Today I received two (make that four now – must sort out my spam filters) phishing emails from a source new to me. Each email purported to come from “linkedin” and each invited me to login to respond to “invitations from your work colleague”. Since a) I have never been a member of linkedin, and …
Category: trivial musing
Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2012/03/19/unlinked/
Mar 14 2012
unplugged
A few days ago my sheevaplug died. Beyond the obvious lack of response either over the network or through the USB serial connection, the symptoms (single green LED rather than blue and green LED lit, ethernet LED light steady rather than flashing) were all consistent with a blown PSU. This problem is well known and …
Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2012/03/14/unplugged-2/
Mar 09 2012
steam locomotive
Most debian users will be familiar with the ASCII “moo” easter egg in apt-get. I have just stumbled upon a more elaborate piece of ASCII art by one Professor Toyoda Masashi who wrote a joke program to reprimand those command line users who misspell “ls” as “sl” (it happens). I installed it on my desktop …
Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2012/03/09/steam-locomotive/
Mar 07 2012
iBomber Defence: Nuclear Option
Today’s G2 has a nice little article by Tim Dowling called “What’s on David Cameron’s iPad“. Dowling’s article says: “David Cameron is about to take delivery of a specially programmed prime ministerial iPad, reportedly at a cost of £20,000 (3G contract not included). An iPad devotee already – he uses it to catch up on …
Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2012/03/07/ibomber-defence-nuclear-option/
Mar 06 2012
banking stupidity
When I logged on to my new bank site this morning, I tried the “help” offered on the opening screen just to see what they had to say about the range of options available. I was not best pleased to be greeted by the message “Flash is not installed, is not enabled or is not …
Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2012/03/06/banking-stupidity/
Mar 04 2012
am I kidding myself
I have recently moved my bank current and short term savings accounts. Partly this is a political statement in support of the move your money campaign, and partly because I feel that my money might actually be a bit safer (if only slightly) in a small UK Mutual than with the UK arm of a …
Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2012/03/04/am-i-kidding-myself/
Mar 04 2012
wordpress 3.3.1 bug update
Addendum to previous post. On further experimentation, the problem seems to be caused by a combination of graphene 1.6.1 and wordpress 3.3.1, not just 3.3.1 alone. I’ll post to the graphene support site to see if anyone else has seen this.
Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2012/03/04/wordpress-3-3-1-bug-update/
Mar 04 2012
wordpress 3.3.1 bug?
As part of the move to the new site I also upgraded wordpress to the latest release (3.3.1). Unfortunately I found a small bug in that version so I have reverted to the earlier version. The bug is odd, and not particularly problematic but irritating nonetheless. It prevents upload of media (such as is used …
Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2012/03/04/wordpress-3-3-1-bug/
Mar 01 2012
we’ve moved (again)
Back in September 2009 I moved trivia from its original home on a cheap shared web hosting platform to one of my first VMs at Bytemark. However, in that move I left the design relatively untouched. (Having sat through more than my fair share of tedious powerpoint presentations I’m a firm believer in the power …
Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2012/03/01/weve-moved-again/
Feb 20 2012
HMG goes cloudy
The UK Cabinet Office has announced the winning bidders to supply IT goods and services to UK Government under its new framework contract called “G-Cloud”. The winners are listed on a new website called the CloudStore which, supposedly, allows HMG procurement specialists to search for the goods and services they want to purchase. The new …
Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2012/02/20/hmg-goes-cloudy/
Feb 14 2012
Досвидания камрад?
From a peak of around 25,000 mail drops per month in the backscatter I was getting from the .ru domain to the non-existent address “info@baldric.net” I am now seeing virtually none. My logs show a distinct drop off from mid to late December last year to about 10-15 emails per day (when I had previously …
Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2012/02/14/%d0%b4%d0%be%d1%81%d0%b2%d0%b8%d0%b4%d0%b0%d0%bd%d0%b8%d1%8f-%d0%ba%d0%b0%d0%bc%d1%80%d0%b0%d0%b4/
Feb 07 2012
perl programmer goes rabid
As a Guardian reader I find the Daily Mail distasteful and I would not normally refer to it in trivia. However, a friend of mine has just sent me a link to a random Daily Mail page generator which manages to lampoon the rag quite successfully. Further investigation of the author’s blog reveals another random …
Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2012/02/07/perl-programmer-goes-rabid/
Jan 30 2012
tomorrow the world
A slightly breathless new post over at omgubuntu proudly boasts that the market share of Linux on the desktop jumped “from 0.96% in January 2011 to 1.41% by the year’s end.” (That could equally be be written as a close to 50% rise in Linux’ popularity). No doubt this will scare the pants off Steve …
Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2012/01/30/tomorrow-the-world/
Jan 22 2012
moxie’s proxy
Moxie Marlinspike, a security researcher probably best known for his SSL proxy tool, likes google even less than I do. His googlesharing website says: “Google thrives where privacy does not. If you’re like most internet users, Google knows more about you than you might be comfortable with. Whether you were logged in to a Google …
Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2012/01/22/moxies-proxy/
Jan 18 2012
and darkness shall be upon the face of the net
Today, 18 January 2012, parts of the ‘net went deliberately dark in combined opposition to the SOPA (A Bill to:“promote prosperity, creativity, entrepreneurship, and innovation by combating the theft of U.S. property, and for other purposes.” I love the “other purposes” bit.) and PIPA bills currently being considered by the US legislative machinery. These two …
Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2012/01/18/and-darkness-shall-be-upon-the-face-of-the-net/
Jan 12 2012
t-mobile resets its policy?
As I have mentioned in other posts here, I run my own mail server on one of my VMs. I do this for a variety of reasons, but the main one is that I like to control my own network destiny. Back in October last year I noticed an interesting change in my mail experience …
Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2012/01/12/t-mobile-resets-its-policy/
Jan 12 2012
tails in a spin
When I first tested running a tails mirror on one of my VMs, the traffic level reported by vnstat ran at around 20-30 GiB per day. I figured I could live with that because it meant that my total monthly traffic would be unlikely to exceed my monthly 1TB allowance. However, when I checked the …
Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2012/01/12/tails-in-a-spin/
Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2012/01/05/well-its-not-me/
Dec 24 2011
happy birthday trivia
Astonishingly, today is the fifth anniversary of my first post to trivia. So, five years ago on christmas eve, I was writing a blog post. Five years later, it is again christmas eve and what am I doing? Hmmm.
Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2011/12/24/happy-birthday-trivia/
Dec 24 2011
bah, humbug
At this time of year it is traditional to receive christmas cards from people with whom you may have only infrequent, if any, contact on a normal daily basis. If you are in a relationship, these cards will often be addressed to you as a couple or family, and be signed on behalf of other …
Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2011/12/24/bah-humbug/
Dec 20 2011
the amnesic incognito live system
Or “tails” if you prefer, is a live CD/USB distribution based on debian which aims to help you preserve your privacy and anonymity when out and about. As the home website says, tails helps you to: use the Internet anonymously almost anywhere you go and on any computer: all connections to the Internet are forced …
Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2011/12/20/the-amnesic-incognito-live-system/
Dec 19 2011
tunnelling X over ssh
OK, yes, I know there are probably already a gazillion web pages on the ‘net explaining exactly how to do this, but I got caught out by a silly gotcha when I tried to do this a couple of days ago, so I thought I’d post a note. Firstly, X is not exactly a secure …
Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2011/12/19/tunnelling-x-over-ssh/
Nov 30 2011
tp-link respond
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about the problems I had with a TP-Link IP camera. Today I received a comment on that post from a guy called Luke in the TP-Link support team. In that response he apologises for the difficulties I had and promises to investigate further. His response deserves as wide …
Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2011/11/30/tp-link-respond/
Nov 23 2011
no you can’t have my mobile number
I guess, like me, many parents will have facebook accounts simply as a means of communicating with their kids. In the past I have used my account as a way of finding out what my kids actually do, or like in the way of music for example. This can be more fruitful than attempting a …
Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2011/11/23/no-you-cant-have-my-mobile-number/