeeeeeepc to Karmic (yes, it’s early). It seems to have mostly worked fine which is good. The login screen now has highly visible shutdown buttons etc which is nice. However it also looks horrible (I really liked the jaunty one) and displays my user details (the full name, not username) which I [...]

Okay, I’ll rise to the [http://www.useit.com/alertbox/passwords.html bait]. You can’t be serious. There are often people seeing what you type, besides which, if this was adopted then people would _start_ looking. When I’m assisting someone on a computer and they are at a password prompt, I even go to the lengths of looking away – very [...]

Upgraded desktop to Linux 2.6.30 (and newer NVIDIA drivers), this also upgraded me to Xorg 7.4. As a result, my Logitech G7 mouse changed behaviour. Instead of the horrible side “back” button doing middle click as I like, it started doing back. Pressing a scroll wheel as often as a Unix user does is not [...]

I was setting up a 3 broadband dongle earlier today, shame their website was failing (connection reset). That’s fair enough, these things do happen, though it’s not terribly impressive. However, for a large corporation I’d hope (not expect – I’m not that naïve) they at least set it up a bit better. A single IP [...]

Since I’ve been signed up with the telephone preference service, only one company phone spams me. BT. First you get a phone call which you answer, the phone goes “beep” and that’s it. Then a short time later, the phone goes again, surprise surprise it’s BT sales about how they can “save me money”. I’ve [...]