January 31, 2007
January 30, 2007
Dave
Digital Audio Video Experience. Smashing the hub and spoke model on a micro scale. Interesting, and serendipitous.
I'm working from home today since it's more conducive to writing - sitting in my lounge with gallons of tea on tap and music in the background. The only catch is that my external USB disk with all the music on is upstairs, so I was forced (forced!) to go and grab some more tunes from allofmp3.com rather than tie up the laptop with endless cables. I'm loving my Airport Express.
I'd just been thinking about splashing out on an Airport Extreme, so I can plug all my external hard drives into the network and continue to wander around the house cable-free. But DAVE suggests a new approach - how long before all external hard disks ship with WiFi? Bring them home, plug them into the mains, and boom, you're up and running. Then I could have the drives plugged into computers that need fast access to write to them (e.g. PVRs), but I wouldn't need the PVR to always be on - the hard disk would itself be a first-class citizen of the WiFi network.
I can see drawbacks - adding WiFi to every device pushes up the cost fractionally, and there's obvious security concerns. But if they could be overcome, it seems like it would decentralise resources in a useful way.
And I guess we all know what will happen in the near future: 
JobKite: Spammers.
Over the last couple of months, I've posted a couple of job advertisements to, amongst others, Monster and LinkedIn. Towards the end of December, I started getting unsolicited emails from JobKite. This week, I've started getting unsolicited emails to a different address, one that appeared only in the latest job advertisements last week. Coincidence? I don't think so - this email address has only really been "public" through those adverts.
It seems (from the evidence) that JobKite are trawling the job boards for email addresses, and then spamming with all manner of nonsense:
"Job Posting, $100 Gift Card"
"Cutest Kids and Popular Pets Contest from JobKite"
"Talking Pets and Babies, simply hilarious"
So if you were thinking of using JobKite of 1601 Penfield Rd, Suite 750 #110 Rochester, NY 14625, I strongly recommend against it.
January 29, 2007
January 28, 2007
Decoration
Work on the lounge is, uh, "ongoing". Not much remains to be done but I've hit a few snags, for example the back door recess is not big enough to fit blinds in without blocking the door from opening. There's also a 5-6 week gap for my new suite to arrive. The suite ended up costing more than I'd planned, which means the dining table is going to be delayed until my bank account has recovered. And I still need to paint the skirting boards and window sill.
None of which stopped me from hanging one of the presents I got for Christmas - a set of paintings done by my nephews. In case you're wondering, there's a rationale behind the curious colour scheme.
January 25, 2007
ApacheCon EU 2007
Ok, it's official. Even though the website has been announcing it for quite a few days now, I was waiting to receive a confirmation email before getting excited.
It looks like I'll be back in Amsterdam in May: the ApacheCon EU 2007 Sessions are up, and my talk was accepted. Make a note in your diaries: Friday 4th May, 17:30, Web 2.0 with Cocoon 2.2. It'll be awesome. I'm hoping to collaborate with Jeremy on the Web 2.0 side of things, since he's the #1 guru working on all the AJAX dojo stuff in Cocoon.
Not too sure what this Cocoon stuff is about? Then go to Jeroen's basic web application development with Apache Cocoon talk, where it'll all be explained. Great to see that Jeroen has submitted a talk - it shows some real commitment to the project ;-)
It's good to see my colleagues from Sourcesense are also presenting: Gianugo about The case for Open Development, and Ugo about An Architecture of Participation for Open Source. It's also great to see the new guy at OSS Watch is also doing good stuff already - Ross Gardler is doing OSS Watch and your OSS Project. Of course Ross has been doing great stuff in an Apache context for a while, but now he's part of OSS Watch I expect them to take over the world.
So book your flights, ApacheCon EU 2007 is coming!
January 24, 2007
Sourcesense news
Gianugo is visiting from Italy this week, which means apart from eating some of the best food Norwich has to offer, there's some Sourcesense news.
Firstly, for those that weren't able to make it to the Open Source Business Academy event in Milan, the video and audio from the talks are now online.
The second bit of news is that Sourcesense have teamed up with Covalent to provide solutions, services and support for the European enterprise market. Covalent are of course well-known for being the source for Apache experts, so it's a perfect fit with the Sourcesense team. Full details (marketing blurb) in the press release.
There's lots of other cool stuff on the way - interesting times!
January 23, 2007
Cars
Two weeks ago I joined the rank and file of car owners once again. After almost seven years of trying to convince myself and the world that you don't need a car to survive, I gave up and became one of the polluting, non-renewable-resource-consuming road-raged masses (as opposed to the polluting jetsetting holiday- and conference-going masses, who naturally are totally above blame in all matters environmental).
I'm not especially green, but it did always bug me that the UK was losing good local stores in favour of out-of-town malls and supermarkets. Mind you, those same supermarkets provided damned handy online shopping, something I might well continue with, since plodding round the actual supermarket is a time-consuming experience (and as I've already discovered this week, I'm prone to forget the two or three things I specifically go to the store to buy).
Having only been an occasional car driver over the last few years, I have noticed a few interesting changes. This obviously entitles me to rant about cars and their idiot owners, so here goes.
- There's some much faster cars on the road. I mean, scary fast. I normally drive quickly, so I'm quite surprised when I get overtaken on the motorways. I'm shocked when I'm overtaken by cars moving significantly (like 20+ MPH) faster than me. This happened a couple of times on my drive from Cornwall to Norfolk, once on a slip road by some nut doing something like 110 whilst merging into traffic. So it seems not only are cars getting faster, but the fast drivers are getting stupider and not realising when it is and isn't appropriate to drive quickly. I expect Darwin will take care of this over time.
- Drivers seem to be stupider in general - or maybe I just got more belligerent and intolerant. Or more likely, both. I'm starting to believe that mandatory re-tests should be given every five or ten years, and I can't wait for them to introduce motorway driving as a component of testing. So many examples of stupidity, so little time.
- There seems to be more cars than ever on the roads, and the roads uniformly seem to be in a poorer state.
- Parking seems to be a lost art. Perhaps there should be a component in driving tests: "parking in a car park without taking up three spaces". Oh, and how about "opening the car door without hitting the car next to you".
- Motivation. I was amazed at the difference in motivation a car makes. Consider these two scenarios:
- It's -2 outside and I have to get out of bed and cycle to work
- It's -2 outside and I have to get out of bed and drive to work
Yup, having a car makes it much easier to get to work, and not in a transportation sense.
- Geek toys. Now I have a car I have a strange longing for a TomTom. I don't need one - I have Google Maps, the RAC, and a perfectly decent road atlas. But I just feel like, you know, I should have one. Just in case I do go somewhere that's not covered by internet mapping and common sense.
Right, I have to go scrape 3 tons of ice off the car now in arctic temperatures. Clearly much easier than cycling to work. Ah, the joys of a car.
January 22, 2007
Virtual domains
Today's lessons:
- 123-reg hosting sucks. Their mail forwarding does not work. Use it only if you want to drop email.
- Hotmail is slow and has over-zealous spam filtering.
- GMail rocks.
- Postfix rocks.
So a couple of weeks ago when I was down in Cornwall visiting the folks, I got collared into setting up a web site for them. Nothing fancy, just a quick and simple hack to get some content online for them. I registered a domain through 123-reg, dropped the pages onto a server, and set 123-reg mail forwarding to personal email accounts elsewhere. I'll link to it once a DNS transfer has completed.
Within a couple of days I was receiving frustrated emails from the family to say that mails were bouncing, and when I did a quick test it turned out to be true. This tallied with experiences I vaguely recalled (too late) from Paul, who ended up moving mail onto our server rather than have it trashed by 123-reg.
Postfix to the rescue! This stuff is probably old hat to most people, but it was new to me, so I'm documenting it here.
As well as all the usual mailserver stuff it does, including handling virtual mail accounts for a bunch of people on our server, it seems you can also arbitrarily do virtual domain hosting and forward mail elsewhere. Here's the magic ingredients to get anything sent to foo.com resent to specific email addresses elsewhere:
/etc/postfix/main.cf:
virtual_alias_domains = foo.com
virtual_alias_maps = hash:/etc/postfix/virtual
/etc/postfix/virtual:
@foo.com someone@bar.com, someoneelse@wibble.com
A quick "postmap /etc/postfix/virtual" and "postfix reload", and we're in business. Except, of course, hotmail sucks, and took forever to receive my emails. When it did, it chucked my emails into the junk box, disagreeing with SpamAssassin on my server and Google's spam filtering.
Google Mail, of course, was lightning fast (going "Ding!" almost as soon as I'd hit send), and correctly identifying the messages as not spam. Just what I needed for testing the new setup.
This will come in handy for redirecting various mail accounts to Google as well, when I finally get bored of running my own mail servers!
ApacheCon Photography Walkabout
The tech conference photography walkabout is becoming something of a tradition. Jeroen mentioned the idea of doing an ApacheCon EU photo tour, which seems like an brilliant idea.
There's lots of excellent sights in Amsterdam, and as a native I'm sure Jeroen would make a great guide (I'm sure he won't mind me volunteering him either, it's time Arjé had a break after being guide for two consecutive Cocoon GetTogethers!). Anyone else going to ApacheCon EU (or just in the Netherlands at that time) interested in joining us?
January 20, 2007
MacFuse
The other day I tried out MacFuse, the user-space filesystem that lets you, for example, mount a remote directory on your Mac via ssh.
I'd known this was theoretically possible for a while, since I recall MJR using sshfs on linux years ago and thinking it would be kinda neat, but not worth recompiling a kernel for. So it was great to just download and run the packaged installer, and five minutes later (after searching the FAQ) discover I could do this:
sshfs username@some.server:/path/to/files /Volumes/servername -oping_diskarb,volname=SomeServer
I guess technically this isn't so amazing - it's been possible to mount remote repositories via WebDAV for some time. But this morning, Adrian pinged to tell me about this awesome demo of MacFuse, which shows how it can be used not just for ssh but also for accessing Spotlight searches, RSS feeds, and even Picassa photo albums. And all through clickable drive icons. Not just accessing remote filesystems, but accessing application data and web services through a filesystem metaphor - absolutely incredible.
This is somewhat reminiscent of the Cocoon Abstract Source interface, now a part of Avalon Excalibur. (here's the history on the Source interface), which lets you access common protocols such as filesystem, HTTP, FTP, or customised protocols such as XMLDB. It's great to see such powerful abstractions reach the desktop.
Right, that's enough procrastination. Time to get back to laying the lounge floor.
Social shopping
In conversation, just now:
john: i've gotta do that shopping, but i need to make a list first.
me: yeah, i need to restock the house at some point
john: how quickly do tesco deliver??
me: by tomorrow
john: really?
me: depends if they have delivery slots, but yeah next day
john: I do hate shopping.
me: yeah. i quite like going for small bits and luxury stuff. hate bulk stuff though. frankly tesco can deliver washing liquid, toilet roll and tins of beans
john: easier now you have car though
me: yeah well, it's still boring plodding round filling a trolley. i'd rather click "same again" on a preloaded list
john: yeah makes a lot of sense
me: once you have the list there, obviously
john: heh
pause
john: can i nick your list?
So here's my $$ business idea for today. Social shopping networks. Share your shopping lists! Recommend bargains to each other! See what the most popular brands of beans are!
The possibilities are endless, really.
So true
Where do you think you're going, mister!?
Just a few more feeds to finish reading before I start the DIY ... 3259 unread articles ... at least old-fashioned newspapers don't get new items added while you're reading the old ones.
January 19, 2007
links for 2007-01-19
-
I have servers mounted in Finder now via SSH -- simply awesome!
Storm
Two trees down and the neighbour's fence missing in action. I think we got off pretty lightly. Photos later, if things haven't been cleared up.
Update: heheh -
All trains came to a complete stand still by order of the traffic police due to leaves on the line. Normally this would not be too much of a problem but the trees were still attached at the time.
From the often entertaining Invading Holland, which struck many chords with me last year.
January 17, 2007
On marketing
This bugs me (approximate rendition of a telephone conversation, just now):
Secretary: "There's a call from a ----- ----- of MS UK"
Me: "Ok, put him through"
Caller: "Hi Andrew, you may recall we were talking about our product at the end of last year, and I said I'd call back, do you remember?"
Me: "Sorry, no, can you refresh my memory?"
Caller: "We're providing a company information product that ... "
Me: "Ah yes, I remember - "
Caller: "... provides you with blah blah blah blah blah blah ... "
Me: "Yes, I remember now, thanks - "
Caller: "... blah blah blah blah blah blah ... "
Me: "Ok, look, I'm sorry, we're not interested, but thanks very much for your call, bye!"
Caller: "... hold on, can I just ask, blah blah blah ... "
Me: *click*
So what bugs me?
Firstly, if you're going to cold call me, please have the decency to stop ranting about your product if I say I remember what you're talking about. Give me time to get a word in edgeways, at least. It's not just about how far through your call script you can get before I hang up, you know. -10 tolerance and interest points.
Secondly, if I tell one part of your company I'm not interested in their product (say, a credit checking service), please don't then pass my details on to the sales team of a thinly-veiled rehash masquerading as another product (say, a corporate information service) to have another crack at me. -10 tolerance and interest points.
Thirdly, please don't use ambiguous names to get through my call screening. MS UK? Hmm, I don't recall having been in conversations with Microsoft ... ah no, it's the deliberately unspecific folks at MarketSafe. -5 tolerance and interest points.
Fourth, if your product is basically built around scraping information from existing databases such as Companies House, please be sure to add something unique - like, say, USABILITY. If your product is better than the incumbent, you don't need to resort to aggressive and unpleasant sales tactics. -15 tolerance and interest points.
And finally - if you don't want me to rant about your company and you'd like me to keep your product in mind for such time as I do decide it would be useful, definitely DO NOT email me something like this:
Thank you for the message that you are not interested in our database. This will now save us both a lot of time in the long run and negate the need for me to keep calling.
I would like to point out that had you had the courtesy to tell me that initially instead of hanging up on me mid sentence, we could have saved ourselves a lot of time.
I would have liked to find out why you changed your mind so completely from when I first gave you the free demonstration, when you were very impressed and thought our system would work for you.
Clearly you do not have the spare 10 or 15 seconds that this would take, so I will wish you all the best.
Oh, and don't bother with putting a disclaimer on your emails either:
Disclaimer: This e-mail is confidential and intended solely for the use of the individual to whom it is addressed.
If it's unsolicited, I don't think that really works.
It's not quite a "cheap, nasty and tacky" email, though ;-)
January 12, 2007
Apple phone
There's one thing that confuses me amid all the "backlash" against the iPhone: people are complaining that you can't remove the battery.
The only time I've ever removed the battery on my 'ordinary' phones is when they crash. Assuming there's some other way to do a hard reset of the iPhone, why would people actually want a removable battery?
I'm sure there'll be third-party battery life extending plugins via the dock connector (pictured), and the phone will be obsolete before the battery becomes useless anyway.
So, what gives?
Apachecon EU 2007
The Apachecon EU 2007 call for proposals closes today, and I've just submitted mine. Plenty of time for more last-minute proposals! Bertrand and Steve have both disclosed their topics, so I'll do the same: Web 2.0 and Cocoon 2.2.
The rationale: I think there's a wild assumption out there that to do fully buzzword-compliant webapps you need one of the new frameworks like Rails or Wicket. Not so!
Cocoon has been helping to expose dark data, leverage semantic web, talk to web services and provide RESTful APIs for years, before we even got useful monikers for these things (I should know, I've been banging on about this stuff, and ranting about suitable architectures at conferences for ages). And thanks to the excellent work of Jeremy and others, Cocoon does all the cool Ajax stuff you'd expect, too.
I had promised myself I'd submit a talk aimed at the business track this year too, but I suspect this will be one of my last opportunities to do a really technical talk, and I wanted an excuse to play with all the buzzword-compliant stuff ;-)
Tacky profitability
Two words: iTunes Ringtones.
You heard it here first (maybe). Or possibly on Macrumors, or el Reg. With the Apple Phone due this summer, I'd expect to see ringtones on the iTMS by this time next year.
January 10, 2007
Yahoo! Go Home
Thinking of trying out the Yahoo! Go 2.0 Beta? Don't bother:
Thanks for registering for Yahoo! Go 2.0 BETA
Due to high demand, the BETA is currently full. We will inform you as soon as a space opens up for you to download the BETA.
This message was after going through four screens on the Yahoo! website, giving them my phone number, and visiting a web page on my phone (which would have incurred data charges if I hadn't been on a Wifi phone).
This is pretty rudimentary stuff, Yahoo! -- don't ask people to sign up if the Beta's already full, eh? Manage expectations!
Appley goodness
Like Jeremy, I was 'watching' the Macworld keynote, and later that evening I was lucky enough to view the real thing before the servers got overloaded. Herein my thoughts and musings.
Apple TV
Apple TV looks like a gorgeous little box - I think the key thing here is that it has all the right outputs by default, whereas I think the Mac Mini would be less simple to hook up to a home cinema system.
I was worried about the video codec issue that Jeremy also mentions for a while. It's certain that the Apple TV will only support "official" codecs:
H.264 and protected H.264 (from iTunes Store): 640 by 480, 30 fps, LC version of Baseline Profile; 320 by 240, 30 fps, Baseline profile up to Level 1.3; 1280 by 720, 24 fps, Progressive Main Profile. MPEG-4: 640 by 480, 30 fps, Simple Profile
I have no intention of downloading films from the iTunes store at their current pricing and quality, most of my films are likely to be ripped from DVD (primarily to remove the annoying copyright notices and obnoxious FAST adverts calling me a thief). But of course the answer to that is simple - I just need to be sure to encode everything in H.264.
I don't suppose it'll be long before many of the films you can download via bittorrent are encoded like that, too. I'd be interested to see how it compares to, say, DivX. And whether people really care about hitting the ~ 700mb file size sweet spot any more - do people actually still burn these things to CD?
iPhone
I'm sure there'll be tons of commentary elsewhere. I look forward to dispensing with my iPod, PSP and Nokia N80, and having everything in one device. It'll make my bag lighter, for sure. Some things that aren't clear to me :-
What CPU is inside this thing? I doubt it's a laptop or desktop-class chip; the GUI seemed a little sluggish (particularly during the Safari demo). Is this running on a RISC chip, something like the XScale, that Intel own? That would make sense - and would mean that Darwin is now running on three platforms. Interesting. Notice the iPhone tech specs don't really tell us what's inside (either CPU or RAM).
This would explain why third-party software won't be on the phone initially: recompilation (and/or a new version of XCode with a "universally universal" compilation option) would be necessary. Not to mention that I'm guessing the phone is running a FrontRow-style application that calls other applications in the background, and is therefore not aware of any "extras" you may install.
That also suggests what's inside the Apple TV: notice how the Apple TV specs page only says:
Processor and storage
Intel processor
... whereas the specs for the Macbook Pro, Macbook, Mac Mini, and Mac Pro all explicitly name the type of CPUs they run on. The XScale chip is built to run cool and at low power, which would explain how they crammed everything (including the PSU) into such a small Apple TV box.
The other thing I'd like to know is whether a second version of the iPhone device will be done before it launches in the UK. I'd expect to see real GPS (explicit, not just "it knows where you are", which could mean GSM triangulation) and 3G. I'm not worried about wireless syncing - I'm used to tethering the phone to a charger daily, so why not sync at the same time? Of course, it would be extremely cool if the phone automatically synced whenever it was near the laptop. And I'd love a 3rd-party app that logs the calls I've made into my calendar or CRM package. And syncing of my SMS conversations into my iChat archive.
And finally - when Steve says the phone "does the right thing" regarding hooking up to WiFi when it's available - how truthful was he being? Does he mean it automatically switches to VOIP calls? I'd be extremely surprised if that were true, especially if Cingular hope to make any money out of the deal. Still, it would be nice. Maybe there'll be a Skype tie-in down the line?
January 9, 2007
alt.pathfinder.die.die.die, but not too much
There's something grimly ironic about your machine freezing whilst writing a lengthy item on backups. Even more so when the forced reboot entails losing said lengthy document, including several hours' worth of work, collected links, fact-checking, valued insights, etc.
All hail saft, whose crash protection for the browser brought back at least 50% of the pages and links I wanted, leaving me with just the simple (haha) job of reconstructing the words to go around them.
The Path Finder connection? After the recent MacBreak episode on Path Finder, I decided to give it another go. I remember now why I didn't reinstall it back in April 2006 on the new Macbook Pro. If you have a WebDAV connection that goes away for whatever reason, and you then try and unmount the WebDAV connection in Path Finder - boom! - your machine is now hung. That's what happened today, causing the reboot and loss of work.
I figured I could ssh into the machine and kill Path Finder, but since switching over to the new Airport Express I got in Boston, the only machines with the new WEP key on were my Macbook (hung), Powerbook (dead hard disk that inspired the original backup post I was writing) and my much-hated mobile phone.
Never fear! I had Opera Mini installed on the phone (conjures up images of fat ladies singing in small cars), so I googled and found Putty for Symbian OS. Unfortunately the download is a zip file and not a jar or sis, and the phone doesn't support zip files. Never fear! I googled and found Handy Zip for S60. Except the download is a zip. Oh, and Nokia - why do you provide a zip manager for the E61 but not for the N80? You suck!
Of course, retracing my steps on the rebooted laptop, I did the same search ("nokia zip") and the first result is the epocware site, and the download page has the SIS file I needed. Some days I think the computers are out to get me. Other days I just accept they are inherently evil.
In fairness - Apple's Finder is not much better with disconnected network shares, but at least you can usually command-tab to a terminal and kill it. And I must admit that apart from the occasional completely killed laptop, I am getting used to the power that Path Finder brings. Do check it out, but make sure you have backups.
Oh, and is anyone else depressed at the thought that heaps of people won't get the whole alt.pathfinder.die.die.die thing?
January 7, 2007
Owwwwww
Oh my god, the pain.
I was clearly not designed with DIY in mind. Or maybe I'm just monstrously unfit. Possibly both. Either way, after two days of hard work, I'm aching quite a bit.
The first task - good news everybody - my shower, formerly busted, now works. It was indeed the solenoid, so full marks to me for being a plumbing genius. If I haven't been electrocuted by the end of the week, then bonus points to me for fixing the shower and not killing myself.
Meanwhile, my long-running decorating project is nearing completion (started as a result of a boiler breakdown in March last year, but in my defense I'd been out of the country for most of 2006). I'm on the final stretch. Please don't quote anything along the lines of 80% of the work only takes 20% of the time. The floor is three quarters laid, and the room should be complete next weekend. Now all I need to do is buy the new furniture ...
January 6, 2007
January 4, 2007
Get fit
Arjé writes about a possible Apache running challenge, and I didn't respond before as I was caught up in the pre-Christmas rush. It sounds like a great idea, but there's a number of reasons why I won't be able to participate (listed in order of increasing importance):
- I don't have an iPod Nano, or the geek budget to get one (*cough* camera lenses *cough*)
- I don't have a Nike Plus or shiny running shoes for it to go in
- I don't have knees that are willing to let me run for any useful amount of time
- I'm too damned lazy ;-)
So whilst I won't be able to join the Apache group and push for the 100 mile target, I'd still like to find some way to participate. I'll cycle 4.4 miles at least three times a week, coincidentally my normal winter route to work, which means I should be done with the 100 miles in 8 weeks ... slightly quicker than Arjé's 10 weeks, but then I am on a bike :-)
(With a bit of luck and fair weather, this will be more like 5 times a week, but hey, I do live in England .... )
How do you solve a problem like email?
One new thing I tried over the holiday break was not reading any emails other than those that found their way specifically into my very personal inbox - an email address that has not (yet) been found by spammers.
This had two interesting side effects - firstly, I actually had a holiday, a relaxing break from the daily grind of deleting spam. Secondly, it allowed me to get some decent statistics on the usefulness of email, even if it was in a supposedly-quiet period for work.
The results were devastating and quite depressing. In the approximately 12 days this went on (5 of which could be considered normal work days otherwise), I received 3720 emails (after server-side and client-side spam and virus filters). After manual and automatic filtering (whitelists, blacklists, greylists, sorting by recipient, and so on), just 0.01% of those emails were genuinely useful non-spam solicited mails.
With that signal to noise ratio, it's pretty clear that email is now an untenable medium. I'd been toying with the last drastic step, pointing everything at GMail and hoping for the best, in the hopes that commercially-maintained spam and virus filters would have more hope of competing than my own meagre defenses. But today my GMail account has received 3 pretty obvious spams. I received perhaps 3 in total there throughout 2006.
This makes me think that the spammers are now working pretty hard at breaking through Google's filters, and that it's only a matter of time before GMail becomes useless too. So the effort it takes to switch is only going to provide a short-term solution at best. Do others see high levels of GMail spam, or am I just unlucky?
Meanwhile, I'm religiously maintaining my address book and the use of specific whitelists seems to deal with much of the pain. I've also dropped a handful of mailing lists and finally deleted my Orkut account, which was responsible for several spams a day. I also wonder if handing over mail filtering to an organisation like Plaxo might help - though of course, finding a trusted third party with critical mass is going to be tricky.
Busted
Four days into 2007, second day back at work, and I'm forced to deal with domestic disaster as my shower goes on strike. Those of you that know me will understand the prospect of no showers has me close to a nervous breakdown.
A brief diagnosis (and recollections of last time this happened, when the shower was still under warranty and I could call out an engineer) suggests that the fault lies with the solenoid, since the shower has both power and water but refuses to do anything with either. Ironically my multimeter has a dead (non-standard) battery, so I'm unable to confirm just now.
A new solenoid should now be en route, meanwhile I'm off to buy one of those terribly tasteful rubber shower hoses that you stick on taps. Unfortunately, my retro bathroom (circa the tasteless era) has non-standard taps, so this fallback plan may not work.
The bathroom was next on the DIY to-do, but it looks like I might have to get started this month, rather sooner than expected. Hrmph.
Oh, happy new year by the way ;-)