Captcha Madness

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I understand what captchas are for, and why we need them, but they seem to be getting out of control. I recently visited a site which had the captcha displayed here. For the record the first word wasn't 'stirred'. I saw the option for an audio captcha and wondered how you pronounce 'Ohehyahtah'. If that … Read more

Ubuntu upgrade 9.04 to 9.10

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Screenshot-Update ManagerI've learnt my lesson on this a few times: things break when you upgrade Ubuntu on laptops. I can understand why. There is a huge variety of hardware for laptops, particularly BIOSes, sound chips and wireless chips, and every manufacturer likes to tweak them a bit. The Linux kernel has the unenviable task of having to support ALL of them immediately, whereas in Windows the hardware component manufacturer supplies drivers which you have to install to get your machine working correctly.

Anyway, for example, last time I upgraded my two laptops from 8.10 to 9.04, a lot of things broke, and I was hurting for a long time. In fact one of the laptops never really got straight. This was irritating for me, but as I had another laptop to use for my main work, it wasn't a major annoyance. But I can imagine if you only have one machine and the sound doesn't work on it, for example, it would leave a nasty taste in your mouth.

So this time, I started with the Thinkpad R51e, which is my spare laptop. I have the /home directory mounted on a separate partition, which makes things really easy. Basically you just blow away the main OS partition, and then remount the your data partition at /home, preserving all your data. (OK its a little more complicated than that, but I'm not blogging about that right now).

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Job (in)security

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Knot the way to do it
Knot the way to do it

Now every so often I complain about my job. No, really. I do. But then something happens to make me realise how lucky I really am. And one of those moments happened just yesterday.

I'll set the scene. Its just after two major typhoons have torn apart the Philippines. Its wet and rainy and the residual wind occasionally rattles the windows. I'm slogging away in front of my computer on a fairly mundane task, and having a bit of a hard time concentrating. I look out of the window. And I see some rope going past. Rope with a knot in it.

This particular rope  doesn't look very safe to me, but then again what do I know. I'm not a sailor, and this could be some kind of special frayed knot type thing which is actually very safe. Interested by now, I take a look out of the window.

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Attack of the mutant lamppost.

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So I was working from home the other day, around mid-morning, when I heard a mighty crunch from outside. I looked out my window and was confronted with the scene to the left. I snapped a picture, and watched as a crowd started to gather, and then after about 5 minutes, the driver emerged from … Read more