Kember.net

RSS Feed Homepage

Articles: 1, 2

Eat no snacks
2008-05-09 14:42:00
I shall eat no snacks for a week. Start weight: 11 stone 12 lbs. Goal: 11 stone 3 lbs.
More About: Snacks

Unfashionable redesign
2008-05-06 22:26:00
According to Dean, nobody wants to know that I’m re-styling the site. When it looks like you’ve broken the Internet, don’t worry – it’s my fault.
More About: Redesign

Dilbert redesign
2008-04-28 14:48:00
Dilbert.com has been redesigned into a web 2.0 colour crazy flash-based megasite. On the up-side, the Dilbert people have also provided a no-frills, no-flash, no-clutter site and an rss feed. Why the extra site? For ultra-techies. Sweet.
More About: Redesign , Dilbert

REISUB - the gentle Linux restart
2008-04-23 16:29:00
According to Lifehacker a frozen Linux system that’s not responding to the Ctrl-Alt-Delete three-finger-salute can be restarted more safely than by pushing the power button, which is usually the next step. Holding down Alt and SysRq (which is the Print Screen key) while slowly typing REISUB will get you safely restarted. REISUO will do a shutdown rather than a restart.
More About: Restart , Gentle

Lunch by Nikki
2008-03-11 13:38:00
Yes, it’s another article about my lunch. This time there’s no photo, but the food’s just as good. I’ve had wraps from Nikki ’s twice now, and I’m impressed by the amount of filling they manage to get in. The wrap isn’t always as neat and robust as you’d get in a supermarket, but that’s the price you pay for having it stuffed full of goodies. My chicken, tzatziki and mixed bean wrap was £2.50.
More About: Lunch

Text editor showstoppers
2008-03-06 16:00:00
I’ve tried a number of times to write up a comparison of my favourite text editors, showing which features each one has. However, this is a long and complicated job that nobody will pay me to do. As a result, I’m going to keep a list of the problems that cause me to switch away from a certain editor. This at least will stop me switching back and forwards between editors – not because they’ve improved, but because I’ve forgotten why they were bad. The first entry goes to PSPad, which treats underscores and dashes as word-separators, so when selecting text, ‘ab-sol_utely’ looks like three words.
More About: Text Editor , Text , Editor

Automatic subdomains broken
2008-03-06 11:34:00
It looks like the DNS provider change has broken the automatic subdomain feature where http://xxxx.kember.net/ is automatically routed to http://kember.net/xxxx/. Unless this is a feature somebody uses, I’m not planning to fix this.
More About: Automatic , Broken

Changing DNS provider
2008-02-27 16:00:00
The DNS provider for Kember.net is changing. This will provide me with fine-grained control over the domain as we change our email provider to Google.
More About: Changing , Provider

Emailing photos with T-Mobile Just Works
2008-02-25 08:00:00
I’m always impressed when things Just Work TM. I took a photo of my lunch with my phone camera and realised that I had neither a bluetooth dongle nor my phone usb cable to hand. On a whim, I pressed the send button and filled in my email address.
More About: Mobile , Photos , T-Mobile , Works , T Mobile

Sandwiches from Food, Glorious Food
2008-02-21 14:45:00
Food, Glorious Food is a sandwich shop on Queensferry street in Edinburgh (map). There is a selection of pre-made sandwiches and baguettes and they also make them fresh from pre-prepared fillings. All things considered, a rather pleasant lunch.
More About: Food , Sandwiches

Lunch at Songkran in Edinburgh
2008-02-07 15:58:00
We’ve just had a lovely lunch in Songkran, a Thai restaurant in Edinburgh . The food was beautifully flavoured and tasted very fresh. The restaurant is small, giving it a nice, intimate feel. Songkran is on Stafford Street in Edinburgh (map) Contact: 0131 2257889
More About: Lunch

Seat reservations for National Express / GNER
2007-12-18 14:14:00
I know that not many people read my website, but if this saves one poor soul from having to dangle on the end of as many automated phone systems as I’ve just done, then it’s worth it. If you’re travelling on the train at Christmas, book seats. If you booked tickets with National Express (was GNER)…
More About: Reservations , Seat , Reserva

Kingdom Letting Services
2007-12-14 14:30:00
We rented a flat in Dunfermline through KLS from October 2006 to May 2007. Conclusion: Avoid if possible.
More About: Services , Kingdom , Letting

Feed reading
2007-12-12 14:05:00
This is a list of sites I have in my RSS newsreader (Thunderbird). I read them because I find them interesting. I don’t agree with a lot of what’s said on some of them, and don’t condone the content of many of them, but here they are, nonetheless
More About: Reading , Feed

Obscure python urllib2 proxy gotcha
2007-11-21 11:42:00
This is going to be very obscure, technical and humourless, so unless you suspect your environment-set http proxy is messing with your python, you can stop reading now.
More About: Python , Proxy , Obscure

Talktalk modem settings
2007-11-13 11:43:00
Currently, the settings Talktalk recommend for modems are: MTU: 14321…
More About: Modem , Settings

Clean database humour
2007-10-19 20:39:00
From XKCD, true geek humour in the tradition of calling your children stupid names:
More About: Humour , Clean , Database

Going to be a daddy
2007-10-17 14:59:00
Praise the Lord! We’re expecting this black and white smudge will be born in April.
More About: Daddy , Going , Goin

Never trust a bird in a clock
2007-10-03 11:31:00
From YouTube, comes this French animation.
More About: Clock , Trust , Bird

Does alcohol really boil away in cooking?
2007-09-30 19:04:00
“Don’t worry, there’s no alcohol in this red wine sauce – it’s cooked.” Heard that before? It’s the accepted wisdom about hot food made with alcoholic drinks. However, all is not as it seems…
More About: Cooking , Alcohol , Ally , Cookin

I do not like Tumblelogs
2007-09-26 12:21:00
I’ve occasionally looked for a good bit of software to set up Kember.net as a tumblelog – a weblog designed for short, title-less articles that contain a few thoughts. Tumblelog s make publishing much easier. People can see my ideas and thoughts from the totality of postings rather than from a few long articles. When I have interesting thoughts, I could just slap them up on the website. Most of these thoughts never make it to Kember.net at the moment, because expanding them into full-blown articles tends to vapourise them. However, I’ve come to realise that I hate reading tumblelogs. There’s not enough consistency to keep my attention. The articles aren’t long enough to tell me something meaningful or make me think. They’re so… In your face. Therefore, I shall carry on as I am.

Creating a self-signed SSL certificate
2007-09-12 11:27:00
There are some really long-winded ways of creating a self-signed SSL certificate for Apache out there on the Intarweb. Most I don’t understand well enough to implement, and the few that were simple enough to implement didn’t work…
More About: Signed , Creating , Cert

Roundup issue tracker page redirects badly
2007-09-06 09:06:00
This isn’t going to be a pretty article, but I’m aiming to catch Google’s attention, along with anybody else who got the same problem as me when they installed the Roundup issue tracker, followed the instructions but got redirection problems ending up with urls containing ‘//////////’ and stuff like that. The problem is in the config file
More About: Page , Tracker , Dire , Issue

Fraudulent Paypal email
2007-08-31 10:16:00
I just received an email from PayPal that looks genuine. It warns me of unusual account activity, and asks that I update my records to restore full functionality to my account. The email address it comes from looks genuine, the logo and the link to the privacy policy are genuine. Only the link to update my details isn’t right. It directs me to http://www.paypal-team.com/eg which is a site that asks me to put in all sorts of personal details.
More About: Email , Paypal , Lent

Holywood-style policing causes computer evidence blunder
2007-08-29 14:56:00
When a laptop computer was seized from a terror suspect, evidence was tampered with and possibly destroyed because the laptop was turned on. Nobody typed $ delete_evidence.sh, they just switched it on.
More About: Evidence , Computer , Style , Poli , Blunder

Gift list
2007-08-28 11:13:00
If you’d like to buy me a present, but need inspiration, you could look at my Amazon wish-list, or the list below.
More About: Gift , List

Aspire Van Hire
2007-08-01 19:43:00
We used Aspire Van Hire , based in Dunfermline, to move all our furniture to our new house. We hired their Renault Master for the day. I would highly recommend Aspire to anybody wanting a local van hire.

Global marketplace
2007-07-31 15:01:00
Amazing. I have an electric toothbrush made by Oral-B. It comes with the curse of unbelievably expensive replacement heads. A pack of two heads in Boots costs £7.49. I’ve just bought 16 heads from Tasmania for £10.31.
More About: Global , Marketplace , Lace

Scotland. That's in England, near Paris
2007-07-26 14:28:00
Today I received a very polite email from a supplier in California asking me: We have received your order. However we have placed it on hold because we need to verify the shipping address. Do you live in Scotland or Great Britain? Please advise.
More About: England , Paris

Voltaire redux
2007-07-05 16:39:00
“A modern British liberal will defend to the death your right to agree with him. Disagree, and he will call the police.”
More About: Voltaire , Redu , Volta