Blog

  • The cure for darkness is light. Not more darkness.

    The matter of data centre security was raised recently on a network mailing list I subscribe to. Someone was wondering if data centres checked incoming equipment for “bad stuff” – explosives and what-not.

    The reaction from some was “don’t talk about that, we don’t want to give people ideas”. What a muddle-headed response!

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  • Use a Mikrotik as a wifi converter

    The situation: You have a computer with no wifi, and you have an access point. No wifi, so no Internet. Sad face. But if you have a MikroTik router with a wifi interface and a couple of Ethernet interfaces, you can set up a private Ethernet network and connect your computer to wifi through the MikroTik.

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  • Making ssh even more secure

    ssh is just about the most secure way you can provide access to a system. But even ssh is subject to attacks. You can reduce the likelihood of a breach even further with a few fairly simple steps. The specifics below are for Ubuntu 16.04, but the principles are the same for any modern Unix.

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  • Electric toothbrush yuk nope nope nope

    After using my electric toothbrush I always rinse the whole detachable head, dry the bristles, remove the head and tap out any water. Yesterday when I tapped out the water (from the open end that sockets onto the handle) a tiny black speck appeared on the white porcelain of the basin. Hm, I thought.

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  • AWS Hardware VPN and MikroTik

    Recently a client decided to set up an AWS Hardware VPN to their site. The simplest way to research this seemed to be to set up a test VPN to my own router – a MikroTik 951G-2HnD running RouterOS 6.30.2. Here’s how I did it.

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  • Good error messages

    I recall our little team getting into trouble many moons ago. We were writing a creditor system, and one of the requirements was for comments to be attachable to individual invoice lines. In COBOL every data structure has to be predefined. One of us thought that surely, surely, 400 comment lines would be enough for any one invoice line. This turned out not to be the case. (more…)

  • Custom window management in Ubuntu/Unity/Compiz

    Someone asked on the Ubuntu users mailing list how they could set up a keypress that would resize the currently active window to 75% of its present width. It took a little thought, but eventually the tools were found…

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  • Lenovo E560 and Ubuntu UEFI dual boot

    My old Dell Vostro 1720 is on the way out, after giving sterling service for over six years. The replacement is a Lenovo E560. I just spent a day trying to get it to dual boot the installed Windows 7 and Ubuntu.

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  • APC BR900GI UPS tips

    As the proud owner of a Synology DS415+ NAS (network attached storage) device, I thought I had better protect the large amount of data accumulating on it by also becoming the proud owner of a suitable UPS (uninterruptible power supply). That way, when the power fluctuates or goes off unexpectedly (as is quite common in rural Australia, where I live) the NAS is protected and will have time to shut itself down in an orderly fashion. So I purchased a Schneider (APC) BR900GI UPS. This article is about how I set things up.

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  • Ethics in cyberwarfare?

    A colleague teaches ethics in IT. He said in a recent email regarding cyberwarfare, that he would be happy if his students thought about whether it was ethical to be involved in planning a cyber-attack. (more…)