Tag: css
January 20, 2024
Htmx - Back to the Server Side
Warning: This post may contain opinions.
I’ve recently got interested in some of the new developments in web development, and in particular, the htmx library. This is a library that allows you to add dynamic behaviour to your web pages, without having to write any Javascript. It feels to the spirit of the web I knew and loved back in the 90s, which was all about hypermedia, and the ability to link between documents.
More!
Tag: html
January 20, 2024
Htmx - Back to the Server Side
Warning: This post may contain opinions.
I’ve recently got interested in some of the new developments in web development, and in particular, the htmx library. This is a library that allows you to add dynamic behaviour to your web pages, without having to write any Javascript. It feels to the spirit of the web I knew and loved back in the 90s, which was all about hypermedia, and the ability to link between documents.
More!
Tag: htmx
January 20, 2024
Htmx - Back to the Server Side
Warning: This post may contain opinions.
I’ve recently got interested in some of the new developments in web development, and in particular, the htmx library. This is a library that allows you to add dynamic behaviour to your web pages, without having to write any Javascript. It feels to the spirit of the web I knew and loved back in the 90s, which was all about hypermedia, and the ability to link between documents.
More!
Tag: hypermedia
January 20, 2024
Htmx - Back to the Server Side
Warning: This post may contain opinions.
I’ve recently got interested in some of the new developments in web development, and in particular, the htmx library. This is a library that allows you to add dynamic behaviour to your web pages, without having to write any Javascript. It feels to the spirit of the web I knew and loved back in the 90s, which was all about hypermedia, and the ability to link between documents.
More!
Tag: charging
December 27, 2023
V2H Part2 - Learning to Use It
Teething Issues We’ve had our V2H charger a while now, but had a couple of teething problems around a software issue that have made it somewhat hard to figure out the best way to use it. We are one of the limited number of customers who have been given an export limit by the DNO (Distribution Network Operator) telling us how much electricity we are allowed to export to the grid at any time.
More!
October 19, 2023
Our Vehicle to Home (V2H) Experience - Part 1
Today a nice engineer from ChargedEV called Steve fitted us a V2H charger. This is part of the world’s largest trial of Vehicle-to-Home bidirectional chargers being performed by Indra in the UK.
What’s a V2H Charger? A conventional EV charger is one way - it takes the electrons from the grid and puts them into your car. A bidirectional charger on the other hand, not only lets you push electrons into your car, but also to pull them out again.
More!
May 30, 2020
Charging Your EV
Charging the Kona at Lochee Charging Hub in Dundee
Having had our first Electric Vehicle for a little over a year, we’ve made a few long journeys that require the use of public chargers. These are some of the experiences I’ve had and some of the things we learnt along the way.
Connectors Most modern EVs have two connectors. This is what they look like.
DC or “rapid charge” connector
More!
Tag: ev
December 27, 2023
V2H Part2 - Learning to Use It
Teething Issues We’ve had our V2H charger a while now, but had a couple of teething problems around a software issue that have made it somewhat hard to figure out the best way to use it. We are one of the limited number of customers who have been given an export limit by the DNO (Distribution Network Operator) telling us how much electricity we are allowed to export to the grid at any time.
More!
October 19, 2023
Our Vehicle to Home (V2H) Experience - Part 1
Today a nice engineer from ChargedEV called Steve fitted us a V2H charger. This is part of the world’s largest trial of Vehicle-to-Home bidirectional chargers being performed by Indra in the UK.
What’s a V2H Charger? A conventional EV charger is one way - it takes the electrons from the grid and puts them into your car. A bidirectional charger on the other hand, not only lets you push electrons into your car, but also to pull them out again.
More!
May 30, 2020
Charging Your EV
Charging the Kona at Lochee Charging Hub in Dundee
Having had our first Electric Vehicle for a little over a year, we’ve made a few long journeys that require the use of public chargers. These are some of the experiences I’ve had and some of the things we learnt along the way.
Connectors Most modern EVs have two connectors. This is what they look like.
DC or “rapid charge” connector
More!
Tag: EVs
December 27, 2023
V2H Part2 - Learning to Use It
Teething Issues We’ve had our V2H charger a while now, but had a couple of teething problems around a software issue that have made it somewhat hard to figure out the best way to use it. We are one of the limited number of customers who have been given an export limit by the DNO (Distribution Network Operator) telling us how much electricity we are allowed to export to the grid at any time.
More!
October 19, 2023
Our Vehicle to Home (V2H) Experience - Part 1
Today a nice engineer from ChargedEV called Steve fitted us a V2H charger. This is part of the world’s largest trial of Vehicle-to-Home bidirectional chargers being performed by Indra in the UK.
What’s a V2H Charger? A conventional EV charger is one way - it takes the electrons from the grid and puts them into your car. A bidirectional charger on the other hand, not only lets you push electrons into your car, but also to pull them out again.
More!
June 4, 2020
The History Of Electric Cars - 21st Century
This is the final piece of my three-parter on the history of electric cars. Here, we move up to the present day and the exciting developments that have happened in the last few years, where EVs are close to becoming mainstream.
2003-04 G.M. and DaimlerChrysler sue the California Air Resources Board (CARB) to repeal the ZEV mandate passed in 1990. The Bush Administration joins the suit.
G.M. announces that it will not renew leases on its EV1 cars and that it plans to reclaim the cars by the end of 2004.
More!
June 2, 2020
The History of Electric Cars - 20th Century
A continuation of my previous article on EVs during the 19th Century, I now cover some significant events in the 20th century around electric cars. Arguably, during this time period, EVs had two chances to become mainstream, but both were impacted by events in the energy industry.
1902 If there is one key event that killed the EV’s chances in the 20th Century - this is it. The hugely successful Model-T Ford began mass production.
More!
May 30, 2020
The History of Electric Vehicles - 19th Century
This is the first part of a three-parter on the history of EVs across the last 200 years or so. It comes from a Lunch & Learn presentation I did at work recently. I wanted to make a bit more visually pleasing, and break down the content into smaller sections.
Here’s the first part - the dawn of electric motors, batteries, and the fledging automotive industry in the 19th Century.
More!
May 30, 2020
Charging Your EV
Charging the Kona at Lochee Charging Hub in Dundee
Having had our first Electric Vehicle for a little over a year, we’ve made a few long journeys that require the use of public chargers. These are some of the experiences I’ve had and some of the things we learnt along the way.
Connectors Most modern EVs have two connectors. This is what they look like.
DC or “rapid charge” connector
More!
Tag: indra
December 27, 2023
V2H Part2 - Learning to Use It
Teething Issues We’ve had our V2H charger a while now, but had a couple of teething problems around a software issue that have made it somewhat hard to figure out the best way to use it. We are one of the limited number of customers who have been given an export limit by the DNO (Distribution Network Operator) telling us how much electricity we are allowed to export to the grid at any time.
More!
Tag: leaf
December 27, 2023
V2H Part2 - Learning to Use It
Teething Issues We’ve had our V2H charger a while now, but had a couple of teething problems around a software issue that have made it somewhat hard to figure out the best way to use it. We are one of the limited number of customers who have been given an export limit by the DNO (Distribution Network Operator) telling us how much electricity we are allowed to export to the grid at any time.
More!
October 19, 2023
Our Vehicle to Home (V2H) Experience - Part 1
Today a nice engineer from ChargedEV called Steve fitted us a V2H charger. This is part of the world’s largest trial of Vehicle-to-Home bidirectional chargers being performed by Indra in the UK.
What’s a V2H Charger? A conventional EV charger is one way - it takes the electrons from the grid and puts them into your car. A bidirectional charger on the other hand, not only lets you push electrons into your car, but also to pull them out again.
More!
Tag: v2x
December 27, 2023
V2H Part2 - Learning to Use It
Teething Issues We’ve had our V2H charger a while now, but had a couple of teething problems around a software issue that have made it somewhat hard to figure out the best way to use it. We are one of the limited number of customers who have been given an export limit by the DNO (Distribution Network Operator) telling us how much electricity we are allowed to export to the grid at any time.
More!
December 27, 2023
Octopus Tariff Comparisons
Octopus Tariff Comparisons Changing Tariff At some point in November, we were experiencing consistently higher prices on Octopus Agile, and I decided to switch tariffs for the rest of the winter at least. Octopus have an “Intelligent Octopus” tariff that charges 7.5p kWh between 11:30pm and 6:00am each day, and around 30p kWh the rest of the time. This tariff is not supported by our V2H charger yet - they specifically say it’s not supported.
More!
October 19, 2023
Our Vehicle to Home (V2H) Experience - Part 1
Today a nice engineer from ChargedEV called Steve fitted us a V2H charger. This is part of the world’s largest trial of Vehicle-to-Home bidirectional chargers being performed by Indra in the UK.
What’s a V2H Charger? A conventional EV charger is one way - it takes the electrons from the grid and puts them into your car. A bidirectional charger on the other hand, not only lets you push electrons into your car, but also to pull them out again.
More!
Tag: agile
December 27, 2023
Octopus Tariff Comparisons
Octopus Tariff Comparisons Changing Tariff At some point in November, we were experiencing consistently higher prices on Octopus Agile, and I decided to switch tariffs for the rest of the winter at least. Octopus have an “Intelligent Octopus” tariff that charges 7.5p kWh between 11:30pm and 6:00am each day, and around 30p kWh the rest of the time. This tariff is not supported by our V2H charger yet - they specifically say it’s not supported.
More!
Tag: energy
December 27, 2023
Octopus Tariff Comparisons
Octopus Tariff Comparisons Changing Tariff At some point in November, we were experiencing consistently higher prices on Octopus Agile, and I decided to switch tariffs for the rest of the winter at least. Octopus have an “Intelligent Octopus” tariff that charges 7.5p kWh between 11:30pm and 6:00am each day, and around 30p kWh the rest of the time. This tariff is not supported by our V2H charger yet - they specifically say it’s not supported.
More!
August 1, 2020
Ripple Energy
A very interesting company I heard about this week was a new cooperative in the UK called Ripple Energy. It’s working on the first consumer owned windfarm. The idea is that you can buy shares in the company, and when the farm is built, you will get some of the energy they generate deducted as cost from your electricity bill for the next 25 years. It’s deemed as an alternative to roof top solar.
More!
Tag: octopus
December 27, 2023
Octopus Tariff Comparisons
Octopus Tariff Comparisons Changing Tariff At some point in November, we were experiencing consistently higher prices on Octopus Agile, and I decided to switch tariffs for the rest of the winter at least. Octopus have an “Intelligent Octopus” tariff that charges 7.5p kWh between 11:30pm and 6:00am each day, and around 30p kWh the rest of the time. This tariff is not supported by our V2H charger yet - they specifically say it’s not supported.
More!
Tag: Social
September 22, 2021
Software Doesn't Solve Social Problems
I listened to the audio book copy of “The Courage To Be Disliked” last year. It’s written as a discussion between a philosopher and a young man, about the concepts of Adlerian psychology, and there’s a great deal of real wisdom there.
One of the key points, is that Adler considered all problems we face as humans, to be issues of interpersonal relationships. The more this is argued in the book, the more it becomes obvious that this is true.
More!
Tag: software
September 22, 2021
Software Doesn't Solve Social Problems
I listened to the audio book copy of “The Courage To Be Disliked” last year. It’s written as a discussion between a philosopher and a young man, about the concepts of Adlerian psychology, and there’s a great deal of real wisdom there.
One of the key points, is that Adler considered all problems we face as humans, to be issues of interpersonal relationships. The more this is argued in the book, the more it becomes obvious that this is true.
More!
Tag: technology
September 22, 2021
Software Doesn't Solve Social Problems
I listened to the audio book copy of “The Courage To Be Disliked” last year. It’s written as a discussion between a philosopher and a young man, about the concepts of Adlerian psychology, and there’s a great deal of real wisdom there.
One of the key points, is that Adler considered all problems we face as humans, to be issues of interpersonal relationships. The more this is argued in the book, the more it becomes obvious that this is true.
More!
Tag: bruce sterling
December 4, 2020
Cory Doctorow And Eco-Consumerism
I really enjoyed this fully-charged podcast and will be reading some Cory Doctorow.
I especially liked the Bruce Sterling quote about the “grandfather problem”. This is the idea that if you can do something less well than your dead grandfather, then it’s probably not the eco-friendly behaviour you really ought to be pursuing.
I think this stems from the idea that we need systemic change in the world, and therefore realistically can’t recycle our way to that future.
More!
Tag: cory doctorow
December 4, 2020
Cory Doctorow And Eco-Consumerism
I really enjoyed this fully-charged podcast and will be reading some Cory Doctorow.
I especially liked the Bruce Sterling quote about the “grandfather problem”. This is the idea that if you can do something less well than your dead grandfather, then it’s probably not the eco-friendly behaviour you really ought to be pursuing.
I think this stems from the idea that we need systemic change in the world, and therefore realistically can’t recycle our way to that future.
More!
Tag: Food
December 4, 2020
Cory Doctorow And Eco-Consumerism
I really enjoyed this fully-charged podcast and will be reading some Cory Doctorow.
I especially liked the Bruce Sterling quote about the “grandfather problem”. This is the idea that if you can do something less well than your dead grandfather, then it’s probably not the eco-friendly behaviour you really ought to be pursuing.
I think this stems from the idea that we need systemic change in the world, and therefore realistically can’t recycle our way to that future.
More!
Tag: Futurism
December 4, 2020
Cory Doctorow And Eco-Consumerism
I really enjoyed this fully-charged podcast and will be reading some Cory Doctorow.
I especially liked the Bruce Sterling quote about the “grandfather problem”. This is the idea that if you can do something less well than your dead grandfather, then it’s probably not the eco-friendly behaviour you really ought to be pursuing.
I think this stems from the idea that we need systemic change in the world, and therefore realistically can’t recycle our way to that future.
More!
Tag: hydroponics
December 4, 2020
Cory Doctorow And Eco-Consumerism
I really enjoyed this fully-charged podcast and will be reading some Cory Doctorow.
I especially liked the Bruce Sterling quote about the “grandfather problem”. This is the idea that if you can do something less well than your dead grandfather, then it’s probably not the eco-friendly behaviour you really ought to be pursuing.
I think this stems from the idea that we need systemic change in the world, and therefore realistically can’t recycle our way to that future.
More!
Tag: recycling
December 4, 2020
Cory Doctorow And Eco-Consumerism
I really enjoyed this fully-charged podcast and will be reading some Cory Doctorow.
I especially liked the Bruce Sterling quote about the “grandfather problem”. This is the idea that if you can do something less well than your dead grandfather, then it’s probably not the eco-friendly behaviour you really ought to be pursuing.
I think this stems from the idea that we need systemic change in the world, and therefore realistically can’t recycle our way to that future.
More!
Tag: Uncategorized
December 4, 2020
Cory Doctorow And Eco-Consumerism
I really enjoyed this fully-charged podcast and will be reading some Cory Doctorow.
I especially liked the Bruce Sterling quote about the “grandfather problem”. This is the idea that if you can do something less well than your dead grandfather, then it’s probably not the eco-friendly behaviour you really ought to be pursuing.
I think this stems from the idea that we need systemic change in the world, and therefore realistically can’t recycle our way to that future.
More!
January 6, 2017
Registrator, a Docker Service Registry Bridge
I’ve been diving into golang recently, partly by accident, given that we decided to use an open source docker service registration bridge called registrator. Registrator fills in a niche with docker containers - how to get them into an existing service registry such as (the excellent) consul. We plan to use this to keep our existing netflix eureka service registry updated with new container based services as they are brought online, and allow us to integrate containers into our existing VM based microservices environment.
More!
May 13, 2015
Off to Hudl
After almost 10 years at Servelec-Corelogic I’ll be starting in a new position at Hudl on 1st June. I’m excited and nervous about the change and looking forward to meeting my new colleagues and learning about how they do things over there! Some of thethings to look forward to are their open-minded approach to technology, working culture and cutting edge continuous deployment processes. I’m sure I’ll learn a lot, and hopefully I can add some of my experiences to the team.
More!
September 9, 2013
Security Breaches From The Sands of Time
I found some interesting old news, back from 1999 that someone posted a link to in the SecurityNow newsgroups. I’ve recently started listening to this podcast - it’s a brilliant way to keep up with computer security news, and I feel a lot more informed having started to listen. http://www.heise.de/tp/artikel/5/5263/1.html http://www.heise.de/tp/artikel/2/2898/1.html The articles were to do with NSA back doors in several pieces of software, Microsoft Windows and Lotus Notes. Both of these were verified back in 2009 by security researchers by reverse engineering software.
More!
Tag: vertical farming
December 4, 2020
Cory Doctorow And Eco-Consumerism
I really enjoyed this fully-charged podcast and will be reading some Cory Doctorow.
I especially liked the Bruce Sterling quote about the “grandfather problem”. This is the idea that if you can do something less well than your dead grandfather, then it’s probably not the eco-friendly behaviour you really ought to be pursuing.
I think this stems from the idea that we need systemic change in the world, and therefore realistically can’t recycle our way to that future.
More!
Tag: renewables
August 1, 2020
Ripple Energy
A very interesting company I heard about this week was a new cooperative in the UK called Ripple Energy. It’s working on the first consumer owned windfarm. The idea is that you can buy shares in the company, and when the farm is built, you will get some of the energy they generate deducted as cost from your electricity bill for the next 25 years. It’s deemed as an alternative to roof top solar.
More!
Tag: wind
August 1, 2020
Ripple Energy
A very interesting company I heard about this week was a new cooperative in the UK called Ripple Energy. It’s working on the first consumer owned windfarm. The idea is that you can buy shares in the company, and when the farm is built, you will get some of the energy they generate deducted as cost from your electricity bill for the next 25 years. It’s deemed as an alternative to roof top solar.
More!
Tag: history
June 4, 2020
The History Of Electric Cars - 21st Century
This is the final piece of my three-parter on the history of electric cars. Here, we move up to the present day and the exciting developments that have happened in the last few years, where EVs are close to becoming mainstream.
2003-04 G.M. and DaimlerChrysler sue the California Air Resources Board (CARB) to repeal the ZEV mandate passed in 1990. The Bush Administration joins the suit.
G.M. announces that it will not renew leases on its EV1 cars and that it plans to reclaim the cars by the end of 2004.
More!
June 2, 2020
The History of Electric Cars - 20th Century
A continuation of my previous article on EVs during the 19th Century, I now cover some significant events in the 20th century around electric cars. Arguably, during this time period, EVs had two chances to become mainstream, but both were impacted by events in the energy industry.
1902 If there is one key event that killed the EV’s chances in the 20th Century - this is it. The hugely successful Model-T Ford began mass production.
More!
May 30, 2020
The History of Electric Vehicles - 19th Century
This is the first part of a three-parter on the history of EVs across the last 200 years or so. It comes from a Lunch & Learn presentation I did at work recently. I wanted to make a bit more visually pleasing, and break down the content into smaller sections.
Here’s the first part - the dawn of electric motors, batteries, and the fledging automotive industry in the 19th Century.
More!
Tag: kona
May 30, 2020
Charging Your EV
Charging the Kona at Lochee Charging Hub in Dundee
Having had our first Electric Vehicle for a little over a year, we’ve made a few long journeys that require the use of public chargers. These are some of the experiences I’ve had and some of the things we learnt along the way.
Connectors Most modern EVs have two connectors. This is what they look like.
DC or “rapid charge” connector
More!
Tag: docker
February 9, 2017
Docker and .NET Core Linux Performance Tracing
_Note: This is an old post that was sitting in my drafts for a long time. It might be useful to someone still as most of the content is still relevant. _
You should checkout dotnet-monitor if you are using .NET Core 3 and above! - it promises to make the while thing a lot easier. I’ve left the below content for posterity, but it’s very out of date now.
More!
Tag: dotnet
February 9, 2017
Docker and .NET Core Linux Performance Tracing
_Note: This is an old post that was sitting in my drafts for a long time. It might be useful to someone still as most of the content is still relevant. _
You should checkout dotnet-monitor if you are using .NET Core 3 and above! - it promises to make the while thing a lot easier. I’ve left the below content for posterity, but it’s very out of date now.
More!
Tag: Linux
February 9, 2017
Docker and .NET Core Linux Performance Tracing
_Note: This is an old post that was sitting in my drafts for a long time. It might be useful to someone still as most of the content is still relevant. _
You should checkout dotnet-monitor if you are using .NET Core 3 and above! - it promises to make the while thing a lot easier. I’ve left the below content for posterity, but it’s very out of date now.
More!
August 11, 2014
Sysdig - A general purpose system capture and analysis tool
I’ve just been looking at a nice new tool called sysdig, which seems to be really useful for analysing and troubleshooting on production systems. There’s a great blog post by Gianluca Borello, detailing how he set up a number of honey-pot servers with poor passwords, and then captured system activity with sysdig, showing exactly how his server was compromised, and what the hacker did at each stage. The level of detail he was able to garner is astounding, and I can see how powerful this tool could be in the future, for any sort of troubleshooting where it’s not clear exactly what has happened/is happening on a system.
More!
April 4, 2014
Active Directory to OpenLDAP Sync with LSC
Old Article Comments I exported these from my old wordpress blog, so they are a bit out of date, but I thought I’d keep them around for posterity.
[vinay shetty] - Nov 1, 2014 Super explanation.. Thanks lot [Anderson] - Mar 5, 2015 Hi Chris, how I can synchronizing passwords (no plain text) between the openldap and Active Directory ? Synchronizing users with LSC-project | Opencloud engineering - Sep 1, 2015 […] -w ‘xxx’ Useful links: 1) Official LSC tutorial OpenLDAP to AD 2) Good blogpost AD to OpenLDAP 3) Official LSC documentation This entry was posted in Uncategorized and tagged ad, java, ldap, […] [ebooster] - Nov 5, 2016 Hi Chris, Thanks for this.
More!
April 4, 2014
Active Directory to OpenLDAP Sync with LSC
I have recently had to sync accounts and groups from Activc Directory to OpenLDAP, for a requirement for a directory server in the DMZ. A DMZ (De-millitarised zone) is an area of the network open to the internet. It’s supposed to be separate from the rest of your LAN, so you can have services running on the internet without fear that people can break into your LAN from these. There are other options for doing this, including a read-only domain controller (RODC), a AD LDS (Lighweight Directory Server) and so on, but they all require connectivity back from the DMZ to the LAN, which is precisely what we are trying to avoid.
More!
October 28, 2013
Simple Steps to Use Yum Rollback on Centos / RHEL 5
Simple Steps to Use Yum Rollback on Centos / RHEL 5 Some nice instructions on a simple backup/rollback technique for packages on Centos / RHEL 5. This can be accomplished even more easily in newer versions of yum, such as on Centos / RHEL 6, which the ‘yum history’ command. There’s a nice undo feature there now, that makes it trivial to revert a change, if you have problems with a package update for any reason.
More!
September 18, 2013
Increasing VMWare Disk Sizes in Linux Without Rebooting
You can increase disk sizes in vmware guests whilst they are running. This is supported, but Linux will not see the new size of the disk until it reboots. There is a way around this (assuming here we are using LVM disks): 1. Increase the disk size in the vmware settings. 2. Logon as root onto the Linux guest system. 3. Do:
echo "1" > /sys/class/scsi\_device/<device>/device/rescan ..where is the SCSI bus you wish to rescan.
More!
September 4, 2013
Working With Haproxy
Old Article Comments I exported these from my old wordpress blog, so they are a bit out of date, but I thought I’d keep them around for posterity.
[Andy Dorfman] - Apr 5, 2014 Excellent article. Do you think this setup will work to load balance/failover several nonclustered weblogic instances. In my current setup, i have apache rp listening on port 443 with ssl termination and forwarding everything to weblogics, listening on port 80.
More!
September 4, 2013
Working With Haproxy
Although I have worked with enterprise envrionments running Oracle and SQL Server for quite a few years, I’ve yet to be involved in a real high-availability deployment. This has been for a variety of technical reasons in our company’s application, and a lack of interest from most customers. Recently, I explored options and had the opportunity to test some load balancing setups for our application servers at a customer site. I was impressed with the reliability and reputation of the HAproxy software, so had a look at that to begin with.
More!
Tag: performance
February 9, 2017
Docker and .NET Core Linux Performance Tracing
_Note: This is an old post that was sitting in my drafts for a long time. It might be useful to someone still as most of the content is still relevant. _
You should checkout dotnet-monitor if you are using .NET Core 3 and above! - it promises to make the while thing a lot easier. I’ve left the below content for posterity, but it’s very out of date now.
More!
Tag: AI
January 7, 2017
Music and Artificial Intelligence
There was a great BBC click podcast this week, covering some of the advances made in technology and music. There was some interesting stuff around Bjork’s new music video and art exhibit, but also a section on IBM Watson research. They did some interesting work on computer/musician collaboration with Alex Da Kid. They also discussed learning algorithms, used to identify vocal stem samples in songs, and attribute them to the original song.
More!
January 5, 2017
Rise of The Robots
I recently finished listening to the audiobook version of Rise of The Robots, by Martin Ford. It was a fascinating and insightful look at how robots and computers are used today to replace human work, and how the expansion of artificial intelligence and the reduction in costs for new machines are accelerating their creation. It got deep inside my psyche - I’ve been thinking about the implications for a couple of weeks afterwards, and it started a big conversation on Christmas Day with my family.
More!
Tag: music
January 7, 2017
Music and Artificial Intelligence
There was a great BBC click podcast this week, covering some of the advances made in technology and music. There was some interesting stuff around Bjork’s new music video and art exhibit, but also a section on IBM Watson research. They did some interesting work on computer/musician collaboration with Alex Da Kid. They also discussed learning algorithms, used to identify vocal stem samples in songs, and attribute them to the original song.
More!
October 9, 2016
Glastonbury Ticket Site Update
Three years ago I wrote a detailed post with observations and advice on the Glastonbury Festival ticket sale, and how their website appears to work. Again, I was involved in the big refresh this year, trying to buy tickets for friends and family. I wasn’t successful in purchasing tickets this year, although my sister was able to buy two sets of tickets (I.e go through the checkout process twice). I also spent a lot of time dealing with a grey page, with connection errors and the like, like many people.
More!
October 9, 2016
Glastonbury Ticket Site Update - Comments
Old Article Comments I exported these from my old wordpress blog, so they are a bit out of date, but I thought I’d keep them around for posterity.
[James Simpson] - Oct 0, 2016 Yep i know this struggle too - drop me an email for a collaboration approach. Although yes, it may be the case of rate limiting, there is more of an issue with actually getting connected in the first place.
More!
October 5, 2013
Examining the Glastonbury Ticket Sales Website
Note: Also see my updated 2016 post about this topic.
Tomorrow is that time of year again, when hundreds of thousands of people spend hours pressing their F5 key, in an often futile attempt to try to book Glastonbury Festival tickets. Although I have been successful the last couple of years anyway, this year I had the opportunity to do a bit of investigation beforehand, as they had a smaller ticket sale on Thursday evening.
More!
October 5, 2013
Examining the Glastonbury Ticket Sales Website - Comments
Old Article Comments I exported these from my old wordpress blog, so they are a bit out of date, but I thought I’d keep them around for posterity.
Lewis Cook - Sep 1, 2015 Great blog post. . Any chance of an updated blog post for Sunday’s ticket showdown?
chrisgilbert42 - Oct 0, 2016 Hi Lewis, hope you managed to get tickets last year/this year. I’ve noticed a few things that have changed this year, I’ll see if I can come up with an updated post soon.
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Tag: automation
January 5, 2017
Rise of The Robots
I recently finished listening to the audiobook version of Rise of The Robots, by Martin Ford. It was a fascinating and insightful look at how robots and computers are used today to replace human work, and how the expansion of artificial intelligence and the reduction in costs for new machines are accelerating their creation. It got deep inside my psyche - I’ve been thinking about the implications for a couple of weeks afterwards, and it started a big conversation on Christmas Day with my family.
More!
June 17, 2015
Install a Babun (Cygwin) Shell and Ansible for Windows - Comments
Old Article Comments I exported these from my old wordpress blog, so they are a bit out of date, but I thought I’d keep them around for posterity.
[mat] - Oct 1, 2015 Thanks for sharing this ! mirzawaqasahmed - Nov 6, 2015 Hi Chris, Thanks for sharing this. However when i am running ansible-playbook it first gave me following error…
GATHERING FACTS \*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\* 0 \[main\] python2.7 8168 child\_info\_fork::abort: address space needed by '\_speedups.
More!
October 13, 2013
Watch "Getting Started with Puppet - PuppetConf 2013" on YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TdAmAj3eaFI&feature=youtube_gdata_player
More!
Tag: Economics
January 5, 2017
Rise of The Robots
I recently finished listening to the audiobook version of Rise of The Robots, by Martin Ford. It was a fascinating and insightful look at how robots and computers are used today to replace human work, and how the expansion of artificial intelligence and the reduction in costs for new machines are accelerating their creation. It got deep inside my psyche - I’ve been thinking about the implications for a couple of weeks afterwards, and it started a big conversation on Christmas Day with my family.
More!
Tag: Robots
January 5, 2017
Rise of The Robots
I recently finished listening to the audiobook version of Rise of The Robots, by Martin Ford. It was a fascinating and insightful look at how robots and computers are used today to replace human work, and how the expansion of artificial intelligence and the reduction in costs for new machines are accelerating their creation. It got deep inside my psyche - I’ve been thinking about the implications for a couple of weeks afterwards, and it started a big conversation on Christmas Day with my family.
More!
Tag: Society
January 5, 2017
Rise of The Robots
I recently finished listening to the audiobook version of Rise of The Robots, by Martin Ford. It was a fascinating and insightful look at how robots and computers are used today to replace human work, and how the expansion of artificial intelligence and the reduction in costs for new machines are accelerating their creation. It got deep inside my psyche - I’ve been thinking about the implications for a couple of weeks afterwards, and it started a big conversation on Christmas Day with my family.
More!
Tag: Coworking
January 4, 2017
Coworking and Mental Health, plus Nottingham Co-Working Spaces
There’s a great article here on the benefits of co-working, and how it can transform what can be a lonely and difficult struggle for some people working at home, into an energising and supporting environment. I’ve found it’s becoming more and more important to me too, now in my 10th year of working at home for the majority of the time. The co-working spaces I’ve used in Nottingham are: Antenna This is my regular haunt, which I typically use once or twice a week.
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Tag: ansible
June 17, 2015
Install a Babun (Cygwin) Shell and Ansible for Windows
Update: You might find this thread useful if you have issues getting ansible to work in babun/cygwin - thanks mcfo for the comments. Update2: Another option is to run ansible inside a docker container using Docker for Windows. This way you are actually using Linux to run ansible in, so are likely to have less problems. Startup time, (after the first time you run it), should be very quick, so has none of the disadvantages of running inside a heavy VM.
More!
June 17, 2015
Install a Babun (Cygwin) Shell and Ansible for Windows - Comments
Old Article Comments I exported these from my old wordpress blog, so they are a bit out of date, but I thought I’d keep them around for posterity.
[mat] - Oct 1, 2015 Thanks for sharing this ! mirzawaqasahmed - Nov 6, 2015 Hi Chris, Thanks for sharing this. However when i am running ansible-playbook it first gave me following error…
GATHERING FACTS \*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\* 0 \[main\] python2.7 8168 child\_info\_fork::abort: address space needed by '\_speedups.
More!
Tag: babun
June 17, 2015
Install a Babun (Cygwin) Shell and Ansible for Windows
Update: You might find this thread useful if you have issues getting ansible to work in babun/cygwin - thanks mcfo for the comments. Update2: Another option is to run ansible inside a docker container using Docker for Windows. This way you are actually using Linux to run ansible in, so are likely to have less problems. Startup time, (after the first time you run it), should be very quick, so has none of the disadvantages of running inside a heavy VM.
More!
June 17, 2015
Install a Babun (Cygwin) Shell and Ansible for Windows - Comments
Old Article Comments I exported these from my old wordpress blog, so they are a bit out of date, but I thought I’d keep them around for posterity.
[mat] - Oct 1, 2015 Thanks for sharing this ! mirzawaqasahmed - Nov 6, 2015 Hi Chris, Thanks for sharing this. However when i am running ansible-playbook it first gave me following error…
GATHERING FACTS \*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\* 0 \[main\] python2.7 8168 child\_info\_fork::abort: address space needed by '\_speedups.
More!
Tag: cygwin
June 17, 2015
Install a Babun (Cygwin) Shell and Ansible for Windows
Update: You might find this thread useful if you have issues getting ansible to work in babun/cygwin - thanks mcfo for the comments. Update2: Another option is to run ansible inside a docker container using Docker for Windows. This way you are actually using Linux to run ansible in, so are likely to have less problems. Startup time, (after the first time you run it), should be very quick, so has none of the disadvantages of running inside a heavy VM.
More!
June 17, 2015
Install a Babun (Cygwin) Shell and Ansible for Windows - Comments
Old Article Comments I exported these from my old wordpress blog, so they are a bit out of date, but I thought I’d keep them around for posterity.
[mat] - Oct 1, 2015 Thanks for sharing this ! mirzawaqasahmed - Nov 6, 2015 Hi Chris, Thanks for sharing this. However when i am running ansible-playbook it first gave me following error…
GATHERING FACTS \*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\* 0 \[main\] python2.7 8168 child\_info\_fork::abort: address space needed by '\_speedups.
More!
Tag: windows
June 17, 2015
Install a Babun (Cygwin) Shell and Ansible for Windows
Update: You might find this thread useful if you have issues getting ansible to work in babun/cygwin - thanks mcfo for the comments. Update2: Another option is to run ansible inside a docker container using Docker for Windows. This way you are actually using Linux to run ansible in, so are likely to have less problems. Startup time, (after the first time you run it), should be very quick, so has none of the disadvantages of running inside a heavy VM.
More!
June 17, 2015
Install a Babun (Cygwin) Shell and Ansible for Windows - Comments
Old Article Comments I exported these from my old wordpress blog, so they are a bit out of date, but I thought I’d keep them around for posterity.
[mat] - Oct 1, 2015 Thanks for sharing this ! mirzawaqasahmed - Nov 6, 2015 Hi Chris, Thanks for sharing this. However when i am running ansible-playbook it first gave me following error…
GATHERING FACTS \*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\* 0 \[main\] python2.7 8168 child\_info\_fork::abort: address space needed by '\_speedups.
More!
Tag: productivity
March 31, 2015
Some Thoughts on Almost 9 Years of Remote Working
Since I started working for Corelogic in 2005, I only spent the first year working in the office every day. I lived in London for that year, within walking distance of the office, in a nice, albeit small 1 bed flat. That flat probably cost around the same price as our4 bed semi in Nottinghamshire (and that was years ago). But I digress. Anyway, I didn’t enjoy living in London too much.
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Tag: remote working
March 31, 2015
Some Thoughts on Almost 9 Years of Remote Working
Since I started working for Corelogic in 2005, I only spent the first year working in the office every day. I lived in London for that year, within walking distance of the office, in a nice, albeit small 1 bed flat. That flat probably cost around the same price as our4 bed semi in Nottinghamshire (and that was years ago). But I digress. Anyway, I didn’t enjoy living in London too much.
More!
Tag: work
March 31, 2015
Some Thoughts on Almost 9 Years of Remote Working
Since I started working for Corelogic in 2005, I only spent the first year working in the office every day. I lived in London for that year, within walking distance of the office, in a nice, albeit small 1 bed flat. That flat probably cost around the same price as our4 bed semi in Nottinghamshire (and that was years ago). But I digress. Anyway, I didn’t enjoy living in London too much.
More!
Tag: Security
August 11, 2014
Sysdig - A general purpose system capture and analysis tool
I’ve just been looking at a nice new tool called sysdig, which seems to be really useful for analysing and troubleshooting on production systems. There’s a great blog post by Gianluca Borello, detailing how he set up a number of honey-pot servers with poor passwords, and then captured system activity with sysdig, showing exactly how his server was compromised, and what the hacker did at each stage. The level of detail he was able to garner is astounding, and I can see how powerful this tool could be in the future, for any sort of troubleshooting where it’s not clear exactly what has happened/is happening on a system.
More!
November 1, 2013
Interesting Interview With Ladar Levison of Lavabit
Old Article Comments I exported these from my old wordpress blog, so they are a bit out of date, but I thought I’d keep them around for posterity.
[billjonesgeneralstore] - Nov 5, 2013 Reblogged this on You Better Watch Out.
More!
November 1, 2013
Interesting Interview With Ladar Levison of Lavabit
An excellent and informing interview with the founder of the Lavabit email service, who was recently involved in a legal case with the FBI, who attempted to force him to hand over SSL encryption keys. This was of course the email service used by Edward Snowden, so attracted a lot of attention. There’s some really interesting technical stuff in here, specifically about the value of perfect forward secrecy in HTTPS encryption, which he wasn’t using, and how he protected his user’s data, in many clever ways.
More!
October 31, 2013
Cryptolocker - Seriously Problematic Ransomware
There’s a new piece of ransomware in the wild, called Cryptolocker. It’s a nasty piece of software that uses public/private keypairs to background encrypt all your documents and files, and then helpfully let you know it has done it. Then - you will be asked to pay $300/€300 to unlock your files. If you don’t, you will lose the key to decrypt them, and then lose all your files. Not only that - it also encrypts shared drives, such as on your business network.
More!
October 8, 2013
SQRL (Squirrel) Authentication - Bye bye usernames and passwords?
Distruptive technologies ocassionally come along which can make a big difference in computing. Something in the early days which I heard about last week was the SQRL authentication proposal by Steve Gibson. This proposal aims to address the extremely big problem of user and password authentication across the internet. This is a huge and annoying problem for all internet users - you must try to come up with secure passwords, whilst giving passwords to many different parties, some of who you can trust, and some of whom you can’t.
More!
September 19, 2013
Google's Password Storage Database
Do you have an Android phone? Some interesting news I read this week was that an innocuous (on by default) setting on Android phones can save your Wifi passwords on Google’s servers. It also backs up all your app settings, bookmarks and so on. This isn’t that worrying - it could be considered a useful feature. However, the worrying thing is that these plain-text passwords aren’t encrypted using your account details - they are available in unencrypted form to Google employees.
More!
September 9, 2013
Security Breaches From The Sands of Time
I found some interesting old news, back from 1999 that someone posted a link to in the SecurityNow newsgroups. I’ve recently started listening to this podcast - it’s a brilliant way to keep up with computer security news, and I feel a lot more informed having started to listen. http://www.heise.de/tp/artikel/5/5263/1.html http://www.heise.de/tp/artikel/2/2898/1.html The articles were to do with NSA back doors in several pieces of software, Microsoft Windows and Lotus Notes. Both of these were verified back in 2009 by security researchers by reverse engineering software.
More!
September 6, 2013
Engineering Around The Privacy Crisis
Is it a crisis? The latest news from the NSA snooping debacle suggests it is. If they have the means to deliberately insert vulnerabilities into well known encryption standards and circumvent others, then what were previously thought to be secure connections, to banks, email providers and search engines, may not be anymore. Bruce Schneier issued somewhat of a call to arms yesterday, asking the engineers to look at how to resolve these problems, and reegineer the internet to our own needs once again, rather than those of some faceless security services personnel, somewhere.
More!
Tag: sysdig
August 11, 2014
Sysdig - A general purpose system capture and analysis tool
I’ve just been looking at a nice new tool called sysdig, which seems to be really useful for analysing and troubleshooting on production systems. There’s a great blog post by Gianluca Borello, detailing how he set up a number of honey-pot servers with poor passwords, and then captured system activity with sysdig, showing exactly how his server was compromised, and what the hacker did at each stage. The level of detail he was able to garner is astounding, and I can see how powerful this tool could be in the future, for any sort of troubleshooting where it’s not clear exactly what has happened/is happening on a system.
More!
Tag: active_directory
April 4, 2014
Active Directory to OpenLDAP Sync with LSC
Old Article Comments I exported these from my old wordpress blog, so they are a bit out of date, but I thought I’d keep them around for posterity.
[vinay shetty] - Nov 1, 2014 Super explanation.. Thanks lot [Anderson] - Mar 5, 2015 Hi Chris, how I can synchronizing passwords (no plain text) between the openldap and Active Directory ? Synchronizing users with LSC-project | Opencloud engineering - Sep 1, 2015 […] -w ‘xxx’ Useful links: 1) Official LSC tutorial OpenLDAP to AD 2) Good blogpost AD to OpenLDAP 3) Official LSC documentation This entry was posted in Uncategorized and tagged ad, java, ldap, […] [ebooster] - Nov 5, 2016 Hi Chris, Thanks for this.
More!
April 4, 2014
Active Directory to OpenLDAP Sync with LSC
I have recently had to sync accounts and groups from Activc Directory to OpenLDAP, for a requirement for a directory server in the DMZ. A DMZ (De-millitarised zone) is an area of the network open to the internet. It’s supposed to be separate from the rest of your LAN, so you can have services running on the internet without fear that people can break into your LAN from these. There are other options for doing this, including a read-only domain controller (RODC), a AD LDS (Lighweight Directory Server) and so on, but they all require connectivity back from the DMZ to the LAN, which is precisely what we are trying to avoid.
More!
Tag: ldap
April 4, 2014
Active Directory to OpenLDAP Sync with LSC
Old Article Comments I exported these from my old wordpress blog, so they are a bit out of date, but I thought I’d keep them around for posterity.
[vinay shetty] - Nov 1, 2014 Super explanation.. Thanks lot [Anderson] - Mar 5, 2015 Hi Chris, how I can synchronizing passwords (no plain text) between the openldap and Active Directory ? Synchronizing users with LSC-project | Opencloud engineering - Sep 1, 2015 […] -w ‘xxx’ Useful links: 1) Official LSC tutorial OpenLDAP to AD 2) Good blogpost AD to OpenLDAP 3) Official LSC documentation This entry was posted in Uncategorized and tagged ad, java, ldap, […] [ebooster] - Nov 5, 2016 Hi Chris, Thanks for this.
More!
April 4, 2014
Active Directory to OpenLDAP Sync with LSC
I have recently had to sync accounts and groups from Activc Directory to OpenLDAP, for a requirement for a directory server in the DMZ. A DMZ (De-millitarised zone) is an area of the network open to the internet. It’s supposed to be separate from the rest of your LAN, so you can have services running on the internet without fear that people can break into your LAN from these. There are other options for doing this, including a read-only domain controller (RODC), a AD LDS (Lighweight Directory Server) and so on, but they all require connectivity back from the DMZ to the LAN, which is precisely what we are trying to avoid.
More!
Tag: lsc
April 4, 2014
Active Directory to OpenLDAP Sync with LSC
Old Article Comments I exported these from my old wordpress blog, so they are a bit out of date, but I thought I’d keep them around for posterity.
[vinay shetty] - Nov 1, 2014 Super explanation.. Thanks lot [Anderson] - Mar 5, 2015 Hi Chris, how I can synchronizing passwords (no plain text) between the openldap and Active Directory ? Synchronizing users with LSC-project | Opencloud engineering - Sep 1, 2015 […] -w ‘xxx’ Useful links: 1) Official LSC tutorial OpenLDAP to AD 2) Good blogpost AD to OpenLDAP 3) Official LSC documentation This entry was posted in Uncategorized and tagged ad, java, ldap, […] [ebooster] - Nov 5, 2016 Hi Chris, Thanks for this.
More!
April 4, 2014
Active Directory to OpenLDAP Sync with LSC
I have recently had to sync accounts and groups from Activc Directory to OpenLDAP, for a requirement for a directory server in the DMZ. A DMZ (De-millitarised zone) is an area of the network open to the internet. It’s supposed to be separate from the rest of your LAN, so you can have services running on the internet without fear that people can break into your LAN from these. There are other options for doing this, including a read-only domain controller (RODC), a AD LDS (Lighweight Directory Server) and so on, but they all require connectivity back from the DMZ to the LAN, which is precisely what we are trying to avoid.
More!
Tag: openldap
April 4, 2014
Active Directory to OpenLDAP Sync with LSC
Old Article Comments I exported these from my old wordpress blog, so they are a bit out of date, but I thought I’d keep them around for posterity.
[vinay shetty] - Nov 1, 2014 Super explanation.. Thanks lot [Anderson] - Mar 5, 2015 Hi Chris, how I can synchronizing passwords (no plain text) between the openldap and Active Directory ? Synchronizing users with LSC-project | Opencloud engineering - Sep 1, 2015 […] -w ‘xxx’ Useful links: 1) Official LSC tutorial OpenLDAP to AD 2) Good blogpost AD to OpenLDAP 3) Official LSC documentation This entry was posted in Uncategorized and tagged ad, java, ldap, […] [ebooster] - Nov 5, 2016 Hi Chris, Thanks for this.
More!
April 4, 2014
Active Directory to OpenLDAP Sync with LSC
I have recently had to sync accounts and groups from Activc Directory to OpenLDAP, for a requirement for a directory server in the DMZ. A DMZ (De-millitarised zone) is an area of the network open to the internet. It’s supposed to be separate from the rest of your LAN, so you can have services running on the internet without fear that people can break into your LAN from these. There are other options for doing this, including a read-only domain controller (RODC), a AD LDS (Lighweight Directory Server) and so on, but they all require connectivity back from the DMZ to the LAN, which is precisely what we are trying to avoid.
More!
Tag: listener
January 13, 2014
Non-Default Oracle Listener
A nice detailed description of how the oracle listener behaves in different scenarios, including the LOCAL_LISTENER parameter. http://edstevensdba.wordpress.com/2011/07/30/exploring-the-local_listener-parameter/
More!
Tag: oracle
January 13, 2014
Non-Default Oracle Listener
A nice detailed description of how the oracle listener behaves in different scenarios, including the LOCAL_LISTENER parameter. http://edstevensdba.wordpress.com/2011/07/30/exploring-the-local_listener-parameter/
More!
Tag: google
November 12, 2013
HTTP 2.0 Is Coming
It’s been almost 15 years since the last standard of HTTP was ratified. HTTP is the protocol which transports web pages across the internet. It’s a brilliantly thought out and quite simple protocol. It’s beginning to show it’s age though, especially with the rise of many requests across multiple web servers. AJAX and newer technologies like WebSockets have worked around it’s limitations. It’s inefficient at connections, is designed to be stateless, so doesn’t maintain data in it’s headers between requests, and it’s not great at doing lots of requests in parallel.
More!
September 19, 2013
Google's Password Storage Database
Do you have an Android phone? Some interesting news I read this week was that an innocuous (on by default) setting on Android phones can save your Wifi passwords on Google’s servers. It also backs up all your app settings, bookmarks and so on. This isn’t that worrying - it could be considered a useful feature. However, the worrying thing is that these plain-text passwords aren’t encrypted using your account details - they are available in unencrypted form to Google employees.
More!
Tag: http
November 12, 2013
HTTP 2.0 Is Coming
It’s been almost 15 years since the last standard of HTTP was ratified. HTTP is the protocol which transports web pages across the internet. It’s a brilliantly thought out and quite simple protocol. It’s beginning to show it’s age though, especially with the rise of many requests across multiple web servers. AJAX and newer technologies like WebSockets have worked around it’s limitations. It’s inefficient at connections, is designed to be stateless, so doesn’t maintain data in it’s headers between requests, and it’s not great at doing lots of requests in parallel.
More!
Tag: web
November 12, 2013
HTTP 2.0 Is Coming
It’s been almost 15 years since the last standard of HTTP was ratified. HTTP is the protocol which transports web pages across the internet. It’s a brilliantly thought out and quite simple protocol. It’s beginning to show it’s age though, especially with the rise of many requests across multiple web servers. AJAX and newer technologies like WebSockets have worked around it’s limitations. It’s inefficient at connections, is designed to be stateless, so doesn’t maintain data in it’s headers between requests, and it’s not great at doing lots of requests in parallel.
More!
Tag: fbi
November 1, 2013
Interesting Interview With Ladar Levison of Lavabit
Old Article Comments I exported these from my old wordpress blog, so they are a bit out of date, but I thought I’d keep them around for posterity.
[billjonesgeneralstore] - Nov 5, 2013 Reblogged this on You Better Watch Out.
More!
November 1, 2013
Interesting Interview With Ladar Levison of Lavabit
An excellent and informing interview with the founder of the Lavabit email service, who was recently involved in a legal case with the FBI, who attempted to force him to hand over SSL encryption keys. This was of course the email service used by Edward Snowden, so attracted a lot of attention. There’s some really interesting technical stuff in here, specifically about the value of perfect forward secrecy in HTTPS encryption, which he wasn’t using, and how he protected his user’s data, in many clever ways.
More!
Tag: lavabit
November 1, 2013
Interesting Interview With Ladar Levison of Lavabit
Old Article Comments I exported these from my old wordpress blog, so they are a bit out of date, but I thought I’d keep them around for posterity.
[billjonesgeneralstore] - Nov 5, 2013 Reblogged this on You Better Watch Out.
More!
November 1, 2013
Interesting Interview With Ladar Levison of Lavabit
An excellent and informing interview with the founder of the Lavabit email service, who was recently involved in a legal case with the FBI, who attempted to force him to hand over SSL encryption keys. This was of course the email service used by Edward Snowden, so attracted a lot of attention. There’s some really interesting technical stuff in here, specifically about the value of perfect forward secrecy in HTTPS encryption, which he wasn’t using, and how he protected his user’s data, in many clever ways.
More!
Tag: nsa
November 1, 2013
Interesting Interview With Ladar Levison of Lavabit
Old Article Comments I exported these from my old wordpress blog, so they are a bit out of date, but I thought I’d keep them around for posterity.
[billjonesgeneralstore] - Nov 5, 2013 Reblogged this on You Better Watch Out.
More!
November 1, 2013
Interesting Interview With Ladar Levison of Lavabit
An excellent and informing interview with the founder of the Lavabit email service, who was recently involved in a legal case with the FBI, who attempted to force him to hand over SSL encryption keys. This was of course the email service used by Edward Snowden, so attracted a lot of attention. There’s some really interesting technical stuff in here, specifically about the value of perfect forward secrecy in HTTPS encryption, which he wasn’t using, and how he protected his user’s data, in many clever ways.
More!
September 19, 2013
Google's Password Storage Database
Do you have an Android phone? Some interesting news I read this week was that an innocuous (on by default) setting on Android phones can save your Wifi passwords on Google’s servers. It also backs up all your app settings, bookmarks and so on. This isn’t that worrying - it could be considered a useful feature. However, the worrying thing is that these plain-text passwords aren’t encrypted using your account details - they are available in unencrypted form to Google employees.
More!
September 9, 2013
Security Breaches From The Sands of Time
I found some interesting old news, back from 1999 that someone posted a link to in the SecurityNow newsgroups. I’ve recently started listening to this podcast - it’s a brilliant way to keep up with computer security news, and I feel a lot more informed having started to listen. http://www.heise.de/tp/artikel/5/5263/1.html http://www.heise.de/tp/artikel/2/2898/1.html The articles were to do with NSA back doors in several pieces of software, Microsoft Windows and Lotus Notes. Both of these were verified back in 2009 by security researchers by reverse engineering software.
More!
Tag: twit
November 1, 2013
Interesting Interview With Ladar Levison of Lavabit
Old Article Comments I exported these from my old wordpress blog, so they are a bit out of date, but I thought I’d keep them around for posterity.
[billjonesgeneralstore] - Nov 5, 2013 Reblogged this on You Better Watch Out.
More!
November 1, 2013
Interesting Interview With Ladar Levison of Lavabit
An excellent and informing interview with the founder of the Lavabit email service, who was recently involved in a legal case with the FBI, who attempted to force him to hand over SSL encryption keys. This was of course the email service used by Edward Snowden, so attracted a lot of attention. There’s some really interesting technical stuff in here, specifically about the value of perfect forward secrecy in HTTPS encryption, which he wasn’t using, and how he protected his user’s data, in many clever ways.
More!
Tag: centos
October 28, 2013
Simple Steps to Use Yum Rollback on Centos / RHEL 5
Simple Steps to Use Yum Rollback on Centos / RHEL 5 Some nice instructions on a simple backup/rollback technique for packages on Centos / RHEL 5. This can be accomplished even more easily in newer versions of yum, such as on Centos / RHEL 6, which the ‘yum history’ command. There’s a nice undo feature there now, that makes it trivial to revert a change, if you have problems with a package update for any reason.
More!
September 4, 2013
Working With Haproxy
Old Article Comments I exported these from my old wordpress blog, so they are a bit out of date, but I thought I’d keep them around for posterity.
[Andy Dorfman] - Apr 5, 2014 Excellent article. Do you think this setup will work to load balance/failover several nonclustered weblogic instances. In my current setup, i have apache rp listening on port 443 with ssl termination and forwarding everything to weblogics, listening on port 80.
More!
September 4, 2013
Working With Haproxy
Although I have worked with enterprise envrionments running Oracle and SQL Server for quite a few years, I’ve yet to be involved in a real high-availability deployment. This has been for a variety of technical reasons in our company’s application, and a lack of interest from most customers. Recently, I explored options and had the opportunity to test some load balancing setups for our application servers at a customer site. I was impressed with the reliability and reputation of the HAproxy software, so had a look at that to begin with.
More!
Tag: Link
October 28, 2013
Simple Steps to Use Yum Rollback on Centos / RHEL 5
Simple Steps to Use Yum Rollback on Centos / RHEL 5 Some nice instructions on a simple backup/rollback technique for packages on Centos / RHEL 5. This can be accomplished even more easily in newer versions of yum, such as on Centos / RHEL 6, which the ‘yum history’ command. There’s a nice undo feature there now, that makes it trivial to revert a change, if you have problems with a package update for any reason.
More!
Tag: rhel
October 28, 2013
Simple Steps to Use Yum Rollback on Centos / RHEL 5
Simple Steps to Use Yum Rollback on Centos / RHEL 5 Some nice instructions on a simple backup/rollback technique for packages on Centos / RHEL 5. This can be accomplished even more easily in newer versions of yum, such as on Centos / RHEL 6, which the ‘yum history’ command. There’s a nice undo feature there now, that makes it trivial to revert a change, if you have problems with a package update for any reason.
More!
Tag: devops
October 22, 2013
Interesting Talk on DevOps
This is an excellent (albeit long) talk on DevOps, and where it came from. Some of the systems theory stuff in here, which is rarely covered by computing enthusiasts is illuminating and extremely helpful. If you’ve wondered why agile doesn’t work in operations, or why there’s such a counter-productive feedback loop between developing a deploying your software, this is really worth a watch. It’s aimed at sysadmins, but I think developers would get a lot from it too.
More!
Tag: sysadmin
October 22, 2013
Interesting Talk on DevOps
This is an excellent (albeit long) talk on DevOps, and where it came from. Some of the systems theory stuff in here, which is rarely covered by computing enthusiasts is illuminating and extremely helpful. If you’ve wondered why agile doesn’t work in operations, or why there’s such a counter-productive feedback loop between developing a deploying your software, this is really worth a watch. It’s aimed at sysadmins, but I think developers would get a lot from it too.
More!
Tag: systems
October 22, 2013
Interesting Talk on DevOps
This is an excellent (albeit long) talk on DevOps, and where it came from. Some of the systems theory stuff in here, which is rarely covered by computing enthusiasts is illuminating and extremely helpful. If you’ve wondered why agile doesn’t work in operations, or why there’s such a counter-productive feedback loop between developing a deploying your software, this is really worth a watch. It’s aimed at sysadmins, but I think developers would get a lot from it too.
More!
Tag: Systems Theory
October 22, 2013
Interesting Talk on DevOps
This is an excellent (albeit long) talk on DevOps, and where it came from. Some of the systems theory stuff in here, which is rarely covered by computing enthusiasts is illuminating and extremely helpful. If you’ve wondered why agile doesn’t work in operations, or why there’s such a counter-productive feedback loop between developing a deploying your software, this is really worth a watch. It’s aimed at sysadmins, but I think developers would get a lot from it too.
More!
Tag: puppet
October 13, 2013
Watch "Getting Started with Puppet - PuppetConf 2013" on YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TdAmAj3eaFI&feature=youtube_gdata_player
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Tag: sqrl
October 8, 2013
SQRL (Squirrel) Authentication - Bye bye usernames and passwords?
Distruptive technologies ocassionally come along which can make a big difference in computing. Something in the early days which I heard about last week was the SQRL authentication proposal by Steve Gibson. This proposal aims to address the extremely big problem of user and password authentication across the internet. This is a huge and annoying problem for all internet users - you must try to come up with secure passwords, whilst giving passwords to many different parties, some of who you can trust, and some of whom you can’t.
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Tag: SQRL authentication
October 8, 2013
SQRL (Squirrel) Authentication - Bye bye usernames and passwords?
Distruptive technologies ocassionally come along which can make a big difference in computing. Something in the early days which I heard about last week was the SQRL authentication proposal by Steve Gibson. This proposal aims to address the extremely big problem of user and password authentication across the internet. This is a huge and annoying problem for all internet users - you must try to come up with secure passwords, whilst giving passwords to many different parties, some of who you can trust, and some of whom you can’t.
More!
Tag: android
September 19, 2013
Google's Password Storage Database
Do you have an Android phone? Some interesting news I read this week was that an innocuous (on by default) setting on Android phones can save your Wifi passwords on Google’s servers. It also backs up all your app settings, bookmarks and so on. This isn’t that worrying - it could be considered a useful feature. However, the worrying thing is that these plain-text passwords aren’t encrypted using your account details - they are available in unencrypted form to Google employees.
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Tag: gchq
September 19, 2013
Google's Password Storage Database
Do you have an Android phone? Some interesting news I read this week was that an innocuous (on by default) setting on Android phones can save your Wifi passwords on Google’s servers. It also backs up all your app settings, bookmarks and so on. This isn’t that worrying - it could be considered a useful feature. However, the worrying thing is that these plain-text passwords aren’t encrypted using your account details - they are available in unencrypted form to Google employees.
More!
Tag: lvm
September 18, 2013
Increasing VMWare Disk Sizes in Linux Without Rebooting
You can increase disk sizes in vmware guests whilst they are running. This is supported, but Linux will not see the new size of the disk until it reboots. There is a way around this (assuming here we are using LVM disks): 1. Increase the disk size in the vmware settings. 2. Logon as root onto the Linux guest system. 3. Do:
echo "1" > /sys/class/scsi\_device/<device>/device/rescan ..where is the SCSI bus you wish to rescan.
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Tag: vmware
September 18, 2013
Increasing VMWare Disk Sizes in Linux Without Rebooting
You can increase disk sizes in vmware guests whilst they are running. This is supported, but Linux will not see the new size of the disk until it reboots. There is a way around this (assuming here we are using LVM disks): 1. Increase the disk size in the vmware settings. 2. Logon as root onto the Linux guest system. 3. Do:
echo "1" > /sys/class/scsi\_device/<device>/device/rescan ..where is the SCSI bus you wish to rescan.
More!
Tag: microsoft
September 9, 2013
Security Breaches From The Sands of Time
I found some interesting old news, back from 1999 that someone posted a link to in the SecurityNow newsgroups. I’ve recently started listening to this podcast - it’s a brilliant way to keep up with computer security news, and I feel a lot more informed having started to listen. http://www.heise.de/tp/artikel/5/5263/1.html http://www.heise.de/tp/artikel/2/2898/1.html The articles were to do with NSA back doors in several pieces of software, Microsoft Windows and Lotus Notes. Both of these were verified back in 2009 by security researchers by reverse engineering software.
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Tag: haproxy
September 4, 2013
Working With Haproxy
Old Article Comments I exported these from my old wordpress blog, so they are a bit out of date, but I thought I’d keep them around for posterity.
[Andy Dorfman] - Apr 5, 2014 Excellent article. Do you think this setup will work to load balance/failover several nonclustered weblogic instances. In my current setup, i have apache rp listening on port 443 with ssl termination and forwarding everything to weblogics, listening on port 80.
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September 4, 2013
Working With Haproxy
Although I have worked with enterprise envrionments running Oracle and SQL Server for quite a few years, I’ve yet to be involved in a real high-availability deployment. This has been for a variety of technical reasons in our company’s application, and a lack of interest from most customers. Recently, I explored options and had the opportunity to test some load balancing setups for our application servers at a customer site. I was impressed with the reliability and reputation of the HAproxy software, so had a look at that to begin with.
More!
Tag: high-availability
September 4, 2013
Working With Haproxy
Old Article Comments I exported these from my old wordpress blog, so they are a bit out of date, but I thought I’d keep them around for posterity.
[Andy Dorfman] - Apr 5, 2014 Excellent article. Do you think this setup will work to load balance/failover several nonclustered weblogic instances. In my current setup, i have apache rp listening on port 443 with ssl termination and forwarding everything to weblogics, listening on port 80.
More!
September 4, 2013
Working With Haproxy
Although I have worked with enterprise envrionments running Oracle and SQL Server for quite a few years, I’ve yet to be involved in a real high-availability deployment. This has been for a variety of technical reasons in our company’s application, and a lack of interest from most customers. Recently, I explored options and had the opportunity to test some load balancing setups for our application servers at a customer site. I was impressed with the reliability and reputation of the HAproxy software, so had a look at that to begin with.
More!
Tag: java
September 4, 2013
Working With Haproxy
Old Article Comments I exported these from my old wordpress blog, so they are a bit out of date, but I thought I’d keep them around for posterity.
[Andy Dorfman] - Apr 5, 2014 Excellent article. Do you think this setup will work to load balance/failover several nonclustered weblogic instances. In my current setup, i have apache rp listening on port 443 with ssl termination and forwarding everything to weblogics, listening on port 80.
More!
September 4, 2013
Working With Haproxy
Although I have worked with enterprise envrionments running Oracle and SQL Server for quite a few years, I’ve yet to be involved in a real high-availability deployment. This has been for a variety of technical reasons in our company’s application, and a lack of interest from most customers. Recently, I explored options and had the opportunity to test some load balancing setups for our application servers at a customer site. I was impressed with the reliability and reputation of the HAproxy software, so had a look at that to begin with.
More!