Stocksy

Diesel Particulte Filters (DPF) and Rising Oil Levels - The UK Government Demonstrates the Law of Unintended Consequences

Mon, 14 Jun 2010 23:27:43 GMT

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

Sun, 24 Jan 2010 16:10:56 GMT

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

Sun, 3 Jan 2010 21:43:22 GMT

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

Sun, 13 Dec 2009 16:16:59 GMT

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

Tue, 3 Nov 2009 16:45:31 GMT

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

Sun, 1 Nov 2009 14:34:52 GMT

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

Mon, 5 Oct 2009 17:02:50 GMT

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.

2009 Dawes Galaxy Twin Tandem Review

Fri, 17 Jul 2009 20:42:30 GMT

Ever since we rented a Cannondale MT800, my partner and I had been itching to get hold of a tandem of our own. After much cogitating a near miss with an internet fraudster and a long wait, we finally took delivery of a 2009 Dawes Galaxy Twin. Read on for the review.

Use HandBrake, QuickTime, iDVD to Strip the Cruft from DVDs

Sun, 12 Jul 2009 11:35:01 GMT

I don't promote copyright infrigement, but I do hate sitting through the unskippable copyright notices and long pointless animated menus before I can start watching a DVD. To get round this I ripped some of my favourite DVDs in order to strip out the nonsense.

Here's how I did it:

Edward Murray Bikes (embikes.com) are Scammers

Thu, 16 Apr 2009 17:51:55 GMT

Having recently rented one and having enjoyed it immensely, I'm interested in buying a Tandem for my partner and I to ride together. Imagine my delight when I found a Cannondale Road Tandem at an amazing price. A little too amazing...

Replaced my Tektro Oryx brakes with CR520/CR720

Fri, 20 Mar 2009 21:09:19 GMT

My Dolan Multicross came equipped with Tektro Oryx low profile cantilever brakes, apparently these are pretty much standard equipment on many new cyclocross and touring bikes.

Essential OS X Applications

Sun, 15 Mar 2009 08:26:33 GMT

I don't have to do a Mac OS install too often, but last week we finally retired the old G4 iMac, to be replaced by a nice new Early 2009 Mac mini. I thought this would be a good time to do one of those really lame 'Essential software for your Mac' articles.

Cheap, Easy and Encrypted Backups With Time Machine on Leopard

Sat, 31 Jan 2009 14:56:17 GMT

I used Linux to make Time Machine work better than Apple intended. Read on for details of the wonders of iSCSI.

How to get Disconnect Supervision on your BT Telephone Line

Tue, 23 Dec 2008 20:42:58 GMT

Disconnect Supervision is a brief interruption of your telephone line's usual 48V signal. This voltage drop tells your device that the remote party has cleared the line and it is time to hang up. Disconnect supervision is also sometimes called "calling party control (CPC)," "open loop disconnect", "cutoff on disconnect" or "disconnect clear time (DCT)". Phew.

Anyway, by default, the timing of this voltage drop seems to be only 100ms or so which is too short for the FXO card in my Asterisk box.

Like most BT related problems, this can be resolved by speaking to the right person, using the right BT terminology and asking the right questions.

Review: OpenVox A400P FXO and FXS Card

Wed, 17 Dec 2008 22:05:10 GMT

I bought this FXO card hoping it would be better than my X100P, which turned out to be an absolute turd.

Keep reading for my review...

Review: X100P Wildcard FXO Card from x100p.com

Mon, 15 Dec 2008 21:53:14 GMT

I bought this card to complete my Asterisk IP PABX setup.

Read on for my review of this card...

How the UK Government Censors and Monitors Internet Traffic and How to Frustrate Them

Tue, 9 Dec 2008 19:07:07 GMT

In 2003, the UK Government created a service called Cleanfeed, the stated purpose of which is to block access to pages deemed to contain indecent images of children. This is achieved by blacklisting sites based on a list maintained by the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF). Nobody (except paedophiles) would object to the idea of blocking access to kiddie porn, but any Briton who values their freedom and privacy should be concerned by the techniques and political apparatus used to accomplish this goal.

Automotive Gynaecology

Sat, 15 Nov 2008 08:48:41 GMT

The goal: Change a W5W sidelight bulb in my car. No problem - done it a hundred times, how hard can it be...?

Mac LC 475 Reliability

Wed, 12 Nov 2008 21:26:44 GMT

My Mac LC 475 has just made it over the one year mark:

Good old NetBSD.

Raleigh Twenty Rebuild

Sat, 8 Nov 2008 21:40:17 GMT

I needed to find a bike with a step-through frame, low bottom bracket and short cranks so that my mother (with a knee injury) could get back on a bike. There's almost nothing being made today that fits the bill. I bought a battered Raleigh Twenty and set about rebuilding it.

Apple Has Stopped Producing Usable Notebook Computers

Tue, 14 Oct 2008 21:29:46 GMT

Earlier this year, my good lady's iBook G3 ceased to operate. Whilst this was bad, it didn't really owe us anything after delivering six years of trouble free service. We had been holding back from ordering a replacement because of the long anticipated new Apple notebooks which were finally announced today. Now, however, I doubt that we will ever purchase another Apple notebook...

3rd Brompton World Championship 2008

Mon, 29 Sep 2008 10:42:18 GMT

I competed in the 3rd Brompton World Championship at Blenheim Palace, I finished 125th out of 373 with a time of 27:59 which I am pretty pleased with given the calibre of some of the other riders.

It was a hoot and a half, here are some pictures...

LJ08 VCP - Hi Google

Sun, 21 Sep 2008 16:46:02 GMT

We spotted this Google Streetview car in Birmingham today, so I thought I'd index some of Google's personal information for a change.

Dolan Multicross

Tue, 16 Sep 2008 18:30:27 GMT

I've had a Dolan Multicross cyclo-cross frame built up to use as a commuter bike. Read on for my impressions of it.

Langster, Long Term Review

Mon, 1 Sep 2008 18:16:45 GMT

I've had my Langster almost four months now and I've used it just about every day. Here's how I've been getting on...

The Terrorists Win at Birmingham Airport

Fri, 30 May 2008 02:00:12 GMT

Birmingham Airport used to be really cool. You could get a taxi or a friend to drop you off on the handy service road that runs right across the front of terminals 1 and 2. It was quick and it cost nothing.

Not any more...

Specialized Langster - Now With Brakes That Work!

Thu, 29 May 2008 22:50:51 GMT

My Langster '08 is a great bike, but the brakes leave a lot to be desired. The pads supplied seem to be constructed from some sort of compressed peanut husks or something. I was finding that they had a tendency to collect aluminium shards and other debris from the rim and form little pearls on the surface of the pad. Once this happens, the brakes only serve to make a bit of a rubbing noise rather than actually stop the bike.

Thankfully, the stock blocks are Tektro's knockoff of Shimano's Dura Ace brakes, so I bought some kool stop salmon cartridges.

Now my bike stops even if it's raining.

Photo set: Ironbridge

Sun, 18 May 2008 13:35:20 GMT

I Took a ride from Telford to Ironbridge and back. Shot a few photos on my phone.

Tesco are Insane

Wed, 14 May 2008 08:42:12 GMT

Tesco Customer Service
PO Box 73
Baird Avenue
Dryburgh Industrial Estate
Dundee
DD1 9NF

14th May 2008

Dear Retail Overlords,

I wish to report the sudden disappearance of common sense from the Stafford 'Tesco Extra' store.

Fixed Wheel is More Fun

Fri, 9 May 2008 09:49:08 GMT

Since I traded in my Marin hybrid for a Specialized Langster, I've become a fixed-wheel convert.

UR DOING IT RONG - Mistakes Cyclists Make

Fri, 9 May 2008 08:00:05 GMT

"Just a second, honey, Daddy's on his high horse."

These are the most common mistakes I see other cyclists making. Because I am an obsessive pedant, I made a list. Most of it is stuff I learned not to do the hard way.

MySQL 5 on OS X 10.5.x Leopard

Thu, 24 Apr 2008 19:36:17 GMT

Compared with previous releases, MySQL 5 on OS X 10.5 is a bit rough round the edges. Here's how I got it going:

Carry Freedom Y-Frame Small Trailer

Sun, 13 Apr 2008 08:15:14 GMT

Or how to carry a silly amount of cargo on a Brompton.

Thanks Apple

Thu, 10 Apr 2008 22:01:21 GMT

My two week old MacBook Pro broke, but Apple fixed it...

Apache 2.2, PHP 5, SSL, etc. on a Leopard Mac

Wed, 9 Apr 2008 08:10:23 GMT

Here's how I built Apache with SSL, GD, libjpeg, libpng, FreeType, MySQL and PHP on Mac OS X 10.5.2.

Getting Time Machine to Work The Way I Want

Fri, 21 Mar 2008 12:28:51 GMT

There are loads of Time Machine hacks on the web. Here's mine.

Chrooted BIND on OS X

Tue, 5 Feb 2008 21:09:50 GMT

Updated: 13th December 2008.

It seems that more often than not, when an ISP is having an outage, it's caused by the DNS servers being unresponsive. Let's cut them out of the loop.

In this article, I hope to show you how to set up BIND both as an authoritative and caching DNS server. These instructions will work with Mac OS 10.4.x and 10.5.x.

Creating a Certificate Authority (CA), Issuing and Renewing Certificates

Sat, 27 Oct 2007 11:53:58 GMT

How to create a certificate authority to self-sign certificates.

Public Transport is Slow, Unreliable, Dirty and Unpleasant

Wed, 10 Oct 2007 21:26:21 GMT

I sold my car and used only my bicycle and public transport between April and October 2007. This article documents my thoughts on the experience.

Free wireless access with sensible controls

Sat, 22 Sep 2007 16:36:02 GMT

I want to share my internet connection with my friends and anybody who happens to be nearby, that's just the kind of great bloke I am. What I don't want to do is open up my internet connection to every Azureus and BitTorrent leech in the neighbourhood. I do this using a combination of shorewall and squid.

Clipless Pedals

Sun, 16 Sep 2007 10:34:21 GMT

I use my bike to commute to work which means riding in all weathers. I've been having trouble with my feet slipping off the pedals in wet conditions, especially the rather slick folding pedal fitted to my Brompton.

The Problem With Cycle Lanes

Sun, 1 Jul 2007 15:35:01 GMT

Earlier this year, the government proposed a change to the wording of highway code rules 61 and 63. Many people interpreted the new wording to mean that cyclists would be forced to use cycle lanes where provided. There was a massive backlash from cyclists and cycle advocacy groups, so the government were forced into a U-turn on the issue.

Why don't cyclists use the cycle lanes?

Commuting by Bicycle and Public Transport

Wed, 20 Jun 2007 22:18:54 GMT

Parking the car at work is becoming more and more difficult because the council is digging up a number of car parking spaces in order to widen the ring road. I decided to investigate whether it is feasible to use public transport for my commute.

There is a train every hour, but I live over a mile from the station. There's also a quarter of a mile to cover when I reach the station at the other end. Walking this distance would waste valuable time and taxis are costly. The solution? I bought a Brompton.

Printing to 10.4 With Windows XP

Tue, 9 May 2006 10:30:27 GMT

By popular demand, here's how to set up printing from a Windows XP PC to a printer shared from Mac OS 10.4.x "Tiger"...

Mailing Lists in Postfix with Virtual Domains

Fri, 5 May 2006 11:07:15 GMT

The 'official' way of creating mailing lists with postfix doesn't work with virtual domains, here's the trick...

No comment

Sat, 22 Apr 2006 22:04:37 GMT

Well that's it, I got fed up and turned off the comments feature. I was getting about 20 spam comments a day and got tired of deleting them. I think I got about three comments ever, so it probably doesn't matter.

I'm off to create my own Internet. Who's with me?

Two Squids

Wed, 19 Apr 2006 19:10:16 GMT

I've been finding Squid really useful for blocking ads, caching OS updates and generally speeding up web browsing. However, having a single point of failure for everyone's web browsing makes me unpopular when I want to just swap out a hard disk or something.

Now I have two squids, browsers pick one at random and fail over to the other if one's not available...

Linux on an OldWorld Power Mac

Wed, 22 Mar 2006 19:07:12 GMT

How I installed Debian Linux on my Power Macintosh 9500/180MP

SPECS

Tue, 21 Mar 2006 21:25:35 GMT

What's worse than roadworks? When they're roadworks to install SPECS, that's what.

NetBSD on my Mac LC 475

Tue, 21 Mar 2006 17:29:41 GMT

Why? Well, I tried Debian, but it was just too slow on the old Mac. The newest kernel I could get to run reliably was 2.2.25. 2.6 is available, but was too unstable for me to use. No disrespect intended to the guys who work on the 68k port, but there were too many niggly issues (hwclock!) and I just don't have vast tracts of time to devote to this. It's supposed to be fun!

NetBSD on the other hand is fast on this little Mac.

Debian Linux for PPC Macs

Wed, 8 Feb 2006 22:21:18 GMT

I was asked how I installed Linux on my Blue and White Power Mac G3. In this example, I will be setting up a dual Boot OS 9 and Debian Linux system. You could just as easily dual boot OS X and Linux with very little adaptation.

Debian Linux m68k on a Mac LC 475

Sat, 4 Feb 2006 09:46:27 GMT

I finally have an ethernet card for my LC! Time to install Linux .

sudo Breakage in Debian Sarge

Mon, 30 Jan 2006 21:24:13 GMT

$ sudo vi foo

gives an error when quitting vi:

Macintosh LC 475

Thu, 26 Jan 2006 12:54:09 GMT

I've wanted a 'Pizza Box' style Mac for some time. I finally gave in and bought one. It's proving to be a lot of fun...

Quota Support in Postfix

Sun, 8 Jan 2006 17:58:07 GMT

Since a fair few people are using my mail server now and also because I am not Google, I thought I'd put some quotas in place. This turned out not to be as simple as I was hoping...

Blue and White G3 "Optical" Puck Mouse

Sat, 7 Jan 2006 23:18:01 GMT

It's Saturday night and I'm trying to find things to do other than study for my CCNA cert, so I'm reading AppleFritter. Since I have a spare 5V blue LED, a light up mouse seems like something I simply must have right away. The soldering iron is heating up...

Navigation Menus in MovableType

Sat, 7 Jan 2006 21:38:26 GMT

The Movable Type 3.2 default templates come with a sidebar on the Main Index Page, but not on any of the other pages. This sidebar has become the main navigation menu on my site, so to follow consistency rules I had to figure out how to get this to appear on the Category Archive, Date-Based Archive and Individual Entry Archive pages. I used PHP includes instead of copying the sidebar into each of the pages. This makes updating the sidebar easier, as it only has to be done in one place. Here's how I did it.

Linux at Work

Tue, 6 Dec 2005 17:53:58 GMT

At home, I use a combination of Mac OS X, Ubuntu and Debian - this does me very nicely. At work however, I've been using Windows XP, and I'm pretty damn fed up with it. Here's what I did to remedy the situation...

Apache 2.2.0 (and mod_proxy) on OS X

Sat, 3 Dec 2005 10:58:31 GMT

Apache 2.2.0 was released on Thursday, including some compelling new features.

I needed to recompile to get mod_proxy anyway, so I installed it without delay:

Postfix as a backup MX host

Sun, 27 Nov 2005 16:36:39 GMT

I've had Postfix/amavisd-new/SpamAssassin/ClamAV/Courier running smoothly on my toaster for a while, thanks to Christoph Haas. Paranoid thoughts have since crept in; what would happen if my toaster were to stop working?

Luckily, I'm the kind of guy who has an old laptop many miles away, quietly humming away under my parents' desk. (No, I don't live in my parents' basement) This would do nicely as a backup MX!

Ubuntu 5.10 Breezy on a Toshiba Tecra S1

Wed, 23 Nov 2005 12:09:10 GMT

My work laptop is a Toshiba Tecra S1 - the 1.7 GHz Pentium M model. After peeling off the 'Designed for Microsoft Windows XP' sticker, I thought I'd get Breezy installed on it.

The MPH Show - NEC, Birmingham

Fri, 11 Nov 2005 17:27:54 GMT

A friend got us a couple of tickets to see MPH 05. It was good.

OpenVPN - It just works!

Sat, 5 Nov 2005 10:37:53 GMT

I've been looking for an easy way to connect my remote computers together for a long time. OpenVPN fits the bill nicely! Best of all, it works with OS X, Linux and even Windows.

I think I hate MovableType

Tue, 1 Nov 2005 14:03:22 GMT

MovableType looks pretty, but it seems hard to install on OS X. I wanted to share one MT installation between several domains, which apparently is not allowed. Here's how I did it.

Build a Firewall with Linux

Thu, 27 Oct 2005 21:23:22 GMT

I was using a Cisco 827 to separate my network from the internet, but being just a router, it didn't offer firewalling capabilities. My main objectives were to have a flexible and secure firewall that cost nothing.

MySQL on OS X

Wed, 17 Aug 2005 19:40:27 GMT

MySQL is a doddle to use in OS X. As a database to power web sites (such as this one), it's hard to beat.

Squid on Mac OS X With Ad Blocking

Sun, 5 Jun 2005 09:38:03 GMT

To quote www.squid-cache.org "Squid is a high-performance proxy caching server for web clients, supporting FTP, gopher, and HTTP data objects." I use Squid not only to save bandwidth, but also to block advertisements. There are also performance gains - watch how puzzled your freinds are when they bring round their Mac and download the 10.4.1 update in seven seconds!

Apache 2, PHP, SSL, etc. on a Mac

Mon, 2 May 2005 20:43:04 GMT

Here's how I built Apache with SSL, GD, libjpeg, libpng, FreeType, MySQL and PHP on Mac OS X 10.4 and 10.3

PHP on Mac OS X

Tue, 11 Jan 2005 21:55:02 GMT

The quick way...

Updated for Leopard, 25th April 2008.

Printing to 10.3 With Windows XP

Mon, 1 Mar 2004 21:11:13 GMT

This page documents how I set up my Mac running Panther to share it's HP DeskJet 1220C with Windows hosts on the LAN. It is written with reference to this Apple Discussions FAQ and This page DEAD LINK. Revised (complete re-write) 6th of October 2004

These instructions are written with reference to OS X 10.3.5 (Panther). There is no reason why it shouldn't work on 10.2.x (Jaguar) as well, but it might require you to adapt these instructions a bit. Since I don't have access to a Mac with Jaguar any more, this is left as an exercise for the reader. These instructions most definitely will not work on versions before 10.2, because they used lpd not CUPS.

Serving a Web Site With Apache on Mac OS X

Wed, 10 Dec 2003 08:27:39 GMT

It's easy to host your own Web site on your Mac. All you need is a Mac running OS X and a DynDns.org account. Reasons you might want to do this:

You want more than the measly 15 MB of Web space that your ISP gave you
You want to do things that your ISP won't let you do on their server - PHP, MySQL, etc.
Because you can or just because it's fun

SSH on Mac OS X

Tue, 11 Feb 2003 08:10:35 GMT

Updated 9th December 2008.

SSH is a secure way to connect to your Mac over untrusted networks, such as the Internet. At its most basic level, it allows you to log into a Mac remotely using the terminal using the sshd and ssh programs. You must enable the SSH service on the Mac you want to log in to: