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The first public beta release of EventCalendar 3.1 is now available. This is a significant re-write. Event dates are now kept in their own table, so they are seperate from the post date. There is a new Ajax interface on the post edit screen that allows you to set …

Some low-life spammer has started forging messages from my domain. My mail server is receiving many deliveries per second, all bounces for users that don't exist at my domain. Unfortunately I have (had) a catch-all alias that put mails for all unknown users into my mailbox. Ooops.

I'm in the …

I've been getting a lot of questions about my Flood Maps web-site. Here's a compilation of all the thing's I've had to say about them so far.

The questions are from Pierre Grumberg ofEmap France.

How did you make the maps?

It breaks down into two parts:

The website …

Seen on Metafilter...

How does linkfile(1) know what the original user ID was, when it's run from inside a SUID program? Well, it's a mystery to me anyway.

Here's an example program:

int main() {
  system("linkfile /tmp/foo.lock");
  return 0;
}

This program simply calls linkfile /tmp/foo. When I run it …

I've just finished listening to Cliff Richard arguing for an extension to the term of performance copyrights. Could he be any more selfish?

It's one of those laws where ordinary people are not permitted to bring private private prosecutions. The argument is that it stops people from "abusing" the law. This novel use of the word "abusing" actually means "practically demonstrating the fuckwittitude of".

Section 15 of the Bill requires the consent of …

My laptop is usually connected behind a restrictive firewall. Since port 25 is blocked, I can't send mail the normal way. Instead I just build a tunnel to my mail server using ssh -Nf -L25025:localhost:25 mailhost and configure Mail's SMTP server to point to localhost port 25025. Usually …

Don't get me wrong. I like Safari. I use it almost every day. But some things about it just irritate me again and again and again...

Next, the URL bar.

(Part 1 was The Back Button)

On the face of it, Safari's URL bar looks perfectly ordinary and acceptable. I …

While I was writing my K5 story on global sea-level rise, I tried to find a map that would show the world after the Greenland ice-sheet had melted. I couldn't find anything, so I decided to make one myself...

Flood Maps is a Google Maps hack, with new sea-levels overlaid …