Moving to CardDAV

 Posted on September 2, 2013  (Last modified on January 14, 2020)  |  richm

It’s time to unify my various phone/email contact lists into a single contact database. CardDAV seems perfect for the job and I already run a DAViCal server that supports both CalDAV and CardDAV. History My email addressbook is currently very disjoint and is primarily based around the builtin address book in Mozilla Thunderbird. However I use Thunderbird on a couple of different devices and each is disjoint and contains an incomplete version of my contacts. [Read More]

Durham Regatta Goes Down Well

 Posted on June 17, 2013  (Last modified on January 10, 2020)  |  admin

[singlepic id=679 w=320 h=240 float=right]Being heavily involved in the organisation of Durham Regatta it is often very difficult to see the wood from the trees. An event of that size always brings up a stream of issues that need resolving throughout the weekend. The key is to minimise the effect of each issue so that it has a minimal impact and where possible to localise effects to a few crews/people. [Read More]

Using Udev to mount a backup disk

 Posted on February 25, 2013  (Last modified on January 14, 2020)  |  richm

I use the wonderful Bacula to backup the systems that I run. This saves the backup volumes onto a couple of NAS devices. The volume of data this produces does not really allow off-site backups to be performed over an ADSL line. Naturally this makes me a little nervous so I implement offsite backups by syncing the backup volumes onto USB hard-drives on a weekly basis and taking these to a remote storage location. [Read More]

New Mail Account for Spammers

 Posted on January 30, 2013  (Last modified on January 10, 2020)  |  admin

I’m trying an experiment to see exactly how long it takes for spammers to pick up a new email address. As such I’ve just registered dick@oldelvet.org.uk and the only reference to it is here on this post. Please be warned that this new email address is not intended for legitimate email. So please don’t add it to your addressbooks or otherwise use it. Lets see how long it takes. P.S. I’ve set the published date of this post back a while so it doesn’t appear too recent in my timeline. [Read More]

Use StartSSL Certificate in Apache Qpid

 Posted on November 6, 2012  (Last modified on January 14, 2020)  |  richm

The Mozilla NSS libraries are unfamiliar to myself and I had a little trouble working out how to import a StartSSL key/certificate stored in PEM files into the format required by qpidd. The Apache Qpid - Securing Connections with SSL blog post gives a good overview of how to create self-signed certificates with certutil and how to configure qpidd to use them. Below are the steps that I used to populate the server_db store with my key, certificate and the StartSSL root/intermediate certificates. [Read More]

Fireball

 Posted on September 21, 2012  (Last modified on January 14, 2020)  |  richm

Just seen the most amazing thing. Was out for a walk at 22:55 21st September and saw what must be a fireball streaking across the sky from east to west. I was up near the traffic lights in Sacriston heading down towards Witton Gilbert. The fireball went across my field of view in a couple of seconds. My first thought was that it was a firework because there were at least 5 pieces of it. [Read More]

Olympic Rowing

 Posted on August 9, 2012  (Last modified on January 14, 2020)  |  richm

The London 2012 Olympic Rowing Regatta at Eton Dorney totally exceeded all of my expectations. Team GB really did us proud getting all 13 crews into the finals with 9 of those crews winning medals. The gold for Kat Copeland and Sophie Hosking really add a local dimension to the results. Kat is a current member of Tees Rowing Club having learned to row at Yarm School. Sophie Hosking is a Durham University graduate having been a member of the Durham University Boat Club rowing programme. [Read More]

Allcomers 2012

 Posted on July 3, 2012  (Last modified on January 18, 2020)  |  richm

Durham ARC ran its annual Allcomers' fun regatta on Sunday. This year I got to coach (and very nearly cox!) two crews in the event. The Durham County Council folks who we had worked with whilst organising Durham Regatta fancied giving the sport a try.

[Read More]