Recently I have been thinking about e-waste. We buy new phones and laptops every few years (or less), and what do we do with the old stuff? I discussed this a little bit previously in my post about mobile phones. So, in an effort to be a little more vigilant, I am going to try and see how long I can make my current laptop last. I will allow myself to replace some components and then try and re-use, dispose of appropriately or give away/sell the replaced components. Read more

So, I was drinking a lot of coffee at work, and to be honest it was costing a lot of money. So from today onwards I am going to stop buying coffee. Bonus. New $dayjob has a coffee machine. Rock!

A little over a year ago I moved from Linux/KDE to a Mac as I was getting fed up with stuff not ‘just working’. While I wasn’t immediately happy for various reasons, it grew on me, especially the fact that you could use commercial applications and they integrated well. The thing that drove me crazy the most was context switching; you switch from app to app, not window to window. Here is my original write up: http://goo.gl/euL6y. Read more

With the recent release of the Nexus 4 and iPhone 5, I am interested in what is the expected life of a mobile phone, and I guess specifically smart phones. In the last 3 or so years I have had 4 phones: Sony Ericsson P910i HTC Dream Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 Samsung Galaxy Nexus But in that same time, actually longer, I have had only one laptop; a Dell Latitude D630. (I may have had a couple of work laptops, like the newer Dell Latitude E6420 and an Apple MacBook pro, but my D630 has been my personal laptop, and it is still going strong (minus one key, + more RAM and more Disk). Read more

Today I learnt something new. I had not previously heard the term VRF (well not that I can remember anyway.) It means Virtual Routing and Forwarding. Here is a link to the Wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_Routing_and_Forwarding and a link to the documentation on Cisco’s website: http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/net_mgmt/vpn_solutions_center/1.1/user/guide/VPN_UG1.html It looks like it could be really useful.