Home networking

http://www.automatedhome.co.uk/New-Products/Ethernet-Over-PowerLine-Built-into-Power-Socket.html

Its really cool to have an Ethernet network in your home with little effort. There are two issues right off the bat with this one:

1. How do you reboot it? (Hopefully you do not have to)
2. Where does the heat go? (The probably consume about 10 Watts which is not a lot but still the heat will be there 24/7)

This networking going in cycles again, we had a single network cable with coax, these days all offices have switched 100MB networks and now at home we are going back to a single wire for the network!

Personal privacy (and Facebook owned)

Yesterdays post was a real rant, today's post is proof that I am right:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/03/25/facebook_exposes_private_pics/

I am not one for gloating but today I will indulge myself as it lets me feel good for a little bit.

Privacy and security are things people are only just starting to become aware of. In the UK some government agency lost the bank details of some 25million people. Something which those 25million people could do nothing about (my partner included).

Some basic things people could do are:

• Use an instant messenger which isn't tied to a single company (pidgin)
• Use encryption when sending messages (Pidgin encrytpion, Enigmail)
• Clean your hard drive on a regular basis, scheduled tasks are great for this (Eraser)
• Do not upload pictures to sites that you do not have security control over, if you don't know then ask somebody who does. (Dreamhost web hosting with 1-click install gallery software)
• Store passwords in a secure database (Password Safe - this one will create passwords for you)

Some more advanced things you can do is switch operating systems. Basic virology tells us that infections affect the largest population first and the quickest (due to the availability of hosts to infect). Switching to Ubuntu Linux or an Apple Mac will cut down the time you spend running security software. I am not saying these are more secure (they might be) but I am saying I haven't needed windows for over a year now and I know my family is safe on-line.

Facebook is evil

http://www.orbit.me.uk/Blogs/Wandering-round-in-fields-of-idiots/Definition-of-a-Friend.html

Computers ask black and white questions and only accept black and white answers.

When you reject someone as a friend have you now lost an opportunity to build a friendship in the future due to somebody taking offence at virtual rejection?

Clearly you cannot allow everybody you meet to be a friend, friendship is a gradient of trust. Do you really want everybody to know you just left the Russell Brand fan club? Is your friendship stronger because you have been bitten by a werewolf?

Facebook is successful because it makes it easy for people to share and reminds people that their old friends are still alive and doing things. Its the next progression from friends reunited which was hugely popular before Facebook. The next Facebook will intergrate other features that will help us share our lives this will be via mobile phone picture messaging, email and calendar intergration. The theme is really taking existing technology and making it work better with what we want to do.

I am interested to know the long term effects on this, it creates a social grouping that is looking backwards at relationships that no longer have physical associations. Humans by nature need physical contact to keep their sanity, its part of the way our brains have evolved. Will peoples perception of the past alter or will it be set in pixels as websites keep an archive of individual history?

Pidgin sending custom emoticons - MSNP9

I just finished uploading the latest compile of im.pidgin.pidgin.custom_smiley

This one is MSNP9, my previous claim was false as the sending was not working.

All can be downloaded from here:
http://www.hannent.eu/pidgin/20080318/

Its working great for me.

Pidgin sending custom emoticons -> beaten to it

Looks like Twain beat me to it, well done, he has the latest windows compile. This is for MSNP14 (or MSNP15, I forget which is in head currently):
http://twain28.freeweb7.com/blog/blog.php?id=50

I thought I had applied the MSNP9 patch but I have not managed that yet. I will have a try later.

T-SQL Round Up function Revisited

In October Last year I posted a function to round up a number. I have had to adapt that function to cater for varied decimal places. Please email me any suggestions or alterations.

CREATE FUNCTION [dbo].[udfRoundUp]
(
@Num1 FLOAT,
@NumberOfDecimalPlaces INT = 0
)
RETURNS FLOAT
AS
BEGIN
DECLARE @Temp FLOAT
SET @Temp = 0

IF @Num1 - CAST(ROUND(@Num1, @NumberOfDecimalPlaces) AS FLOAT) > 0
BEGIN
/* When rounding we cannot just add 1 */
/* Calculate the round up value */
SET @Temp = POWER(10, (@NumberOfDecimalPlaces * -1))

END

RETURN ROUND(@Num1, @NumberOfDecimalPlaces) + @Temp

END

Custom emoticons on MSN revisited

Yesterday I recompiled from the monotone branch for pidgins custom emoticons. I have completed the upload of the debug and no gtk exe files.

Its using msnp9 and works for me.

pidgin-2.4.1devel-no-gtk.exe

pidgin-2.4.1devel-debug.exe

Enjoy

Declutter the charger

Little tip for you.

I have a draw full of chargers for various electrical items at home. I got fed
up with having to spend 10 minutes de-tangling them to get my phone or MP3
player charged.

The solution is to put each one in a freezer bag.

Perfect.

Gary Gygax

Outstanding

http://xkcd.com/393/

Update on Pidgin Emoticons

Kudos to Sadrul Habib Chowdhury for creating a monotone branch for the custom smileys to live in. I asked him to propagate the changes from the trunk to the branch yesterday and today I have recompiled the the windows platform:

pidgin-2.4.1devel.exe

pidgin-2.4.1devel-debug.exe

pidgin-2.4.1devel-no-gtk.exe

pidgin-mtn-smiley.zip (The source)

Trac it here:
http://developer.pidgin.im/ticket/1187

Enjoy.

Eco kettle - Flawed design

Hi,

In Decemeber 2007 our kettle's filter broke, I could not find a replacement for the life of me.

I decided to go the Eco-friendly way and buy a new Eco-kettle:
http://www.ecokettle.com/

It turns out its a really bad idea purely from a design perspective. Let me explain.

Firstly a description: there are two chambers, the boiling chamber and a reservoir. There is a button on the top of the lid that when pressed will allow the water to drain into the boiling chamber, so you only use just the right amount. You can also lock this into position so that both chambers will boil.

Now stop and think about this, simple laws of physics come into play here. If you have one chamber that is filled with boiled water and on top of that you have water that is at about 5 degrees centigrade and you leave it for 10mins your boiled water will be lukewarm! Meaning you have to reboil the kettle.

Next look at the amount of materials used when compared to a traditional kettle, you have an extra button, a rod to open the reservoir, a seal for the reservoir and a special catch that will allow you to keep the button pressed to boil both chambers. All that is extra materials in the manufacturing process and more to dispose of at its end of life. Its also mostly plastic so recycling is harder and component failure is higher.

On a little aside you will also find that the kettle is not much bigger than a standard kettle, meaning that if you have to boil a lot of water you have to have the button locked down so that both chambers get boiled. If (as with mine) the catch and button start to give a little (with use) you end up with the entrance to the reservoir not being wide enough to boil the water in the reservoir causing you to boil the kettle twice.

If you are the kind of person that fills a kettle up just as much as they need it then you are already doing what this £30 kettle does. While the kettle is winning awards I can only assume that its because the testers are not using it long term.

If you think that it has some other component that helps it well it has a 3000W element which is the same as my previous standard kettle. They are not going to change the laws of physics, the amount of energy used to boil a kettle is constant.