Dave Holland's home page

My brain hurts
11:55pm, Friday 16 February 2007

"Piet is a programming language in which programs look like abstract paintings." That's... neat.

That program prints "Piet". Obvious, huh?

Keep up at the back
1:21pm, Monday 22 January 2007

Anyone would think that Alexander Pope had previous experience of upgrading computer operating systems:

Be not the first by whom the new are tried,
Nor yet the last to lay the old aside.

Or, in other words, moving from Windows 98 to Windows XP so that your son's Lego racing game works will prevent your daughter's dolls house game from working. Thank you, Microsoft.

Gone phishing
1:02pm, Friday 8 December 2006 (Updated 4:34pm, Friday 8 December 2006)

In the never-ending battle against unwanted email junk, I added a bunch of phishing mail signatures to my mail server. Within 15 minutes, the new rules rejected 2 messages; and another 2 in the next 45 minutes. A small but worthwhile reduction in the deluge.

Update: and if I delay incoming email from Windows machines then lots of inbound connections strangely don't run to completion. :-)

Early, for a change
11:14pm, Tuesday 21 November 2006

So much for getting ADSL on the 23rd - Nildram emailed me today to say it'd be active on the 24th. I plugged the router in anyway and what do you know - it's already live!

Retro... no, just irritating
9:53am, Tuesday 14 November 2006

I'd forgotten quite how slow and irritating a dial-up Internet connection is.

Nildram tell me they'll be enabling my ADSL on the 23rd. I don't think ADSL is going to count as a "utility service" until same-day house move service enabling is available (like, say, water... electricity... telephone) which I imagine might be a blocker for consumer VoIP take-up.