this blog is girtby.net

MIT Weblog Survey

I was sent an invitation to fill out the MIT Weblog Survey. Only 5000 invitations were sent out, it must have been my lucky day.

Must. Obey. Book. Meme.

For some unknown reason, Chris is interested in what books I read.

This is What You See. This is What You Get.

Recently, I was talking with a Distinguished Colleage on the subject of Wikis. After having had to deal with the six single quotes rule, he complained that complicated markup syntax was a limitation of Wiki technology (or current implementations maybe) and that an ideal solution would allow WYSIWYG editing of content. He wanted all the advantages of Wikis but with a Microsoft Word interface. I disagree with this, and here is an attempt to explain why.

Hard questions

Reading the CCNA Study Guide, 4th Edition I came across the following. It is the answer to a multiple choice review question. (edited and emphasis added)

I'm Certifiable

Yesterday I passed my CCNA exam. As such I am now officially qualified to administer your network. Yes, yours! (If it’s run on Cisco kit of course) So now you know why girtby.net has been quiet of late.

Here are some observations from the experience of preparing for, and taking, this exam.

The eBay Buyer ... From HELL!

Those of you who were drooling uncontrollably at the description of my new PowerBook may console themselves with the knowledge that it has not been all beer and skittles. Not when you consider the agony of the Worlds Worst eBayer F——– Will Not Deal With Again. But I’m getting ahead of myself. This is a long and hopefully amusing story, please bear with me.

What's in your bookmarks bar?

So apparently I’m not the only one who fills up the bookmarks bar of my browser with lots of frequently-used and aggressively abbreviated bookmarks.

FreeBSD considered handful

Like most geeks I have a server at home for doing serveral tasks. Today I upgraded it from FreeBSD 5.2.1 to 5.4. This was a slightly daunting experience, which I will now recite.

More PowerPoint UI Potshots

Let’s pick on PowerPoint’s User Interface problems again! Won’t that be fun?

I Got The Power (Book)

Look, I need help. Seriously. My work starts offering new laptops paid for by salary sacrifice, and I just can’t help myself. A week or so later and I have a brand new PowerBook. I blame this on genetic flaws. Something to do with the Y chromosome, definitely.