http://bogpeople.com/blog Sharing The Few Thoughts I Have With The World Tue, 06 Jan 2009 15:43:54 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en I recently found myself needing to upgrade the hard disks in a few PCs to bigger and and faster ones. The thought of having to reinstall Windows from scratch an all of them made my heart sink into the pit of my stomach so I set about seeing what ... http://bogpeople.com/blog/?p=15 Wow...is it really over a year since my last blog post ? Anyway, here's something which I hope will be useful. I find it awkward to pick out my Mac's IP addresses at a glance from the output of "ifconfig -a".  Here's a command-line that makes it very easy... [eamonn@stig ~]$ ifconfig -a ... http://bogpeople.com/blog/?p=17 Have you ever wondered what lurks inside the master telephone socket that eircom provide?  Surprisingly little, as it turns out.  Here is a photo of the insides of one of them:- (click on the photo above for a bigger version)  The circuit diagram of the master socket is:- There are two sets of ... http://bogpeople.com/blog/?p=14 [This post is a slight departure from my stated policy of trying not to increase the average level of inane wittering on the Internet any further by keeping my opinions to myself in this blog, but this particular insight is just too penetrating not to share it with the world. ... http://bogpeople.com/blog/?p=13 Imagine my dismay when my new, fast-everything-dual-core-with-tons-of-RAM PC suddenly started running at around 50% CPU utilisation more-or-less constantly, even when it wasn't supposed to be doing anything. You just don't have these problems with Linux ;-) . Anyway so began the detective-work. Most of the CPU utilisation appears to ... http://bogpeople.com/blog/?p=12 This is a neat demonstration of the effect of camera aperture on picture depth of field. All of these photos were taken at the same time with decreasing aperture (or increasing f-stop if you prefer). f/5.6 f/6.3 f/7.1 f/8 f/9 f/10 f/11 f/13 f/14 f/16 f/18 f/20 f/22 f/25 f/29 f/36 For those who are curious about such things, the pictures were all taken with ... http://bogpeople.com/blog/?p=11 The problem: when my cheap-n-cheerful 14" Philips portable TV was connected to my even-cheaper-n-just-as-cheerful Bush DVD player, the screen on the TV was completely blank when trying to watch ordinary TV. Sound came through OK, but no picture. Disconnecting the SCART cable or plugging out the DVD power cable ... http://bogpeople.com/blog/?p=6 OK...this is my first useful post to this blog. I have spent the better part of the day trying to diagnose an IPSec connectivity problem between a Cisco PIX (version 6.3.5) and a WatchGuard Firebox of some kind (I have no visibility of it). The problem turns out to be ... http://bogpeople.com/blog/?p=5 Temptation has got the better of me. I have a blog. This will be a source of some mirth to those who have suffered through my several diatribes about a certain class of self-important, highly-opinionated person who believes that they somehow make the world a richer place by filling it ... http://bogpeople.com/blog/?p=4