Category: Geekery

Ubuntu + mpd + Jinzora + Hi-Fi == ACE

Ok, so here’s the problem: I have a decrepit old PC that I need to find a job for or it’s destined to sit on a scrapheap biodegrading over the next 10,000 years. We don’t have room to have all our CDs anywhere near handy so have to listen to our music on the computer

Read more

Port Forwarding FTL

OK, so we had a bit of a situation. We have a full rack of co-located production equipment, running a critical web application which can’t go down. The trouble is, the router and firewall belong to someone else and it’s getting turned off at the end of the week. Not a problem, you cry, just

Read more

Message for you Sir!

At last, I’ve settled on a mail configuration that I like, blocks viruses, is fast and has outstanding spam filtering. There’s a few bits to it, but essentially, it works like this: Mail arrives on port 25 (port forwarded through my firewall) where ASSP is listening. ASSP is, on the surface, a bog standard SMTP

Read more

Geek Girl in the making

My daughter has a teddy bear called “Socket”. It’s unclear where he’s an RJ11, RJ45 or – god forbid – a straightforward ball-joint socket. I’m trying to encourage her in the direction of RJ45, but only time will tell.

Read more

KWorld promise you the double multimedia happiness!

There’s nothing I love more than badly translated manuals and websites, and the homepage of KWorld is the best example I’ve seen in ages. Apparently: Want to have high quality digital TV, but not be able to give up analog TV? Annoyed by your big and ugly IT hardware which can’t fit in your stylish?

Read more

It had to happen.

Well, it always does really. I generally class the honeymoon period of a new job as the period of time between walking through the door for the first time and the moment where I type vi munge.pl. So, that halcyon period of belief that every single person around me has clue has ended horribly. A

Read more

Blu-Tack is Stronger than Paint: Official!

I love it when bloggable things happen at work. Due to a bizarre experiment involving a wall, a whiteboard, all the blu-tack in the universe and an infeasibly large number of natural language programmers, systems bods, and developers, we’ve managed to prove exactly what it says in the title. Technically, I suppose, it wasn’t the

Read more

OpenPGP Key

I get so many requests for my OpenPGP key these days that I thought I may as well post it here to save people asking. You can download the transport armour version here. It’s also available on the main keyserver at http://keyserver.veridis.com:11371/ under the key ID jmd at nelefa.org (but replace the at with an

Read more