Older blog entries for mjcox (starting at number 64)

Played around with the alarm system (well the 'tamper' system works) but need some opto-isolation before I dare connect it up to the gateway. Got the gateway to SMS me when there is a power failure, which is semi-useful but really freaks out guests when I switch off the master power and my phone beeps a few seconds later. Took a few pics of the setup so far here.

I'm trying to stay away from coding for work for a month or two, just to see if it can be done. I've found it hard the last few years as I moved away from doing coding on a day to day basis; you tend to judge your week by how much code you've achieved. This of course doesn't scale when you get to be a manager and the temptation is to try to do a bit of coding for work every week in order to feel you have 'achieved something'. Last week I couldn't resist and ended up recoding some pages and scripts that were in PHP to work with AxKit. Doh.

In other news: Sonik

Now my days and evenings are spent working and my nights trying to learn DIY as quickly as possible. I fixed a few electric points that were wired incorrectly (several had no earth connection!). Also I was expecting the light switches in the house to be wired conventionally (which at least in the UK means you run the mains to a junction box in the ceiling, then run a two-core cable with live in and out to the wall switch). In this house each switch has three twin+earth cables. Mains in, mains out, and switched mains to the lights. I've yet to find out why. Actually this turns out to be rather cool as in most UK houses you don't get neutral in the switch boxes which sometimes limits the fun you can have with home automation. But it does mean that one particular place has five mains wires competing for space behind a single gang triple switch

Currently working out the best way to connect up the heating system (one input) and alarm system (lots of triggers) to the network; I don't want to trust X10 for those.

More CVE fun and advocacy

So having cable internet throughout the house is cool; having water coming in from outside through the plasterboard is not so cool. A highlight of my week in North Carolina was meeting up with some of the IBM Apache folks, especially RoUS, almost made the 4 hours stuck in Newark airport worthwhile. Also got to spend some time with Bryce, shopping, and other Red Hat folks.

32 snagging list items left for the builder to fix (down from nearly 200). Never buy a new house, not if you are already working >>40 hour weeks.

Continuing my quest to add CVE details to all Red Hat security advisories, working my way through 2001.

ScrewfixDirect say "every item in stock - if it's in this catalogue we will despatch it today, without delay". Except if you're me when you order on Wednesday and due to items being out of stock I won't get my order until Monday at the earliest. Meanwhile the toilet stays broken....

house: Moving in on Friday, finally. Not everything is 100% finished, but I spent a couple of hours wiring in the patch panel and a couple of hours working out which socket was which. Note: if you ask your builders to install CAT5 for you remember to also ask them to label the ends. I kind of assumed they'd do that. I also made the incorred assumption that when the spec said "aerial points in every room" it meant I got an aerial. No, I get a whole load of cables in the loft ready for an aerial and distribution amplifier to be installed. I'm finding it really hard to find everything I want for the new house; I want some X10 light switches (fairly easy to find except I need one to control 500W and they look cheap and tacky in white plastic), a couple of sets of motorised curtains (harder to find, impossible if you want to do >2.5m lengths), automated heating control (found a couple, nothing perfect)

security: So finally the stuff I've been working on for the last few weeks, a security resource center for Red Hat went live, but no rest for me as I get signed up to write a webcast for later this month. I got quoted in a few news articles after giving interviews about the Red Hat wuftpd security release, not all the quotes were 100% accurate, but in the whole it was better than any other time I've given interviews.

house: Gave up trying to find an f-connector (or even bnc) patch panel, looks like I'll have to buy a drill and make one. Planning how to deal with various cool home-automation stuff for the house, but now wishing that I'd taken more time to help out and plan when they were doing the wiring; would have saved a few of the bodges that are going to be necessary. Hopefully in by Christmas!

Not much exciting development wise, I've been working on a new project for Red Hat (details in a few weeks). Spent a weekend researching home networking and found some cheap and neat single-gang triple RJ45 outlets (Alphasnap, www.bka.co.uk). Installed half of them in the house this morning. Bid on a couple of 19" rack cabinets on ebay, but these things are *really* expensive. Decided instead to use a 19" rack wall frame (www.minitran.co.uk) at a tenth the price.

closure: ebuyer.com said they'd refund my postage and my money, so I'm happy with them again. Telewest have agreed to install cable internet to my new house, it might take them a couple of months, but better than the 31200 baud I'm currently getting. My girlfriend is fine after 3 nights in the hospital. And finally I moved up to Scotland yesterday, after being quite impressed with the removal firm (If you want a good removal firm in Berkshire mail me for details)

Red Hat Linux 7.2: Had some issues with openssh-gnome-askpass (theres about five places you could get it to run ssh-agent, but only one is the right location), but generally been impressed. It even detected my obscure cheap Memorex USB smartmedia reader!

CVE: The experiment with the Mitre CVE vulnerability dictionary went well, but it's going to be difficult to get it working for every security errata. Need to think about that some more.

perspective: My girlfriend spent the night in hospital; it looks like she'll be okay, but i'm not going to get stressed about stupid computer hardware companies this week.

ebuyer.com. Well their Terms and Conditions state that if the item is broken you have to pay the costs to send it back to them, say what? But their Terms and Conditions also list their registered office as a PO Box, something thats actually not allowed under the Companies House rules :) Since they're not replying to my email anymore the next step will be to contact American Express. Thank goodness for consumer credit acts!