On Sunday I went for a beer and a couple of pulled pork sliders in Atlanta. There and back again in a day just for a Sam Adams, so it wasn’t like it was a great beer calling to me. To top it off, the sliders gave me barbequed eructations, so the poor woman sitting next to me on the way back certainly deserved a medal. Since no one in their right mind goes to Atlanta for beer – it is the home of Coca-Cola after all – there must have been a better reason underlying it all. […]
READ MOREOver the past month or so, I’ve gathered a few links to interesting topics which I tweeted about at the time. Since Twitter is so evanescent, I thought I’d gather them in a post here on my blog, which is a little more long-lasting. That way, I can find them again when I need them. I’ll publish a similar list at the end of every month; indeed, because of this, I’ll probably tweet more of these interesting links. […]
READ MOREThree years ago today, we held the funeral for my Dad. He’d died of a second heart attack ten days earlier on the 21st December, the first one being a week earlier than that; I’d flown back on some last minute flight in between into the worst winter in the Dales for many a year. Mum asked me to write and deliver his eulogy in church. Here it is; it still fills me with an unending sadness. […]
READ MOREThis one’s for me for next year (or whenever I need to do this again), or for people like me who find themselves in the same predicament. It also gives a couple of hints to try and get the best effect. […]
READ MOREWhile I was away last week in Vegas for the DevExpress Summit, my newest calculator was delivered: the Sinclair Cambridge Scientific. It was with a little bit of apprehension that I opened up the padded envelope on Friday afternoon to see what it looked like and whether it worked properly (sometimes sellers on eBay are a little, er, shall we say, enthusiastic about how good the calculator they’re selling is and somehow neglect to mention various obvious problems). This one was doubly worrying: the seller admitted that he made it from the kit – yes, for some reason, you could buy it as a kit and assemble it yourself: it was slightly cheaper than buying it pre-assembled. […]
READ MORESo, a while back, I backed a Kickstarter project called the Brydge. This is a keyboard for the iPad (2nd to 4th generation) that seems to magically attach and makes the iPad into a kind of Ultrabook. It even had speakers and its own power. I thought it sounded pretty nifty so I went for it at the $180 level. […]
READ MOREIn which I talk about how to solve the problem of communication between two entities (I talk about the archetypal Alice and Bob) so that no one else (notably, Eve) can listen in, and no one (especially Mallory) can monkey around pretending to be Alice to Bob or vice versa. (For those not in the know why these names were chosen, Alice and Bob just designate A and B, Eve is the eavesdropper and Mallory the man-in-the-middle.) […]
READ MOREAfter some futzing around with converting a professional website theme to GraffitiCMS (yes, I still like it and use it), and some hacking with a special HTTP module, I can now announce that the 64SAINT blog is live and ready for readers. For those not in the know, 64SAINT is my Volvo 1800S and I thought it well time that I parceled off all the posts about it over to its own site. […]
READ MOREThis particular article sprung pretty much fully formed from an XKCD comic. It’s the one called “Password Strength” and talks about password entropy and about choosing a password by selecting four separate words at random. I’m sure my readers, sophisticated souls that they are, already know of it. […]
READ MORELast week I finally buckled and went to see my doctor about a pinched nerve in my shoulder. It had been bothering me for weeks – but I was sure that after yet another good night’s sleep or a day’s gardening work it would be gone. But no, so off I went to my GP (as we say in England) and the only outcome was the need for physical therapy. And an appointment for a physical check-up. And… an appointment for a colonoscopy. […]
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