https://neilzone.co.uk
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Today, for the first time in years - probably 20 or so - I drove to London. I didn’t really want to drive to London, and it is daft that it was even a credible option. I’d much prefer to take public transport and, when I go to London for work, I do. Thankfully, there is a reasonable if not brilliant train service from Newbury to Paddington. Time-wise, there was not a massive difference between driving from Newbury to Westfield, and then taking the tube, and taking the train from Newbury and…
Two and a half years ago, I found a piece of paper in our parcel box, asking if anyone would consider becoming a governor of a local primary school. I ummed and aahed about it, and decided to express an interest. Within a few minutes I had arranged a visit to the school, and within a few days, I was a governor. I did a lot of training, and spent the first 12 or so months trying to work out what on earth was going on. Being a school governor, and in particular understanding school accounting,…
Sandra and I have had this week off, and one of the things I wanted to do was to catch up on my reading. All bar one so far has been from Standard eBooks. Soldier Spy From Kobo, I enjoyed this account of someone who claims to have worked for MI5 (I’ve no reason to doubt this, but, well, who knows) carrying out operational (i.e. on street / in car) human surveillance. How much is true, how much is hyperbole, I don’t know, but it made for an interesting, often challenging, read. I finished the…
I found myself wondering the other day whether I was still interested in, let alone excited by, technology. I think that this is partly down to “AI”, and the breathless hyperbole about how it is Going To Change Everything. In my spare time, I’m a lawyer, and there’s a non-stop feed of slop about how all lawyers need to “adopt AI or be left behind”, and I’m finding this kind of nonsense draining. The ongoing regulatory narratives, particularly around identity verification simply to go online,…
I’ll be honest, I was a bit surprised that I knew anyone who would buy a pair of Meta AI glasses. Sure, they are readily available, and presumably heavily advertised, but most of the people with whom I spend time - online or offline - are not the kind of people who would buy them. I’ve got friends who use Facebook. I’ve got friends who use WhatsApp. But the glasses just - to me, anyway - feel rather different. Nevertheless, a friend did buy a pair, and was happy to chat about them. My friend -…
For some reason, the Address Book tab/pane on Thunderbird’s menu bar had gone missing, and I struggled to find out how to get it back. So, for future me, what resolved it was: Ctrl + Shift + b
Some of the UK government’s policy announcements around the Internet - and, in particular, social media and VPNs - are downright concerning me at the moment. In the name of “online safety”, the fundamental rights of both freedom of expression and privacy appear to be under imminent threat. I have concerns which go beyond our shores - mostly stemming from Google, frankly - but the UK legislative / policy issues are bothering me especially at the moment. I value my ability to read, learn, and…
A while ago, I heard that a friend of a friend was running a close quarters battle training course, at an Airsoft site not far from me (Ironsight, in Andover). So I schedule a rare mid-week day off, and signed up. That day was today :) Honestly, I was a bit nervous going into the day. Would I know anyone? Would everyone be fitter than I am? Or just better at it? It turned out that I knew, or at least recognised, at least half of the attendees. That made it easier to chat to some of the others…
Three months ago, I moved from hugo to BSSG for this blog (and my work blog). You can get BSSG here. I’ve been really happy with BSSG, and a couple of recent changes by Stefano have made it even better. Less content, less to generate I have a minimalist blog. A list of posts on the front page, and generally text-only posts. I like it to load fast even though it is running on a Raspberry Pi 4, along with a couple of other bits. This means that there are some features of BSSG that I do not use,…
A friend was looking for a new tablet, and they asked me for a recommendation. And… I just don’t have one. The only good tablet, because Android can be replaced with GrapheneOS, was the Google Pixel Tablet, and that is no longer available. Secondhand prices are sky high. That was my go-to recommendation for a while. Perhaps there will be a new one soon? Amazon’s range of FireOS tablets are, IMHO, bloated with crapware which one cannot easily remove. Even the Fire-Tools scripts only get one so…
tl;dr: I removed the “nginx proxy manager” add-on, and replaced it with the Let’s Encrypt add-on and (second) the nginx add-on. A couple of months ago, I moved my HomeAssistant installation to HAos. I think that it is fair to say that I was not overly pleased with this. Honestly, I preferred the “Core” python-venv approach, but I also wanted a “supported” installation, and so I switched to HAos. i got it up and running okay, and I thought that I had got proxying working too, using an add-on…
I have used RSS (“Really Simple Syndication”) as my default web browser (for some stuff) for ages now. Ages as in “20+ years”. It seems to be enjoying a bit of a resurgence, and I am delighted. What is RSS RSS is a way of publishing web content in a machine-readable format. When you publish a blogpost, as well as the new blogpost showing on your site, it is also added to a file, often call index.xml or feed.xml or similar. I publish RSS feeds for my personal blog and the decoded.legal blog.…
Computing can be so noisy these days No, I don’t want to sign up to your newsletter. No, I don’t want to create an account to read your site. (Well, I will for paid subscriptions, I guess.) No, I’m not going to create an account on your system to use my computer, or configure a router. I have a local account on the machine, and that’s just fine. No, I don’t want your app. You have a website. And yes, if you pretend that I can only do something via your app because I’m on a mobile browser, of…
I asked for reading recommendations, for a partner of someone who is going through the perimenopause / menopause. I got a lot of responses; thank you. I have included below those which seemed most relevant, for me to follow up on them. Apologies if I didn’t include your particular suggestions. I received quite a lot of advice too; thank you. Reading suggestions Books “Burning Up, Frozen Out” by Joe Warner and Rob Kemp “Menopause Manifesto” by Dr Jen Gunter (several recommendations for this)…
