Now that Microsoft is Shutting Sunrise

January 5, 2016 | 2 comments

I have been a big fan of Sunrise but there was always a danger when it was taken over by Microsoft that they would eventually shut it down and that is now on the cards. I really like the way that Sunrise allows me to see in my calendar information other than my diary entries such as Tripit travel plans and Foursquare checkins and I didn’t want to lose that.

My initial thought was to do something through IFTTT but not all services were covered and I couldn’t get the options I wanted to change the entry colour, for … Read the rest

Installing ModSecurity & OWASP Core Rule Set on an Amazon EC2 Linux (CentOS) Instance

December 29, 2015 | Comment

NOTE: This post has been updated to include the requirement of mod_unique_id.

As part of some investigations at work I have been playing around with ModSecurity, the open source web application firewall (WAF), and the standard set of rules provided by OWASP. All our infrastructure is hosted with Amazon AWS so I thought that it would be useful to drop down the steps I took to get this working on a bare bones Amazon Linux box.

Install ModSecurity

You can, of course, compile ModSecurity from the sources but it is easier to install via yum, however, it is part … Read the rest

WordPress, Cloudflare, Caching & Version Numbers

December 23, 2015 | Comment

While I love WordPress one thing that really bugs me is its insistence on adding the version number to the end of resources, so you end up with links links this:

http://www.spokenlikeageek.com/wp-content/themes/required/style.css?ver=4.4

The version number is added to enable browser caching of files thereby speeding up page loads. The issue with this is if you make a change to the resource it is difficult to get the changes showing without clearing your cache. Additionally, as I am using CloudFlare this step by WordPress is superfluous.

All is not lost however, you can remove these version number by adding the … Read the rest

Pebble Time Long Term Review

November 26, 2015 | Comment

So I have had my Pebble Time Steel a few months now so I thought that it would be good to revisit it and put down my thoughts having had it a while. The first thing is that I have now received my steel band and the watch looks so much better for it than the “leather” strap it was originally sent with. I’m really pleased with the look and it is a step up from the original plastic version (original Pebble) I had.

The Good and the not so Good

The watch interface has had an overhaul and there … Read the rest

Halo Back: Good idea, but does it work?

October 21, 2015 | 1 comment

A while back, although in terms of Kickstarter dates it was positively recent, a project was posted that caught my eye called Halo Back. This was a glass screen protector with a difference – the bottom left area was “mapped” to the top left making it easier to click the back link on apps. That’s poorly explained but this cheesy video from the project does a better job:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/haloband/halo-back-make-your-iphone-perfect

Last week the Halo Back arrived and so I stuck it on. Unlike other screen protectors the positioning is quite important and so the makers have included a frame that fits … Read the rest

New Pebble Time Thoughts

October 7, 2015 | Comment

Just thought I would put down my initial thoughts on the new Pebble Time. I’ll do a fuller review, including the same tests that I ran with the old Pebble, in a few weeks when I have captured more data.

I’ve had my steel version a couple of weeks now and it really like both the look of the watch and the new interface itself. In fact Apple seemed to like the timeline too so they pinched the idea for their watch!

When you pledged via Kickstarter the Steel variant comes with both a leather and steel link straps. … Read the rest

The developer’s iOS 9 public beta conundrum

September 4, 2015 | Comment

[UPDATE – I’m being trolled by my bank! See the update at the end of the article]

The above is a conversation that I had with my bank about their iOS app and highlight, I think, an increasing issue that developers are going to have with more and more public involvement with beta testing.

I have been running iOS9 for a while now and on the whole it is pretty good but having beta software out in the wild does cause issues for developers of apps. It may not be possible to get fixes that are caused by the beta … Read the rest

Flattery as a form of spam

August 11, 2015 | Comment

As spam goes this is pretty benign but irritating nevertheless and I have no idea how to rid myself of it.

Just recently I have started to receive messages through the contact form on our website that are allegedly related to our blog posts and they are smothering with kindness and praise for our work.

I blog quite often and I seriously appreciate your information. This article has truly peaked my interest. I’m going to take a note of your site and keep checking for new information about once a week. I subscribed to your Feed too.

When they take … Read the rest

Test Driving iOS 9

August 6, 2015 | 1 comment

Update: Almost the moment I pushed the post button Apple released beta 3 of iOS9 so I have added some things to reflect that.

So a few weeks ago I took the plunge and installed iOS9 on my iPhone, despite the dire warnings that accompanied the beta and I wanted to put down my thoughts.

Firstly iOS9 isn’t a radical departure from iOS8, in fact it feels more like a point update rather than a full update. That’s not to say that there aren’t some nice features that are included, which I will briefly cover below.

The first thing that … Read the rest

A little spring cleaning

July 30, 2015 | Comment

This is why you need to open up your PC occasionally and give it a bit of TLC. The pile of grubby dust above is just six months worth from our always on media server.

I got into the habit of cleaning it out regularly after it started (unsurprisingly) to become pretty noisy and given that it is in our lounge that became an issue. It is amazing the difference that a really good clean makes.

One important thing is that you MUST NOT use your normal hoover to suck out the dirt. This is a bad idea as it … Read the rest