daemon.child

Corporate ID badges: everyone has them these days. Most organisations with more than a few tens of people have listened to their security and HR consultants. They've spent money on ID badges. This is great news, of course. However, they're not very much use if people don't check them. I mean really check them, not just a cursory glance. This article explains some of the issues that I've seen as a consultant and gives some ideas to improve the situation in your business.

So, last year, the lovely Daemonchild suggested that it might be entertaining for me to be able to code/hack/do something that isn't flying, so that a) I'd have an extra transferable skill, b) we could, in future, do some work together and c) I'd stop asking him so many bloody questions! In his defence at the latter, I'm not so sure he's used to having an intelligent other (better?!) half so it must take some getting used to ;-)

Years ago - back in about 1998 - there was an incredibly useful tool called the Internet Ports Database running on the domain portsdb.org. I used it about once a week back then, so I was pretty irritated when the site just disappeared over night.

Finally, I've gotten around to producing my own version. You can find the interactive version here: Internet Ports Database. There is also a version for use in scripts. Use curl to send a GET request to http://www.daemonchild.com/pdb/ports.php?port=[port number] and you'll receive a simple format list of ports.

Once again, I'm writing a complete novel (defined at 50,000 words) in a month. Here's how it's going. (Not well at the time of writing, but I hope to catch it up...!)

(Red is bad - meaning I didn't write anything!)

Upgrading the iOS on an iPad or iPhone used to be a case of plugging in to the Mac or PC that hosts your iTunes library. iTunes always needed to be updated to the latest version in order to supply the latest firmware. Your mobile device was tethered to a computer. What about those people who don't own a computer, or moreover those people who don't want to own a computer? The iPad had such promise until the realisation hit that you still needed a desktop or laptop in order to set the thing up!

With Apple's iCloud and update over the air, this is no longer a requirement. I took some screenshots of my iPhone's update to 5.0.1 last night. It's such an easy thing to do, just click to continue. It took about five minutes to download in the end and another few to reboot and install. No problems at all.

While in Iceland recently, I took a bunch of great photos. I was really pleased with some of them from the first day in Reykjavik and the second in the hills. Only, bad things happened. My ageing camera (a 6 year old 400D) nearly lost us two days of photos. The on/off switch is very light now after so many years of use and so are the nav buttons... Yep, you guessed it.

Today, like every other Apple nerd, I updated my iPhone and iPad to iOS 5. I wanted to post a few screenshots of the new initial configuration screens.

Once your iPad reboots (mine took a few goes and I had to enter recovery mode followed by a full restore) you'll see the following:

This weekend, my daughter had some homework to do using a 10x10 number grid. But there wasn't one in her homework pack. I decided to make one for her. I'm not one for doing work manually when we can get a computer to do it, so I wrote an AppleScript to get Omnigraffle to create one. Here it is.

So, Daemonchild and I decided it might be a good idea to make our own wine. Nothing wrong with that...er...except that HE decided on Plum wine. I was sceptical. It doesn't sound particularly appetising. However...

There are many applications that link to FaceBook. Some of the apps that I make regular use of are included in this list: FourSquare, Twitter, Klout, various games and toys, etc. But I've always had the choice whether to link them to FaceBook. I've chosen to do this in some cases, and not in others. All good, it's my choice. But apparently, Spotify now requires you to link to a FaceBook account or your can't use their services. That's right, no FaceBook, no Spotify. Hmm.