SSD Drive

My 2009 vintage Compaq Presario is running out of disk space.  I've been convinced that SSDs are the way to go.  The PC is running SATA II supporting up to 3GB/s transfer rates.  I've ordered 256GB SATA II SSD from Crucial.

In the meantime CCleaner has bought me back about 20GB of cleaned up temp and cache files.

Spanning Backup for Google Accounts

I've just purchased Spanning Backup for our home Google Apps accounts.  I feel that I should really write a little script to pull my Google data out to a local hard drive periodically.  I've got a year to find the time to write that script before I need to renew Spanning.

Podcast on John Locke, Prices and Morality

I really enjoyed the Econtalk podcast on John Locke's views on economics, prices and morality.

SSH From Behind the Firewall

We've just got a network connection at the college where the boys do music.  Unfortunately the firewall blocks ssh traffic.  In order to get round this I've set up the ssh daemon to listen on port 443 and that gets round the firewall.

Here's the steps:

1. sudo vi /etc/ssh/sshd_config
2. Add in the line Port 443
3. sudo /etc/init.d/sshd restart 

Mac to Raspberry Pi Over Ethernet Cable

Here are some really quick notes on how to connect a Raspberry PI via a ethernet cable to a Mac in order to run the PI in head-less mode over SSH from the Mac:

1. Get the Raspberry Pi running connected to PC and monitor
2. Plug the ethernet cable between the Pi and the Mac
3. Set up internet sharing on Mac for the ethernet interface
4. To find the IP of the Pi: grep OFFER /var/log/system.log
5. ssh pi@[the IP address from the grep]

Cross-Platform Password Manager

I've been using KeePass as my password manager for some time now.  It works on Windows and the Android, but on OS X it runs under Mono and there is a bug that means it won't paste passwords into the Mac buffer.  This makes the password manager practically useless for decent, and hence impossible to type, passwords.  I'm on the look out for a replacement password manager.  I'm going to give LassPass a try.

Manchester Raspberry Pi Jam October 2012

We won't be able to make the Manchester Raspberry Pi Jam October 2012.  #1 son and I do still intend to work on a more powerful set of LEDs for the Morse code sender.  We might even have a chance to have a go at the receiving end.