Diesel Particulte Filters (DPF) and Rising Oil Levels - The UK Government Demonstrates the Law of Unintended Consequences
14th Jun 2010, 23:27:43
The Sociologist Robert K. Merton observed that in the field of human activity, things do not go as planned and strange paradoxes may be seen. In an attempt to be 'green', the UK government has given us a perfect case study. By mandating the use of biodiesel, it has created a huge maintenance headache for motorists and perhaps increased environmental pollution. In some cases, driver safety has been put at risk.
The BBC Want to Prevent us From Recording TV
24th Jan 2010, 16:10:56
The BBC have been granted provisional approval for the implementation of DRM (copy protection) on the soon to be launched Freeview HD platform. This will prevent licence payers from recording TV programmes for later viewing.
The good news is, there's still time to complain to Ofcom.
A Doorbell I Can Hear
3rd Jan 2010, 21:43:22
When normal people want to be able to know that someone is at the door even when they are in a remote part of the house or garden, they often purchase a wirless doorbell of the sort sold in DIY shops. After an incident involving a day off work and a nearly missed UPS delivery, I decided to see if this could work for me.
Building an 'Enterprise Level' Firewall on the Cheap
13th Dec 2009, 16:16:59
For the past five or six years, I've been using a Power Mac G3 running shorewall on Debian Linux to keep our network safe. The G3 quite happily sat there shuffling packets back and forth without a murmur. Just recently, the Mac would kernel panic for no reason or randomly reset every once in a while. The final straw came when it would periodically introduce latency of 2000ms for no reason at all.
This seemed like a good opportunity to experiment with a low-power, solid-state system. So I chose the Soekris Engineering net5501 as the basis for my new firewall.
Output HTML From Asterisk's Call Data Record CSV Log
3rd Nov 2009, 16:45:31
One of the handy things about Asterisk is that it keeps a log of all calls placed and received by the household; no need to wait for the phone bill. The log itself is just a big old lump of CSV - not very convenient.
There are plenty of full-featured statistics packages for Asterisk out there. Most of these seem to be geared towards monitoring queue lengths, call volumes and other things that only call centres would care about. I just wanted something light which would give me a quick overview of my most recent calls.
How I used Asterisk to Take Back Control of my Telephone
1st Nov 2009, 14:34:52
I turned to Asterisk to solve the problem of telemarketers cold calling us. Along the way, I discovered that it can do much more and it saves us money. Read on to see my configuration.
Brompton World Championships 2009
5th Oct 2009, 17:02:50
I rode in the BWC last year and thoroughly enjoyed it. I was looking forward to this year's ride, as was my other half, Karen. My parents came along to do the leisure ride where the four mile circuit is opened for the paying public.
