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Posts related to the wider topic of IT.

Three months of WordPress: A review

31/01/2016 0 Comments

In October I’d had enough of this website. I had topics I wanted to talk about, but getting them onto the screen was so difficult thanks to a half finished editor and a lack of motivation on my part to finish getting the site working. For the first eight years of owning this website, I’d steadfastly refused to use WordPress or any other CMS system. Then I decided to give it another go. It’s amazing what a few years of development on a product can do. The experience went from being impossibly annoying, to being relatively straightforward. Three months on,…
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How low can you go? The cheapest PC

08/01/2016 0 Comments

I was having a chat with a friend about about cheap PCs the other day. We began to wonder, given the massive drop in the cost of components, what’s the cheapest PC you can build? Using scan.co.uk who are my goto place for computer supplies, I decided to find out. First, we need to work out what this machine will be used for. If we’re going for cheap, then gaming is out, meaning it’s going to be used for a bit of web browsing and perhaps a bit of word processing / spreadsheeting. In reality, if that was all the…
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IT, Products

Review: Toshiba Satellite Click Mini

08/11/2015 0 Comments

The big thing in computers between 2007 and 2010 was the rise of the Netbook: Small, low powered, low cost computers, running either Linux or Windows. The first Netbooks had a mere 7-inch screen at a stupidly low resolution of 1024×600. Then came 9-inch models, same poor resolution, but a more useful screen. Then came 10 and 11-inch variants. The price also started to rise as more powerful processors and components were installed. Then, just as quickly as they burst onto the scene, the Netbooks fizzled away. Until recently, the smallest you could go was 11-inches, which is a shame…
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IT, Products

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Networking 2015: Hello pfSense

06/11/2015 3 Comments

Having spoken previously about how I’m done with using Cisco for my networks, I now need a replacement. This has come in the form of pfSense. Given that it doesn’t have the name recognition of a brand like Cisco, perhaps some explanation is necessary. The fundamental element of networking is moving packets of information across physical networks. Once upon a time, this required specialist hardware that could move these packets quickly enough, giving companies such as Cisco their market. Today, commodity hardware is cheap and powerful enough that it can act as a network router. This is where software such…
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IT, Networking

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Networking 2015: Saying goodbye to Cisco

01/11/2015 2 Comments

For the past five years I’ve been in a relationship that I’ve had no business getting involved with. That is, with Cisco networking equipment. Back in 2010, a friend decided to begin learning Cisco and to obtain his CCNA with a view to becoming a network engineer. Because I can’t resist fiddling with technology, I soon picked up enough to build networks, and eventually had built four of them using Cisco routers and switches. Unfortunately, there’s a  few downsides to using Cisco, which I’ll cover below. In part two of the Networking 2015 series, I’ll introduce the technology I’m replacing…
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IT, Networking, Uncategorised

The technology has become a tool, and I’m not sad

21/10/2015 0 Comments

I would like to say a big thank you to Facebook. The other day it thought it would be nice to remind me of a photo I took at university, something I still think of as being not that long ago, But no, Facebook had other ideas, and helpfully depressingly reminded me that it was in fact five years ago. The photo is from my lab in my final year. I was working on a project around home automation, so I had lots of fancy electronics kit, a couple of computers and a whole bunch of time on my hands. It…
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Protecting a website against spammers and robots – CallamMcMillan.com

07/07/2014 0 Comments

This post was originally going to be a talk about what I did with CallamMcMillan.com to stop comments, followed by another article on how I dealt with a robots problem on the article voting system. After re-reading the article though, I decided to explain the problem a bit better and make this article somewhat informative so that you can use it on your own websites. If you’re like me then you’ll enjoy getting feedback on your work. The feedback may not always agree with my point of view, or it may suggest that my technical solutions are lacking, but at…
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IT, Security

HowTo: Comment out lines in a .htaccess file

31/07/2012

The .htaccess file allows for directory-level configuration on Unix based web servers. You may use the .htaccess file on a website for authorisation and authentication, or for URL rewriting (changing mywebsite.com/fruit/bananas to mywebsite.com/fruit.php?fruit=bananas.) This feature allows the mechanics of your website to be hidden from the user and allows search engines to index your content more efficiently. As with most configuration files, it becomes necessary to comment out lines and add comments to assist with maintaining the file. To do this you need to add a hash (#) symbol at the start of each line. Simples!

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An advert for a great web host – EvoHosting.co.uk

29/04/2012 0 Comments

When I signed up with my web hosting company nearly five years ago, they offered the best service for the price. By the time the last renewal come round though they were useless, so I changed to my current hosts – EvoHosting.co.uk. Why am I giving them free advertising, well last night I couldn’t get my browser to save the password to my control panel, so I opened a ticket with them. They fixed it within 4 hours on a Saturday night. That’s good service! if you want good service from your web host check EvoHosting.co.uk out here!

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On the search for better internet. Part 1

08/04/2012 0 Comments

Let me answer a couple of questions about the internet. Is the internet a human right? No. Should it be? Not really. Would I become a raving lunatic if the internet was taken away from me? Probably! The reason I say this is that I have had enough of ADSL, it’s crap and that is putting it mildly. We have two ADSL lines coming into the house. Measurements taken at 1240 on a Sunday afternoon reveal that the main BT Business broadband connection manages a pathetic 3.15Mbps down and 0.38Mbps up with a 19ms ping through a Cisco 1841 router….
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IT, Personal