Category: General

Things that don’t fall in any other category.

Mikrotik Routerboard

Bandwidth Management My need for bandwidth management (aka Traffic Shaping) is a result of my desire to live in the countryside. Low population means little incentive for commercial companies to install fibre. No fibre means slow broadband over a piece of overhead wire installed in the 1970s. I found various articles about traffic shaping on… Continue reading Mikrotik Routerboard

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GoPro Hero 8

I bought a GoProd Hero 8 back in August 2021. The sole justification was to attach it to my bicycle to capture events on my daily commute to and from Plymouth. The time has now come to say what I like and what I don’t like about it. Likes Picture quality is fantastic. In fact,… Continue reading GoPro Hero 8

DNSSEC signing a zone

Every time I add a new domain, I wade through the process of how to generate the required keys and how to get the records that need to be published at my upstream registrar. Hopefully this will help in future! First off, some assumptions: Bind is installed and running Zones are in /etc/bind/zones Keys are… Continue reading DNSSEC signing a zone

Elite Dangerous – Is this love?

The announcement that Frontier Developments were going to produce a new version of Elite caused a stirring in my, long inactive, game-related synapses.  Since original Elite I’ve been a dormant gamer, other than brief interests in long-ago versions of Doom and Quake.  The stirring was sufficient to justify a crowd-sourcing contribution and some researching of GPU’s… Continue reading Elite Dangerous – Is this love?

Not Smiling

I recently received a letter from Smile, the Internet bank advising that my credit card is due to expire. They’re quite right, it expires at the end of August 2013. The next part of the letter came as a complete surprise to me.  It says: We regret we are unable to issue a new card… Continue reading Not Smiling

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Cycle Navigation by GPS

When you use a SatNav in a car, the objective is usually to get from Point A to Point B in the most efficient manner.  When you cycle, it’s more frequently a requirement to get from Point A to Point B via a specific route.  It might be a scenic route, a flat route or… Continue reading Cycle Navigation by GPS

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Minack Theatre to Porthleven

On Thursday 9th August, Colin, Chris and I set out to do a walk with overnight camps from the Minack Theatre. Colin and I had previously walked from Lands End to the Minack so this was a natural progression for us. The plan on day one was to reach Marazion and I set off with… Continue reading Minack Theatre to Porthleven

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Coast Path – Fowey to Pentewan

After a long break from Coast-Path walking, Colin Kelly and I set off from Fowey at 1045 and headed West. No particular goal was in mind but Colin thought it would be good to reach Charlestown. The first section to Gribben Head was easy walking and a persuasive National Trust volunteer talked us into climbing… Continue reading Coast Path – Fowey to Pentewan

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RIP Len Sassaman

I only met Len once at What The Hack in Holland back in July 2005 but chatted to him about Mixmaster on various occasions. I’ll never forget the exchanges between him and Frog-Admin in which Len always came out the winner, simply by virtue of knowing what he was talking about. I’ll miss you Len.… Continue reading RIP Len Sassaman

Welcom Bay – Perrenporth

Don’t know why I’ve left it six months to publish this article. Oh well, better late than never! This was a walk undertaken by Tim Clayton, Colin Kelly and myself. We started from Welcom Bay on the 11th September 2011 and spent three days walking to Tintagel where Tim had to leave us due to… Continue reading Welcom Bay – Perrenporth

It’s the little things

Just a quickie to say thanks to the driver from Burcombe Haulage who stopped in St Mellion village on the A388 during rush hour to let me cross over with my dogs on Monday evening. Apologies to the commuter zombies who were forced to wake up for 5 seconds and apply the brakes.

Bull(shit) Fighting

Today the most popular news story on the BBC News Website is this one about Bullfighting. Some would argue that it wasn’t Bullfighting but rather a show with lots of guys teasing a bull to make it chase them round an arena but that’s a difference only the Spanish would care about. So why is… Continue reading Bull(shit) Fighting

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Hi Sue!

I recently discovered that Sue Appleby (our neighbour), is a follower of my Blog. She describes it as interesting but a bit Victor Meldrew-ish. So I’m no longer just a cynic, I’m also a grumpy old man. I would vow to write more technical posts and less rants but the technical posts are usually also… Continue reading Hi Sue!

Bye bye Wimble Womble

This morning Lou discovered that our ferret, “Womble” had died in the night. She’s been looking weak lately and old age was taking its toll on her. Lou thinks she was about 11 years old. We got her from the RSPCA‘s Little Valley Animal Shelter in June 2005 after seeing an advert on the BBC… Continue reading Bye bye Wimble Womble

Speeding Ticket

If you own a powerful motorcycle, I think speeding tickets are an almost inevitable eventuality. I did quite well and rode my current bike for over five years before I got caught and even then it was on the A4174 Bristol Ring Road which is apparently one of the highest revenue generating roads in the… Continue reading Speeding Ticket

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The Half Blood Prince

Yesterday Lou and I went to see Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince at the Vue Cinema in Plymouth. The film was pretty good although inevitably some chunks had to be cut out to squeeze the 768 page book into an acceptable length. Even so, the film runs for 153 minutes plus the inevitable… Continue reading The Half Blood Prince

Why is profit not enough?

A couple of recent news reports and a company email have got me pondering about profit. It seems to be a modern culture that making a profit is simply not good enough. The margin of profit must grow, year upon year. The reason frequently expressed is that unless the profit keeps going up, the shareholders… Continue reading Why is profit not enough?

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Nine Dart Finishes

I felt a need for distraction from work for an hour so I wrote a Python program to calculate the possible ways to do a nine dart finish in a standard game of 501. There are 3944 possible ways to do it so I won’t list them here. The initial code attempt required 4,585,142,217,282,816 iterations,… Continue reading Nine Dart Finishes

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