Posts by Chris Walsh

The chip that changed my world – and yours

It was the Sinclair ZX80, not the ZX81 that was available in kit form.

The New ROM Antics – building the ZX Spectrum 128

Me neither. You don't see those on the Emulators. I must check out the other personalities on my KS2 Spectrum Next!

Neo4j has this great IDE-a: How about we stuff all our graph workspace, database, algorithms and visualisation wizardry in one place?

Surely Spam demands an honourable mention! ;-)

Don't shame idiots about their idiotically weak passwords

My 20 character randomly generated strong passwords curtosy of LastPass is no match against stupid websites that (no word of a lie) require your password to be "between 6 and 8 digits" (yes 0-9 only!)

High-end router flinger DrayTek admits to zero day in bunch of Vigor kit

2850n

We have a bunch of 2850n units but these are now considered "legacy products" and there hasn't been a firmware update release for it (last release was January 2017). Is that because this "legacy" product is not vulnerable or that they're just not supporting it?

Pickaxe chops cable, KOs UKFast data centre

Just had our UK fast account manager call us. Apparently the resulting power surge caused the UPS to fail which is why the outage occurred. They are looking into hardening this area.

Rackspace gone dowwwwn?

Rackspace gone dowwwwn?

Our Rackspace hosted server has been having problems with RDP and FTP this morning.

Now our hosted site is not responding to http requests - nor is the rackspace's own website at http://www.rackspace.co.uk/

What is going down? DDOS?

Update: Apparently it is a major BT outsage

Broadband / Phone provider sought

PlusNet offer a static IP address for a one-off fee of £5

Been with PlusNet for a couple of years on their fibre option.

I work a lot from home and use a site-to-site VPN with the office.

BT wanted me to go "business class" to get a static IP.

Plusnet were happy to provide me with one for a one-off fee of £5.

Generally pretty happy with the service.

SanDisk's record-busting 512GB SD CARD will fit perfectly in your empty wallet

In another 10 years

I wonder if well be seeing a 512TB card in another 10 years. Some how I doubt it! :-)

Valve showers Debian Linux devs with FREE Steam games

That's Denian productivity down the pan then!

(I say in jest! - fair play)

Backup software for HDD and Cloud

Good experience with Acronis True Image

My experience with Acronis True Image (TI) 2014 is very good. My main PC uses TI to backup daily incrementals and a monthly full backup to a QNAP drive. It only takes 2-3 minutes every morning to to the incremental and I can mount any daily image from anything back to 3-4 months ago when I first set it up. You can set a quota so that it doesn't consume all the NAS drive space (I've set it to 1GB and it is only still consuming 700GB including 3 full images) but I know it will start dropping the full image from several months back once that 1GB quote is reached. It supports bare metal restores too.

I use Windows 8.1 with a 250GB SSD drive. NAS is QNAP 412 with 3x2GB hard disks.

Have you reinstalled Windows yet? No, I just want to PRINT THIS DAMN PAGE

I did have a few giggles reading this!

In many ways printers have come a long way. However most of 'intelligence'(!) is in the drivers now and not the printers themselves.

I still find it crazy how my printer feels the need to go through a Head Cleaning Fit when I switch it in to SCAN some documents! I would laugh, except that I know that each time it does it costs me 3% of each ink cartridge.

Microsoft relents: 'Go ahead, install Windows 8.1 on clean PCs'

18th October..

..will be a slow day on the internet!

Google goes dark for 2 minutes, kills 40% of world's net traffic

I agree with Cliff...

I use the ubiquitus 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 (?) and if DNS fails then pretty much all web/ftp/rdp/name-your-service-here fails unless you are using direct IP addresses or local host file entries.

As big as the Chocolate Factory is (and it IS big) I think the DNS service is so central to what people conceive as the internet working, or otherwise.

Still 2 minutes... bad Google, bad Google!

ZX Spectrum cassette player lost? There's an app for that

Actually the code master CD loaders were much faster as they required a special (well, bespoke, nothing complicated) to connect your CD player to your joystick port as this was more accurate than using the ULA's EAR socket.

I think they did miss a trick however of not usilising more than one bit of the 16 available on CD.

Infinite loop: the Sinclair ZX Microdrive story

I own three Microdrives. Two still work! :-)

Here's the $4.99 utility that might just have saved Windows 8

Stardock get my seal of approval

I've never been one for installing loads of gimmicky UI-enhancers but I have been using StarDock Fences for at least a couple of years now and was well worth the purchase.

I've not used Win8 in a production environment yet but as a developer I can't imaging TIFKAM being a benefit to me and more likely a hinderence. I suspect if/when I choose move to Win8 StarDock may be a no-brainer for me.

Sinclair ZX Spectrum FAILS latest radio noise rules SHOCK

I thought the 3.5MHz clock might be one suspect.

The clock is stepped down from 14Mhz crystal but the 3.5 was used by most of the computer and 7 and 14 used by the ULA to render the screen (pixel clock etc.)

Raspberry Pi 2.0 ready to ship

Still waiting for mine and I ordered mind in March!

Still waiting for mine and I ordered mind in March!

WD sees red, flogs NAS niche drives to SOHO punters

5400rpm is okay

The 7200rpm issue is not a problem IMHO. 5400-5900rpm provides quieter and more reliable (long term) for the same cost. At the end of the day, they are for mass storage, not high performance.

I'm waiting to order 3 x 2TB WD RED for my brand spanking new QNAP TS-412. Not sure if they have hit the UK yet though.

£109 for 2TB - a clear mark-up on the US costs. Maybe related to VAT.

Portal 2

really?

Can you really find 10 people who don't like their humour for every one person who does?

I wager I can find 10 people who say you are wrong to 1 who agrees with you..

Windows Server 2008 bundles get first 'public' airing

Complex licensing with Server products

As a small business (4-9 staff), buying into Microsoft Server products has always been increadible complicated. I hope that the 2008 Server range is simpler..

Microsoft delays SQL Server 2008 release again

Had it already!

This announcement is strange.

I've downloaded and been using VS2008 Professional for the last eight weeks via our MSDN Subscription. How could VS "not" announce a release?

BTW: Before you ask, I'm not using a beta or RC version of VS2008.

Remembering the Commodore SX-64

widely considered the best-selling personal computer?

- It was the Commodore 64 — widely considered the best-selling personal computer of all time. It was fast and cheap with a show-stopping 64 kilobytes of RAM.

Nah, the ZX Spectrum was far superior. Ask anybody.

Major HTML update unveiled

HTML5 vs XHTML2 & what about user agent support

Wow, now we have to decide whether we should build our sites using HTML 5 or it's XHTML cousin. All sounds quite exciting!

I wonder when we will expect to see HTML 5 supported in user agents. I bet the Mozilla crowd get there before Microsoft. There! I have thrown down the gauntlet... :-)

A serious browser vulnerability, but whose?

Its neither!!!

I thought I would just introduce another angle on it!