Connected

Posted: Sat 24 January, 2015 | Author: | Filed under: Customer Services, Domestic, Driving, Geeky, Getting Organised, iPhone, Work-related | Leave a comment »

This weekend I’m off seeing friends Oop Norf, and because of working from home, opted for the easier option, leaving home early, stopping off at a services most of the way to where I’ll be, and working from there for a few hours.

It actually worked out pretty well – surprisingly so, in some ways – and meant I didn’t get stuck in tons of shitty traffic.

The surprising bit was that where I stopped, up at Hartshead Moor services, my phone had a full 4G data service – surprising, because Hartshead is pretty much the bum-end of nowhere. But still, 4G.   That meant I could connect from laptop to iPhone using WiFi, which then gave me data via 4G, without having to pay a penny to the on-site extortionists of BTOpenzone et al.

That, to me, is a complete win. I’ve got unlimited 4G data through my phone contract (I know, it’ll still have a ‘fair-use’ limitation or whatever, but I’m well within that anyway) so it’s saved me the money of a connection through BTOpenzone, and won’t even hit my phone bill.

There are some bits of this modern life that I really quite like…

Somewhat Calmer

Posted: Sun 18 January, 2015 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, Domestic, Geeky | Leave a comment »

Over the weekend, I’ve been working on reducing the impact of whatever/whoever was attacking D4D™ (and many others, I’m sure)

Looking at log files, it became apparent that a number of the issues were related to a particular site primary user-name that’d become known. Not massively surprising- it wasn’t the strongest in the first place, although the password was- and while it hadn’t been cracked/opened, it was getting hit so many times that it kept on getting locked out. And because it was the primary user-name (which I used all the time) it meant I was getting locked out as well.

As a result, that user has now been massively demoted, and I’ve created a couple of others with more-secure usernames and similarly secure passwords.

It’s not been the easiest of processes, and I’ll be keeping an eye on it over the next few weeks – but at least things now seem to be calmer and less slogged-down with hassles and shit.

Writing Tools

Posted: Mon 22 December, 2014 | Author: | Filed under: 2014/15, Cynicism, Geeky, Technology, Thoughts, Write More, Writing | 3 Comments »

Many many years back – before D4D even started – I used to have a couple of palmtop computers. I started off with the Atari Portfolio, then ended up with Psion devices, a 3a and then a Revo.  I used to love these things – they made things easy, and gave me a lot of time/ability for writing.  Of them all, the Revo was the best for also having a decent keyboard.

psion_revoThese things were tiny – far smaller than today’s tablet devices – but had enough power to do general organisational stuff, and plenty of writing along the way.

In 2015, I want to do more in the way of writing, and I’ve been looking for something similar to the Psions of old – the main requirements being small size, and a decent keyboard.  One thing I hate on tablets is the “on-screen keyboard”, which is nigh-on impossible to touch-type on. There’s no real feedback, and it’s hard to type clearly/cleanly/correctly on the poxy things. When one is wanting a device primarily for writing/typing, that’s hardly ideal.

There’s a couple of smaller tablets that also have decent keyboards – but then, if I’m looking at that I might as well get just a small/compact laptop. Mind you, a laptop (even a small one) is still larger than I was looking for.

Ideally I’d like something the size of the old Revo(ish) with a decent keyboard, and better connectivity. Doesn’t seem like much to ask for, does it? Particularly when you consider that such a device was in existence more than a decade ago. But it just doesn’t seem to available.  The best alternative seems to be something like the Typo2 keyboard for my phone – except that then negates the case/battery-pack I’ve already got, and also buggers up some of the other phone functionality. Which makes it a bit more pointless.

I feel the same about “smartwatches” like Apple’s iWatch and so on. Sure, there’s a lot of things that are cool on them, but when I think of what Casio used to do with digital watches back in the 90s – watches with calculators, databanks, thermometers, barometers, heart-rate monitors and so on – then the smartwatches are actually pretty dumb.

It’s just annoying – it seems that for all our technological advances, in some ways the devices we have now are less useful than those from a decade ago.

Spam Tendencies

Posted: Mon 15 December, 2014 | Author: | Filed under: Advertising, Cynicism, Geeky, People | Leave a comment »

One of my geekier interests (and there’s a long list, I know) is that I find it interesting what sort of subjects are used by spammers in their efforts to get people to click on their ropy emails/links.

I’ve got one email account that gets spammed rotten, and I look through it on occasion when I’ve nothing better to do.

In this case, I had a look on Saturday evening, while my brain was somewhat comatose, and found that the following seem to be currently popular…

  1. “You’ve been accepted onto this year’s ‘Who’s Who’ listings – click here to verify your details’ (appealing to the vanity of the vacuous who’ve done fuck-all)
  2. Working from home  (no surprise there)
  3. ‘Super-low’ mortgage rates (again, no real surprise)
  4. And some weird shit about ‘this 57 year-old man cured Diabetes/Alzheimers/Cancer’ which I don’t quite get.

Of course there’s plenty of others, but I’d guesstimate that those four account for about 60% of the shit I receive on any given day…

Signs of Progress

Posted: Sun 14 December, 2014 | Author: | Filed under: Business, Creativity, D4D™, Depression, Domestic, Geeky, Introspective, People, Sociable | Leave a comment »

Last week, I had a couple of indicators that things are definitely in a recovery pattern for me again. (And not just that contract offer a month before the current one expires)  This year’s been pretty up-and-down, albeit with more ‘down’ than was feasible or expected, so it’s good that it appears to be closing off on a period of much-needed ‘up’.

The first real thing has been the ability/desire to get out a bit over the last month or so. As already blogged, I’ve been off to Felixstowe and Brighton, as well as two London concerts. That’s a massive improvement over a lot of the year already.

Next was the MK Geek Night last Thursday. I’ve been going to this now for a couple of years, but this year had a couple of wobbles – one where I didn’t want to go because of Too Many People, and one where I was simply too busy/overworked to go (although that one also had the potential for Too Many People as well as A Couple Of People I Really Didn’t Want To See)   Me being me, I usually get myself a bit stressed about it due to the whole lots-of-people thing anyway, but those couple of times this year it felt pretty insurmountable.

However, this time it didn’t worry me at all – just turned up with some other friends, and all was good. That, I think, was the real ‘lightbulb moment’, that showed me I was doing better now than I have been in a while. Indeed, I even commented on it to one of the friends while we were there.  Definitely A Good Thing.

And finally, I’ve started writing again. There’s a couple of ideas on the burners, and as yet I’m not sure if they’ll actually go through to completion – but they’re being written, which is another major sign of things being better.

So yes, it’s all a bit positive.  Of course, the pessimist side of me is now just waiting for the other shoe to drop, for something to mess up a bit, but that’s par for the course – and I’m not hiding away or sheltering and trying to avoid the shoe when/if it does drop, I’m getting on with things in the meantime.

Busy Week

Posted: Fri 12 December, 2014 | Author: | Filed under: Domestic, Geeky, Getting Organised, Own Business, Work-related | Leave a comment »

Updates have been a bit sparse this week because it’s been chaotic round here.

Monday was working on-site with my current client, and also the phone interview for the new contract

The rest of the week’s been working from home, but has also involved

  • Tuesday : Organising life stuff, doing some shopping, and all that kind of tat
  • Wednesday : Getting notified about the new contract, and doing a conference call with another client
  • Thursday : Signing the new contract, starting to sort out a business bank account, and a bundle of other paperwork. Also, out in the evening for a geeky social event in Milton Keynes
  • Today : Chasing up the poxy GP about blood-test results and the like

This weekend’s busy too – off tomorrow to see War of the Worlds at the O2, and Sunday I’ll be taking dad to see the final Hobbit film.

So yes, fairly busy all round. Kind of scary, really.

 

Two Hours

Posted: Mon 8 December, 2014 | Author: | Filed under: Domestic, Driving, Geeky, Thoughts, Travel | Leave a comment »

Over the last couple of weekends, I’ve looked (again) at just where I can get to in a two hour drive from home.  As has been said before, I live between Milton Keynes and Bedford, so I’m sat right between two decent North/South access roads (The M1 and A1) as well as vaguely decent cross-country connections with the A428 towards the West, and the A14 to the East.

What this means is that a two-hour drive covers one heck of a lot of the country, and I decided to have a look at just how far (via use of Google Maps, and their route predictions) I could get in each direction.

Two hours North takes me up to Sheffield, and South gets me to Brighton. That’s a total distance of 225 miles top to bottom.

Two hours West gets me to Bristol, and East gets me right across to Felixstowe and Aldeburgh – roughly 234 miles in total.

The area within that circle comes out as roughly 43,000 square miles (if my maths about area in circles is correct) or 111,000km², which in terms of the UK is just under half the area of the UK as a whole (going by CIA’s Worldbook figure of 243,610km²)

Not bad, all things considered…

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