When I want to show a video chat on the big screen I tend to use a mobile device and cast the picture to the TV . It did occur to me though that it might be useful to have the capability to call directly from the home theatre PC under the TV . I don't want to buy a separate webcam for this niche u...
Until the coronavirus lockdown, video calling wasn't something I used a great deal. Although I have multiple devices with a built-in webcam, I've rarely used one after my initial interest in the technology subsided. At work I don't really see the value-add over voice calls or instant messaging; if a...
My monitors are colour calibrated using a colorimeter for photographic work, which requires the monitor brightness to be set at a specific level for colour accuracy. During general use in the evenings however I always lower the brightness to avoid eye strain. On laptops this is easy, as you can simp...
In Monitoring Baby On The Go I mentioned that it would be easier if I were able to connect the Raspberry Pi to new WiFi networks through a web browser. Then I could leave my travel router behind and just use a browser to configure the new network connection on the Pi, without logging in through VN...
Launchbot, the start-page project that my personal portal is based on, recently released version 3. This release includes a settings page, so that sites can be added without editing the source, a feature that was sorely lacking in v1.
However I've forked and modified the original project substa...
Sadly I've decided to give it a miss this year. I registered for my tickets early and was still dithering over my itinerary for the talks right up to last night - there are a lot of interesting speakers to choose between. However with an epidemic looking like it's descending on the UK (and especiall...
As discussed in my ealier post A Better Baby Monitor , we're now using Gonimo to keep an eye on Tiny at home. On the road we've been using our phones (one stays in the bedroom as a monitor, the other we carry with us as a viewer). This works OK for audio only or during the daytime where there's a f...
My motorcycle batteries tend to suffer over the winter. I'm an all-weather rider, but this year has been busy and there have been long periods of a month or more when the bike has been left idle. When it came time for a trip a fortnight ago, she simply wouldn't start. A night left on the battery ten...
I first built a Linux home theatre PC around 2005 and I've had one ever since. At first I used MythTV and it was all about recording and transcoding OTS (over-the-air) broadcasts, in the days before online streaming services had caught on (and way before offline downloads). These days that's still a...
I've been keeping a digital notebook in Evernote for quite a few years now. It's a great tool for archiving knowledge that you need to retain long-term. It's become my personal wiki of experience and clipped web pages. Despite this I've carried on making paper notes for calls and meetings. There a...
Having decided to use the GoPro Quik app for short video projects , I wondered if I could make better use of it at home. On the road I can run the app on my phone or iPad. At home though I'd prefer to make use of a large monitor, keyboard and mouse. I'd also like to make use of larger, faster stora...
I've done a fair bit of video work in my time and always looked down on the consumer options, such as Windows Movie Maker. iMovie was a notable exception before it was dumbed down to resemble the iOS app in v13. Over the years I went from iMovie '11 to Final Cut, Premiere and then Lightworks. Howeve...
Like many parents, since our first child arrived at the end of last year we have anxiously kept an eye on her using a baby monitor. When she was born we purchased a pram from an old friend and colleague, who kindly threw in a monitor that he no longer needed. It was a basic BT model, a simple microp...
I was invited back crewing in the Solent at the weekend. Another fantastic trip around the Isle of Wight with great weather.
Over the years my photo collection has grown and grown, especially since switching to digital photography circa 2007. A few years ago I decided to make a concerted effort to properly organise, backup and maintain my collection. Around the same time, I began to take an interest in manual photography...
Occasionally I still prefer a physical book (or am gifted one) over an e-book. But it's useful to have a digital copy of a chapter or two, either to read on the go without lugging the whole book around with me or to carry all the time for revision and reference.
A few printed books now come with...
In the middle of my desk sits a small KVM (Keyboard/
Video
/Mouse) switch that lets me flip my only mouse and keyboard between my main computer and one other. I've had it a few years and it's been very useful, but far from perfect. The unit itself is a small, cheap model with a single USB input. Tha...
While I was rather proud of my DIY kayak sailing rig, at the end of last year I came to the conclusion that it wasn't worth the time, money and effort to try and fix its deficiencies. It sailed, but not very well. The learning and building process had been fun, but having successfully proved the con...
The overhaul of my company and personal blog sites is now complete. It was long overdue, and my recent sabbatical presented a perfect opportunity to do a complete redesign and get up to date. I had been thinking for some time that I would like to switch to a simpler setup and workflow. After a great...
I've been away for a week since my primary NAS died and in the meantime an identical unit has been shipped under RMA from Amazon. So today I began running through the recovery steps suggested on the Synology site. This wasn't quite as straight forward as I had expected (insert the drives in the new...
So today I have my first outage since switching to Synology NAS some seven years ago*. I received an email from my primary NAS, a DS218+, that the box would be going down for a reboot following an update. Some hours later I tried to view one of my internal portal sites, no response. So I checked the...
I've had a Wacom graphics tablet for a number of years now. I've never been completely happy with it's performance in either Windows or Linux - pointer movement was jerky and the accleration far too aggressive. Also switching between the configuration options appropriate for particular tasks, such a...
Got invited to go skiing in France with a couple of friends this year, a little frosty up on the glacier mid-week but other than that conditions were great!
For a while now I've been struggling with managing browser tabs. Most of the time I seem to be working on tens of tasks at once, each task in its own window with many tabs. As everything has become web-centric, the collection of open windows and tabs has become unmanageable. For a while I tried tab...
She sails! Having stiffened up the leeboards and frame, I took the sailing kayak out first on the Bealiueu Estuary and then Burnham-on-Crouch. All the effort finally paid off.
After dabbling in a bit of dinghy sailing and being invited to crew for a friend last year, I've been bitten by the sailing bug again. The GF and I decided to charter a skippered yacht for our summer holiday this year.
I've been very pleased with the Docker support on my newest NAS, but the Synology Docker GUI is somewhat lacking. Essentially it provides start and stop buttons for the containers and that's it. I wanted something with some monitoring and a bit more control to avoid having to log into the box at the...
Since Maldon I've been itching to try the kayak sailing rig again. Quite a hefty load to wrestle onto the bus/underground/train/ferry/train, but eventually I made it.
Recently I upgraded my travel router to a GL-iNet GL-MT300N-V2. My motivation was two-fold:
- I wanted support for my OpenVPN built in.
- TP-Link had stopped supporting my old TL-MR3020, leaving it insecure.
The MT300 is a fantastic little device. Very low power requirements (it will run off a sin...
Finally got to the stage of test assembly and taking her to the water, at Maldon in Essex. Sadly no sailing today as the test revealed a need for reinforcement around the mast step, but still good progress. And who could complain, what a sunset!
Since I got my kayak back in May I've had an ambition to turn her into a sail boat. She's incredibly light, around 8kg, which was one of the selling points. So I'd want to make a rig light to keep her portable. After a lot of reading on the science of sailing (I've sailed since I was a lad, but never really took it too seriously) I decided I could build something out of aluminium profile. The best way to describe this is "Meccano for grown-ups".
My Tomato router supports dnsmasq, allowing me to provide user friendly names in place of IP addresses for the web services on my local LAN. Simply adding the following to the dnsmasq Custom Configuration field in the router settings creates addresses pointing to my start page and the staging/develo...
Took my latest ride out on the water for the first time today. Fantastic views of the take-offs alongside City Airport.
I've been running a self-hosted Git server on my Synology NAS for some years. A while back I searched around for a UI for Git. I'm comfortable at the CLI but sometimes I just prefer a GUI for browsing through revisions.
Back skiing on the North American continent again, for the first time since I started. It's true what they say, there's a different feel to the snow here, drier and more powdery.
I've been very happy with my Synology NAS, a 4-bay DS411j which I've had for some seven years. But the ARM chipset has always been a little underpowered and with the latest DSM updates it's been really starting to show its age. I was finally spurred to upgrade when I read about the virtualisation features in the newer Intel based boxes. These are able to host VMs and Docker containers.
Much as I enjoy our two-up trips, I've been yearning to return to the Alps single-handed since our first tour down to Rome. The time came this year when a couple of friends invited me down to visit them in Milan.
I got invited to crew for a friend on a circumnavigation of the Isle of Wight this weekend. I haven't been out on a yacht since I was quite young, but had been thinking of taking it up again so I leapt at the chance.
Back at the Techcrunch Disrupt London conference this year, one of my favourite tech news sites.
I was most interested in the talk on a general purpose API builder, quite close to something I've been working on lately.
This year's trip was slightly further afield, to Norway. We didn't quite make it to Nordkapp, but well inside the Arctic Circle. This one was a bit of a logistical nightmare, as there are no longer any direct ferries from the UK.
My home office needs a landline - it's the only way to answer the door in the property, as the intercom at the building entrance dialls the occupants for authorisation. I've been looking for a way round this, as I object to paying a not insignificant monthly fee simply to answer the door. We really have no other need for a landline. It's possible to link a mobile phone number to the intercom, but then only one of us can answer the door!
My large Lowe Alpine backpack comes with a nice lacing system for attaching shoes or a jacket outside the pack. I have a smaller Deuter backpack with eyelets for adding the elastic, but I rather missed the plastic part on the Lowe, which does a good job of keeping the elastic in the right place and...
So this one was a little ambitious, but I was sure it could be done. Some friends of mine were having a party down at their villa in Tuscany to celebrate 20 years of Marriage. A great place to holiday, even better to bike. So I decided to make a long weekend of it, from the Friday evening through Monday. I'd have to get myself through the tunnel on the Thursday evening, find a hotel I could work from on the Friday, then take a days holiday on Monday. Tough going, but doable and tremendous fun.
My latest two-wheeler - now that the new office is slightly further from home I decided I needed more range than I'd get on a kick-scooter. The Strida folds and unfolds in a couple of seconds and can be stashed under a desk or in a corner at work. I've upgraded the grips and added bar ends to make things a bit easier on hills. And of course a QuadLock adapter for the phone.
A bit of 3d printing and the ergonomics of my Thinkpad laptop are much improved. It also frees up quite a bit of desk space.
QuadLock adapters are great for quickly clipping your phone in various vehicles. I've used them on the motorcycle and scooter for some time, so I decided to do the same for the bicycle. One for the phone and another for attaching a battery pack under the cross-tube, keeps the satnav running for at least a full day cycling. Also attached a Lezyne headlamp in addition to the front and rear blinkers, for those days when we stay out late. All ready for some summer cycling!
Listening to Steve Freeman's talk on using command line tools for data processing. While everyone's trying to re-invent the wheel, often the old UNIX CLI tools are still the best for the job (with a little Python mixed in).
In recent years there have been many reports in the press about the dangers of using public WiFi. These hotspots offer free, convenient connectivity on the go, but are often poorly maintained and are not security audited. I attended a STAC conference recently where a security expert strongly recomme...
Returned to Val Gardena again, it never disappoints. Particularly stunning view at dusk from the balcony this year.
Attending Techcrunch Disrupt London for a couple of days, great fun!
We stayed in the UK again for this year's bike trip, going West to Wales. One of my first ever bike trips was to Wales, cutting directly across the middle on the road to Aberystwyth, and I had fond memories. This time we went on a tour of the coast road starting in the South, Pembrokeshire then up through Aber to Snowdonia and Anglesey.
The security of ISP's standard routers has been a nagging concern of mine for some time. Security updates seem to be few and far between and there are disturbing reports of exploits in the wild. Also the functionality of these boxes is quite limited; none or limited support for local DNS, VPN and DD...
Our friends are a bit busy this year so we're venturing off on our own and trying Saalbach in Austria. Great skiing, I would say the slopes are a little tougher than we're used to and... watch out for that ice!
We've been looking for a tray for the coffee machine for a while, as the integrated drip tray isn't very effective. After a time there's always a pool of coffee/water underneath, damaging the couter top. At last we found one that fits like it was made for it except... sod's law, the cable doesn't fi...
The balcony PVC doors and windows in our flat are a bit past their prime, but they'll do for a few years yet. They've proved almost impossible to get parts for though, a case in point being the spacers between the latches. These have become rather unattractively discoloured and some have simply brok...
For this year's bike ride we stayed in the UK and headed North to Scotland. We wanted to see as much as possible so decided to tour the whole country, starting in the East at Dunnottar Castle. From there we cut across Cairngorms National Park and headed to one of the northernmost points at Smoo Cave, then down the whole West Coast.
I've often been frustrated when I spot some interesting wildlife but can't get a decent photo. I have a telescope and tried digiscoping a while back - for this you buy an adapter that allows you to take photographs through your telescope with a cameraphone or point-and-shoot camera. The results were...
I bought and an adapter to take photos through my telescope with my phone. Quite pleased with the results, but it's a bit of a faff getting the camera lined up. It has to be very precisely aligned with the scope eyepiece to get a good shot, which is tricky to do without moving the scope. It only occurred to me after quite a few shots to use digital zoom on the phone to remove the circular border.
We finally did it and went motorcycle touring through Europe. Not one to just dip my toe in the water, I decided we'd kill two birds with one stone and visit some friends who live in Rome, almost 2,000km each way.
So the GFs keen to come on a road trip with me, but not so keen on the Ducati. To be fair, the blazing hot exhausts directly under the passenger seat don't make for comfort. And while she's a lovely bike, she's a torture machine for the rider after anything more than a couple of hours. So I've decided I need a different bike if I'm seriously considering touring.
Time to retire some old servers as I've made the switch to Synology NAS, which suffice for my purposes. Not before I've scavenged the old hard drives though.
I don't think I'll be going back to rolling my own. I enjoy the build process, but it's such a time-sink. With the Synology boxes I get less...
Attending the kx Annual Conference at the K club in Ireland for a couple of days. Fantastic venue to catch up on the latest KDB+ developments.
Finally got to go skiing again last week as my Italian friends invited me to join them on the yearly excursion. The resort is Val Gardena and it really is perfectly laid out, a circuitous route of some 50km around a table-top mountain in the centre.
First long ride of the season and it snows! Right after this it started settling on the road which made things a bit hairy... I'm starting to seriously consider fitting that slightly slippier clutch the dealer suggested.
I've been spending more time on-road than off in recent years, so I decided it was time to make the mountain bike better suited to road-riding. Popped a set of Continental SportContacts on over the weekend. Whizzes along now and I can lean the bike through a fast corner without her trying to slide out from under me.
Last year we bought tickets to go parachuting, but the weather always thwarts us. We've booked in and turned up several times, but always the sunny forecast gives way to winds that are too strong to safely parachute. Still, we did get to try out the practice tunnel, a giant fan that blows air upward with such force that it keeps you suspended above the ground. Maybe we'll have better luck next year.
Traded in my CBR600 for a Ducati 848. I've had a lot of fun with the CBR, but just look at the Duke...