Author's posts
Oct 13 2011
Dennis Ritchie dies
Now this is getting depressing. It seems that Dennis Ritchie (the “R” in K&R, author and creator of the C programming language and genuine legend in computing history) died last weekend. Bell Labs reported yesterday, and confirmed today, that Ritchie had died after a long illness. He was 70 years old. As a unix fan, …
Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2011/10/13/dennis-ritchie-dies/
Oct 11 2011
I have a policy
As I have said in many posts in the past, I care about my privacy. I also care about yours. Ironically however, I have not until now codified exactly what I mean by that, nor have I identified what I will or will not do to protect your privacy. This seems to me a little …
Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2011/10/11/i-have-a-policy/
Oct 10 2011
that looks like a scam to me
The volume of spam backscatter I am receiving at the baldric.net domain currently runs at around 18-20,000 emails per month, nearly all of which is aimed at the info@ address I have mentioned before. My mail server is currently configured to reject mail to non-existent users at the SMTP level with a permanent failure message …
Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2011/10/10/that-looks-like-a-scam-to-me/
Oct 07 2011
rip steve jobs
Whilst I have never been an Apple fan, I was enormously saddened to learn of the death on wednesday of Steve Jobs. He was a visionary architect and was undeniably a charismatic, if idiosyncratic, leader in the world of computing and technology. Whilst his death was not unexpected, he will be missed.
Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2011/10/07/rip-steve-jobs/
Sep 27 2011
webcam mark II
Upgrading the slugs to squeeze killed the webcam. At first I thought that squeeze was missing the necessary gspca drivers, but no, a quick look in /dev revealed an entry for video0 and “lsmod” reported “gspca_zc3xx” loaded correctly. This is a different driver to that which my camera loaded in lenny (spca5xx) but a quick …
Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2011/09/27/webcam-mark-ii/
Sep 26 2011
squeezing the slugs
Debian 6 (squeeze) has been the current stable version since February 2011. The latest version (6.02) was released in late June. I have put off updating my slugs from lenny (old stable) for a while because I wanted to see how others faired before committing myself. Indeed, initial reports on the debian arm list indicated …
Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2011/09/26/squeezing-the-slugs/
Aug 14 2011
my wife bought me a kindle
I feel it only right to add to the post below by noting that my wife bought me a Kindle for my birthday. I have since found one useful aspect to electronic publishing. A Kindle can reduce the weight of your luggage when going on holiday. But I still prefer the “real thing”. “Speedbump” cartoon …
Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2011/08/14/my-wife-bought-me-a-kindle/
Aug 14 2011
in praise of dead trees
As an unashamed gadget freak I suppose I should applaud the rise of the e-book in all its wondrous forms. But actually I much prefer the “real thing” (TM). Some while back I became involved in a series of email exchanges about e-books in general and the Amazon Kindle in particular. That exchange made me …
Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2011/08/14/in-praise-of-dead-trees/
Aug 14 2011
what time does the pub open
I wanted to check the opening time for a local shop and petrol station this morning so I plugged in a query about opening times to my favourite search engine and hence came across a rather useful little wiki called, not unnaturally, opening times. That sort of single purpose site is exactly what makes the …
Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2011/08/14/what-time-does-the-pub-open/
Jul 18 2011
who are you going to call
Like most email users I get my fair share of spam and other internet crud. Mostly I ignore it, but I received an intriguing email a couple of days ago which purported to be a mailer daemon “Delivery Status Notification” informing me of a failed delivery to some address I had not even heard of. …
Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2011/07/18/who-are-you-going-to-call/
Jul 02 2011
one reason I don’t use apple
Being a linux and FLOSS fan has its advantages, not least the fact that most, if not all of the software I would want to use (and indeed, /all/ of the software that I actually do use) is free as in beer as well as free as in speech. And given the much smaller target …
Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2011/07/02/one-reason-i-dont-use-apple/
May 11 2011
I know I shouldn’t do this
but I just can’t resist it. The Cabinet Office has launched a trial version of a new central government portal called alpha.gov.uk (snappy title). This trial site is a taster for what the designers hope could be a “new, single UK Government website”. I cannot help but be amused by the fact that one of …
Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2011/05/11/i-know-i-shouldnt-do-this/
Mar 29 2011
irony is not dead
Installing counterize to analyse trivia’s logs has been instructive. I now know that some of my most visited pages are consistently those of a “how-to” nature (in particular, those about postfix, dovecot and, strangely, reflashing the old BT home hub). In many ways this is satisfying since one of the objectives of this blog is …
Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2011/03/29/irony-is-not-dead/
Mar 27 2011
from russia with love
A few weeks ago I installed pflogsumm on my mail server in order to automate my mail log scanning. For some time I had been conscious that my mailer had been rejecting a lot of mail with “user unknown” but I had never really investigated that in any depth. Running pflogsumm over the logs on …
Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2011/03/27/from-russia-with-love/
Feb 01 2011
no police here
The UK Home Office launched a new crime statistics website today at www.police.uk. The site is supposed to show “Local crime and policing information for England and Wales”. I’m not entirely convinced of the merit of the site in the first place (and can see all sorts of potential objections arising in some of the …
Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2011/02/01/no-police-here/
Jan 29 2011
is my computer off
This site is probably even more pointless than most webcams, but it, and the site it was inspired by, amused me. Having found this, I just had to register a similarly pointless domain of my own. So now I am the proud owner of theinternetisoff.net Make it your home page. You know it makes sense. …
Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2011/01/29/is-my-computer-off/
Jan 27 2011
now I feel bad about blogging
El Reg has a wonderful ROTW post here. One “Matt Kracht” lays into an article by Andrew Orlowski about P2P bitorrent users saying: “I hate… no, I *loathe* when bloggers try to move to online news sites. If there’s one thing that web 2.0 has done, it has fucked up journalism so bad that nobody …
Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2011/01/27/now-i-feel-bad-about-blogging/
Jan 26 2011
I guess they do it differently over there
I came across a potential new entry to the “slug replacement” competition today in the shape of a 2GHz Sheeva Marvell based plug computer by Ionics called the Nimbus 2000 (all the company’s products seem to be named after cloud types – wonder why). In addition to that rather fast ARM CPU, this little beast …
Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2011/01/26/i-guess-they-do-it-differently-over-there/
Jan 24 2011
wordpress setup
I have just added a couple of new plugins to this blog and tidied up some old cruft that I had been meaning to get around to for a while. One of the plugins I have added is a really rather good statistcs tool called Counterize II. It provides a very quick (and impressively comprehensive) …
Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2011/01/24/wordpress-setup/
Jan 23 2011
click here
The Cory Doctorow article referenced at the end of the post below mentions URL shorteners as potentially dangerous because they completely obscure the actual URL you will be taken to if you click them. By way of experiment I thought I’d post one here just to see how often it is used.
Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2011/01/23/click-here/
Jan 23 2011
damn, I think I got hit by a 419er
I am normally pretty careful about my on-line security and privacy. I take a lot of care to ensure that my home network is nailed down tightly and all the clients and servers on it are also nailed down as well as I know how. I don’t use software which is susceptible to the majority …
Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2011/01/23/damn-i-think-i-got-hit-by-a-419er/
Jan 04 2011
critical security update to wordpress
This blog comes to you courtesy of those excellent free open source authors who have contributed to wordpress. Unfortunately, in common with all software, wordpress inevitably has some bugs. Worse, some of the those bugs can occasionally be sufficiently bad as to make the software vulnerable to remote exploitation by ne’er do wells and other …
Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2011/01/04/critical-security-update-to-wordpress/
Dec 31 2010
a personal note
I have not posted anything new since October because I have been hobbled following an operation to my ankle. Perversely, this made sitting at my desk (and hence my keyboard) very uncomfortable because my leg would swell inside the plaster if I stayed in a seated position for more than a few minutes at a …
Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2010/12/31/a-personal-note/
Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2010/10/09/google-opt-out-village/